The convoy carried Kaiden's family north out of the city for an hour, until the buildings thinned into rice terraces and the road signs began counting down the kilometers to a town called Kawanami.
Two valleys east, Scarlet had her own raid group at a second overflow zone, another town shaded out on the Circle's map. The family group chat had carried three messages from her about who would finish first.
The cordon announced itself before the town did. Steel barriers crossed the valley road in a double line, watchtowers rose on both shoulders, and past all of it, wedged between a green river and greener hills, waited a town with no lights on.
A full kilometer out, the crowd started.
Cars filled the shoulder and folding chairs sat in truck beds.
Families who had spent the outbreak sleeping in gymnasiums and relatives' spare rooms lined the guardrail with the joint stream open on their phones, because the morning feed had told them whose convoy was coming.
