Last Avenger

Epilogue

The trailer at Pier 45 had been secured and a disposal team was sent to collect the shield, as was protocol. They had driven it to a storage unit on the mainland a few hours outside New York with the other sacrilegious items needing to be contained after the war. The unit amounted to an old, wooden shed standing about a storey tall. It was off a highway, down a small dirt road in a forest whose sole purpose was to shepherd whoever had wound up on inventory duty that month.

By March, the snow had begun to melt and the road had become a muddy quagmire. By the beginning of May it was all gone, but instead had been replaced by a few vicious rainstorms, disrupting the scheduled inventory days as the road kept getting washed out. The climate settled by June, the road drying out but in rougher shape, and by the middle of July New York state was in the middle of a second heatwave.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky as the Gennisian truck made its approach along the highway, winding around hills and coniferous forests. The sun in some places had made the colours of the earth brilliant and lush, and in others the colour had burnt away. The truck sailed past a handful of fields and clearings with noticeable patches of brown. The driver had set back in his seat, guiding the truck along, cruise control engaged the first chance he got. He had an old pre-war Post Malone album low on the speakers, competing with the wind flapping through the open windows.

"Cycle, this is Dispatch, can I get a sitrep?"

Cycle lazily clutched the mic off his radio. "Dispatch, this is cycle. Five clicks out from Toybox."

"Roger that."

He set the mic back and readjusted comfortably in his seat. He rested his one arm up on the window sill, maintaining course with a few fingers draped on the wheel.

"Cycle, this is Dispatch, come in."

Cycle rolled his eyes, smiling out the side of his mouth. "This is Cycle."

There was a pause on the other end.

"Dispatch, you there?"

"Yeah, Jack, I'm here," she said. "Just waiting for the brass to move off my shoulder. But is that Post Malone I'm picking up?"

Jack chuckled heartily. "Yeah, yeah."

"God, I haven't heard Posty in, like, 40 years," she said with a touch of a swoon.

Jack felt light in his seat as he glided passed the encroaching hills. "Yeah, guess someone'd been stashing his last album in the glove compartment."

A heavier silence soon set in over the line, though no one wanted to hangup. It hung in the air, obliging someone to say something.

"Any news on Barnes?" Jack finally said.

"Nothing," Dispatch said.

"Didn't find anything in the thaw?"

"I think it's more the rains washed out any leads we had."

"I doubt he survived the winter." Jack sighed bitterly as the silence set in again, satisfied.

"We'll get him," Dispatch said. "Everyday that goes by, he's got fewer places to hide."

"Yeah, roger that," Jack said in a bittersweet cheer.

The sun was hidden behind the trees and hills as Jack rounded the last bend before the turn. He swung the truck onto the dirt road. He scanned and left and right as he began the kilometer and a half drive in.