OLED sun reigns high. Motor oil red. The light rolling across the desert flats. Mountains fall behind. Oil churns, fumes thick. Smells of speed. Sounds of life. Roars from the machine. Just them. Hound and The Boss. Mut and man and open sky. Was it always this way? No. He’d been chained, in oil and blood and mud. Hound had been heeled, shock collared, now wagging his tail. He does not know why. The Boss believes he does. Hound wags his tail for he is, and he knows he is, and he knows he’s with him, The Boss, riding through the desert in this automobile.
         Faster than any of his breed could have imagined, faster than any dog had ever seen, Hound knows he is the apex of his breed, the prime of his species. He has mastered the greatest of predators.
         Now, Hound was not Best in Show. Too long of limb, too short of tooth. Where once had been a strong paw, now shone the flash of metal, flanged and chrome. Hound’s volition saw to chew phantom itch. No fur on that left paw to lick away now. The fang still found purchase, found a memory. A man’s hands had taken it. He knew that much. He had smelled the stink on the man’s breath, a need to hunt without hunger. Hunting between towers of glass, rivers of asphalt, chasing living things for the body harvest. Hound had hunted too; not for pieces of bodies, but pure survival. Sensing prey for others like the one that had left him in that place, left as carrion. 
         Hound growled in introspection. The Boss had replaced that missing piece. He had been a hunter like that other man. Unlike that man, The Boss had regained his real hunger, hunger for life and the real. After that night, after the taking of his paw, The Boss had left him the blood taste in this new paw, and he knew that taste well. Hot and cold and thick and all of it, Hound knew the sanguine flavors still in the metal. Where ABS plastic and chrome and lubricating fluids joined the sinew, the bone, the blood. 
         That was then. Now it’s all engine hum and road and open sky. Now, joy. Hound knew what winds should be on his skin, where the new skin and bones had been cast, and where it still was; howling in his ears, racing on his mottled fur. The sun beating down into his eyes, shining along the chrome in his patched fur. Hound was born for the ditch, the gravel embankment, the drive-through dining experience. Hound was beyond Best in Show. Hound was Best on Road.
         The Boss drank deeply from his Extra Large Big Gulp. His preferred “Suicide;” he wanted everything, and he had all the world’s flavors in a foam cup. The Boss was a thin, ragged man who hadn’t shaved in these three days. Brow furrows permanently entrenched, arms decorated in the scars from the old work as a Forced Organ Donor in the division of Polyroq, a subsidiary of Tranquil Equity. The Boss saw what Hound was thinking, saw what had been once behind his scratched lenses of his shades. The Bad Day. Then again, they wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t gone that way. The Boss scratched Hound’s head, wincing slightly. The little plastic air freshener tree jangled in the breeze made by the windshield’s new bullet holes. Hound closed his eyes, and let his bite slip. The Boss pops the lid of his Extra Large Big Gulp, and Hound laps up the tincture. They both said much, but did not speak.
         Hound liked the sounds of Big Black’s Atomizer from the faulty bluetooth to AUX to radio converter chain. The sound of the pace, the run they were on. Hound panted in the sun. Hound enjoyed the taste of the road. The taste of sandstone and pumice and granite covered in Sprite and everything else flying from the rubber below them. It was its own peace. Hound had smelled it in the end, and Hound had licked it all. 
         Later. The day runs hot. The Boss pulls over, fuels his automobile. Above, a stick stuck to the pillar of the oil spout spins and spins until it forms into their shape. Once again, a familiar digital mirage forms. They see The Boss and Hound in some other place, cleaner and happier, and surrounded by others and everything is immaculate and water and beaches and brand sponsored AR experiences—it shatters. The rotating stick and LEDs along it break upon the ground. The Boss feels his entire body itching, feels the wound open in his shoulder. Shouldn’t have done it; The Boss knows the silent alarm would be going off now. And he knows what security worked this region of desert. The Boss runs to the car.
         Hound stalks down his road, his territory. He marks what’s his. Other beasts would know. And if they did not, well—a smell. Something caught in the wetness of his nose. Acidic. He turns and sees the fallen tech, smelling battery’s blood dripping into the concrete of the gas station. He knows what follows. Hair bristling, spine tightening, the buzzards are soon to come and Hound gallops as The Boss sets in motion gasoline and ignition and the howling speed soon to come.

         Behind them. No lights, no sirens. Not yet. Hound sees it; The Boss does not. Hound whines. The Boss shifts up, the 1985 Pontiac Firebird 5.0 liter V8 5-speed automobile shifts down. Pedal and metal. The roar of the engine, oh joy! Hound howls in the discord. He howls the call of petrol. Why does he howl? He howls because he is ready, he howls because he does not heel, for he has healed.
         The sirens grow close now, more of them. Shrieking things, motorcars and false buzzards made tame by law—law that bound and tied and left no kibble untouched by Best in Show. But that was there; this was Hound Road, and it was time to go, speed, go. Ahead, a bridge too long for a canyon so shallow. Two motorbikes of the standard variety of motorbikes two years from this moment prowl upwind. Riderless. Lifeless. The Boss smiled. He remembers why he made this choice that night. These things ahead were not of the road; they weren’t even truly alive. Half things, made of algorithmic hallucinations, protocols. No hunger. Existence only in relation to their owners, their makers.The machines ahead moved and had sight and screamed, but they could never know. The Boss understood this. Hound knew.
         One thing stood on the road ahead of the riderless motorcycles. It was like The Boss, but had decided it was worse to know what it was. It lost its eyes and ears, sound perceived through ABS and LCD and algorithmic illusion. It was a rabid thing. An empty thing. It wasn’t enough to be its own being anymore. It no longer understood why anything would do anything else. It held a hand in the air. The motorcycles screamed back into the wind, closing off the long bridge, a valley above the valley.
         If Hound felt fear, it was not for his hide. The machines, that which gleamed more like obsidian than plastic and leather, cried with servo-whine. Hunting without instinct, without fear. They didn’t know. A virus can never know, and The Boss understood this too. The Boss looked to Hound. Hound has his ears back, teeth shining with saliva and the world’s sodas. A half smile. Then, gear shift, clash of meat on metal. Not theirs.

❋

For now, the thing was off the scent, its perception destroyed. The trail, hot. But distance, growing. Hound did not bark out triumph. No words of elation from The Boss. They were still prey. Hound did not pray. He did not pray because no dog in the Blue had sway on their highway, their freeway, their causeway.
         Blame the beast? Or reflect on yourself? The Boss doesn’t know. He can’t. Perception is his greatest sin, and so his salvation. He looks to the Hound. The Boss thought Best in Show reflected on themselves. Hound cannot know. Hound is beyond knowing, for he simply is. And he knows he is.