Gabriel shifted his pack, trying to let some air get through to his soaked shirt. The last few miles had been especially brutal. What was he saying? The last six months had just sucked - this was just more of the same, only with more exhaustion and less fear. He still hoped for a car to come by, someone who wouldn't mind stopping for a scruffy kid in the middle of nowhere. The road was empty, though, a single scorch-mark through the middle of a forest. Somehow, the young pines growing thickly right up to the asphalt seemed to keep the wet heat close to the ground. The shade was a joke. People actually live here, Gabriel thought, shaking his head in mock disbelief. Well. He reconsidered. He hadn't seen any sign of life since he'd started walking, not even a speed limit sign. Except mosquitos.

He checked his watch. Maybe he could take a siesta or whatever, just to get through the hottest part of the day. Fuck it, it was always this hot. He pushed his hair off his forehead and tried to remember what it was like to be cool, tried to remember his parents' air conditioned house, the swimming pool out back. He shrugged off his pack, peeled off his soaking wet shirt, and found a place among the pine needles close enough to the road to listen for cars. He futilely wiped at his face with his shirt and leaned against his pack. Fumbled for a powerbar, a swig of water, and a cigarette. The smoke settled around his head in the still air.

Gabriel awoke an hour later, with the ash still clinging to the butt in a long, curved mockery of a cigarette. Fuck. If he didn't find a town soon, he'd be out, and then he'd wish he hadn't fallen asleep. The mosquitos had settled in with a high whine. He half-heartedly slapped at the welts on his chest, and made a mental note to keep all his clothes on from now on, no matter how hot it got. He squinted down the road. It was just so fucking empty.... Just keep walking.

Gabriel hummed a mostly-forgotten 90s pop song - something his bunkmate had been trying to sing while he lit a joint on that last night.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he had said.

"What are they gonna do? Send me home?" Dave had laughed, that high-pitched, half-stoned screech that drove him mad.

Gabriel had frowned - not that he of all people had anything against a little weed. The wardens sure as hell wouldn't be sending anybody home for weed or anything else for that matter. That's why they were here, after all. Their parents didn't want to deal anymore with their fuck-up offspring. Still, though, he didn't think Dave would actually get away with it. He had seen Robert coming out of the infirmary, cuts covering his face and hands, neatly stitched with fine, black thread.

"Dude, put it out," he'd retorted. "Remember Robert?"

"Ah, c'mon, you bought that shit?" Dave had exhaled in Gabriel's face and giggled. "He was a fag. He made a pass at the wrong person. You know how people are around here." Gabriel hadn't argued, just grunted that he needed a wizz. The room had been empty when he got back.

Gabriel shook his head clear of the memory and tried again to wipe the sweat from eyes. He was away from there now, and there was no way they'd get him back. He kicked at one of the small, tight pinecones littering the side of the road, trying to get it to land on the yellow stripe. He glanced at the road behind him, hoping for a car. But not too hard - might jinx it. Maybe around the next bend. Just keep thinking about the next bend.

"Around the next bend will be a town," he said aloud, just to hear something other than the mosquitos and cicadas. "Up there, just a couple of miles, there will be a billboard advertising a free hotel and a bar that serves 24 hours a day and a store with a walk-in freezer section." He giggled at himself, and the sound unnerved him, reminded him a little too much of Dave. "Almost there," he told himself.

Gabriel forced himself not to run as he neared the bend. It was, of course, just more of the same, of course - the fucking road cutting through the fucking pines. No turn-offs, no driveways, no potholes. Just a road. He took off his pack and sat on it, wiping his eyes. He strained to see anything different through the haze. Maybe, just maybe, that green splodge in the distance was a road sign. The splodge wavered in the heat, but Gabriel kept his eyes focused on it, not wanting to miss that moment when it resolved into something. Anything.

Please a sign, but if not, then please not another pine tree. Just something. Sure, a town would rock, a town with a bar that doesn't require IDs and a place to stay with AC and, hell, maybe even a couple of hot chicks just hanging around the bar, waiting for me. He comes out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, the AC drying his skin and raising little goosebumps. He pops open a PBR. Two girls are making out on his bed. He walks behind one - the blonde one - and lays his hand on her back, tracing the curve of her spine, deftly unhooking her bra with one hand. Without breaking the kiss, she pulls him onto the bed, pressing against the other girl to give him room....

Gabriel pulled himself from the girls and the beer and refocused, looking for the green splodge, which seemed to have disappeared into the haze and the trees. His stomach knotted. There. He let out a breath and pulled out a smoke. His hand shook, and it took him two matches to get it lit, even in the still air. "I thought I'd lost you," he muttered at the sign - he was sure it was a sign now. "Don't do that again." He took a drag on his smoke. Down to six now. He'd stolen Dave's contraband collection when he left, feeling a bit guilty. He took another drag and exhaled loudly. It had so been worth it. Chances were good that Dave wouldn't be needing them any time soon, anyway.

The sign was closer, bright green against the dull gray-brown of the tree trunks. It's really a sign. Gabriel felt giddy. Walking for so long, seeing nothing but trees and road (and for a while, not even road), and now, finally. Far enough away from the wardens that he'd never have to go back (if they're even still there). He still wasn't sure why he'd been able to walk out of there so easily. Fate. Simple as that.

He flicked the butt ahead of him on the road, dragging his boot over it to put it out and trying not to look down, away from the sign. Just a few more steps and it would be legible. Gabriel tried to guess just how many it would take and got distracted by the thought of the girls in his air conditioned room before he reached twenty. He squinted. The sign was longer a splodge, but a neat rectangle with white lettering. Gabriel held tight to the straps of his pack and jogged the last 100 feet, hopeful for the first time in months.

"Welcome to ... Salient Point? What the fuck is this?" He laughed at the pun, and imagined a place on the ocean where people lounged under beach umbrellas, ordering frozen drinks and everyone talked like his tenth grade English teacher. Gabriel shed his pack, leaned back against the pole, this wonderful, scorching hot metal pole, made by actual human beings, and wept.

He wiped his face with his filthy shirt and rummaged into his pack for something a little cleaner. He'd never imagined that he'd have to walk so long before coming to some kind of civilization. He considered rinsing out a shirt with some of the water he had left, but thought better of it. Sure, there was a town ahead according to the sign, but he hadn't seen any people yet. And anyway, he'd been conserving water for so long, that the thought of cleaning with it seemed horribly wasteful. At least the other shirt was dry, even if it smelled like stale sweat and cigarette smoke. Oh, well. What could he do? Those girls would just have to wait for him to shower. Gabriel picked up his pack and lit his 5th-to-last smoke. Up ahead, the pine forest thinned, and the light spread.

"Mamaaa, Daddy! There's somebody comin' on the road!" Gabriel strained to see where the voice was coming from and felt the tears stinging his eyes again. People. There were people up ahead. It sounded like a kid. Heh. Must not get all that many visitors in the middle of godforsaken nowhere if the kid was that excited to see him. Gabriel smelled salt marsh through the pines, and under that, someone grilling with charcoal. His mouth watered. He'd been eating nothing but some wrinkled apples and tasteless, gritty powerbars since he'd been on the road. Steaks, fish, even some fucking tofu. He didn't care as long as he never had to look at another powerbar.

A blonde head darted across the road. A man walked through the opening in the trees, and Gabriel froze. A shotgun had been cocked. He slowly extended his hands.

"Hi, I'm Gabriel. I was just looking for a place to stay for a couple of nights. Some more supplies. I'm just a...I'm just a hiker." Surely they got fitness nuts coming through here, right? Gabriel took a step back and wondered if he should run. Surely not. These were people, and they were supposed to be saving his life, not holding a gun on him.

"Has he got it, Daddy?" The kid's voice was high and reedy. He was shirtless and shoeless and his skin was brown and smooth.

"Hey, what's your name? I'm Gabriel?" He swallowed and locked his hands behind his head. The boy peered solemnly around his father's legs.

"What's this all about? I'm not here to hurt anybody. I just need a shower and some food and maybe a beer or something, or even just a coke. I don't care, I was at this wilderness camp, you know for kids who've screwed up, but that place was so bad, and I was scared, and I just wanted to get away, so I left, and I've been walking for days, more than a week, I think. I need help. I won't be here long, just long enough to get cleaned up and call my folks or something...." He was babbling, he knew, but he couldn't seem to stop. "Please, I just wanted to get away from there. I'm just a kid, y'know?"

The man spit a long stream of of brown tobacco juice and raised the gun to his shoulder. He looked Gabriel in the eye. "We got kids of our own to think about."

"What are you doing? I'll leave, I promise, I won't come back. I'll just keep walking. If you can just - just tell me where the next town is? Please?" Gabriel crumpled to the ground as his chest exploded in a spray of blood and meat.

"Nice shot, boss." A man walked onto the road and nodded toward the corpse. "Clean. Should I give Stanton a call?"

The first man grunted his agreement. "Just have Stanton move it out to the sign. And tell the kids to keep away from it. Can't be takin' no chances."