“Blistering heat baked the stagnant air and the green-sweet aroma of recently gouted blood burbled up from the blasted turf as the McCarthyists took the field. The Judge looked stony-eyed into the weathered faces of his compatriots and let forth with a string of curse-laden proverbs stolen from Job. The Kid spat drily. They had walked four days to this empty field of desolate demongrass and agate and needed to cross quickly. They had no water and food was whatever raw thing they could scavenge. They crashed out into the open but a herd of hellspawn rose from the dustcloud to meet them. Lightning flashed red scars in the sky. Not men, monsters in the shape of nightmares. Glanton howled and the team was joined by a cursed ghost, his eyes reeling in their sockets and bile frothing from his mouth. Into battle they went, gibbering with madness and bloodlust. The monsters’ leader, a desert gecko hugely swollen with childmeat, hung back, flanked by his knights. Sensing a moment of weakness, the Judge leapt at him, hacking away the prize. One of his companions reflexively grabbed at it and clung wildly, frozen in place with fear. He was soon erased by a monstrous body that appeared suddenly from the bloodmist, smeared with viscera and offal, the object wrenched from his grasp, his mind undone in pain. Men fell all around the Judge. Just when he feared for the end, blue fire cut through the sky, flaying the gecko king and rending the treasure from his grasp. Lacey could just make it out in the haze of burnt flesh and ozone, and sprang forward, his eyes on a distant figure. His purchase, usually so firm, slipped on the blooddrenched sphere and when he looked up he had managed only to rend up a clump of razorgrass. He was quickly dismembered. Everywhere was horror; sinew hung in clumps from bleached trees, teeth twinkling in the dirt. The group retreated, the first skirmish lost. Those who remained determined to try one last time to cross the screaming wasteland before nightfall. A giant blocked their way, but with determination they attempted to budge his reeking carcass, to no avail. Darkness consumed all.

The next morning they broke camp early. The sun had already turned the wasteland into an inferno, but the McCarthyists rushed forward, bones creaking from the hard night and wild with thoughts of revenge. They quickly crossed the expanse, though Suttree had his tendons ripped out by a vicious hit, and cheered when they escaped at the last moment. It was a short-lived victory, for they found themselves again beset on all sides by minions and demons. They must defend the hard-won ground. As the Judge looked around he realized that Lacey and two others lay insensible from the heat, reducing their numbers to well less than their opponents. He smiled through blood-stained teeth and sneered, “Today we may die, but we will foul this land with our blood, fill the streams with it so that it poisons all.” Into battle they flew, suicidal with intent. They were battered remorselessly until nothing remained but scars in the land and a pile of stinking rags. Thus passed their first foray into the emptiness of the blight.
”