Dust and Bones

In the drought-ravaged expanse of the Cordelian Plains, two desperate men become fugitives after a botched act of retribution against the corrupt National Relief Bureau leaves a clerk dead. Ellis Vance and Ray Loomis, both crushed by a system that denied their disability claims during the Silver Collapse, flee with a stolen ledger that could expose a senator's theft from the fund. As a relentless State Investigator and a dogged journalist close in, the open road becomes a pressure cooker of buried guilt and paranoia. Trust corrodes with every mile, turning a flight for freedom into a slow march toward mutual destruction, where the real poison is not the desert but the decay the nation left behind.