The world dissolved into dust and the shriek of tortured metal.
Sergeant Ryder Vance firing his weapon through the cover, burnt gunpowder filling the air.
Gunfire hammered a syncopated rhythm against the roar in his ears. Somewhere to his left, Miller screamed—a wet, gurgling sound that cut through the chaos.
Not on my watch.
Adrenaline surged, cold and sharp. "Covering fire!" Ryder yelled, already moving.
He laid down one last burst from his rifle towards the crumbling building where the shots originated, the familiar kick against his shoulder giving him a grim comfort.
He sprinted across the exposed alley, boots skidding on loose rubble. Miller lay crumpled behind a shattered concrete barrier, clutching his leg, blood pooling dark and fast on the sand-colored earth. His eyes were wide with shock.
"Hang on, buddy!" Ryder grunted, grabbing Miller's vest. "Gonna get you out!"
He started dragging him back towards their squad's position, muscles screaming. Miller was dead weight, groaning with each jolt. Return fire snapped past Ryder's head, chipping stone inches away.
Almost there, almost.
Impact. A white-hot fist punched through his side, just below his vest. Air exploded from his lungs. He stumbled, his vision tunneling. Another hit, lower, shattering bone in his leg. He went down hard, landing half over Miller. Pain wasn't the word. It was an inferno consuming him from the inside out.
Through the graying haze, he saw boots approaching – friendly ones, pulling Miller the rest of the way. Good. Task done.
He tried to lift his head, tried to reach for his rifle. Futile. His limbs felt like lead pipes filled with broken glass. Below him, the ground seemed to pulse, warm and strangely resonant.
The gunfire faded, replaced by a low hum that vibrated in his teeth. His last conscious thought wasn't of home, or glory, or even regret. It was a flash of that impossible chrome, the growl of a perfectly tuned engine, the dream rig he'd enlisted to earn.
A 1977 WESTERN STAR 4800, the truck he planned to name Betsy...
Then, only darkness.
♢♢♢♢
Ryder woke hacking, spitting something thick and black onto cracked stone. It wasn't dirt or blood. It felt… wrong. The air burned like spoiled meat. He blinked, staring upwards. The sky boiled, a nauseating canvas of molten gold poured into a blender of blood-red clouds and flickering, silent lightning.
"...What is this place?" His voice was a shredded whisper.
Gone was the scent of gunpowder and desperation. Beneath his hand, the stone felt hot, faintly pulsing, like something alive.
He pushed himself up, every muscle protesting. His uniform was torn, filthy, but the searing pain, the sucking wounds… gone. Replaced by a deep, phantom ache that echoed where the bullets hit. His leg felt… weirdly solid.
He stood, staggering slightly. His boots crunched on glassy rubble. Scorched wreckage fouled the air.
A twisted metal structure nearby leaked steam, weeping into the bruised sky. The town—or what remained—looked like it had lost a fight with something far bigger and meaner than artillery. Storefronts gaped open, walls melted like wax or shattered into jagged teeth. Craters yawned in the pulverized street.
No bodies. No squadmates. No enemy. Just ruin and silence.
Where the hell am I? Did I... Did I make it?
Then, Ryder heard something something screaming. Low. Wet. Close.
Ryder's head snapped towards the sound, trainings kicking in.
It was already moving. Thirty feet of coiled nightmare, leathery skin twitching with dozens of whip-like tendrils tipped with blinking red eyes.
It flowed like a centipede made of tar and hate. Centered on its vaguely-a-head, a vertical maw split open with a slick shhhk, revealing rows upon rows of serrated, needle-sharp teeth.
It pivoted, its multitude of eyes locking onto Ryder with unnerving, predatory focus.
Then, it launched. A tendril lashed out.
"Sh—!" Ryder threw himself sideways, muscle memory overriding confusion.
The tendril cracked where he'd been standing. Pain flared in his already aching leg as he landed awkwardly, rolling behind a pile of debris. Adrenaline surged again, familiar and welcome. Okay, firefight instincts. Good to have you.
The creature slithered closer, the air buzzing with that low-frequency hum, making his fillings ache. The world narrowed to that giant, glistening maw. He scrambled for a weapon – found nothing but a broken pipe. Useless. His hand tightened anyway. Died once today. Not keen on round two.
Just as the creature coiled to strike again, the sky ruptured.
Not with lightning this time, but with a immense, unnatural power. Blue-white light tore through the bruised clouds.
[FOREIGN ANCHOR-BEARER DETECTED: RYDER VANCE]
[BINDING ANCHOR: 1977 WESTERN STAR 4800 – DESIGNATION: BETSY]
[SYSTEM SYNC: 100%]
[WELCOME, RYDER.]
The words appeared in his vision, stark white against the chaos, clinical and utterly insane. Reality itself seemed to scream around him.
With a shriek of tearing space-time, the air above the ruined square ripped open.
Arcs of raw static and swirling, impossible glyphs erupted downwards. Through the breach plunged something impossibly huge—a plummeting vision of defiant red paint and gleaming chrome. It struck the ground fifty feet away with a thunderclap wrapped in furious steel, kicking up a shockwave of dust and rubble.
No... it can't be. It was the spitting image of the '77 Western Star 4800 he'd spent countless nights sketching, researching, dreaming about saving up for. The exact paint job, the chrome stacks, the visor... His perfect rig. Real. Impossibly, terrifyingly real.
Except… not quite. Glowing runes, intricate and alien, now crawled across her chassis like incandescent tattoos. Her headlights pulsed with a fierce, electric blue intelligence.
Then—her driver-side door popped open with a pneumatic hiss. And she spoke, her voice booming slightly, amplified, yet somehow capturing the imagined rumble he always pictured, now laced with chrome and southern sass.
"Well, paint me red and call me salvaged, you look like you went ten rounds with a mortar, sugar."
Ryder stared, jaw slack. "...Are you... Are you her? The truck I always..."
"The dream made steel, hotshot. Damn right I am." Her voice held confidence, a flirty challenge, like she could rebuild your engine or break your kneecaps with equal ease. "Surprise! Looks like the System grabbed you mid-flatline, took a peek at that truck-obsessed brain of yours, and decided to manifest your ultimate ride. Added some interdimensional bells 'n' whistles, and boom. Here we are."
"System...? Flatline...? Manifested?" Ryder's head swam.
Betsy cut in, her tone sharpening. "Point is, I'm sentient, probably illegal in twelve dimensions, and apparently, I'm your Anchor now. Whatever the hell that means."
The monster, momentarily stunned by the truck's dramatic entrance, shrieked again, surging forward. Ryder flinched, phantom pain lancing through his leg.
"Get in, Ryder!" Betsy commanded, her voice hardening, door swinging wider. "We got an ugly sumbitch to turn into road pizza!"
Ryder didn't need telling twice. He scrambled towards the cab, hauling himself up with his arms, wincing as his leg protested the movement. The door slammed shut the instant his boot cleared the frame, sealing him inside with the smell of new vinyl, hot electronics, and something indescribably other.
The cab was chaos and uncanny familiarity fused together.
It looked exactly like the interior he'd memorized from old brochures and restoration forums – the bench seat pattern, the layout of the dash – but it was pristine, untouched, and overlaid with impossible technology.
Lights pulsed everywhere. Runed overlays flickered across gauges that should have been analog. Buttons glowed blue, yellow, and one flashed an insistent, angry red, right next to the shifter he'd only ever imagined gripping, labeled:
[ENGAGE: MONSTER CRUSH MODE]
It felt like stepping into a dream he couldn't wake up from. A dangerous, deadly dream. Ryder grinned, a raw, slightly unhinged sound.
No training manual needed for this. He slammed his fist onto the red button.
The engine roared to life, not a familiar grumble he knew, but a howling warcry amplified by raw power, shaking the entire frame. Betsy lit up, runes flaring blindingly bright, tires spitting sparks as they bit into the cracked pavement. She launched forward like a missile wrapped in eighteen wheels of pure vengeance.
Outside, the monster paused, tendrils twitching. Its body arched, confident in its territory. It had festered here, unchallenged, feeding on the town's shadow.
Until now. Until her. Until the nightmarishly huge metalbox barreling towards it, snarling chrome, glowing war-sigils blazing.
The Primordial hesitated. Alien instinct screamed danger.
Too late.
Betsy hit it head-on. Ryder felt the sickening crunch as her reinforced grille punched through its vertical maw.
Tendrils flailed wildly against the metal, then went limp. He felt the heavy bump as the wheels rolled over the remains. Betsy slid to a halt fifty yards later, spitting gravel, engine settling into idle.
Silence descended, thick and ringing, broken only by steam hissing from Betsy's hood and the faint, electric hum of the runes glowing on the dash.
Ryder stared through the windshield at the pulped, twitching mess staining the square, his knuckles white on a steering wheel he'd only ever held in his imagination until seconds ago. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He took a shaky breath, the phantom smell of cordite mixing with the ruin's real stink. He exhaled slowly.
"...Okay. That happened." His voice was flat with shock. "My dream truck just... murdered a nightmare centipede."
"Felt good, didn't it, sugar?" Betsy purred, the sound vibrating through the cab, somehow grounding. "Like stompin' a cockroach the size of a Prius. Saw how it looked at me? Pure terror."
[THREAT NEUTRALIZED: CLASS-3 PRIMORDIAL – GOREMAW]
[ECHO LAYER STREAM: ACTIVE]
[FOREIGN ANCHOR-BEARER: RYDER VANCE – REGISTERED]
[CURRENT VIEWERS: 3]
Viewer01: wtf is this channel???
Viewer02: HOLY SHIT DID HE JUST RUN IT OVER WITH A TRUCK
Viewer03: Okay, instant sub. Truck-kun delivers.
[NEW TITLE UNLOCKED: PRIMORDIAL ROADKILL SPECIALIST]
Ryder leaned back against the pristine seat, chest heaving. His hand instinctively went to where his Chewing tobacco should be in his sleeve pocket. Empty. Damn.
"...I need answers. And maybe something stronger than Rip-Its."
"Answers are comin', hotshot," Betsy replied, her headlights sweeping the ruined street like searchlights. "But first? Let's figure out where the hell 'here' is. Somethin' tells me the neighbors are gonna be real curious about the new rig parked in their apocalypse."