End Times by Anna Schumacher

hand.
    “Let’s hope neither of us end up regretting this,” he said, pumping her arm up and down. “But welcome to the Global Oil team.”

FROM the moment Owen and Luna left the Radical Roots festival, their journey took on the urgency of a phantom itch, ephemeral and omnipresent, demanding yet refusing relief. They talked endlessly as they drove from town to town, hitting races when they needed the money and pushing on when they didn’t, the phantom vein from their dream pulsing like a mirage, always a few miles farther down the road. They regurgitated their life stories as his wheels ate mile after mile of pavement, poring over the details of their childhoods and looking for the loose threads that would weave into an explanation behind their shared nightmares.
    Besides being born on the same commune, they discovered that she was just two days older than him, that they both hated the taste of pesto, and that they would always rather move than sit still. Their restless energy filled the cab of the truck, pulsing to the jam-band tunes from Luna’s iPod, relentlessly propelling them forward. They didn’t know where they were going—only that they needed to get there as soon as possible, to placate the voice in their dreams.
    A few nights into their journey, at a campground in a remote logging village in Montana, the bonfire in Owen’s nightmares burned brighter than ever before. Luna was there, her face no longer cloaked in shadow like the rest of the figures dancing and shrieking around them. Her green eyes glowed like embers as she writhed in a hoop made of fire, the flames lapping at her skin without leaving a mark. The bonfire grew until it nearly blinded him with its white-hot hunger, robbing the air of oxygen until he awoke, choking on his own fear, with the gravelly voice still whispering find the vein in his ears.
    He thrashed in his sleeping bag, clawing at the drawstring that had wrapped around his neck until he’d shaken himself free. The late-morning sun was high in the sky, baking the bed he’d made for himself in the back of his truck, and he shielded his eyes with his hands, glancing around at the tents and RVs until he spotted Luna. She had rolled out a yoga mat under a pine tree and was standing in downward dog, peering at him upside down through the gap between her legs with an unmistakable smirk on her face.
    “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, kicking into a handstand.
    Fear still throbbed in Owen’s veins. “I had it again,” he told her. “Just now.”
    “The dream?” She arched her body into a bridge, the charms in her dreadlocks jangling as they scraped the yoga mat. “I had it, too. It was so intense! I know we’re getting closer. I can feel it.”
    Owen wondered whether the morning yoga session had calmed her, or if Luna simply didn’t find the dreams as unsettling as he did. “Where are they coming from?” he wondered aloud. “Was it like that at the commune, when you were a kid? You mentioned there were bonfires every night.” He swung his legs over the truck’s tailgate and fished in his backpack for a canteen, taking a long, lukewarm swig of water.
    “A little.” Luna pulsed up and down in her backbend, the slim muscles in her arms straining. “But it was nothing like this. That was what was. This is what will come to be.”
    “What do you mean?” he started to ask. But Luna had already cartwheeled her way to standing. Her back was to him as she raised her arms to the sky in a final long stretch, so that it looked like her tree tattoo was growing.
    “I’m starving,” she said, turning back to him. “Let’s go get breakfast.”
    • • •
    THEY drove up the road to a restaurant they’d passed on the way in, a log cabin with a long lunch counter and a few small tables. From the wool hats and flannel shirts of the grizzled regulars sipping coffee and polishing off stacks of pancakes, Owen could tell it was a popular spot among the local