The Slow Ride runs straight as an arrow toward the mountains looming in the distance.

The man looked at Christmas.  His face held an expression of something like peace.

"When you live day-in, day-out with somebody, sharing what you got and watching each other's backs, one day you notice you just don't got much to fight about."

He turned back to the road.

Lucas and his passengers had left the East Highland Hills and then the Oilfields behind them a short while ago, and now they were on the first leg of the Slow Ride.

The flat landscape held only scrub, but it was green scrub, a holdover from when the land was cultivated before the War.  In time, the farmers of East Highland would be able to make it green again.  The asphalt showed the wear of years, but it was in better condition than the Road and the heavy-duty tires on Lucas' rig handled it easily.

The man was peering out at the road ahead.  Suddenly he pointed.

"There.  That clump of trees.  It's past that.  Keep going past the ruins on the other side.  A little while after that. It will be on the right. It's an old station wagon.  I got old signs over the windows."

Christmas slid the magazine she'd loaded into the semi-auto resting under the scarf on her lap. She took a moment to consider his words and began to resent the old man's peace when she realised who it reminded her of. She rested a hand on the shells in her pouch and watched the landscape, sighing.

"Does getting old just peace people out or something, Lucas?" Christmas asked, rather tactlessly. She peered towards the trees when the old man directed them and wondered what she'd do first once they were back at Travel Stop.

In reply to Christmas (msg # 4):

Lucas grinned briefly at Christmas.
"Sometimes if a person has any sense at all?
Dey might figure out dat some shit just ain't worth fightin' about."

Lucas slowed the Wrecker down a bit, his flinty gray eyes watching every tree very carefully for possible ambush. "Scaff boy ...youse look alive. We're gettin close."

Erwin slowed when Lucas did, checking his priming.

"Maybe," Christmas conceded, abandoning a train of thought which concerned only the distant future. She extended her lap as the Wrecker slowed, glancing from mirror to mirror.

Christmas checked her pistol and made a sling from the gown-rag with cagey efficiency. Her eyes crawled the surrounding scrub, free hand grasping the shotgun's pump like a gearstick.

"You seeing anything?"

As the vehicle slowed, Crow using the tool boxes and side of the truck for cover, took the chance to scan the area with a small set of field glasses. If this was a trap they needed to spot it before they came under fire.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:39, Sun 07 June 2015.

Yollie kept her eyes and ears open, scanning the surroundings absently, not really expecting to see anything. She hadn't spoken to the Crow and nor had he to her. She was relieved. He was an odd duck to say the least and aside from her basic first aid knowledge and their ancestry, they had little in common. She decided she would learn from him by observation, keeping the chatter to a minimum.

With her arrow knocked, she scanned.

Spot 10 vs 70 - big pass, Listen 70 vs 50, fail.

The clump of greenery grew nearer on the right, while to the left the flat dusty scrubland continued.  As the big truck rumbled past, the wary passengers caught glimpses of wreckage between the trees. Rusted cars and wide mounds of rubble covered with brownish grass were all that remained of whoever was once here.
Scaff swung his heavy machinegun to cover the small copse of trees, since it provided the most obvious cover for a raiding party, then glanced over his shoulder on the off change that any ambushers would expect that and somehow conceal themselves in the flat ground behind him.  He glanced again, then a third time.  Finally he shrugged and focused on the copse of trees.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:55, Sun 07 June 2015.

The rig rolled by the clump of trees without incident but for a pair of ground squirrels scurrying across the road.  A short distance down the road was something more worthy of the attention of Lucas and his passengers: a blackened mass of twisted wreckage lay in the middle of an old parking lot just off the road.  Whatever the old building was, it had been scorched and blown to pieces.  Fragments of it lay strewn across the terrain.  A couple of cars were caught nearby; they had been flipped end over end and now lay crumpled and rusted on the baked blacktop.

The man leaned forward in his seat between Lucas and Christmas and pointed down the open road.

"There.  Just keep going straight a little while more.  You'll see my car on the right. You'll see it easy from a cab this high."

He closed his eyes and touched his fingers to his forehead, chest and each shoulder, murmuring to himself.