He sat in the back of a greasy spoon, twenty miles out from the warm lights of civilization and twenty light-years out of his head. His only companions a long-cold cup of joe and a fuzzy tv on the bar. Set to local news, it was of little interest; he never stayed local very long.

Wandering had been his life since the war; one foot in front of the other in a march that had taken him from the Hell of Drumhead to this gray, lifeless purgatory of desolate truck-stops and dive bars on the fringes of the world.

Then the tv caught his attention: riots in C-ville. Murder, destruction, fire.

It was time to move on.

He clutched the frayed army jacket that was the only relic of the man he’d been, scattered coins onto the dirty counter. Not much of a tip, but he wasn’t much of a man anymore.

Lights rolled across the ceiling.

He ignored the pleading eyes of the girl outside—his escape had come; a truck to carry him from the Hell of C-ville, from the man he’d once been, but ever closer to the nothing he had become.