Solomon's Crucible 55. The Open Road (Patreon)

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Once Solomon had handed over the guns and his advice, there wasn't much to say. He and Dale sat in companionable silence for a little while until Kanmi woke up. The three of them ate a quick breakfast before Solomon and Kanmi said their farewells and hit the road.

Solomon set a faster pace than he had the day before. He didn't want to spend more than one night out on the road before reaching his parents' place. He'd also gotten a lot more comfortable riding a horse. He still couldn't match Kanmi's natural grace, but at least he didn't feel like he was fighting the horse for every minute he stayed in the saddle.

His mount maintained a steady, unrelenting gait without variation or hesitation. It felt a little unnatural, but the predictability of it helped Solomon to adjust. They passed through another small town that seemed completely abandoned before riding onto the freeway. He would have liked to help the people there if he could, but he had to put his family first. Maybe they could do something on the way back.

For the first half hour of the ride, the freeway was completely deserted. That wasn't too unusual for western Oregon south of Eugene. When Solomon was driving on this stretch of road he usually only ever slowed down when his radar detector went off. It was still eerie to be moving along the interstate accompanied by nothing but the clop-clop sound of their horses' hooves.

Solomon grimaced as a wrecked car came into view. From a distance he couldn't see anything other than that it looked like the car had been both smashed and burned. As they got closer, he could see that the front end had crumpled as though the car had hit something, though the road ahead was clear. He pulled to a stop next to the car just in case, but from the smell alone it was clear that there was nothing he could do other than offer a brief prayer for the departed.

Kanmi pulled up next to him. "Poor bastard must have been about to go from one zone to the next when the walls went up."

Solomon shook his head. "At least it was quick."

He snapped the reins and set his horse back in motion. As they galloped away, his thoughts lingered on that moment of the system's activation. The driver they were leaving behind may have seen a flash of blue before the fatal crash. What about airplane passengers? They would have had a few seconds to read the introductory message as their plane lost power and started plummeting to earth. Did the grid walls reach that high? It had been hard to make out the shimmering barriers against the bright sky, and Solomon hadn't paid much attention at the time.

It was a sobering reminder that the moment the system appeared had been worse than any terrorist attack the country had ever suffered, worse than any war that had taken place while Solomon was alive. He'd deduced as much while he was slogging through the dungeon, but it had felt distant. He had been cut off from any kind of mass media reports. He still was. There was no disaster footage he could stream to his phone. Knowing that something had happened was one thing, seeing and smelling a dead body quite another.

All that death and destruction was just an opening act. The system was going to follow up by besieging them on their own planet, creating monsters out of nothing and teleporting invaders through the vastness of space, all in pursuit of some unknowable goal. Solomon knew he was probably never going to get a chance to strike back at the system itself. Any power he had that would let him do so would have to come from the system itself. It was easy enough to imagine how that would end.

Well, he'd just have to vent his anger on all the monsters coming around to try and kill and enslave humanity.

Inevitably, his thoughts turned to his parents. They should be all right. At the very least, they should have escaped the instant disaster from the grid's creation unscathed. The system had arrived on a Saturday, around mid-morning.

His mom most likely would have been out in the garden. His dad would have been inside watching television. On the off chance that one of them had gone out to get groceries, they would have been driving on a local road, not bombing down the freeway. They would have been safe enough at least long enough to read the system's introductory message.

His sister, too. His only worry there was whether the message would have still been around when she finally woke up. With a power outage taking out her alarm clock, she could easily have slept until mid-afternoon.

He thought they would still have been all right, toughing out what the system had to throw at them. It was building conjecture on top of conjecture, but his dad had done a tour in the army back in the day. He'd have kept his head. With the HP healing, he might end up ahead of the bargain, at least physically. His mother was tougher than she looked. The two of them would stick together and take care of each other.

His sister... he wasn't too worried about the system. Unless it outright dropped monsters in her room while she was asleep, she could handle what it threw at her. He was more worried about what the other college students might get up to. That was one reason he wanted to hurry. The more time he took to arrive, the more time for the crowd to decide to do something stupid.

They passed a few more cars. Unlike the first, they had at least been able to pull over to the side of the road. All of them had been abandoned. Solomon didn't try to track down the drivers. He'd help out if a person right in front of him needed a hand, but he couldn't afford to go off on speculative rescue missions every time he thought somebody might be in trouble.

The ride passed in silence, other than the steady sound of hooves striking concrete. Even when they stopped for lunch, Solomon was in no mood to talk. They continued on that way until the sun started to set. Just as sunset turned to twilight, they passed a sign on the highway advertising a Motel Six.

Not Solomon's first choice of accommodations, but he wasn't in a position to be picky. He led Kanmi towards the motel building, following the signs until it came into view. 

As soon as he laid eyes on the building, the first thing that jumped out at him were the signs of battle.

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