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“Come on.” I lightly touched her elbow and made my way towards the jeep.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Romero demanded, slamming the door shut just as I pulled it open. “You sit in the front.” He took hold of my forearm and walked me around to the other side, and then all but placed me in the passenger seat himself.

Arlen climbed in behind his seat and Grimm sat behind me for more leg room. Within seconds, we were on the road heading to wherever our destination was.

“No entourage of followers?” I asked, getting myself comfortable.

“They’re called acolytes, and they’ll be around soon enough.”

I hummed, staring out the window as we headed down a long empty road that had no end in sight. I peeked in the side mirror and saw Cobra was behind the wheel of the other jeep.

“What’s the deal with the girl and Bryce?” Arlen asked, slightly leaning forward.

“Bryce is someone I know I can rely on to keep Cali safe, regardless of what’s going on around us. And think of Dhal as a midwife.”

“Midwife?” we said at the same time.

If Arlen was caught off guard by Romero knowing I was knocked up, she didn’t show it. Grimm didn’t react at all, which could only mean he’d already known, or that not even that bombshell could crack his stone demeanor.

“I wanted someone around who wasn’t a stranger and knew about babies and shit. She’s helped her mom deliver a few.”

Honestly I didn’t give two fucks who wanted to play doctor, as long as they knew what they were doing and Baby S made it from utero

to my arms. It was the principle I needed to shine a spotlight on.

“You didn’t think to tell me any of this? Like, hours ago?” I questioned.

“You didn’t ask, like, hours ago.” He retorted. “I plan my shit meticulously, you know that.”

“Glad you’ve got it all figured out then, dickhead.”

“I always do.”

“Asshole,” I muttered, leaning my elbow on the window frame.

He chuckled darkly. “Keep talking shit, Cali. I won’t be driving forever.”

Rolling my eyes to the sky, I turned the radio on and let the voice of Otep fill the silence.

After what felt like hours had gone by, a weathered sign that read: “Welcome to the city of Woeford” appeared up ahead.

I’d been half asleep up until that point. It wasn’t the sky towers covered in moss, or the vision of a place that had once thrived that caught my attention and woke me up.

It was the smell gently blowing on the wind. The smell of death was so potent it burned my nose hairs and coated my tongue. The closer we got, the worse it became.

Death was an everyday occurrence in the Badlands. Whatever was causing this odor wasn’t.

“The fuck is that?” Arlen coughed out. from the corner of my eye, I saw her lift her shirt over her nose.

“There’s chaos in the streets. You’re about to see a whole lot of bodies and blood,” Romero answered.

No sooner had those words fallen from his lush lips and the jeep coasted into the mouth of city did his words drive home.

I could handle the stench of death. It was a sweet aroma that brought an air of comfort with it. Death signified the end; it was final. When death snatched a life away, she never gave it back. To me, that was beautiful.

What I was not a fan of was corpses that had been baking in the heat at a temperature of eighty-seven degrees.

Blood coated the sides of buildings, old store-fronts, and shards of windows that hadn’t been able to handle the carnage and shattered. It spread through the cracks and crevices of the sidewalk and steamed on the asphalt.