The white girl's name was Valery and she wanted to die because of what she knew of men, and of what she knew was her portent in their future.

Men were doomed; this she knew. Since the day of the massacre at the Falls, she knew with utter certainty that she'd been conceived and sent into the world as the agent of men's doom.

All of her breed shared similar tales. Many were defined by them.

when that bitch gets in heat, boys, you better watch out. I'm telling you, she was killing them. killing them. them boys was slaughterin each other so bad, the Falls foamed red with blood. using anything they could get their hands on to kill each other, they were. rocks. logs. tire irons. they own hands and teeth, tearing at each other like rabid dogs. finally slaying each other up with the bones of the fallen, I shit you not

Valery and her kind were known amongst all men, largely through the medium of the Airwaves, the vestige of an ancient (or at least poorly remembered) medium of mass electronic communications, now held by most men to be the mouthpiece and repository and vehicle for communicating oratory and intent of the President, and of God (as was said among men, same difference). As agents of the War, all of the truckers had broadcast radios and many of them had TVs and some had obtained even more sophisticated receivers, usually acquired either through trade or treachery in the course of their travels to the north.

"Fear of Moans." I was on a run once, I heard it called by some of them booksmart sissy boys up the north country the time of they "Fear of Moans." I guess it's cause when you get to fuckin em, if it's they time, and they get to moanin, that's when you're gonna get whacked. By me or whoever's there

Valery was one of the last girls on Earth, each genetically identical member of her breed intentionally designed and grown and propagated as the last remaining representatives of the female species left on the planet. And in their genes was written men's apocalypse, and in their fertile wombs was planted the seeds of men's destruction. She and her ilk were not the progeny of women, and from their wombs would not come men, but the destroyers of men, and this according to the plans of their creators.

I heard it told once, these two old boys had one of em, red bitch I think it was (they say they're the horniest, the mean-fuckingest) in a spit roast and didn't hardly have time to even spurt before they was set to killin each other, screaming and snarling and clawin at each other's eyes and throats. And kill each other they did, right there with the red bitch still moanin and suckin in between em. No, I never heard what came of it, if it resulted in a Birth or no

Valery wanted to die because she loved men and she hated them. In many ways had she loved the men who created her, with her mind and with her body, and with that which was neither mind nor body, and now she hated them.

First, she'd wanted them dead; then, herself. But she had been afraid to die, afraid to kill herself.

The day by the Falls had changed that.

And now, here in this diner truck stop, here she'd finally, on the spur of a pure and deadly whim, accomplished this goal, and here comes this idiot waggling his fingers and here I am alive again and did I dream what I just did or did I really do it I did not dream I did I do it I don't care whatever I still want to kill kill kill kill kill myself and him too, why the fuck not, my time is coming around again, should be any day now, so what the fuck, one last roll in the hay for you buddy boy, and you got any buddies you know want to get fucked real good? not all us white girls are so pure, it's all myths, you know, what they say about us, why, the dirtiest, fuckingest, suckingest cunt I ever saw was just as blue as they come, blue as the ocean. Her name was Mandy

***

The white girl looked blankly up at M. He seemed to see something warm, something of red pass beneath the grey irises of her eyes.

Suddenly, through the tears, she smiled up at him.

He sat down heavily across from her in the booth.

***

Anxiety in the trees, the bare winter trees, the spindly, spidery filaments of their branches. a solitary house in a barren field. This is where we must go; this is where I must take her. snow falling, softly plummetting from a hard white sky, the same color as the white girl's hair, her skin the exact shade of the gently falling snow, a dry, papery snow softly filling in the barren field's yellow scrub