Having successfully managed to get everything down the hatch without frying my girlfriends, I’d headed out to Monster Mash and got her running.

I don’t know how to describe the feeling of starting a vehicle that you can tell has something wrong with it, at least not what I felt.

The whirring drone, the whine whenever I turned left, the constant vibrations that ran up my arms, all of it worked towards making me tense, anxious, and desperate.

We didn’t live too far out of town, five miles give or take, but despite the winding forest road’s thirty mile an hour speed limit, most people took the advantage of the lack of speed cameras and any sort of police presence and belted through at at least seventy making it feel like death was awaiting around every corner.

Granted, I had been one of those people, and yes there were very few people that took that road, but that didn’t change the fact that trundling along in my rust bucket waiting for a wannabe rally driver made an already stressful situation outright harrowing.

However, no one came up behind me, no one zoomed towards me, and there weren’t exactly a lot of driveways in our neck of the woods.

In fact, as I passed the three mile marker, I started to loosen up a bit and managed to get Monster Mash up to a slightly more respectable speed.

Needless to say, that was dumb.

“Shit.” I cursed under my breath as the steering wheel suddenly felt like I was dragging it through wet concrete and my revs dropped to nothing.

Struggling to keep her on the road on my way around a long, blind corner, I did my best not to crash while simultaneously finding a place to stop where a surprised station wagon wouldn’t end up meeting an untimely end.

Pulling over to the wrong side of the road in the hopes that someone coming towards me would be able to steer around, I started applying the brakes.

Once again, poor decision.

Although, in my defense, there was no way I could’ve known before I rounded the corner that a group of six Ghouls would be waiting for me half-a-mile up the road, tearing into a broken down truck.

Thinking as quickly as was needed at five miles per hour, I drove the brake pedal into the floor and came to a surprisingly still harsh halt in a relatively safe spot.

I cursed myself out as I put the van in park and took the functionally useless spoon out of the ignition, telling myself that if I hadn’t have started slowing down I could’ve probably coasted past them.

Annoyingly, my self-abuse gave a few of the Ghouls time to notice my presence and point me out to the others.

A day prior and I’d have taken them all on with ease, or I’d have simply ignored them for the shit all XP roaming feral Ghouls gave, but as I sat there white-knuckling the steering wheel and staring at the emaciated, red-eyed monsters I couldn’t help but feel just a little bit scared.

To make matters worse, I knew they fed off that, and that if I could’ve been at least a little more confident I might’ve been able to jump out of the van and scare them off.

Naturally, the knowledge that being afraid drew them to me made me more afraid and so on and so forth.

“Fuck it.” I announced to the empty van as I grabbed my axe from the passenger seat, “Fuck it.”

It took me a few more seconds after that to work up the courage to get out, giving the Ghouls the time they needed to finally start moving towards me.

Knowing a one-on-six fight would end poorly for me at my level, I figured my best course of action was to try and scare them off.

“Rar!” I roared, throwing my arms up and making a show of my axe, “Go on, git!”

The Ghouls had no problem seeing through my crappy brave mask though and continued moving towards me in their twitchy, tweaker way.

I roared again, doing my best to ignore the blood pounding in my ears as I cautiously walked towards them.

Before long, my ears were ringing to the point that I couldn’t hear the Ghouls’ clicks, growls, and threatening shrieks.

There was no point trying to make a run for the van, not only would they catch me before I got close, but they’d tear into her within seconds even if I managed to reach her.

I wanted to call the girls, tell them I loved them, I wanted to make sure my family knew they were always in my thoughts, even at the end.

There was nothing I could do to make those things happen though, I was stuck in a vulnerable, shitty situation and all I could do was make sure I died on my feet.

Planting my feet firmly on the uneven asphalt, I raised my axe over my shoulder and prepared to take as many of the feral bastards down with me, deaf or not.

Right as the first of the monsters went to break into a ghoulish sprint and I got ready to swing my axe, an explosion cut through my deafening heartbeat and sent the Ghouls running into the woods, screeching as they did.

Whipping around to find the source of the blast, I saw a shotgun-wielding mountain of a man climbing out of his red and white 80s F150, the bed and trailer of which he’d converted into a sort of poorly reticulated camper.

“Well, well, well, look who it is.” Nolan, my former Sasquatch lumberjack and handyman, chuckled heartily in his thick Wisconsin accent as he walked down the road towards me, his classic red flannel and jeans telling you just about everything you needed to know about him, “What are you doin’ here?”

“Just enjoying the scenery,” I joked, my heart struggling to cope as my adrenaline waned, “what about you?”

“Oh, I was just making my way into town,” Nolan replied, keeping an eye on where the Ghouls had been, “you need a jump or..?”

“Think I need a good deal more than a jump,” I sighed as the seven-foot mass of hair reached me, “thanks for the save though, might see you in town.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nolan laughed, clapping me around the shoulder, “c’mon, I’ll give you a lift. No sense leavin’ you out here to get chomped.”

“I…” I muttered, trying and failing to come up with a good reason not to accept his help and thus not be in his debt, before resigning myself to not being an idiot and smiling at the man-Wookie, “Thanks, a lift would be great.”

“Super,” Nolan replied happily gesturing for me to follow him, “gives us an opportunity to talk out what caused all the hullabaloo back on the land.”

“You didn’t get anything from…” I trailed off.

“So you saw…” Nolan got out before evidently getting stopped by the same wall me and the girls had, “Well, yeah, it was… made clear to me that I needed to get off the land before it got… reforested.”

Understandably, he struggled to get the words out in such a way that didn’t violate the rules that had apparently been set on us by Nimda, like trying to make a wish that wouldn’t end with ironic consequences.

“What took you so long to make it down this way?” I asked curiously as we reached his old but well-maintained truck.

“I went up the mountain-way first, figured I could find a good place to set up where you guys could find me easy enough when the time came.” Nolan explained after climbing into his slightly modified seat, nodding at the headrest when I showed him my axe, “But like you mentioned way back when, ain’t nothing but trouble up that way.”

“How far did you make it?” I asked after we’d made sure our weapons were mostly secure behind the seats, having some knowledge of what waited for the folk who went up the gravel roads of Harrow Peak.

“Maybe a quarter of the way?” Nolan replied unsurely as we finally set off, “Got past that last little commune, the one with all the Reformed?”

“You mean ‘Psycho, high off mushrooms and dehydration Ghouls with a passable vocabulary’?” I chuckled, “Yeah, I know of ‘em.”

“Yeah, well they were nice enough, but once I got past them the trees started shiftin’ around me and I swear something tried to get in the trailer.” Nolan continued, pointing over his shoulder with his big furry thumb, “Anyways, I came to the conclusion that the trailer park may not be pretty, it may not be free, but it also didn’t have Wendigos or murderous trees.”

“Just meth-heads and felons.” I half-joked.

“I can deal with junkies,” Nolan replied, gesturing to the shotgun behind our heads, “buckshot don’t stop Wendigos though.”

“True, very true,” I said with a nod, “maybe you don’t have to deal with either of them though.”

“How do you figure?” Nolan asked as we passed the truck the Ghouls had been ripping apart.

“Well, it’s a bit of a mess at the moment, but our old deal can still stand if you’re up for it.” I suggested, “I have it on the highest authority that the little… mix-up is resolved, so it’s not like you’ll have to pick up and move again.”

“You’re sure you’d be okay with that?” Nolan asked, trying to hide his eagerness, “Don’t feel like you owe me anything or nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” I scoffed amusedly, “You know as well as I do that the only reason I was able to get into as good of a position as I was was with your help. You and Connie.”

“And that little… glitch.” Nolan pointed out, the last word seemingly damn near killing him, before smiling and giving the divider glass a good knock, “You hear that Connie? Looks like we’ll be back home by dinner.”

A series of excited trills and beeps rang back in response, bringing a smile to my lips as I pictured what the joyful little Connie was doing.

Having Nolan there gave me a sense of normalcy to life, even if he was also a reminder of just how far I had to claw back.