The trek back the way they'd come was uneventful. At one point, Shepard stopped to swig from her flask, an unappealing warm metallic flavor, and saw vultures circling behind them. The sun is beginning to set by the time they join back with the original ambush-site, and it's the sort of altercation with a pack of wild varren that Shepard would have written down as, Local wildlife encountered in her report, had she been submitting one in writing.

Less pleasant is the job of burning the bodies— as much to prevent further scavengers being attracted to the road, as to respect the dead. Besides, for all she knows this is how you get zombies. Even after two years, after a thousand years, Shepard still doesn't really get many of the rules of this place.

Then it's back to walking, marching through the twilight until real dark finally settles in, its grip tightening with a bony cold. Shepard finally calls a halt when the moon rises, deeming it ground enough to have made up for the day, and sets their camp with a distinctive boulder at their backs, to shelter from the wind, and hide the light of their fire— from one angle, at least.

"Damn," She says, waiting for the water to boil and the rations, a rehydrated stew, to thereby become edible. Outside their ring of warmth and light, the night-insects are singing, and the small creatures of the badlands are living their hurried, violent little lives, tiny rustles in the bush, "I always forget how tiring this kind of walk can get. How you holding up?"