The first challenge facing the four seekers of the sandwich of the end-times was how they would get Burney into the car. Actually, the first challenge was what they were going to do about their apartment now that it once again had a Gore-shaped hole in it. This problem solved itself, actually, when Dawn pointed out that nothing in the place was worth stealing save Gore’s ninja throwing stars and a few choice beads from Dawn’s hemp-making kit. Thankfully, though, Gore had previously lodged those weapons in the wall, and Dawn had packed her beads in a backpack to take with her. Plus, they were on a quest to start the end of the world. Worrying about their possessions seemed defeatist.

As it turned out, deciding to abandon the empty apartment was an even harder decision to make than where they would go. They’d already scoured St. Louis for any viable sandwich places in their everyday lives. All agreed that a sandwich of this magnitude could not be discovered in a city most known for consumption of foodstuffs accompanying vast quantities of beer. While Gore briefly suggested that Steve should have made this a quest to find a really good beer, the situation could not be altered, and thus they decided a road trip was necessary.

With their target and leaving easily in place, the four were left staring at Steve’s four-door, mid-nineties Honda wondering how to get Burney inside without burning the upholstery and while violating a minimum quantity of traffic laws. That’s why their first stop was the hardware store.

“Okay, so you take the highway south pretty much straight there on the interstate,” Dawn said, checking the map on her phone. She sat in the passenger seat enjoying the way the breeze from the partially lowered windows flew against her wispy hair.

“And when we get to Memphis?” Steve asked from the driver’s seat, trying to merge onto the interstate and out of St. Louis.

“Barbecue!” Gore said from the back seat. He sat in the middle of the back seats, his black armor taking up the vast majority of the car’s tiny space. He’d long ago made a helmet-shaped dent in the car’s roof to accommodate his armored head, and would occasionally forge a new one when he wanted to shift position.

“Memphis is known for its barbecue,” Dawn noted. “Perhaps a pulled pork sandwich is what will bring the antichrist back to reality.”

“Memphis dry rub pulled pork. And a pickle!”

“No pickles,” Steve said.

“Why no pickles!”

“Because I hate pickles.”

“How can you hate pickles? Pickles are essential in a pulled pork sandwich!”

“I don’t like pickles.”

“I hear they serve you a whole half a pickle at most barbecue places in Memphis,” Dawn said. “Not just the slices.”

“I don’t care if it’s sliced or a whole pickle, I don’t want it near my sandwich,” Steve said.

“Mark my words, Steve, you will not restore the antichrist from his gaming slumber with a pulled pork sandwich that does not include a slice of pickle!” Gore challenged, and formed another dent in the car’s roof.

“What do you think, Burney?” Steve asked, and stuck his head out the window. “Do you like pickles?”

Burney screamed a ferocious cry of pain from the car’s roof while the wind super-heated the flames surrounding his body to a white-hot inferno so intense it threatened to melt the window-wrapping chains that secured him atop the speeding car.

“Burney says he doesn’t like pickles,” Steve said after pulling his head back inside.

“He would,” Gore grumbled.

“I don’t think a side of pickle will be the deciding factor,” Dawn speculated. “It’s got to be a really good sandwich.”

“With a pickle.”

“There might be a sandwich where pickles are a make-or-break addition,” Steve conceded, “but I don’t think a pulled pork sandwich is it.”

“Why are we going south anyway?” Dawn asked. “Why not Chicago, or further East?”

“To the fires of Pittsburgh!” Gore suggested.

Burney screamed from outside the car.

“Burney likes the south,” Steve said.

Burney screamed again.

“But we’re not going to Antarctica!” Steve added.

Burney’s muffled scream after that sounded less enthusiastic.

“Why not go to the East coast, get a crab cake sandwich?” Dawn suggested. “Or how about West, for fish sandwiches in San Francisco?”

“California is a weak-souled place,” Gore said. “We should challenge the proud people of Pennsylvania to bring forth their greatest combatant, and their most powerful Philly cheese steak.”

“You forget we’re on a time crunch here,” Steve said. “Memphis is close, and as good a place to start as any, and we can’t exactly get Burney on a plane.”

Burney screamed.

“I know you’ll pass a metal detector, Burney, but Gore won’t,” Steve clarified.

Gore made a metallic harrumphing sound as he shifted his sword to a more comfortable position.

“Just stay on this highway for another few hours and we’ll be there before sunset,” Dawn said. “Any idea what you’ll do if you don’t find a good enough sandwich in Memphis?”

“Probably just keep looking somewhere else. That’s half the fun, right?” Steve said.

“I suppose. And what will you do if a sandwich isn’t enough to get Damien to stop playing that game?”

“No clue.”

“Use your secret weapon: a pickle,” Gore suggested.

“A pickle is a horrible secret weapon.”

“I disagree,” Dawn said.

Burney screamed.

“Burney!” Steve shouted. “That’s horribly inappropriate!”

The four scions of the antichrist spent the next several hours debating the merits, or inappropriateness, of a pickle.

Literally blazing a trail, thanks to Burney, the car sped its way south toward what might yet be the end of all things. Passing various off roads signaling fast food restaurants and highway diners, the group made sure to note of the possibility that there might be a hidden gem of a sandwich purveyor in the rural terrain between St. Louis and Memphis.

While “Mama’s Place” and no less than three different establishments all named “Smith’s” sounded rustically appealing, none had that exotic look of something that would lure the ultimate evil away from a digital world. Plus, one of the places had a turtle on the sign, and Gore didn’t trust turtles.

It was perhaps closer to Memphis than St. Louis, somewhere amidst the wide stretches of the great Mississippi River, that Dawn decided it was time to discuss her growing concern of financial planning. Or the lack thereof.

“I have a credit card,” Steve said.

“We all know,” Gore said.

“Right. You know of the one credit card I have, but you don’t know of the one I got for emergencies.”

“You have a second credit card! Why was this kept a secret from me?”

“Because if you don’t know about it then I don’t have to worry about you stealing it and using it to buy fireworks.”

“That was for a vital experiment of vast scientific necessity!”

“You strapped a thousand bottle rockets to Burney and threw him off the St. Louis Arch.”

“Vast scientific necessity!”

“I wrote a paper on it,” Dawn said, referring to an essay she’d written on the subject. It was less an essay and more a poem about explosions and arches and something about a feminist allegory and reference to the inevitable corruptibility of mankind. It got published in a magazine in Saudi Arabia that did not get the metaphors at all, but still paid Dawn twenty bucks to print it because it said funny things about explosions near American monuments.

“Either way, this credit card will stay with me at all times and will be used to cover all expenses. Let’s just be careful about how much we spend,” Steve said.

“Why? Either you get Damien to take over and end the world, or you get flayed alive for a million years. In both outcomes you won’t have to worry about credit card debt,” Dawn said.

“Nice sentiment, but I don’t have that much of a credit limit. Over-buying fireworks will do that.”

“If there exists a store of fireworks along the path to Memphis, I have a suggestion for a sandwich that will surely break Damien free of his game,” Gore suggested while scanning the highway exits.

“No fireworks.”

As Steve turned to scold his armored friend for once more suggesting bringing explosive materials into Burney’s close proximity, he failed to see the flash of pure white light that coalesced into being at the cusp of the coming horizon.

“I’d actually like to see Damien eat a firecracker sandwich,” Dawn said.

Burney screamed, because he saw the radiant glow that caused all traffic on both sides of the interstate to slow and stop at the shoulder just so they might bask in the light’s energy. The light was perhaps half a mile down the road, in the middle of the interstate, and singing. All who heard its voice wept with joy, and stopped their vehicles to listen.

“The goal is to get a tasty sandwich and make Damian want to leave the game on his own,” Steve countered. “And maybe, I don’t know, do something other than take over the world.”

“A hospital stay would make him leave the game,” Dawn noted.

Surrounded with white light, there appeared a radiant being at the center of the highway. Winged, skin as pure as silk, and her golden face glowing with a holiness that made all who saw her share in her wondrous song, she reached a gentle hard toward Steve’s approaching Honda.

“Don’t be so sure,” Steve said, still not paying attention to the white glow, and only glancing forward so he could dodge the slowing cars and stay safely above the speed limit. “I once saw Damien’s computer blow up. Whole thing, screen and all just exploded right in front of his face from a power surge or something.”

“Yikes,” Dawn said.

The holy being stared at Steve’s speeding car. Serenity coating her white-robed visage in an unbreakable calm, the winged woman opened her palm to acknowledge the coming vehicle.

“Yeah. But even before someone could call for help, Damien pulled out his laptop and started logging into the game,” Steve explained as he continued to speed straight down the highway.

“This Damien has a strong force of will. I will be honored to fight for him. Or blow him up,” Gore said.

The white light-robed angel spread her arms wide to embrace those who approached, smiling in greeting.

“That’s some commitment,” Dawn said.

The smile fell from the angel’s face.

“Right,” Steve said as the car thump-thumped and a bright light briefly saturated the car. In a flash, the light was gone, and Steve turned to look at the steering wheel. “I think I just hit a raccoon or something.”

“The bells shall ring loudly with the ever-rising stacks of our defeated enemies,” Gore laughed.

“Yes,” Dawn said, “we’ve killed many woodland critters this day. Huzzah.”

“Anyway,” Steve said, turning on his wiper blades to remove the pure white glow that had splattered onto his windshield, “it’s gonna take a really good sandwich to break Damien out of that kind of commitment. Not fireworks. Or dead raccoons.”

“What about a dead raccoon sandwich?”

“With a pickle!” Gore added.

“That is double-disgusting,” Steve said as the glowing, slightly twitching and perhaps bleeding profusely light faded in the distance. “Oh. We should probably get gas before we get near Memphis.”

“There’s an exit up ahead,” Dawn said, and pointed to a sign for a gas station a mile up the highway.

Steve turned onto the narrow ramp of an exit, and the car crunched against the gravel edges of the pavement. Up ahead, in a gap between the thick southern Missouri trees just big enough for the building, was a gas station that looked more like a house than a convenience store. Smoke wafted from what appeared to be an actual chimney. No less than five satellite dishes of varying sizes covered one narrow wall of the vinyl-sided structure. There was a sign that simultaneously described the station as open and that cheap bait was available for purchase.

The gas station awning and pumps were up to date and bore the name of a prestigious oil company, so Steve felt confident they at least had gasoline as well as bait for sale. But as he pulled up to one of the pumps, Steve discovered that the strangest part of this station was not the signs advertising that both hunting licenses and bail bonds could be purchased at this establishment, it was the white-robed figure slashing the front tire of an SUV at the neighboring pump.

A pair of ruddy tennis shoes made a scratching noise against the sandy gravel as the robed figure chuckled at the rapidly deflating tire. He stopped laughing suddenly, somehow realizing he was being watched, and turned around to grin at the coming demons.

The man’s robes were tattered and open, worn and purposefully frayed to resemble a thin jacket. Underneath, he wore loose blue jeans and a t-shirt. Above his head of uncombed, long hair rested a tilted halo the color of brass left outside too long.

“Hey fellas,” the angel said as he jammed his knife into the already tire-slashed SUV’s trunk, twisting it so it couldn’t be opened. “Howyadoin?”