//------------------------------//
// Dodge 
// Story: The Longest Highway 
// by Jay911 
//------------------------------//

OCTOBER 29

“So, where do we stop in the city?” Max asked.
“Idunno,” Kate shrugged. “It’s a big place.”
“Where would you end up if you had the free run of the whole city?” Duncan mused. “Where would your home base be?”
“The mall?” Max smirked.
He got a hoof to the side for his efforts. “Pssh, get real,” Kate said. “More like a hotel.”
“Yeah,” Duncan said, raising a hoof, which Kate bumped. “S’what I did.”
“Is there some place lots of people would gather?” Max inquired. “On the highway?”
“There’s a stadium,” Kate said. “Maybe that, I guess.”
Max hmm’ed. “Good as any, probably. If we don’t find anyone there, we might have to do a lap of the city to get somebody’s attention.” He turned his attention to Duncan. “Did Alex say how many ponies were left?”
“Not that I recall,” Duncan answered. “Except that ‘most of us’ were sent forward.” He added, “You trying to calculate the odds?”
“Odds of what?” Kate said.
“Finding somebody,” Max explained. “In a city this size.”
“There’s gotta be somebody here. There’s one and a quarter million people here,” Kate said. After a pause, she added, “Right?”
“We’ll see in about an hour,” Duncan said, tapping on the GPS with a pen. “Take Route 1 straight in.”
“On this beautiful, wide highway?” Max said with a smirk. “Now I can put the hammer down. Make it 45 minutes.”

Forty minutes later, the truck passed a truck stop - on the wrong side of the road, Max noted with disappointment - and crested a hill overlooking the city.
“Well, at least it’s not on fire,” Kate quipped. In fact, there was nothing out of the ordinary in sight, except for a lack of traffic. 
"Always the optimist," Duncan smiled.
The truck descended the hill and continued on the Trans-Canada Highway, passing a suburban airport and an amusement park, still ten or so miles outside the city itself. Max picked up the radio mic and held it out to Duncan.
"What?" Duncan said.
"I'm drivin'," Max answered, pushing the mic towards Duncan a second time. "It's time you do some work here. Call out."
Duncan took the mic, staring at it as if it might grow legs and attach itself to his face. He squeezed the button on the side. "Uh, hello. Is there anybody out there? Um, over."
"Smooth," Max smirked.
"It's your fault," Duncan accused. "My sum total of using a radio has been in your presence."
"Give it to me," Kate insisted, reaching out and pulling on the cord until Duncan released the mic and it shot towards her. She keyed it up and said, "Anyone on this channel, this is the Pony Express, do you copy? Anyone in the Calgary area, please respond. Over."
Max flinched at hearing the name she'd called out with.
"What?" she said.
"Don't get me started," he shot back.
"No answer," Duncan pointed out.
Max flipped on the emergency lights. He held a hoof out towards the siren control, but decided to wait until they were in the city proper - otherwise, they'd only serve to assault their own ears.
Another hill came and went, and then they were starting to come into the city's surrounds. The ski hill and former Winter Olympic venue loomed on the right.
"Anybody out there? This-"
"Don't do it again," Max cut Kate off.
"Fine, I'll drop the name," she sighed, rolling her eyes. "This is a truck coming in past COP on Highway 1. Anybody out there?"
Still, there was no response. Max rolled the truck through the intersection in front of Canada Olympic Park. He continued on eastbound on the highway as it transitioned into a surface street.
"How far is this stadium?" he asked.
"Idunno, about five minutes, I think," Kate said. "You'll see it."
True enough, in a few minutes, after passing through several barren communities, and past a hospital, which Max filed away in his head as being potentially noteworthy, there stood a red and beige structure on the left - beige stadium seats flanked by four red metal towers, from which a large speaker was suspended over midfield.
It took several attempts to find the correct road to get into the place, but eventually, the truck ended up in the parking lot of McMahon Stadium, according to the darkened electronic signboard out front.
"Doesn't look promising," Duncan observed.
"Maybe we should check that hospital back a ways," Max suggested.
"Probably right," Kate said. "But let me take a look from above."
"Sure," Duncan said, leaning back in his seat to let her past. She perched on the door briefly, then leapt into the sky.
"That's never gonna get old," Max smirked, looking through the windshield at the pegasus as she ascended.
"Almost didn't, thanks to us," Duncan pointed out.
They watched Kate circle around the stadium a few times, then come back to roost on the front cowl of the semi again. She shook her head.
"Don't scratch the finish!" Max railed.
Kate was tempted to drag her hooves across the hood as she came to the door and climbed in across Duncan's lap again. "Nothin' but a big, fat nothin'."
"Back to the hospital, then?" Duncan asked Max.
"Might as well," he agreed, putting the truck in gear and preparing to turn it around out of the parking lot.

"Well, this is turning out to be a bust," Duncan said about fifteen minutes later. There wasn't a soul at the hospital, or at least, none answering their call.
"Do we check inside?" Kate wanted to know. "For people who can't get out of bed."
"Anybody who's been in bed for five months, they're beyond our help," Max proclaimed.
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Duncan said. "So. Where to next?"
"Do you wanna try a mall, just for the heck of it?" Kate suggested.

The biggest mall, according to their GPS, was through downtown and down a main road through the south of town, so they angled that direction.
"Pretty big river," Duncan said, looking at the waterway beside him as they headed downtown.
"The Bow," Kate said, ever the tour guide. "Supposed to be the best fishing in western Canada."
"You'll forgive me if I skip that, because I think I'd have to fish like a bear," Duncan said.
After a pause with no reply, he gestured with a hoof, like a bruin scooping up a salmon. "You know, like-"
"Yes, we got it," Max interrupted.
"Right," Duncan said. "Probably couldn't eat fish anyway, considering they're meat."
Max tried to tune out the rambling, but was getting increasingly agitated. At first he thought it was the incessant nattering that was getting on his nerves; then the frustration of not finding anybody in a city of a million people pre-Event. After a moment, he realized his foul mood and general sense of uneasiness was increasing the closer he got to downtown.
"I'm not sure I like this idea after all," Kate commented. Max looked over his shoulder to see the young pegasus sitting on the floor, frowning, ears pinned back to the sides of her head.
"Oh thank God it's not just me," Duncan said, though there wasn't much relief in his voice.
Max said nothing, but decided to chalk it up to all the things he'd rattled off in his mind already, plus the uncertainty of pushing into a downtown core that should never have been completely devoid of life.
"Anybody'd be put off by this," he murmured to himself, though the glances he received out of the corner of his eye told him his voice hadn't been low enough.
Off the river drive he bravely went, onto a southbound road that traversed the river by way of a bridge. Max tried to put from his mind's eye the nonsensical vision of the truck falling through a dilapidated, disused structure into the river below, and got across it safely.
Despite nearly every fiber of his being telling him it was a dumb idea, Max turned down one of the avenues (needlessly obeying the one-way arrangement of the grid roads, he realized later) and followed the GPS's instructions to find southbound Macleod Trail.
"I'm really not liking this," Kate warned, a tremor in her voice.
Duncan looked over at her, shivering in place, now huddled low on the floor. He looked back to Max. "Hey, pal, I don't feel so good either-"
"I know," Max snapped. "Just hold it together 'til we get to the mall, then we can all puke as a group."
The fact that Max acknowledged feeling uneasy too seemed to paradoxically settle the others, somewhat. The trio rode in silence down 6th Avenue until the GPS voice, oblivious to the drama, perfunctorily instructed them to turn on 1st Street East. The truck rounded the corner, momentarily crossing a set of train tracks for the city's transit system, and, glancing down that passageway nervously, Max saw a flat-black box the size of a shipping container sitting in the middle of the street, with a cable at least eight inches in diameter coming from one end and snaking its way to a nearby manhole and underground.
Inexplicably, the nervousness began to ebb as they headed south. The truck dipped under a rail underpass, this one for the freight line - and nobody felt like getting out to check if the truck would fit under the bridge. If it didn't and it was jammed there, they'd all get out and run.
Or fly, in one case.
But fit it did, and by the time they reached the next set of traffic lights, Max had the rig going nearly fifty miles an hour. It took him another half-dozen blocks to realize and ease off, as they passed signs indicating the grounds of the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede.
"Hey, the Stampede grounds," Kate said. "Maybe somebody-"
"They'd be crazy to camp out anywhere near here," Max cut her off, and Duncan was interrupted while trying to say almost the same thing.
"No, seriously; there's all kinds of places on the grounds for-"
"Didn't you feel that?" Duncan said, turning around in his seat to face her. "That wasn't natural. It wasn't just coincidence we all got it at the same time, either."
"I know, but-"
"For all we know, there's a Terminator back there," Max said. He was at the wheel, so ultimately it was his decision, and the truck unwaveringly continued south. For a few minutes, there was silence as they all considered what had just happened, and what they had said to one another.
"We're almost at the mall," Duncan said quietly. "We'll stop and check it out. Okay?"
"Yeah," Kate said.
Max grunted and nodded.
When they arrived, their destination contained a Shell station within its parking lot's boundaries, so Max positioned the truck there. He started the generator and began the task of topping off their tanks, while the other two took some lights and began to explore the mall.

Duncan held the door open for Kate. "Thank you," she smiled and trotted inside.
He followed her, surprised when he saw how much sunlight was getting into the building.
"Looks like this place has lots of skylights," he said, looking up at the roof nearly completely made of glass. "Guess these are redundant." He flicked off his headlamp, removed it, and tucked it into his satchel, slung over his neck.
"Hello?" Kate was calling out, having already sprinted ahead to the junction of their corridor with the main core of the mall. Her voice echoed eerily throughout the structure. "Anybody here?"
Duncan's hooffalls also echoed as he caught up with her. She was hovering in place a foot or two off the tiled floor.
Kate pivoted to face Duncan. "Left and straight ahead?" she asked, indicating the two ways the main part of the mall branched.
"Why not," he shrugged, and started off towards the left.
Kate fluttered on down the main corridor.

Max sat beside the truck, listening to the generator drone on as the two diesel pumps trickled fluid into the reservoirs of the semi-truck. This is why I prefer truck-stops - they have faster pumps. Filling from a pump designed to be compatible with diesel passenger cars meant the large fuel tanks for both the generator and the truck would take a long time to fill - on the order of a half an hour combined.
Max glanced up to the open cab of the truck, and the items sitting there. He'd shut off the emergency lighting to save battery power (and his retinas, from the strobing effect), but the master power switch was still on, providing electrical service to everything in the rig. He climbed up and was about to throw the switch, but the satellite phone caught his eye, blinking its idle indicator and the clock.
He wriggled over to where he could sit comfortably in front of the device, then took up a pen in his teeth to use as a stylus. Digging out the number Alex had texted him from, he keyed up a reply.
Max here. Making good time - in Calgary, Canada now.
Those fifty-three characters plus shifting for capitals and punctuation took him nearly six minutes to accomplish. Still, he spent some more time contemplating his next set of sentences before composing them, using some short forms to speed up his efforts.
Smth strange in downtown Cgy. All 3of us felt weird getting closer 2 downtown core. Like a fight or flight feeling. Worst when we passed blk seacan in mid of road. Better now bout 60 blks away, sensation almst gone.
Again he ruminated on the situation before continuing.
Not going back 2 core. If ponies alive there, have 2 come 2 us. Will stay in city til 2morrow morn in case. Probly at current coords.
One more time, he paused, then heard and felt the 'click' of one of the pumps automatically stopping the nozzle flow as the tank filled up. He added one last bit:
Any advice greatly appreciated. Continuing south 2morrow aft. Max
Reading over the text crowding the small screen, he then pushed the SEND button, reacting with mild surprise when the phone indicated the message had gone into 'the cloud' successfully. Guess it's still working, he mused to himself, just as the second pump clicked off.
He climbed back down and headed toward the pumping island to finish up.

"Anything?" Duncan said, meeting up with Kate in the food court.
"Yeah, a crime against food," she said, gesturing behind her with a foreleg. "Marble Slab Creamery back there. All the ice cream is melted of course."
Duncan smiled, then clarified: "No encampments or looting? Evidence that somebody has been here?"
"Nah, none of that. Probably nothing worth grabbing either. I mean, over half the place is dedicated to clothes and stuff, and half of the rest is electronics stores or restaurants with rotten food in 'em. Maybe one of the department stores might have junk on your junk list."
"I'm always up for junk," Duncan joked brightly. "But we may have our share for now. Especially if we need to get moving quickly - if that weird sensation returns."
Kate shared in his serious expression. "You got any idea what that was?" she asked.
Duncan shook his head. "New to all of us, it seems. But whatever it is, I presume it has to be related to the aliens that did this to us. Never experienced it before in my life. And, quite frankly, don't want to again. I thought I was going to soil the seat."
"I hear ya," Kate nodded. "There's nothing in here; let's go."
Duncan agreed and followed her outside. They were one entrance further south than they'd entered, so they walked (and flew, lazily) along the mostly-empty parking lot back up to the truck.
"Ready?" Duncan asked Max, who was sitting on the ground near the cab.
"Yeah," Max said. "Nothing worth grabbing?"
"Not in here," Duncan said. "If you need some fashions or home furnishings, though, we've got our pick of the litter."
"All right. I'm not ready to leave this place without something to show for it. So do we make camp here for the rest of the day, or drive around?"
"Where else can we go?" Duncan asked. "Assuming north is out of the question."
"It is," Max said, and both ponies looked to Kate.
"Hey, I don't know every street and alley in the city," she said. "Far as I'm concerned, we've hit pretty much every place somebody might build a camp, except the airport."
"Do we try that?" Duncan asked Max.
"I suppose there's no harm in it, so long as none of that weird shit is in there. Okay, let's go."
They climbed aboard the rig and started off for the airport terminal.

Going around the downtown core necessitated a trip out to the ring road, a freeway that circumnavigated most of the city. It was, of course, as deserted as everywhere else.
On the way to the airport, Max told the others about the text message he'd sent.
"Did you get an answer?" Kate asked.
"Not yet," he replied, gesturing to the darkened phone on the dash. "Not sure if we will or not. We never discussed that, but since we traded numbers, I figured I'd bring her up to date."
"Good plan," Duncan said. He removed the phone from its cradle and began to fiddle with it.
"What're you doing?" Max wanted to know.
"Just checking... yeah. Let's store her as a contact just in case, so we know what number to call or is calling us."
"Just don't erase it," Max cautioned.
"Don't worry," Duncan said. He took a pen in his mouth, and spoke around a grin as he typed. "Macksh's... girl... prend..."
"Hey!"
Kate laughed.
"Relax," Duncan said after he spit the pen out. "I put it in as 'Alex Pony'. See?" He turned the phone's display towards Max.
"You're hopeless," Max sighed.
"You're the one who's hopeless," Kate countered, still giggling. "We're gonna have to laugh once or twice if we're going to make it in this bleak gawdamn world."
"She's right, you know," Duncan said. "There's nothing to be gained from sulking all the time."
"I'm not sulking," Max countered.
"Sure," Kate said, rolling her eyes.
"Look, I'm just spooked because of downtown, all right? Tell me you're not, I dare you."
That shut them up for a moment. "Okay, point," Duncan said eventually. "Let's start over, shall we? What should we expect to find at the airport?"
Max pondered the question. "Well, hopefully no planes half-screwed into the ground, for starters. Ideally, some kind of camp from people who took up residence there."
"The lack of cars and trucks on the highways - that means logically we should see a lack of planes, too, though I'm not sure I get how that works. The people who were sent forward in time were sent with their vehicles? That's gonna make a mess in the future. Imagine waking up as a pony at the controls of a seven-forty-seven."
"No thank you," Max said. "This is hard enough as it is."
"The problem is that a city big enough to have survivors is too big to check all at once," Kate said. "You need a quicker way to survey the whole place. And I know how to do it." She climbed up onto the center console again. "Roll down your window, Dunc."
"Be careful," both men stereoed as she prepared to take off.
"I always am," she said dismissively and leapt out the opened window as the truck hurtled down the ring road highway.
"Always freaks me out when she does that," Max mumbled.
"You'd do it too, I'm sure, if you could," Duncan smiled. He tapped at his horn with a hoof. "At least she has 'special appendages' that work."
Max had no reply for that, so he just looked out the windshield, trying to spot the white-and-pink pegasus in the sky. It was surprisingly difficult to locate her once she got moving and distant.
"I wonder if there is something more we could be doing to draw attention to ourselves when we come into a city?" Duncan mused. "I mean, somebody back at the mall we were at has absolutely no hope of spotting us even with our flashing lights turned on. They might have better luck seeing Kate if she wasn't so fast and tiny... hey!" He brightened with an idea. "She could tow a banner."
"Better ask her before you start putting one together," Max said, allowing himself a smile.
"Just thinking out loud. She's right, though; the city's far too big to ensure that anyone anywhere in its limits would know we were here just from what we've been doing. Maybe we need to put together a list of places we should visit when we hit a new city, such as the airport, the train station, city hall, stadiums, hotels, et cetera."
"Yeah, I can see how that could be a good idea. Add fire stations and truck stops too. And hospitals I guess."
"Shopping malls?"
"Meh," Max shrugged, turning on to the road leading to the airport itself.
Duncan was evidently storing the plans in his head, to be transcribed to his tablet later. "Also should probably look for signs of smoke or fire, right? I mean, that's how we spotted Jordan."
"Yup," Max nodded in agreement, wondering how the old man was doing. His thoughts were cut short by the fact they'd arrived at the terminal loop road - the lower half of which the truck would definitely not fit; and the terminal building itself appeared to be intact and untouched, indicating no colony was present.
Max was about to ask if he should try to find a gate to the tarmac when something fell right in front of the windshield and landed on the hood of the truck with a THUMP.
"Gah!" Duncan screamed, and Max recoiled with a less family-friendly curse word emanating from his lips.
Kate looked at them through the windshield, shaking her head. "No signs of life," she called out.
"Get off the frickin' hood!" Max bellowed.
Kate half-snarled, half-slurred a mocking parody of Max's instruction, and climbed back in the window. "Why're you so uptight over the paint job on this thing?" she grumped. "You act like somebody's gonna give you a hard time if you return it with a scratch on it."
"Just - don't scare us like that," Max said, his anger deflating.
Ultimately, after a few minutes to allow everyone to settle down, the three of them found themselves in yet another place devoid of life.
"This is getting depressing," Duncan observed.
"Oh! Hey, you know what we need to do? Make signs," Kate said excitedly.
"Signs?"
"Yeah! In case somebody does the same thing we did, after us. Imagine if we got here and there was a sign that said-"
"But we're not staying here," Max pointed out.
Kate huffed and rolled her eyes. "You didn't let me finish," she said. "Let's put a sign up that says "Survivors head south to Chicago."
"Paris."
"Whatever. I mean, that will tell people that we were here, and how to get to us. If we put the date down, they'll know how long it's been, and if they have any chance of catching up."
Duncan looked to Max and shrugged. "Can't hurt, I guess," he said.
"Yeah, probably not a bad idea," Max admitted. "So what do we do, get some plywood?"
"No," Kate said, a grin spreading across her muzzle. "I got a better idea."

Several minutes later, she was on one side of a chain-link fence which separated the road from the airport tarmac, with the stallions on the other. The pavement on both sides was plainly visible from either direction.
"Okay, so now what?" Max asked.
"Well, on the off chance that a pegasus is among the ponies that come across this, it should be visible from above," Kate said. She had a can of spray-paint, liberated from the nearby construction site, gripped precariously in one hoof, in that peculiar manner that allowed them to manipulate items without fingers. "Probably gonna use all of this up, but here goes. Step back!"
She took off and used a stick she'd wedged into the nozzle to start dispensing bright day-glo orange paint onto the pavement. First a large arrow was drawn from the road towards the fence, and over it onto the tarmac. Then she began to start drawing a number of words.
SURVIVORS WERE HERE
OCTOBER 29 2015
HEADING SOUTH
PARIS, ILLINOIS
ALL ARE WELCOME
LOOK FOR THE RED SEMI (FIRE) TRUCK
The words took up a space about 30 feet to a side. She finished off by drawing several more arrows from different directions, as if pointing a viewer from above to her message.
"There!" she said, and laughed as the spray can sputtered its last just as she finished one last thing - a stick figure pony beside the word 'WELCOME'. "What do you think?"
Both stallions were trying to read the text upside-down and from a very shallow angle. Eventually they deciphered the message. Duncan nodded.
"Looks good to me," he said.
"Yup," Max agreed. "Good idea."
"Thanks," Kate said, grinning, and discarded the spray can. She kept the stick, and headed back to the construction shack.
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Getting more paint," she said over her shoulder to Max. "We'll have to repeat this every time we stop, right?"

"I know where I want to stop for the day," Max said when they got into the truck again.
"Oh?"
He nodded to the GPS which already had a route programmed. "Found a big truck stop. It's close to the highway, and is bound to have plenty of supplies." And maybe we'll finally luck out and find somebody else, he didn't add.
"Fair enough," Duncan shrugged.
"I'm cool with it," Kate supplied.
And so, twenty minutes after leaving the airport, the truck rumbled into the lot of the Road King truck stop off Barlow Trail. Very few vehicles were in the lot, but if their theory that occupied machines were 'disappeared' along with their occupants was right, it made sense.
There was one thing resting in the lot that caught Max's eye, but he put it aside for the moment and allowed for the usual search and scavenger hunt.
"Radios," Duncan said, coming out of the main part of the store after his hunt. "Little handheld ones. Hoof-held? Whatever. We can keep in touch with one another when we're searching."
"If you can find headsets, they're probably VOX capable," Max said, not bothering to explain the term, as Duncan simply turned and dashed back into the store once again.
"No food," Kate said dejectedly, coming out of the restaurant plaza. "It's all gone way bad."
"We'll find stuff," Max said. "What about water?"
"Yeah, got a whole bunch of that. Everything from single-serve bottles to the big water-cooler barrels."
"Awesome."
The trio helped one another jam everything into the nearly-bursting-at-the-seams trailer, but Max had an idea on how to relieve some of that pressure.
"I need to find something called a dolly," he explained, gesturing reflexively with his hooves while he described the contraption. It was a set of two semi-truck axles on top of which sat another fifth-wheel plate, allowing a second trailer to be hooked to the primary. The front of the dolly had a hitch that could connect to a hookup on the back of a semi-truck or straight truck. Or, in their case, the back of a trailer that was already configured to accept a second trailer.
"Is that one?" Kate pointed towards a corner of the lot.
"Yes," Max exclaimed, hurrying to the truck. He drove it, trailer and all, near to the little connection appliance, then climbed back out.
"Need me to guide you back to it?" Duncan asked.
"Nah," Max said, "'cause I'm gonna do this." He put his head down and shouldered the back of the dolly with all his might. Even though the brakes were still set, the dolly inched its way toward the back of the red fire truck trailer.
"Want help?" Kate asked.
Max didn't answer - he suspected that neither of them had the umph to assist, anyway. A few more shoves and the dolly skittered into position, the pintle hitches latching on the dolly's tongue bars.
"Hook up the air lines if you wanna help," Max said, panting between every few words, even while he pulled on an electrical cable. Each of the other two ponies took a coiled air hose and, without much trouble, figured out how to connect them to the 'glad hand' connectors on the back of the trailer.
"Outstanding," Max exulted as the dolly's brake lights came on and the rush of air filling the brake system could be heard.
"What does this do for us?" Duncan asked.
"This is part 1," Max said. "That over there is part 2." He gestured, before scrambling back to the semi cab and pulling the truck, trailer, and dolly over to where he'd been pointing.
He skillfully backed the combination up to the flatbed trailer combination that Kate and Duncan had gone over to look at. The dolly allowed the first trailer to pull the flatbed - two flatbeds, truth be told, which were already in a 'double' or 'super' configuration. The truck would now be an astounding forty-six wheels and nearly 140 feet of machinery, but they would be able to pick up any of the bigger pieces that were on Alex's 'shopping list'.
"Guide me back into the fifth wheel pin," Max hollered out the window. Duncan used a flurry of hoof signals to indicate left, right, back, and even some other things Max couldn't figure out - but ultimately he felt the resistance caused by the new trailers locking in to the dolly's fifth wheel and holding firm.
One more set of air and electrical lines, and the machine was fully put together. Max left the engine running so that the air compressor would have time to fill the reservoirs on the dolly and the new trailers, giving him braking capability on those pieces.
"So I guess this place wasn't a total bust," Duncan mused as they built a little campfire on the gravel parking lot, sitting around it for warmth and to heat up some coffee and soup.
"Nowhere near as big a result as I wanted, but I'll take it," Max agreed.
"Once we're done eating, I'm gonna draw another message," Kate said. "What road are we taking out of town?"
"Route 2," Max said. "Just say to go south."
"Where's tomorrow's stop?"
"Not sure yet," he said. "I'll figure that out after we eat." After a pause, he said, "Thanks for your support today, guys. I know I was an ass for part of it, but-"
"You had your reasons," Kate said. "Don't sweat it."
"Just remind yourself that we're all in this for the same reason," Duncan nodded. "We'll get through it."
Max nodded back and fell silent, sitting watching the flames tickle the pots containing their meal.