Lana could feel the blisters swelling on her over worked feet like hot pokers fresh from the fire. She had been walking in the brush for what seemed like an eternity, trying to stay out of the light of the road. She wasn't at all inconspicuous in the terms of soul to human relations, just the condition of her torn clothes alone made her stand out like a sore thumb. She was alone, and had to I been for some time. Two summers, Lana had stopped keeping track of the days and months after Knox, her partner, blew his head off. He had always said they would never catch him alive, but Lana had never expected that.
The sun was down and the shadows had her mostly hidden, and upon realizing this she sat right in the dust to yank off her boots, and begin tearing through her pack for the cured beef strips she had saved for a night like tonight. It was a strangely eerie feeling to have gone months perhaps without hearing your own voice. On the back of her dirt coated hand was a spiral brand, small in the crook of her thumb and index finger. A reminder of normality and safety, cold beers and good friends. Chewing slowly on the tough meat, she wondered briefly if she would have been better off going with Knox, taking the big sleep instead. Suddenly, the first car she had seen in a while, engulfed we in its floodlights. Scrambling into the bush beside her, Lana held her breath and stared helplessly a her boots, laying limp as a giveaway just out of her reach.