The highway to Churchill was gone. Roads had

crumbled into moss and ice, and the radio

crackled with static instead of voices. Lena

drove her rusted diesel rig through the boreal

forest, her eyes on the horizon where the old

railway line still ran, straight as a scar

across the tundra. She’d left Toronto behind

after the collapse, when the government fell and

the borders dissolved. Now she was chasing a man

who’d stolen everything from her—her brother,

her home, and the last map of the northern

routes.

She’d learned early that the new world had rules.

No maps, no fuel stations, no mercy. The only

law was the land itself. Trees grew through

asphalt. Wolves followed trucks. And the cold—oh,

the cold—was a living thing that gnawed at

exposed skin and turned lungs to ice. Lena had

survived it all, but not without cost. Her rig’s

engine was barely holding together, and her

supplies were thin. She’d traded her last can of

beans for a lead on the man who’d betrayed her.

At a derelict gas station near Lake Superior,

she met a group of survivors who claimed to have

seen him. They spoke in clipped tones, wary of

strangers. One woman handed her a photo—a man

with a scar across his cheek, standing beside a

truck like hers. “He’s not just a thief,” she

said. “He’s leading a pack. People who follow

him don’t come back.”

Lena pressed on. The railway was her only guide,

its tracks cutting through the wilderness like a

thread. She passed abandoned towns swallowed by

forest, their windows blackened, their streets

overgrown. At one, she found a child’s drawing

nailed to a tree, the paper faded but the stick

figures unmistakable: a girl, a boy, and a

monster. The monster had a truck for a head.

She reached the northern edge of Manitoba, where

the land became wilder. The man waited at a

junction where three rail lines met, surrounded

by others like him—truckers, exmilitary,

wanderers. He stood tall, his scar gleaming in

the sun. When he saw her, he smiled. “You came,”

he said.

The fight was quick. Lena’s rig had been

modified for speed, and she used it like a

weapon, ramming through the group until she

reached him. The snow was red where he fell. She

didn’t stop to look. She drove north, toward the

Arctic, where the land was still untouched, and

the cold would keep anyone else away.

The revenge was done. The road ahead was hers.