“Woo!” Ekua cheers and starts to pack up.

“Man, it’s been years since I drove a car,” Matt chuckles, opening the back door so he can empty out the vehicle.

“You can drive it?” Edison asks.

“Psh. Yee of little faith,” Matt teases as he reaches across the backseat to push open the other door. “Sucks it smells so bad.”

“Leave the windows down?” Edison suggests.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Matt agrees and shoves stuff from the backseat floor out onto the asphalt.

Edison helps clear things out and stands behind the car while Matt pops the trunk, wincing once the lid opens. He stabs the dead’s head with the crowbar he’d found in the backseat.

“Now we know where the smell was coming from,” Matt says when he comes around to the back. “Wonder how long they were in here.”

Edison nods curiously and lets Matt tug the body a few feet from the car so he can check the trunk for anything else. He doesn’t find anymore bodies, so he empties out the useless junk.

“Do we put anything in here?” Edison asks.

“Nah.” Mat shakes his head. “Just in case we have to dump and run, I’d rather have our stuff on us.”

Edison nods and shuts the trunk as the girls walk up to the car.

“I can’t believe you found one,” Maybelle says and trots around it excitedly. “Can you teach me how to drive it?”

Matt blinks in surprise and looks at Edison, who shrugs.

“She loves learning,” he says.

“Alright,” Matt agrees and nods to the driver door. “Come on around this side. You can get us out of the parking lot. If you do good, you can drive more.”

Maybelle giggles excitedly and slips in behind the steering wheel. Edison smiles at her excitement and sits behind her. Ekua sits next to him and Matt sits in the front passenger seat.

“We’ve got everything, right?” Matt asks.

“Yep.”

“Cool. Okay. Use this to put the car into reverse,” Matt instructs.

Maybelle quickly follows.

Edison smiles as his sister readily takes Matt’s teaching. Getting out of the parking lot is a bit bumpy, but since Maybelle does good, Matt lets her keep driving up the straight stretch of road, so long as she goes fairly slow.

“Tell me when you’re done,” Matt chuckles and sits back.

“I can do something you can’t do, Edison,” Maybelle teases.

Edison hums in agreement.

“I can teach you too, if you want,” Matt offers, glancing back.

Edison shakes his head. “No thanks. Maybelle can have this. I doubt we’ll find more cars anyway.”

Matt shrugs and turns back to the windshield.

It’s a while before Maybelle decides to be done. Matt guides her through pulling over and they switch seats. He doesn’t get back on the road right away, pulling a map from his jacket instead.

“Whoa! Where’d you get that?” Maybelle inquires.

“Bartered with some river folks for it,” Matt replies, leaning over so she could see. “We’re around in here somewhere, and we’re heading up here.”

“That’ve taken way more than a day,” Maybelle claims.

“Possibly.”

They sit back as Matt decides what the best route will be. He folds up the map and sticks it in his pocket again, pulling back onto the road to drive on.

Matt drives a lot faster than Maybelle. At first, it seems like he gives himeslf a crash course, but he quickly gets comfortable and relaxes into his seat.

A few hours pass and all but Matt’s window are up. The breeze from the single open window makes everyone comfortable and the quiet isn’t at all awkward like it used to be with Edison and Maybelle’s last group. Both of them appreciate that Matt and Ekua are more than satisfied to sit in silence.

Matt’s the first one back to the car when they stop for a pee break.

“You want shotgun?” he asks as Edison comes up to the car.

“You aren’t giving me an actual gun, are you?” Edison guesses.

Matt snorts and shakes his head amusedly. “Nah. Front seat. It’s a slang term from the old world.”

Edison nods and shrugs. “Sure.”

He walks around to the passenger door and leans on the frame of the open door, watching a beetle scuttle across the roof. When the girls get back to the car, they all get in and take off again.

“How long will it take to get there with a car?” Edison wonders after a while as he glances at Maybelle’s sleeping form.

Matt shrugs. “A day or two.”

Edison hums and looks back out the window.

“It’s a prettty good place, where we’re going,” Matt says, glancing at Edison.

“You’ve been there before?” Edison asks.

“Yeah. I’m a messenger, so I go between districts all the time.”

“Messenger?” Edison repeats curiously, earning Matt’s gaze. “I don’t know a lot about the districts.”

Matt waves it off. “Not everyone does. Messengers are people that run messages and packages between the districts. I also help people get through the Outlands a lot.”

Edison nods. “That sounds tiring.”

Matt chuckles. “It can be.”

“Why do you do that?”

Matt shrugs. “For supplies or food. Sometimes just because.”

“Huh.”

“The district we’re heading to is probably my last stop for the season, though,” Matt sighs and leans back.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like being out in the open during the winter months. So I usually hang out in a district while the worst of the cold goes by. Keeps me warm and fed.”

“Winter. May and I have to find a place.”

Matt glances over. “If you want to, I know someone in this district who’d probably take you two in for the cold season. She might ask you to work every now and then in exchange.”

“What kind of work?”

“Cleaning and repairs mostly. Just household chores. She’s kind of old, so it’s a little difficult for her to get to certain places now,” Matt explains, then hums and rubs his chin. “Although I heard she kicked the bucket recently. Wonder who’s running the place now. Probably Calvin.”

“Will we still be able to stay there?” Edison asks.

“Oh yeah. Calvin’s cool. And there are usually two or three rooms available,” Matt assures.

“I’ll talk to May when she wakes up,” Edison decides.

“Is Ekua sleeping too?”

“Yes.”

Matt nods and shifts gears as the road slopes up.

From the top of the hill, Edison can see a series of small bumps in the road, leading down to a straight road. In the far distance, he sees the wall of the district they’re heading toward. It won’t take more than a few hours to get there.

“There’s a road block on the road leading up to the wall,” Matt announces as he drives over the last bump. “We’ll have to dump the car at the end and walk the rest of the way.”

“How soon?”

“It’ll come up in the next hour or so. Let them sleep,” Matt said, glancing in the mirror at Maybelle and Ekua.

Edison agrees and looks out the window.

“You could sleep too if you want to,” Matt says.

“I’d rather not,” Edison objects absently.

Matt shrugs.