This thought gave him an extra burst of energy and helped put his aching ribs and feet out of his mind.

Like wild banshees, Liz and Joe ran until they came to a small gravel road. Panting and wheezing as they paused, Joe felt like his lungs were going to burst.

“Let’s go,” Liz gasped in between gulping for air. “We can’t stop.”

Trudging ahead, Liz turned and motioned Joe to keep up. Joe’s feet were killing him, but the prospect of hanging around was worse.

As they came to the bottom of the hill, Liz quickly pulled the leafy covering off the hidden non-descript pick-up truck. As they jumped in the front seat, Joe felt the ground tremble slightly and saw the darkened Muveed town’s light come on for a millisecond before parts of the place rocked with an explosion.

Joe looked at Liz and she looked back at him as she started the truck. “I left them a little present.”

Liz was quickly turning into Joe’s kind of woman.

“Look in that bag by your feet. I put some clothes in there for you to change into.”

Liz grabbed two water bottles from under her seat. “Here,” she said, still panting slightly from their run as she handed Joe the water.

Joe swallowed almost all of the water in one gulp. It cooled his parched and aching throat, but at the same time, it burned like hell. Clearing his throat, Joe’s voice did not sound as gravelly as it had fifteen minutes before.

“Thanks,” he croaked as Liz floored the accelerator.

He opened the bag by his feet and pulled out a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. Suppressing a shudder, he remembered this was identical to what he had had on when he had been arrested for the alleged murder of his alleged wife.

In the cramped front seat, somehow Joe managed to slip the jeans and shirt on without giving Liz a full-monty show. He winced as he put socks and a pair of boots on his shredded feet.

Liz noticed his quiet pain. “I’ll take care of your feet when we get to my safe house. But, before we can go any further, there’s something I have to do,” she said as she turned down a small paved road and stopped the truck.

Taking Joe’s left arm, Liz felt along the inside until she came to an almost imperceptible bump. Pulling a sterile-sealed scalpel out of the glove compartment, she made a tiny cut by the light of a flashlight she had handed Joe to hold.

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

Joe simply nodded. They had managed to plant a gol, a tiny tracking device, underneath his skin.

“That’s the one I can see,” she said as she flicked it outside. “If they did the ingestible one, there’s a way to short-circuit it, but I can’t do that here.”

Joe shook his head. “They’ll track me. If there’s any left, we’ve gotta get them out of me now.”

“Can’t do it here,” Liz paused. “Unless you want me to hook your gonads up to the truck battery.”

Joe shook his head again. “I’ll wait.”

Pulling back onto the road, the rebels put miles and miles between them and the people who were coming after them.

Driving all night and day, they shared shifts at the wheel. Neither could sleep when it was not their time to drive. They were both on high alert.

After hundreds of miles on the road, they finally pulled into Liz’s safe house. As Liz unlocked the gate, Joe read a small, hand-carved inscription on one of the posts.

Templum Damno.

Sanctuary of the Damned.