Chapter Text
"What happened was a gross violation of America's homeland security. Sergeant Barnes admits this in his own sane words, and I’m not here to convince you of his innocence. Our solemn responsibility is to listen to the evidence and review these awful accounts. It’s a sad task for all of us. Have the crimes of espionage and treason been established? You’ve heard testimony from--”
“желаниe. pжавый.”
"Silence in the gallery."
"семнадцать--”
Steve paused the courtroom recording before it zoomed in on retired Colonel Helmut Zemo. The private jet was descending, and he tucked away his Stark Tech phone. He knew what happened next; it was a scene replayed over and over. He'd memorized every twist he should've accounted for, every missed oversight. Steve pushed up the shade on his window and watched the Raft rise strange and ominous from the sea, gulls wheeling in the afternoon sun. Deprogramming was taking two long years. It could’ve been worse, they said. The public was afraid. They needed a scapegoat. His own reputation was in tatters if the press was anything to go by, but Bucky was alive.
That was what mattered, Steve thought, as he navigated security and asinine fake pleasantries and dick-measuring chit-chat with this month’s Raft personnel, his jaw perpetually clenched.
He trailed behind a nameless black ops recruit, some young buzz cut with a Texan drawl. The visitation cell with its triple-thick shatterproof glass centered on a single empty plastic chair. Steve took a breath.
“Hey, Buck.”
The man sitting in the corner tucked his left shoulder into the far wall. His knees hugged his chest, protecting his vitals. Dark zigzags of stitches scarred his shaved head, and he brushed a hand over them. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Steve exhaled. “Was in the neighborhood,” he lied.
Bucky scoffed. His cheekbones were less gaunt. “Still a shit liar.”
Steve half-smiled and mentally scrolled through a number of innocuous topics thought up in the weeks between his last visit, discarding them out of hand. Bucky would tolerate nostalgic childhood yarns, go silent when it came to the war and Hydra, and lapse into a maddeningly cynical attitude at the mention of his psych evals. Behind the shatterproof glass there was a fortress. Steve might scream if he had to play through the same performative charade again. Not this month. Not after he'd buried Peggy, shoveled dirt on her coffin. He should scream; maybe they'd commit him, too. He clasped his hands in front of him, rubbing the faint callouses from the shield.
“The UN subcommittee agreed to review your appeal.”
“I didn’t ask for a fucking appeal,” Bucky snapped, all sharp angles.
Steve chewed the inside of his cheek. “I know. You deserve another chance, even if--”
“Don’t tell me what I deserve. You read the files.”
“Even if you don’t believe that yet,” Steve finished stubbornly, because he always had to push, push, push. Start the fight, ignite a spark. If he clenched his jaw any tighter he might chip a molar.
“Why don’t you get out of here?” Bucky shot back, eyes wide and blazing. The orange jumper’s mended left sleeve revealed a metal socket. His remaining hand clutched white-knuckled at his kneecap as he launched himself up, uncurling like a snake. The Raft escort shifted in silent warning behind Steve, as if Steve wouldn't crush his skull if he so much as touched Bucky's sock. “Forget all this misery. Go live your life in the sunlight.”
Steve swallowed and crossed his arms so no one could see his hands shake. “Can't do that.”
Bucky's words puffed little fogged patches on the reinforced glass. “I’m not your friend, get that through your Captain America helmet, alright? That guy’s been dead a long time.”
It stung. It was exhilaratingly real, like a sharp crack from taking it on the jaw. Bucky had always been a good boxer.
“Then from one soldier to another, I’m not leaving you here.”
“Fuck you.” Bucky's mouth twisted into a nasty visage. “I dug my own grave, you don’t gotta lie in it with me.”
“Last I checked both our graves were empty,” Steve retorted with the same heat. When they put Peggy six feet under, all he wanted to do was sleep. Rest. But someone was still roaming the earth with Bucky's face and Bucky's past, god damn him.
The man with Bucky's face now held him captive under a withering stare, reading Steve like an especially confounding book. Was he still a skinny kid from Brooklyn? Captain America: government puppet? An exasperating stranger? Steve suspected he was something worse; that he was close to going off the rails.
“Walk away, Steve.”
It was an easy hit to parry. “Not without you.”
***
Steve blinked in the weak fluorescent lighting and peered again at the photograph taped to the bare wall beside his cot. His naked feet curled against the frigid floor and he rubbed his arms absently, dry skin catching on thick sweater wool.
It was a candid yellowed photo of two men on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. The sun lit a younger version of himself in a plain t-shirt tugged by the wind. His companion's face was shy under a ballcap, one jacketed arm hooked confidently around a bridge cable. Scrawled in the margin, a clue:
Back before you know it -- Bucky
"Bucky," he said aloud to the photo, the syllables warming deep in his chest. And it was, unmistakably. His metal left hand was tucked into a glove and brown hair spilled beneath the cap. It must’ve been …
Hm. Steve tapped a finger. The train of thought faded, his recollection straining and failing. He picked up his little worn notebook from the bedside and thumbed to the dog-eared page.
The prior pages held his precious collection of notes, dates, times. It threatened a headache, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. One of the lightbulbs buzzed low and insistent. A glance at his watch showed five 'till. He tossed the notebook aside and heaved himself from the cot, wincing at the twinge in his left knee as the tendons complained. Slept on it wrong. An unpleasant unfamiliarity with his own body tickled the back of his neck, not unlike those fresh few months after the Vita-Ray, and he registered a series of mismatches. He was heavier, for one. Yet his clothes fit him fine and the unshaven reflection in the square shaving mirror was distinctly him, just a decade older than his face in the photograph. The world was different now (again), why wouldn’t he be different too (again)?
The silent motions of morning routine allowed space to recall his current context, like methodically outlining an elephant in the dark with a flashlight. He settled into a time and place, partially filling his empty vessel as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair in the spartan bunk room. The plastic wash basin filled with suds and he dumped it down the toilet chute.
A knock at the door: "Good morning, gorgeous!"
Steve opened it with a distracted kick and pulled a pair of boot socks from his crooked chest of drawers. A quadruped android resembling an abstract minimalist sketch of a dog entered and rose to bipedal height at Steve's shoulder. The head unit's vision system was stamped B.I.T.S., Stark logo obvious.
"The year is 1812, we hail Emperor Napoleon--"
"You try this every morning." He flung his coveralls on the bed and bent to retrieve his boots.
"Hope springs eternal."
"Just give me the status report."
"I can tell you haven't had your shitty coffee yet."
"BITS. Status report."
The android folded down with a petulant whir. "Clear skies and a practically balmy thirty below. Radioactivity level orange thanks to winds from the northwest. You've got Route 3, 40 and 695; loading dock at oh nine hundred. Schedule's already on the Big Board because Sharon's been up since four with her obsessive compulsions."
Steve laced his boots then zipped the insulated coveralls over his long johns and sweater, nodding at this information. Those routes he could drive blind. Figure ten hours on the road if the weather held. He grabbed his notebook as the android idly played a Frosty the Snowman jingle. Outside his bunk room, the concrete hallway was lit with the same weak yellow bulbs and he rubbed his eyes in the doorway.
A woman rounded the corner and intercepted him, shoving a thermos into his hands. "Morning, Rogers. Oatmeal's in the pantry, it was hot five minutes ago. Let's go. BITS, turn that crap off." She whisked them both up in her wake.
The pantry was another unremarkable concrete room. A lemon-soap scent lingered. Steve took a spoonful of oatmeal from a plastic bowl and set down the thermos, its SHIELD insignia worn away. The woman busied herself at a laptop on the corner linoleum counter, plugged in next to a half-rusted hot plate. Her brow was weathered into a permanently concerned vee above the nose and her gray hair wove into a braid that brushed the collar of her turtleneck, tucked into equally thick coveralls. The constant wind gave her a high blush like a glow.
"Morning, Carter."
She shot him a wry smile. "Lucky me, a man who knows my name at the breakfast table."
He allowed a chuckle. The oatmeal was bland, the coffee bitter. It was hard to believe it had ever been otherwise. BITS snatched his empty bowl and thermos into a bucket of soapy water filled with a collection of dishware from the crew's earlier breakfasts. Steve tapped a finger on the table as he stalled, then checked his watch: almost oh nine hundred. Right, the loading dock.
"Tell me your routes," Sharon said, clicking away at the computer.
"Three, 40, 695."
She nodded once. "Good. Let's get you on the road. BITS, you set to run diagnostics?"
"Oh, of course, it's an honor to be included in conversation this morning, Captain," BITS muttered, one appendage rinsing a pot.
"Too early for the sarcasm. Don’t make me retool your algorithms."
“An empty threat, you could never.”
Steve joined Sharon by the lift to pull on their standard-issue parkas, knit hats and gloves. Their clattering ride up to the loading dock was brief, dim, and reeked of gasoline.
The lift doors opened like a sunrise.
The bright, vast space of the loading dock housed four eighteen-wheeled giants and their attendant equipment. Crane machinery dangled from the rafters, meant for maneuvering the shipping containers of precious cargo from the surplus sublevel beneath them. A mechanic hooked up a hose into a tanker marked with a red flammable sigil, and the adjoining snowmobile garage was a hive of activity. Wind rattled the huge frosted-over windows, mixing with the whine of drills and pump motors.
Sharon grabbed a pair of spare ski goggles from the snowmobile helmet cubbies and went to a locker labeled CARTER, next to BARNES. BITS trotted to a faded red cab with snow-dusted chrome finish and unfolded to lift the engine hood forward, its grille swinging down like teeth to prey. Two of the four trailers, including the red cab, were loaded with shipping containers, and their respective plow attachments waited against the trailer bed for service. A white-washed wall dominated the head of the floor: the Big Board.
The small frustrations and incompletenesses of his morning melted into familiar certainty. Steve pulled out his notebook and carefully copied his portion of the schedule. Weinstauber, Suburban Appliance Fairbanks, Pierre. With each proper noun a place rose in mental association, the routes connecting a path between the dots. It was glorious, magical.
Two other crew in matching parkas were bent over a workbench in conversation. One of them raised a hand. "Morning, Captain Carter."
"Morales," Sharon called and paused her Big Board update. "Your last route on Earth, try not to pop a flat. Got some Jim Beam waiting for after."
"Can't take that on the shuttle."
"Guess you better enjoy it all here then."
"Wilson says hangovers are worse in orbit."
She waved him off. "Yeah, well, Wilson says a lot of things."
"GPS is still shitting itself," BITS announced irritably from the engine innards, one appendage ported to the system.
Steve frowned and scrubbed crusted snow from the headlights. "Any replacement units?"
"We barely got a working Mr. Coffee, you think I got a replacement GPS?" The android pushed the hood shut and fetched a plow attachment. The giant plow dwarfed the android but BITS handled it deftly, another appendage bolting it into position. "Unless you or some poor fuck wants to go ice fishing at the nearest subterranean Best Buy."
"Can't you upgrade him? More cheerful?" Morales gestured as he passed by.
"No one is upgrading me except me!"
Steve crouched to check the back tires and their snow chains, and wondered when his knee would stop hurting like a sonofabitch. The serum was slowing down, that much was clear. It used to be he could recover overnight. Like after the helicarrier, sure. But that was years ago, he'd been in plenty of scrapes since then. Right? Nothing particular came to mind, which was patently absurd. He levered his weight against the tire treads as he straightened. Just focus on the job. Check the trailer fastenings on the container, triple-locked, cables tight. He circled to the cab and pressed his thumb to the grease-stained keypad.
AUTHORIZED: STEVEN G. ROGERS
It was like sitting down in a favorite chair, the cushion long-worn. His vintage alarm clock sat on the dash, CHECK-IN CHANNEL 19 inked across the bottom. The CB radio above the windshield had one switch taped over in red: emergencies only. His compass hung from the rear-view mirror like a totem artifact. It hadn't pointed north since… Well, a long time. Back before the Earth's magnetic poles went haywire. Peggy's photo was cracking at the edges, a memory so impossibly far removed from the present that it verged on fiction. It was a blessing she hadn't lived to see the end. He adjusted the mirrors and looked to his right. In the passenger seat rested the old shield, half-scorched and a nick along the edge. He smoothed a hand down its face. The United States of America remained in name only. The collapse of Hydra and SHIELD had been the first domino in a long line of them. Coincidence, bad luck, self-destruction, fate, call it what you wanted. His thoughts trailed off and he was left blinking at the blackened star. Christ, did he need another coffee?
He checked the glove compartment. Copies of registration and permits, as if the Security Council would actually be patrolling out there. Sorely outdated and creased paper maps. One Glock, fully loaded. Music CDs salvaged from another era. A square plastic box with little pills in segmented sections, organized by day. The taped scrap of a note over the lid read: STEVE — 1 PILL / 24 HRS. It was his own handwriting. There were five remaining. He verified the date in his notebook. Now four remained. Was he supposed to get a refill? It wasn't helping his knee. Steve shoved the box away and fished out his scratched pair of aviator sunglasses as Sharon rapped on the driver's door.
She passed a weather-proofed tablet up to him. The double-lion Security Council logo on its cover matched the design on their parkas and truck cabs. "You know what this is?"
"Delivery validations, yeah, I know. I can do my job," he added testily. All these little quizzes.
"Just due diligence," she replied. "BITS put your suit in there too." She nodded to the passenger seat, where a white and blue packet was tucked under the shield.
"I don't need the suit."
Sharon arched an eyebrow and gave him a pointed once-over. "Due diligence," she repeated, and jumped down from the rim step.
Steve made a noise that was definitely not a harrumph and scrolled through the tablet, cross-checking names with the Big Board and his own notepad, adding notation for scheduled check-ins. Behind the truck an alarm buzzed once, twice, three times. Gears ground as they struggled to slide the massive garage door along its iced track, the wind picking up ferociously.
He hit the engine ignition button and the truck rumbled to life with a thick cough. Orange needles on the dashboard gauges jumped and settled. Check the voltage, fuel tank, air pressure. A refurbished digital readout showed the auxiliary power unit at 85%. Years of rough travel had chipped its casing and without suitable spare parts it, like everything else, was slowly breaking down. Steve checked the seal on the windows and cranked up the heat. Marvin Gaye crooned on low volume. He fastened the seat belt across his parka and coveralls because the ice could get a little unpredictable. Snowflakes fluttered in and melted fast on the windshield. By the Big Board, Sharon pulled down her ski goggles, framed by parka fur and unmoved against the gusts. She raised one hand in farewell, returned with a thumbs-up.
"Nomad, you read me?" said a voice over the CB radio; Morales, from an adjacent truck.
Steve reached up and unhooked his mic from its cradle. "Loud and clear, Spider."
"Happy trails, elders first."
Steve rolled his eyes, put on his sunglasses, and shifted into reverse with one pull on the horn.
Nice weather meant no blizzards and no ice storms. It was never truly nice anymore. The clouds hung low and overcast, a gray layer nevertheless bright enough to reflect light up from the permafrost tundra. Hazy smoke on the eastern horizon obscured where he knew skyscraper skeletons reared at the sky, like so many sticks planted in the snow. Opposite was a half-buried river of signs and tangled wires that stretched to the mountains, which is where anyone who survived and wanted to continue surviving fled, before the shuttles began. Whenever that had been. He'd survived. Had he fled? It was blank.
He turned the big rig westward, started the alarm clock on the dash, and settled in.
Except he didn't settle in. An hour later on the unchanging vast tundra and there was an itch, a piece missing yet unknowable. Marvin Gaye had crooned his last song a couple miles back, and the cab filled only with the engine's muted rumblings. Too quiet. He pushed the scan button on the CB and listened as it fluttered from station to station. Most leftover people had radios, needed them as a lifeline. The antennae searched for a connection. It came up empty and restarted over again every few minutes.
He passed the twisted wreckage of a high-voltage transmission tower and his mind wandered around to the photograph. He should've asked Sharon. Where was Bucky? Was he still alive? Was he coming back? If he didn't remember to care, did he care at all? The notion made him sick, like someone had punched him in the gut and again in the nose. Had it been like this for Bucky, those first months after the helicarrier? Steve had been different, then, too. None of this grasping after memories and mundane frustrations. They'd dragged the Potomac (he wasn't in the fucking river, he was out there) and put Bucky's face all over the evening news and social media and in the end he'd just shown up in Steve's living room, in the same chair he'd shot Fury. Do you know who I am?
But that was ages ago.
Steve knew he'd lost time. Handfuls of it, scooped out at random. There were people he should be mourning. They slipped away from him like wisps of cloud on the wind. He knew Sharon and BITS and the Albany Outpost and this job, the frozen roads, the things that were right in front of him. Bucky was a ghost. And if Bucky was a ghost, then so was Steve. That was how it always went.
"And she left him!" The CB burst forth in a rush of static and startled him from reverie. "I told Dan I didn't believe any of that--"
Local traffic. Steve wiped a hand over his mouth, down his beard. A half-buried green highway sign marked the upcoming exit. The mountains had grown steadily closer with their patches of stunted pine and long-dead lumber.
He slowed and maneuvered the wide turn, dropping the plow to confront the next three miles or so until his first stop. The back roads were riddled with debris, plastic waste and bizarre souvenirs of far-flung suburbia that resurfaced in storms, mostly picked-over by scavengers. If you wanted a delivery you had one obligation: Maintain your access road. He'd gotten stuck in drifts on a few early routes and, well, that's why super-strength was a valuable driver attribute. Frigid temps and high radiation meant any prolonged exposure was deadly serious. Steve gripped the steering wheel tighter.
He eased up to the barbed-wire fencing of the Weinstauber homestead and idled. The third story of a former office building was visible above the snow pack. He waved once. After a few minutes, a trio of people bundled in ragtag furs emerged from around the back with a sled. Steve exchanged his sunglasses for goggles, pulled down his hat, and zipped up the parka. He grabbed the battered tablet and lurched from the warm cab into the brutal frosted air.
The trailer rear opened with a frozen squeal. Inside were tens of pallets of food, recharged batteries, medicine. Those in the front were marked with a W. Taking more than the scheduled allotment was punishable by excommunication, which more often than not meant death. Those who chose to stay had to acknowledge the rules and the consequences. Eli Weinstauber and his neighbors had chosen to stay, and Steve doubted nothing short of the actual breaking apart of the Earth itself would move them. His mother, father, uncle, two sons and one daughter were all buried on the property; casualties of old age, unfortunate accidents, and the present circumstances. And how was it Steve succinctly recalled this, the sad lineage of relative strangers, instead of the last time he'd seen Bucky's face, or why he was living with Sharon, or how he'd gotten this way in the first place? It was maddening.
Steve handed over the tablet for signature and a thumbprint, and stacked the designated pallets onto the sled, their combined weight denting the permafrost. Slivers of his exposed skin were already chapped. Quick work meant less frostbite to heal.
"You delivering surplus next Thursday?" one of the bundled-up people asked through their layers. Out in this cold everyone was faceless, sexless.
Steve shrugged. "I don't make the schedule."
"Weather's starting to turn, looks like. Here. For the road."
A casual salute and then a plastic baggie of … Steve did a double-take. Jerky?
Back to the highway.
The CB radio scanned forlornly. He checked in with Sharon at the assigned time, and reset the alarm clock.
He savored the last of the stringy old squirrel jerky as the dented Suburban Appliance sign came into view. The associated warehouse was retrofitted with an array of gadgets and new-old tech clearly plundered from military connections. It was the largest delivery drop on this route, an amalgamation of extended families. Different folks found different reasons for staying behind. The Suburban Appliance commune was aggressively optimistic: when the winter receded, they would be here first, and governed themselves accordingly.
He guided the rig to their de-iced lot and hesitated longer than necessary in leaving the cab. It wasn't a stop he enjoyed.
"Captain America!" hailed an anonymous figure in outerwear. Four others swarmed him at the rear of the truck, rifles hanging off their backs.
"Sign for validation," Steve muttered through his parka fur, shoving the tablet forward.
"God bless us all, Captain America has arrived with the goods to save the day!" The homesteader continued in a tone reminiscent of the old USO shows.
Steve ignored it and unloaded all but five pallets of remaining cargo from the cavernous shipment container, his breath mingling with the others’ in suspended condensation.
"And a gallon of fuel."
He stopped and huffed a fresh cloud. He'd left the handgun in the glovebox and the shield up front. "What?"
"A gallon of diesel for your prescription refill." The homesteader was serious.
Fuck. "Show me."
They pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. There it was, plain as day, his signature on a crude trade contract. Diesel once a month for something called dediscozipine. His knee throbbed. There was more than enough fuel in the rig for him to return to the outpost, not to mention the auxiliary power.
"Siphon it," Steve capitulated gruffly, and caught the pill bottle tossed his direction. Why the hell was he bartering out here instead of through Sharon? Then again, he avoided medical bays as a general rule.
Back in the cab, he portioned out the capsules and relabeled the dates.
One more stop.
The Pierre homestead was furthest into the mountains, the last reachable delivery drop for rigs. Any further venturing into the woods necessitated a snowmobile or bulldozer plow, and even then it was touch-and-go. Avalanches ripped dead forests up clean from their roots, crashing into massive snarled tangles that rendered former mountain roads impassable.
Steve frowned. The snow blew soft across the highway exit, drifted since the last storm. Failed maintenance usually spelled trouble. It was a winding ramp. He idled, debating, letting the radio click through another scan of empty channels. Number one rule was don't leave the truck. Especially not this far from the outpost. Well, better to try and push through on a clear day. He shifted into gear, flipped the off road and power divider lock switches on the dash, and nosed the rig down the exit to the connector road, feathering the brakes. The path snaked between foothills in a shallow valley, fallen limbs blown across the cleared roadway. The plow handled them easily even as Steve's trepidation grew.
The Pierre homestead was a squat collection of cabins behind a standard razor-wire fence. Here the terrain played a greater defensive advantage. Steve waited at the gate, knee jogging restlessly in the cab. No one appeared. Not good, not good. He pulled the horn in a single loud blast that sent a flock of crows spiraling into the sky with insulted screeches. Still no movement. No chimney smoke, either. He preemptively cut the alarm for check-in and grabbed the radio mic, tuning to channel 19.
"Break one nine. Nomad to Albany Outpost."
Sharon clipped back immediately. "This is Albany. Nomad, you're early."
"Pierre homestead's quiet. I'm gonna check it out."
"Raid?"
Steve scanned the perimeter. "Nothing obvious."
"Wear the suit."
"I don't need the suit. It'll just be a minute."
“I'll give you ten,” she warned.
The truck engine cut off and every movement seemed enormously loud in the ensuing silence. Steve exchanged his sunglasses for ski goggles and a scarf his over his lips and nose. He checked the handgun from the glovebox and shoved it into his parka. Then he grabbed the shield, because some things were more effective than firepower. His boots slipped a little off the side of the road as he leapt down, and he dug around for the spikes he kept under the driver's seat. He already felt like a sitting duck, and he stopped to check the perimeter again. No signs of life, not even crows.
The shield shoved through the gate after a protest from twisted, barbed steel wire. His boots crunched into iced-over snow. If there were footprints earlier, they'd been erased by the latest snowstorm.
"Hello?" he called out. "Captain Rogers, Albany Outpost."
He peered in a front window of the first cabin. Deserted. Everything seemed in order. He tested the doorknob -- locked. The neighboring cabin was the same.
The third cabin was a nightmare.
"Ah, shit," Steve breathed, and pushed through the door. A dozen frozen bodies in such relaxed repose it could've been a cheap wax museum setup. He took stock of the setting. No violence. There was a decently-sized woodpile next to the fireplace, and he'd passed a larger shed out front. A quick check up the chimney confirmed the flue was open. His boot spikes clicked across the floor as he approached the dining table. The scrappy remains of a dinner had frozen before three people dead in their seats, and he picked up one of their empty glass bottles. Steve wrinkled his nose at the potent odor of moonshine. He examined the bottle closer; no identifying marks. Either someone had fixed up a still on the homestead or was running a trader side gig. Bad batch.
He rubbed the hat pulled low on his forehead and considered the bodies. Better to leave them here. The ground was far too frozen for a burial, and trucking them back to Albany was pointless. Steve sighed and the condensation gathered in his beard before frosting over.
He checked the last two cabins, also empty. One hell of a party. Heading to the truck there was a frazzled buzzing noise -- the CB radio. He stomped the excess snow from his boot spikes and slid across the cab seat, dumping the shield.
"Albany to Nomad, come in, repeat--"
"This is Nomad."
"Report?” Sharon asked, relief tangible.
"All dead, accidental. Bootleg liquor.”
"Jesus.”
“Unmarked bottles, maybe not so accidental.” Steve pulled off his goggles and wiped his nose on his sleeve. There was time he would've said some words, made a cairn in remembrance, but he had a schedule to keep and dead bodies were as common as the snow they rested in.
“I’ll log it. You headed back?"
Steve rubbed his eyes, weary. "Copy that, signing off."
The truck engine's noise broke the silence that hung over the cabins. Staying this long in one place wasn't ideal, and he needed to get moving. There was barely enough cleared road to execute a turn without running adrift. Steve cursed under his breath and checked his position. The rig nosed forward in low gear, plow brushing the barbed fencing as he straightened the wheel alignment, then shifted into reverse. He watched his mirrors and worked the rig around one foot at a time until he could ease out.
It was slow going uphill, tracing the path the plow had cleared earlier. The shadows lengthened. He was at the final turn before the highway straightaway when it happened. The left side back tires hit a slick spot and the trailer took a slow, aborted jack knife into the debris-filled ditch, nothing to be done. Steve straightened out the steering, and went out to inspect the damage. This close to evening the wind was picking up, and he almost mistook the sound in the distance for a gust blowing through tree limbs. It wavered in and out of clarity until, carried on a singular burst of wind, the buzz of snowmobiles was unmistakable.
Scavengers.
Steve worked quickly, jamming his boot spikes into the slick snow and grabbing the low right corner of the crooked trailer bed that was clear of the ditch. He sent up a short prayer of thanks that the damn thing wasn’t fully loaded, then pulled. Slowly, gently, the trailer slid back into alignment. He hustled up to the cab, the truck now an obnoxiously loud target, and took a steady breath, tried the turn once more, gentle on the clutch. The tires caught, slipped, and caught as the buzz outside grew louder, resettled crows taking to flight. Adrenaline trickled in. Stay patient. If he took it too fast the trailer might skid again or he'd blow the differential, and that wasn't a scenario he was keen to face at the moment.
He maneuvered the cab around the turn and then it was a straight bit back to the highway. He let the odometer climb. Shift gears. Almost there. He passed the battered exit sign and braked, slowly, slowly, turn the wheel --
Steve grabbed the Glock from his side and took a shot out the driver's door, a single echoing pop.
A spit of ice and snow sprayed the white snowmobile that was crawling up the road. The scavenger heeded the warning and hung back.
They wouldn't trouble with an armed confrontation this late in the day, when the truck was near-empty. If they'd intercepted the comms, which was likely, they knew there was a far larger cache of gear at the homestead, and that Steve was the driver. Captain America didn't mean much to any survivors but it still made for a pause in risk assessments.
Steve opened the throttle and the truck rumbled eastward, exchanging mountains for the eastern haze of a smoldering city. He checked the rear view mirror. Six snowmobiles, the scavengers hunched and watchful as he left them behind.
Two more hours on the road meant another round of Marvin Gaye, several protein bars, and a freezing piss stop.
Evening threatened as he pulled into the outpost. Cutting it close. Sharon took his radiation reading and squeezed his shoulder. Hot soup for dinner and he sniffed his runny nose. BITS uploaded data from the delivery tablet. Morales and the rest of the crew, their names a blur, offered him a swig of whiskey. Steve thought of the homestead and declined, stomach clenching.
He knew the contours of his room and stripped silently in the dark. Notebook on the nightstand. The weariness was deep in his bones, stiff in his joints, stringing through the serum.
***
The overhead light sputtered on and he opened his eyes, focusing on his boots tidily stowed under a chair and coveralls draped less-than-tidily over the same chair. His watch showed five 'till. A photograph was taped to the wall by his cot. Himself, younger, with another man on the Brooklyn Bridge. It should've been familiar, well-loved. He read the note:
Back before you know it -- Bucky
Steve’s chest warmed, and he looked at the other man in the photo again. Bucky, that was right. Of course it was. When had they … He searched for context. After the helicarrier, after the Raft. His memory sputtered with confused images like a broken movie reel and instead brought a wave of melancholy, as often happened with irretrievable things.
He picked up his little worn notebook and thumbed to the dog-eared bookmark.