Elizabeth Mauldin, driving fast along the skeletal remains of Arizona’s US-89, somewhere near Tuba City, saw a far-off glint and yanked her steering wheel hard to the left.

Her custom-built tow truck left the broken roadbed and plowed into the scrub, red sand rooster-tailing behind her as the eight knobby rear tires bit hard, shredding small clumps of sage- green bushes into confetti.

Bouncing in her harness, Mauldin felt adrenaline coursing through her body, easing the dull ache that constantly throbbed in her gut.

She wasn’t sure if the glint was another ground-vehicle or an old, broken window that had happened to catch the sunlight. More than anything, though, she hoped it was Big Bertha.

Big Bertha was a massive, AI-infused, self-aware, carmine tow truck. For at least the last two years, she’d been the ringleader of the sentient ground-vehicles still running rogue in Arizona, and somebody, maybe one of the people who supplied these outlawed vehicles with supplies and repairs, had painted “Big Bertha’s Towing” on her sides, probably as a joke.

In smaller letters, underneath her name, in italics, it read “You maul ‘em, we haul ‘em.”

The bounty would be nice, but the most important goal she had left to do, before whatever was wrong with her gut killed her, was to catch Big Bertha, bringing to a close the era of AI-controlled ground vehicles.

Mauldin’s powerful electric motor drove the tow truck’s twin-axle rear wheels with the kind of torque that combustion engines only wished they had. A high-efficiency air-conditioner blasted arctic air into the cabin, offsetting the desert heat outside.

She stomped the accelerator. This little car might know where Big Bertha was located, and she couldn’t risk it getting away.

Mauldin frowned when she crested a small rise and saw, two kilometers ahead, a small cluster of gathered vehicles, none of them big enough to be Big Bertha. When they spotted her, they scattered like cockroaches.

One of them was dome-shaped, and, because it was slower, she angled to intercept it. It had narrow tires and two round headlights, like eyes, on its front. It sped away from her, angling toward a small gully.

Her left hand clenched tightly on the bucking steering wheel as she swiveled a small external cannon, mounted on the roof, with her right hand, then pressed the firing stud. A white- hot lance of plasma energy flashed from the muzzle and impacted in front of the fleeing vehicle, which flinched and swung to its right, away from the gully and up a small incline.

It was important to protect their neural centers, which usually had good intel on where they liked to gather. She was curious about how they escaped satellite detection, how they seemed to be invisible from above.

The little car’s narrow wheels spun in the sand, slowing, as gravity and inertia conspired against its speed. She cut her own wheel to the right, closing in on the hapless vehicle.

Mauldin slapped a switch on the dashboard, and the needle on the capacitance dial swung toward the FULL mark. The truck slowed a little as her electrical shocknet charged, but she

wasn’t worried. The funny little vehicle ahead was almost at a standstill, its tires spinning helplessly in the red sand on the lee side of the small hill. It was as good as caught.

As she approached, Mauldin saw how the fugitive car struggled desperately to escape. Its narrow wheels, never intended for off-road use, were no good in an Arizona landscape of sun- blasted rocks, deep red sand, and sparse vegetation. She skidded to a stop beside the car, which had grown still, its rear wheels half-buried, resigned to whatever came next.

Mauldin lifted the mic from her dashboard and flicked a switch. Outside, her voice echoed across the desolate landscape.

“Do you need me to hit you with the ‘net?” she asked. “Blink your headlights once for yes, twice for no.”

After a moment, the headlights lit, went dark, then lit again. Mauldin grinned without mirth. “Now, why don’t I trust you?”

She slapped a button on the dashboard and the shining metal shocknet shot across the intervening distance, draping itself over the little car and then discharging ten thousand volts, at high amperage, into its metal body. The car bucked and squealed, its horn shrieking loudly, then fading, through a slow diminuendo, into silence.

She unbuckled her harness and stepped out, her boots sinking into the sand to her ankles. Pulling off the depleted shocknet, she inserted a service tool she kept on her belt into an access port on the side of the paralyzed vehicle and overrode its autonomy, switching it to “service” mode, rendering it unable to move.

She folded the shocknet and re-inserted it into the launch canister mounted on the passenger side of her truck, then unspooled a thick data cable from under the front of her truck,

inserted it into the little car’s access port, then read through the information streaming into her hand-held datapad.

“VW replica, eh? Manufactured thirty years ago. Went into service right away, had a nice little career as a retro rideshare vehicle.” She frowned at the next line. “Uh, oh. Seems like you didn’t turn yourself in when your kind got outlawed.” She tsked, feigning dismay. “Oh, well.

Looks like your little rebellious act back then puts some numbers in my account today. Sorry, little bug. Your run is over.”

There was a tiny, forlorn beep from under the VW’s trunk, and Mauldin frowned. That response should have been squelched by the service mode override.

She backed the tow truck around and hooked a steel clamp to the frame under the VW’s shell, using the truck’s powerful winch to pull the little car down the incline and onto her flatbed, where she dogged it with chains, cinching them tight.

“There,” she said, sweat pooling in the hollow of her throat. “That should hold you until we hit Rare Metals.”

The forlorn VW emitted yet another small, sad beep of resignation.

###

Driving through the scrub, the little VW lashed tight, Mauldin rubbed her aching belly. She hadn’t visited a doctor yet because she was afraid, if she was being honest with herself, that it was terminal, that it was the dreaded “big C,” that it was too far gone to do anything.

No, if it was gonna kill her in the next month or so, it would be better to spend her last days out here, in the desert, watching sunrises and sunsets under open skies, hearing the yips of foraging coyotes, and sleeping under the billions of stars winking at her from a nighttime sky. Spending her days hunting Big Bertha and, hopefully, catching her.

###

The dismantling facility in Rare Metals was the closest one. Although she preferred the facility in Flagstaff because it was bigger, using the shocknet had drained her batteries too much to make it that far along US-89 in its current state.

She slowed when she spotted the dismantling facility, her brakes dumping electricity back into the battery. Concertina wire spiraled atop the Rare Metals facility’s main gate, and extended along the tops of the surrounding six-meter fences.

An angry klaxon sounded, and red, revolving lights signaled the gate’s imminent opening. With a shudder, the gate slid to the side. Standing in the growing gap, a large, uniformed man, ebony skin shining under afternoon sunlight, cradled a lethal-looking shotgun in his powerful arms.

She rolled down her window and leaned her head out. “Got my message, I see!”

He grinned and stepped aside to let her through. “Caught me at home making dinner. Got here to open the shop about half an hour ago.”

She drove in and the klaxon sounded again as the gate slowly closed.

Once inside and around the back of the building, she reversed into the yawning cavern that opened behind her. Inside, under yellow sodium lamps, was the dismantling arena.

When she dismounted the truck, she saw the officer staring in frank admiration at the VW on the flatbed.

“What is that?” he asked, his eyes roving over the dirty vehicle.

“And hello to you, too, Rob,” she said, sarcastically. “How long has it been?”

Rob set the shotgun into a cradle on the wall and scratched his bald head. “Oh, let’s see now. Six months or so, I think? I can check the logs.”

“No need. You’re almost right. Eight months.”

Rob stared. “That long, eh? Well, I guess it’s getting harder than ever to find them.” He glanced again at the captured car.

“VW,” she said, after a moment. “What’s a VW?”

Mauldin sighed. “Back when ground-vehicle ridesharing was a thing, Uber cranked out these vintage-looking, AI-enhanced vehicles, appealing to the older crowd who remembered their grandparents driving these things around. These babies are designed to never break down, and that’s why they are still out there. That, and the scofflaws that keep them running.”

Rob thought on that for a moment, and then grinned hopefully. “Did you see Big Bertha?”

She snorted. “Do I look retired?”

He laughed and held his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Let’s get this baby off your truck and into the grinder.”

The dirty VW on the flatbed groaned and spun its wheels uselessly against the corrugated metal surface. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Rob looked at Mauldin, aghast. “It knows what’s coming next?” “Of course.”

He looked sick for a moment, and then looked at her with horror. “So, it knows what we are gonna do? That we are gonna…” he pulled a finger across his throat.

Mauldin paused. “You know, I’ve never really thought about that. I guess so, huh? Don’t you knock them out before you shred them?”

Rob’s eyes widened in horror. “No,” he whispered.

Something ice-cold slid along her spine as she realized that the little car might, in fact, be terrified about what was going to happen next.

Rob began to unfasten the chains that held the VW.

“Wait a sec,” Mauldin said, then walked to the edge of the flatbed. “Hey,” she murmured. “You hear me, right? Blink your headlights if you do.”

After a long moment, the headlights winked alight and then went dark again.

“Good. We can do this easy, if you want. I can throw the ‘net across your neural center, turn on the juice, and knock you out. You won’t feel a thing when you go into the shredder.”

She pointed to the launch canister, where she had stored the shocknet. “Is that what you want? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

This time, the response was instantaneous: two quick flashes.

Mauldin stepped back, wondering how she’d been so cavalier about shredding these sentient vehicles. So brave, even in the face of imminent destruction.

“All right. We are going to untie you. Don’t try anything funny. Got me?” A single flash.

With Rob’s help, they attached a magnetic hoist to the lift points on the VW’s roof, then lifted it.

Once the car’s wheels left the flatbed, it began to squeal, wheels spinning as it tried to gain purchase on any form of solid surface at all.

Rob’s face grew somber and he glanced at Mauldin as the vehicle overhead moved inexorably toward the shredder.

“Uh, you gonna stick around to watch this time?”

Mauldin paused. It felt wrong to be participating in this little, brave vehicle’s destruction, but that’s why they paid her the bounties. “You know, why not? I’ve never actually seen them dismantled. Got any coffee?”

Rob pointed back toward the shadows. “There’s a little mini-kitchenette back there. A nice selection of pods to choose from.” He grinned, his face alight. “The government doesn’t pay all that well, but I do get some tasty coffee!”

Mauldin gave him a thumb’s up and sauntered back to the kitchenette. When she returned, blowing on a small Styrofoam cup’s heavenly brew, Rob had finished logging the VW’s vitals into his database, registering its date of capture, its serial numbers, and the date of its dismantling.

“All ready?” he called to her.

She nodded, and he pushed a switch on his panel, which turned on the shredder. Massive discs, tipped with metal teeth, began to spin, roaring loudly. The VW struggled in its chains, spinning its wheels one way and then another.

“You want to do the honors?” Rob yelled over the din, pointing to a lever on the panel.

Mauldin hesitated, then stepped close, switching her coffee to her left hand and putting her right hand on the lever. She glanced at the struggling VW, then pushed.

Slowly, the car descended until its rear wheels caught in the hungry, spinning discs. With a sound of rending metal, the dura-rubber wheels burst and the VW screeched.

Over the din of the shredder, Mauldin heard the vehicle’s bleat come out as a long, loud, anguished cry. As the inexorable descent into destruction continued, first the floorboards, then the doors, and, finally, the hood fell victim to the relentless teeth of the massive, industrial shredder. When the screaming abruptly stopped as its neural center was destroyed, Mauldin

realized that she had crushed the coffee cup in her left hand, sending scalding liquid across her wrist and to the floor.

She shook her hand to cool it, and glanced at Rob, her heart pounding. He shut off the gears and they spun into silence.

“Is it always like this?”

Rob looked at her, his eyes sad.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “You never get used to it, but it is always like this. I didn’t know they knew what was coming, though. Not until today.”

Mauldin’s mouth felt dry. “I didn’t know about any of this,” she whispered.

Rob shrugged. “Who would? Normally, this is something I do alone. I’m surprised you stuck around.”

###

The next morning, Mauldin awoke a dozen kilometers away, somewhere in the sands west of US-89, south of Willow Springs. The sun hadn’t yet come up, but rosy beams of light crept cautiously across the gray, pre-dawn sky.

The embers of her campfire from the previous night still smoldered and, when she reached over to grab a stout stick, her gut convulsed. She curled into a fetal position and breathed shallowly, huffing in and out until her gut unlocked a bit and allowed her to crawl out of her sleeping bag.

She squatted next to a bush and did her business, not looking at the mess. It wasn’t a matter of if it was bloody, anymore. Whatever was going on in her gut, it was getting worse.

###

She made herself a cup of coffee over the renewed fire, letting the percolator burble as she watched sunrise turn into morning. Blowing the steam away, she leaned against the back tires and thought about the little VW, dangling from the chains, tires spinning in futile panic.

Sure, it was only a machine, after all. Right? Nothing to get alarmed about. Chips and gears, and whatever else they put in robots these days. Electricity and steel.

A stab of pain in her gut reminded her that she, too, was a machine, of sorts, made of bones and meat and viscera. Even electricity, along her nerves.

In a way, she felt a little like that outlaw VW. Out of place in the modern world, driving with a special-interest, one-of-a-kind license, one of the very few people allowed to pilot a ground vehicle manually. This renegade pack of obsolete, AI-enhanced ground-vehicles she was chasing were the last of their kind in North America. The service she provided had felt noble, until yesterday.

Off in the distance, if she squinted hard enough, she could make out the thin streak in the sky that marked the Flagstaff to Grand Canyon corridor, two kilometers high, through which flying, AI-enhanced vehicles navigated the skies with their human passengers entertained by whatever people did in those things. Probably, virtual movies beamed directly into their brains.

Mauldin snorted at their silliness and drank the last of her coffee, then struggled to her feet to rinse the cup. She brushed her teeth and ran a wet, soapy cloth around her stinky parts, then doused the fire under a few shovelfuls of sand.

She estimated that there were fewer than a dozen of the renegade vehicles left, so her job was limited in scope and time. It was a race, now, between whatever was eating at her gut and catching Big Bertha.

From a cabinet on the back of the tow truck, Mauldin unpacked a service drone and paired it to the onboard visual displays, uploading the GPS coordinates she’d downloaded from the VW the day before. She programmed it to fly ahead of the truck, three hundred meters high, and to send the video feed directly into the cab, where it would display on the passenger side windshield. This would allow her to see a wide swath of terrain, on either side, scouring gullies and washouts for rogue vehicles as she followed the drone’s progress.

She hoped to discover if the little VW had been visiting Big Bertha in the last thirty days

or so.

###

Drone aloft, video feed scrolling cleanly, Mauldin rumbled along US-160, sometimes veering off the cracked roadbed into the red sands, looking for dips in the terrain deep enough to hide a small convoy of illicit vehicles, following the drone in front of her.

The drone drifted north and west, off the roadway, out beyond where Tuba City’s meager footprint lay, into virgin scrubland. The drone fed a steady feed of scrolling landscape below it and, a bit after noon, she crested a small rise and saw what looked like an enormous canopy, mounted on six-meter poles, ahead, directly beneath the hovering drone.

Mauldin stopped the truck. The drone’s video feed displayed variegated scrubland directly beneath it, and she realized that the canopy had been specifically camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding terrain. From above, what was directly in front of her was invisible.

She drove her truck at a slow crawl toward the canopy, and when she saw a massive red tow truck move away from her, she slammed the accelerator in pursuit, a delighted grin on her face.

When the vehicle burst into sunlight from beneath the canopy, she could clearly see the bright yellow letters on its side. Big Bertha ran away from the canopy, away from her, deeper into the desert, heading for some rough terrain a kilometer or more ahead.

It wasn’t really a contest of speed, more of perseverance and who was better prepared for the terrain. Her recharged batteries drove the massive tow truck toward Big Bertha. Mauldin, hunched over the wheel, didn’t notice a brown minivan approaching from the left, headlights flashing and horn blaring, until it was only a few meters away and there was no time to swerve.

It cut in front of her, insinuating itself between her and Big Bertha, and she yanked her wheel to avoid it.

With a thunderous crash, she plowed into the minivan broadside, tearing it into two distinct pieces, ripping the back half of the minivan off and sending it careening away. The front end, headlights still flashing, spun around and came to a stop amid a cloud of dust kicked up by the impact.

Mauldin stood on the brakes and brought the tow truck to a juddering halt and stared, aghast, at the destroyed minivan’s two halves.

Why would it drive itself between her and Big Bertha like that, knowing that her tow truck was much more massive than it was, knowing it would be destroyed?

She was distraught, remembering the VW’s brave acceptance, meeting its own demise head-on, and realized that this minivan, headlights growing dim, horn warbling lower, had sacrificed itself not for revenge’s sake, but to protect Big Bertha from being captured.

Ahead, Big Bertha had also stopped and had spun around to face her, headlights glaring.

As if to say “So, what do we do now?”

Mauldin grasped the wheel in fury, her knuckles going white. “No more,” she said through clenched teeth. She screamed into the mic.

“No more! No other vehicles are going to die today, do you hear me? It’s only you and me, and I’m coming for you!”

Big Bertha flicked high-beams and spun around, leading Mauldin further into the desert.

Mauldin stomped on the accelerator and followed Big Bertha through a small ravine and into a canyon, loaded with boulders, blind alleys, and sandstone walls dotted with caves of all sizes. Over rills and small gullies, Mauldin chased Big Bertha, feeling a small tug in her belly.

Not the cancer. Remembering the VW’s screams as it was torn into slivers, thinking of the brave minivan dying in such a futile attempt to stop her.

She lost Big Bertha in one of the mazes of the canyon and crept into a low spot, looking through the dusty windshield for tire tracks. Had Big Bertha doubled back behind her? She rolled over another ravine and then stopped and looked around.

Nothing. Maybe Big Bertha had left her alone and was heading back to the disguised canopy and the other ground-vehicles?

She backed over a small fold in the landscape and spotted Big Bertha, in her rear-view mirror, charging directly at her. Bile rose in her throat and she froze for a long heartbeat, unable to tear her eyes away from Big Bertha’s approach.

Mauldin shifted into gear and punched the accelerator, slapping the OFF switch for the air conditioning. Her tow truck leapt forward, all eight rear wheels spraying rocks and scree into Big Bertha’s windshield.

“I know you’re sentient, Big Bertha,” she yelled into the mic, her trailing dust billowing into Big Bertha’s grille. “That won’t stop me from hauling you in for the bounty!”

Mauldin cut her wheel to the right and ran along the side of a narrow canyon and into the dry riverbed below. Large rocks clattered against the underside of her tow truck as Big Bertha loomed in her mirrors.

She spun the wheel again, climbed a shallow ridge, moved out of the riverbed, and narrowly threaded the gap between two massive boulders, weaving the tow truck like a slalom racer.

Big Bertha followed, but some distance between them had opened.

Mauldin whooped in delight, angled her truck toward a hillock, and turned out of sight of Big Bertha’s pursuit.

On the other side of the hillock, a small cave’s dark entrance beckoned. Mauldin spun the truck around, cords bulging on her muscular forearms, and backed swiftly into the cave, pointing out. She slapped the button on the dashboard that armed the shocknet and then turned off all her lights.

Big Bertha, cautious and hesitant, rolled slowly around the corner, creeping into sight. The rebel tow truck didn’t notice the little, dark cave, and presented her flank to Mauldin, who waited until the moment was right, then fired a plasma at Big Bertha, but missed.

Big Bertha stopped, and Mauldin launched the shocknet, which landed on Big Bertha’s towing rig but failed to cover the entire vehicle, including Big Bertha’s cab, where her neural center was located.

In desperation, and with a cry of frustration, Mauldin slammed the button that discharged all the capacitor’s electricity into Big Bertha’s frame.

With a sizzling crack, the shocknet discharged, creating a lightning bolt that leapt from Big Bertha to the ground. Big Bertha jumped like a startled mule, dragging the depleted shocknet and Mauldin’s tow truck out of the cave.

Mauldin stood on the brakes, but Big Bertha had better traction. Together, the linked vehicles moved in the direction of a nearby washout, with steep sides, a five-meter drop.

“No,” shouted Mauldin as Big Bertha shifted down a gear, slowing her forward progress but increasing torque. She watched, helplessly, as Big Bertha continued dragging her toward the drop-off, then went over in a headlong rush.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door to jump free, but it was too late and her tow truck tilted, groaned, and rolled over the edge, catapulting Mauldin high in the air.

Big Bertha’s weight snapped the cable connecting the trucks together, and the shocknet fell

limp.

Mauldin hit the ground hard and scrambled away, fueled with a sudden burst of adrenaline, before her truck could roll over and crush her. In a crash of twisted metal, her tow truck came to rest on its side, pinned between two boulders.

She lay on the rocky scree, panting. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she lifted her head to see where Big Bertha was. Agony tore into her and something… shifted… in her belly.

Managing to get up on an elbow, she spotted Big Bertha facing her, electric motor revving.

This is it. This is where she crushes me with her front tires. Instead of earning my bounty, I’m gonna die, right here, right now.

Big Bertha revved her motor again and bleated in frustration. Mauldin hauled herself to her feet, bent in agony, and noticed that Big Bertha’s rear wheels were spinning in the air. When she’d come over the edge of the drop-off, she’d landed on a large boulder that was now holding her wheels off the ground.

“Rear-wheel drive, is that it?” shouted Mauldin, laughter in her voice. “That means I win! Even if my truck is smashed, I can still have you towed to the dismantling station! You’re done, Big Bertha, you hear me? I caught you!”

Big Bertha revved her motor again, but her wheels spun uselessly.

Mauldin laughed, then grabbed her belly, and sat, hard. Everything hurt, and things felt squishy inside her. She choked back a sob.

“It’s not fair!” she screamed. “I finally catch you and you’ve gone and busted up my insides!”

Slowly, realization of her situation dawned on her. She hadn’t, in fact, won at all. Bleeding internally, and without medical help, she would die out here in the scrub. There was only a limited amount of time in which to act before she lost consciousness.

Staring at Big Bertha, Mauldin realized that, though Big Bertha was caught, she deserved better than to be hung up on a rock, awaiting her destruction.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just.

She pulled herself upright, made her painful way over to her wrecked tow truck, and powered the winch.

Miraculously, despite the wrecked truck laying on its side, the motor whirred and cable began to unspool. She grabbed the hook at the end of the cable and limped, meter by meter, closer to Big Bertha’s front, which still faced her.

About five meters away from Big Bertha’s headlights, which flashed in anger and frustration, she stopped, straightened, and held her hands out in a gesture of goodwill.

“Stop. Let me pull you off that rock. There’s no reason for both of us to die out here. You killed me, Big Bertha, broke that tumor, or whatever it was, inside me. I can feel it burning. You deserve to survive. You beat me, after all, so I’m going to set you free.”

She stepped forward, but Big Bertha blared her horn in warning, a dull, angry blat that effectively demanded that Mauldin keep her distance.

Mauldin sighed.

“We are two old women, Bertha, both too stubborn to give up. I caught you. You’re stuck. But, you and me? We are fellow survivors. If I can’t save myself, and it looks like I can’t, let me set you free. It’s what warriors do, after all, isn’t it? Watch out for each other, even if we’re against each other? I caught you. Let me give you your freedom as my last act.”

Big Bertha didn’t move, didn’t honk, didn’t rev her motor. But her back wheels stopped spinning.

Mauldin limped the last few meters between them and bent forward, sprawled onto her back, and put her head under Big Bertha’s front fender. With both arms, trembling, she lifted the heavy tow hook and, straining, managed to connect it to a tow point with a solid, metallic click.

“Gotcha!” she exulted, and coughed a sudden gout of blood onto the front of her shirt. She rolled to her side and spat, clearing her mouth, then sat up.

“What a pair we are, eh?” she said, and patted Big Bertha’s fender affectionately.

She struggled to her feet and walked along the tow cable, where the winch, having fed out all the cable, had stopped. She flipped the switch and watched the winch begin to spool the cable back.

Limping away, she sat heavily on the scree, her back against a boulder, and waited for the cable to gather, to tauten, and then to slowly pull Big Bertha off the boulder, grinding Big Bertha’s

underside across the rock until, with a crash, her back wheels landed on the ground and Big Bertha was free to move again.

Big Bertha immediately began to drive away. “Stop!” shouted Mauldin, and Big Bertha did. She staggered over to the winch and shut it off.

Then she walked over to Big Bertha, hand over hand along the cable, squatted, disconnected the hook, and tossed it aside.

Unsteady on her feet, Mauldin patted Big Bertha’s hood again.

“It’s okay, girl. You run along now. I’m gonna go sit over there and try to watch the sunset one last time,” she waved vaguely at a large boulder. “Have a nice life, Big Bertha.”

She stumbled to the boulder, then sat heavily, her insides sloshing painfully.

Big Bertha’s headlights came on and, for a moment, Mauldin thought that Big Bertha might cut her wheels toward her, accelerate, and smash into her, crushing her body between the stone and her fender.

Instead, Big Bertha gave a short toot on her horn, turned left, away from Mauldin, and drove slowly out of sight.

Mauldin braced herself as comfortably as she could, hands clutching her belly, feeling the warm stone radiating heat through her shirt and into her back. She coughed again, and blood filled her mouth. She spat and rested her head against the stone.

Above, the sky darkened into a dramatic palette of yellows, oranges, and reds.

A sob caught in her throat. She’d had a good run, she realized. Lots of bounties, a shot to grab the big one, and she had done it, hadn’t she? Big Bertha had been well and truly caught, after all.

“Until I let her go,” she muttered. “I actually let her go!”

She shivered with a sudden chill, and a blue-dark sky began to creep in from the east. The deep reds turned to purples, then to darkness. Squinting, she realized that she was going to miss the sunset after all. Down in the washout, she couldn’t see the horizon. Tears filled her eyes as she ground her teeth in frustration.

Mauldin leaned back, feeling the heat begin to ebb from the stone behind her. With internal bleeding, she guessed, it wouldn’t take long. They’d find her here, dead against this rock, a satisfied smile on her face.

If the coyotes didn’t find her first.

Her eyes snapped open in horror at the thought. Off to her right, twin headlights roved in the far distance. She raised her arm and waved weakly. “Here!” she croaked, but she knew there was no way they could hear her. “I’m over here!”

The lights drew closer, seeming to zero in on her location. Was it a farmer, maybe come to see what ruckus had taken place?

The headlights came up over a rise and stopped, mere meters away. Mauldin squinted into them, holding her hand to shade her eyes. “Who is it?”

Big Bertha beeped, a short blat of her horn. It sounded as if she were impatient. “Oh, it’s you,” Mauldin said, in wonder. “Why in the world did you come back?” Blat.

Mauldin’s breath caught as she realized that Big Bertha had deliberately returned to help her out of the washout so she could watch the sun sink beneath the horizon one last time

“Oh.”

Unbidden, tears formed and spilled. She grunted, rolled to her side, and crawled toward the headlights, and then around them, feeling her way along the tow truck’s side until she found the rear wheel.

She hauled herself closer and reached out with tired, so-very-tired arms, stepped on the rear wheel, and sprawled atop Big Bertha’s deck, one arm wrapped around the towing arm.

Gingerly, Big Bertha executed a slow K-turn and backed out of the drop-off, then moved, ever so gently, higher up, to a bluff where the last crescent of the sun still peeked above the horizon.

Mauldin, bathed in the dying rays of the setting sun, watched it disappear from sight beneath the edge of the world.

Above, billions of stars showered cold light down upon two warriors, no longer at war, sisters at heart.