Click here to read a sample of The Dead Roads by D.W. Wilson

On the mountaintop, Vic hooked hair behind her ear. — You’re my guy, Dunc, she said as though it were true.

—I know, Vic. But sometimes I don’t know. You know?

Then she cuffed me, all playful, and pulled me into her.

But that’s Vic for you. Afterward, when we were done and Animal’s moans were snores and the fire glowed down to embers, Vic sat up and stretched. Her ribs made bumps under her skin and the muscles along her spine tensed and eased and it felt alright right then. That’s Vic for you, that’s how she can make you feel, that easy. Never liked a girl so much. Nothing else to it. I just cared about her more than the university guy did or Animal did or maybe her old man did. I should’ve told her so, or how I wished she didn’t have to go west, or how I’d had a ring for her for years but lacked the balls to do anything with it. Even then, the mountaintop seemed like a last chance or something.

She sucked the rest of the whiskey and pointed at the sky where a trail of turquoise streaked across the horizon – the northern lights, earlier than I’d ever known them. She just stood there for a second with her back to me and those lights around her. Christ, she was so pretty. Then she whipped the empty bottle off the summit, and I stared at her and thought about her and waited for the sound of the bottle breaking way, way below us.