If the South was the apocalypse's refrigerator, the Southeast was the furnace.
We had been on the road for three weeks. The Anhanguera Highway, or what was left of it, stretched out before us like a scar of melted asphalt cutting through a sea of red dust.
The thermometer on the dashboard of our new vehicle—an armored cash transport truck that Valéria "liberated" and modified with Gargoyle parts—read 42°C (107.6°F).
"Arthur, if I sweat one more liter, I'm going to evaporate and turn into a steam elemental," Luna complained, sprawled on the back seat, fanning herself with an old road map. Her hair, once short, was starting to grow back, sticking to her forehead.
"Drink salt water," I replied, not taking my eyes off the microscope. The truck's shaking made it hard to focus the slide, but I needed to analyze the sample of Iron Dust we collected at the last gas station. "The Cerrado has changed. The soil is saturated with magical heavy metals."
"What does that mean?" asked Valéria, gripping the steering wheel firmly to dodge craters in the road.
"It means the monsters here aren't made of soft flesh and fungus, like in the South. They have natural metal alloy armor. They are biological tanks."
The Parasite inside me was lethargic. The excessive heat accelerated my metabolism, causing me to burn calories at rest. I was thin, devouring protein bars every two hours just so I wouldn't start digesting my own muscles.
[STATUS: MILD DEHYDRATION.]
[REQUEST: IMMEDIATE COOLING OR SYSTEM HIBERNATION.]
"Hang in there, buddy," I whispered, taking a sip of warm water.
"Look!" Gristle pointed out the armored window.
To our right, a soybean plantation abandoned decades ago had been replaced by something much worse: Concrete Termite Mounds.
They were towers of earth and hardened saliva reaching ten meters high, pointed like spears, spreading to the horizon.
"Valéria, don't slow down," I warned, feeling a vibration in the floor through the wheels. "That's not scenery. That's a minefield."
"They're sleeping, Doctor," said Gristle, sniffing the air. "Giant Termites are nocturnal."
"They were nocturnal. Before they ate uranium."
Suddenly, the asphalt in front of the truck exploded.
It wasn't a bomb. It was a subterranean collision.
The ten-ton truck was thrown into the air like a toy, landing with a crash that made my teeth chatter.
"Dwarven hydraulic suspension, I love you!" Valéria shouted, fighting to maintain control as we landed.
From the hole in the road, a beast emerged.
It wasn't a termite. It was their natural predator.
An Armored Giant Armadillo (Titanatus Dasypus).
It was the size of a school bus. Its shell wasn't made of bone; it was made of chunks of asphalt, guardrails, and car metal it had ingested and incorporated into its skin over the years.
It snarled, a sound of grinding metal, and curled into a ball, preparing to roll toward us like a bowling ball of death.
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"Floor it!" I shouted.
"The engine can't take it!" Valéria stomped on the gas, but the wheels spun in the dust.
The living wrecking ball came rolling.
"Luna! Resonance Frequency! Break the shell!" I ordered, unbuckling my seatbelt and running for the roof hatch.
"It's mixed metal and asphalt!" Luna yelled, grabbing her baton. "It's too dense! I can't vibrate it all at once!"
"Aim for the joints!" I opened the hatch. The hot, dry air hit me like a punch.
The giant Armadillo was fifty meters away and closing fast.
Arthur (the Parasite) activated combat mode.
[HEAT PROTOCOL: ACTIVATED. BOILING BLOOD.]
I didn't generate bone blades this time. The heat would make them brittle.
Instead, I extended reinforced tendon whips from my wrists, with hooks on the ends.
"Gristle! Handbrake!" I shouted down.
The orc pulled the lever. The truck drifted sideways, ending up perpendicular to the road.
The Armadillo was going to hit the armored side. It was going to flip us.
"Now!"
I jumped from the truck roof the exact moment the monster collided with the armor.
CRAAAASH!
The truck tipped dangerously, almost flipping, but the extra weight of the plating held it down. The Armadillo, stunned by the impact, uncurled for a second.
I landed on its back.
It was like landing on a hot tin roof. My boots sizzled.
The monster felt my weight and started shaking, trying to throw me off or crush me against the ground.
"Weak point... weak point..." I muttered, trying to hold onto the asphalt plates of its skin while being shaken.
There were no openings in the upper shell.
But biology has rules. To curl up, the belly has to be soft. And to breathe in this heat...
I saw side slits, just above the front legs. Cooling gills.
It was exhaling steam through there.
"Luna!" I shouted over the comms. "Aim for the lateral gills! Use a high-frequency pulse to burst the inner eardrums!"
Luna appeared in the truck window.
"Eat decibels, you giant speed bump!"
She fired. The sonic beam was precise, going straight into the monster's vent slit.
The Armadillo roared. The sound reverberated inside its own shell, amplified like a bell. Its brain rattled.
It got dizzy, legs giving way.
That was my cue.
I drew a flask of Alchemical Liquid Nitrogen (stolen from my father's lab in Curitiba).
I jumped off its back to the ground, sliding under the exposed belly.
"Thermal shock," I whispered.
I smashed the flask against the beast's soft, hot chest.
-200°C met +50°C.
The belly skin froze and cracked instantly.
The Armadillo tried to curl up to protect itself, but the frozen skin didn't bend. It shattered.
The flesh tore open, exposing the giant, pulsating heart.
"Gristle! Dinner is served!" I rolled away.
Gristle leaped from the truck with her new Araucaria bone cleaver. She ran, jumped, and drove the blade into the open slit with the precision of a masterchef butcher.
The monster shuddered once and collapsed, dead.
An hour later, the smell of barbecue filled the highway air.
The sun was setting, painting the sky purple and orange—a toxic beauty caused by mana particles in the atmosphere.
We were sitting on the asphalt (far from the carcass to avoid attracting scavengers), eating Armadillo meat skewers.
"Tastes like pork with a hint of... burnt tire?" Luna chewed, thoughtful. "It's strangely good."
"It's rich in iron," I said, wiping grease from my mouth. The Parasite was satisfied, purring with the injection of dense calories. "We need to stock up on this meat. We won't find food this easy further north."
Valéria was under the truck, welding a plate that had come loose in the impact.
"Arthur," she called. "You need to see this."
I slid under the truck. Valéria pointed not at the vehicle, but at a piece of the Armadillo's shell that had gotten stuck in the bumper.
There was a burn mark on the metal of the monster's skin. It wasn't natural. It was a brand from a hot iron.
A symbol: A Cross wrapped in Barbed Wire.
"Cattle," I whispered. "Someone branded this monster."
"Who herds ten-ton giant Armadillos?" asked Valéria, incredulous.
I crawled out from under the truck and looked north, into the darkness covering the savanna.
"I don't know. But if they use these monsters as cattle... it means they have something very valuable to protect. Or a lot of hunger."
I pulled out the holographic map.
"We are entering the Pilgrims' Zone. According to Sovereignty data, it's a no-man's-land controlled by apocalyptic sects that worship Rift radiation."
"Great." Luna sighed, tossing the skewer stick away. "First pharmaceutical corporations, then assassin angels, and now mutant cultist hillbillies. Will we ever have a beach day?"
"Brasília has a lake," I replied, climbing into the truck. "But I think the water there is holy and radioactive. Let's go. If this Armadillo was cattle, its owner will come looking soon."
The truck engine roared.
The road to the capital was open, but it wasn't empty. And judging by the mark on the shell, the civilization we would find ahead would be much less civilized than the monsters of Curitiba.
