The Electric State - Into the Dust

Started: 2026-05

May. Somewhere east of the Sierra Nevadas, the city already behind us far enough to stop mattering.

The job belongs to The Gent — the shape of it, anyway. What I was told and what I brought to that conversation are two different things. What's ahead is the Blackwelt Exclusion Zone, and the centre already has eyes on the corridor out. We know that for a fact now.

The crew: Dustin, who is fifteen and watches exits like someone taught him to. Sergei, who makes the right calls under pressure. Rock, who I haven't classified yet. Static, who showed up at a roadblock south of Concord wearing a mask, read the whole situation wrong, and is still here. I let that happen too fast. Ten years running narcotics cases and I still give too much ground too early to someone who moves like they know something.

We're in Littleville now. Battery dead — possibly EMP. There's an abandoned house with a dead man sitting in a chair, headset intact. The zone doesn't get further away just because we stopped moving.

I'm still waiting to find out what we're really walking into.

• The Angel

  2026-06-24

  At 1am in Littleville, the floor trembles and a red glow rises in the west — something large passed through, and its tracks run past the Church of the Angels. By midday the party knows the town isn't abandoned; it's organized around that church. Ramona, the diner owner, wants out and is afraid to say so out loud.

• Dead Battery

  2026-06-10

  Static arrives at the roadblock mid-fight, misreads it, and joins the group anyway. The Buick dies in Littleville — dead battery, possible EMP — and the party shelters in an abandoned house where a neurocaster addict simply never got up. Sergei tries the headset and comes back shaken. The Electric State, seen close, is quieter and uglier.

• The Road Out

  2026-05-27

  Somewhere south of Concord, a Centre van materializes out of ordinary roadside noise and Lennie keeps his voice flat and drives past. Two hours out, a neurocaster roadblock produces worse results: one worker seized on the road, one shoved in a ditch, and a utility man back on his feet and swinging as the afternoon goes out of control.