Three weeks.Three weeks left until the end of the world, until that mighty lady in the sky slammed with apocalyptic force onto the face of the earth somewhere and everything expired, and Santiago was feeling pretty okay with that. Sure, he reflected as he kept up a steady pace, the various straps and fastenings of his hikerās backpack clinking together, he didnāt exactly
want to die, but maybe it was the fact that heād made a habit of staring death in the face frequently that allowed him to sort of shrug it off. The part where it was inevitable was actually kind of
boring, if he thought about it the right way.
Half the fun in most of the things he did was the fact that you never
knew if you were going to die or not. Cliff-diving, hang-gliding, bungee jumping (with less-than-safety-approved equipment), skydiving, bull-riding, underground arena fightingā¦ chances were if it was dubiously-intelligent and carried a substantial risk of serious injury, heād tried it already. The fact that he was going to die in three weeks anyway kind of took the fun out of staking his life on things, though. Which was probably why he was giving this whole ātraveling with complete strangersā thing the old college try.
He hummed an old capoeira fight song to himself to keep his march apace, not that it was too difficult. That had been the one thing that was a little difficult about packing the essentials and leaving: the dojo was the closest thing heād had to a home in a while, but there wasnāt much point in staying. The master had boarded the place up and gone to stay with family in Brazil, which was probably how things should be. Santiago might have gone to stay with his, but heād been ignoring his motherās phone calls for a few years now, and there was really no good way to fix that kind of thing. He didnāt want to spend his last three weeks awkwardly wading through all the family issues heād managed to accumulate over the course of the last twenty-three years. Seriously, could there
be a bigger drag?
So instead, heād hitchhiked and hoofed his way across a couple states and wound up here. Naturally a pretty decent navigator, heād considered getting intentionally lost a few times to see what would happen, but each time heād discarded the suggestion, something drawing him forward along the shortest possible route. This was something he had to do, now, for no other reason than because heād decided he was going to do it. No point contemplating the alternatives.
Dusk was fallen over the area, the sunās last tendrils flinging magnificent flame-hues into the sky, and a check of his watch revealed it to be just before six. Santiago picked up his pace a little, settling into an easy jog, apparently heedless of the weight of what life he had left upon his back. The address was around here somewhereā¦
He slowed as he arrived at what seemed to be the right building, at least it was lent that impression further by the small cluster of people in front of it. He blinked grey-green eyes a few times at the scene, then smiled and covered the rest of the distance, in time to hear someone call out from within. Presumably, that was Noe. Shrugging, he complied with the implicated suggestion, and opened the door, stepping aside to let the others go in before him.
"Hey, kids. All here for the end of the world?" Introductions were clearly in order, but that could wait until everyone was there. Was this everyone? He actually had no idea how many people might have answered, though he was going to guess āenough to fit into that RV and not more,ā so maybe seven or eight?