An old gas station was the first thing he saw. The little adjacent shop was still quite intact, but the roof that sheltered the pumps had collapsed some time long ago. The pumps themselves seemed in good shape but dusty and capped with rubble. Growth had crept over the concrete yard over the years, and thorny vines climbed along the pumps and obsolete pillars that once held up the roof.

What might’ve been a restaurant or coffee shop came a few yards later. A red sign spelled a word in a language August didn’t recognize. The glass walls framed by a brick skeleton reminded him of the coffee shops back home. A few old cars sat rusted and overgrown in the reclaimed parking lot. One lay overturned—a van.

August stepped away from the others. He studied the pavement beneath the growth and found a faded yellow line. He followed its direction until he found another, and then another. He looked down what once had been a street with two rows of old houses standing on either side.

The houses stood in varying stages of decay. The stucco ones and the wooden ones had fared much worse than the brick ones. Nearly all windows had been shattered, most doors hung ajar, and a few roofs had caved in.

A cloud of pigeons erupted from one of the more solid roofs as August stepped down the street. Seven guns aimed at the flock held for a moment and lowered slowly. The squad had been on edge since stepping out of the bushes. No one had admitted it, but August could sense that he wasn’t the only one.

He continued down the street a bit and was pleased to hear Rosek’s mech suit close behind. He slowed to wait up, and she joined him while the rest of the squad had gone on exploring in another direction.

“Something else, isn’t it?” Her face shield was wide open as she gazed around in wonder.

He wanted to joke that the place didn’t look so different than where he’d grown up but refrained. There was a time and a place for jokes, and there, stranded outside the dome, wasn’t one of them. He nodded. They continued up the street abreast.

A basketball hoop slouched in one of the driveways. The netting was gone leaving only a faded orange rim, and the white paint on the backboard had withered to reveal an ugly grey wood. A rusted bicycle leaned against it with flimsy dislodged tires. The seat had a massive spot of bird droppings, and the spokes were lost in the clutches of angry brambles that bore sinister-looking dark berries.

“It pains me to think of the children who used to play in this street,” Rosek said. “I wonder what happened here.”

August assumed the dolo had something to do with it. They were the main reason everyone had fled to the dome so long ago. They were humanity’s greatest plague since… he thought for a while but couldn’t remember anything as horrible as the dolo from history class.

The street led to a four-way intersection that was comparatively free of growth, though the asphalt had seen better days. Four similar signs faced what would have been oncoming traffic on each street. They were completely faded and void of any color or wording, but according to the octagonal shape, August was able to identify them as stop signs—which were all digital or holographic under the dome.

They wordlessly agreed to turn left, probably because it was the street with the most exposed asphalt of the four. Steel reflected a sunray into August’s eye from the end of the road. He lowered his face shield dousing the world in a yellow tint. He leaned to the side to change the angle and saw what had been reflecting the light.

He beamed and jogged for it. He had a bit of a limp as the stinger wound sent a shock through his leg on every step.

“Wait,” Rosek called out. “We shouldn’t get separated. It’s bad enough being apart from the others.”

He wanted to heed her warning, but he was too excited from what he saw. A car sat in the farthest driveway on the right, tucked securely beneath a tarp that had lost most of its blue from years of sunlight. Gaping holes in the tarp revealed the glossy back fender of a familiar car. The tarp clinging to the rest of the body suggested it was indeed the type and make he thought it was.

Rosek caught up to him. Her heavy footsteps shook the ghostly neighborhood. “What is it? You rushed all the way here for some old car?”

“This isn’t just a car,” August was beaming like a child, almost laughing with glee. He took hold of the tarp and whipped it off in a single motion like a magician to a tablecloth. There it was—a nineteen-seventy-two Montag Phoenix—the color of a shiny penny. The vintage folk used to call it a muscle car which always made August smirk considering they barely had half the power of your average aircar. It had two wide doors, a long, powerful snout, and a short trunk. The roof was rounded, but everything else was formed in sturdy angles.

“Looks like just a car to me,” Rosek said, unimpressed. “It’s cool and all—most of these vintage era cars are—but I don’t see the big deal.” She looked around. The sun shone into her suit, stirring up the array of colors on her blonde hair. They were alone with the ghosts of the town. The rest of the squad was nowhere to be seen. “We should probably head back.”

“I’ve driven in one like this before,” August said, ignoring her suggestion.

“No way,” she said.

“I’m serious,” August ran a finger along the front fender. The car looked untouched compared to everything else in town. “My buddy Manny has one just like this. He gets made fun of a lot for driving it around, but he loves it.” Seeing the car made him feel like he was home again—a feeling he’d never expected to find this far outside the dome.

“Fine,” Rosek said, “I believe you. Let’s go.”

He tried the chrome handle. The door popped open. He grinned and slid onto a leather seat that still somehow smelled like new. He wrapped gloved fingers around an overly large steering wheel that had been fixed with a fluffy coat the same color as the paint job and turned the wheel left and right, pretending to race.

Rosek tapped her foot outside with crossed arms—another comical gesture in the highly responsive mech suit. “Don’t make me pull rank on you.”

“Come on,” August said, maintaining his grin. “When’s the next time we’ll be allowed to have any fun?”

“We aren’t allowed to have any now,” Rosek said.

“Get out of your suit and get in here,” August said. “I’m driving.”

Her stare was cold from inside the suit.

“Fine,” he laughed. He was about to leave when he saw the key in the ignition. He looked at Rosek, then back at the key. He shrugged and gave it a try. The engine rumbled and roared like a demon rising from the earth beneath him. The seat and steering wheel rattled as the car idled and purred. His hairs stood on end as he scrambled to turn it off.

He twisted the key, and the engine choked. Its roar echoed for what felt like hours over the empty town, announcing their presence to anything or anyone nearby.