Blood Wasteland：Cornered Beasts

Bounty work is the only paid work left after the collapse. Riley takes a posting on Mason, a former soldier convicted of something he did not do, and brings him in across open desert while a sandstorm closes over the route. The reward never gets collected. Mutated creatures hit them on the road and the two of them end up fighting back to back, then travelling together because neither can cover ground alone. What they pull out of the wreckage they search points at a corporation running biochemical work in the region, and the creatures are the product of it. Riley keeps the documents. The company sends the queen of the swarm after them, and the fight ends at a fuel depot with Mason at the charges and Riley shoved into an escape pod with the evidence still in her hands.