Noon settled into a long, bright hush. The single rifle crack had rolled west across the flats and died, leaving only wind and the low buzz of the diner's surviving neon transformer. RayRay marked the direction with a grease pencil on the back of a menu board: due west, maybe two miles, maybe three. Beyond that lay nothing but creosote and blacktop all the way to the interstate.
"We go at dusk," he decided, speaking to the room more than to anyone. "Two-man patrol. Foot only. Engines draw crowds."
Mara looked up from the cooler doorway, Elijah curled on her lap, half asleep. "You just told us every hour spent improving the building keeps us alive. Now you want to open the gate?"
RayRay kept his eyes on the map. "The signal came from the west. If they're organized, they have water, fuel, or both. If they're dying, they have ammunition we can't waste. Either way we learn what's left out there. I won't run a kingdom blind."
Wes felt the weight of the rifle on his shoulder and understood the math: two leaving meant two remaining. Two remaining could hold bolts and pull triggers, but barely. He nodded anyway. "I'll go. You pick the second."
RayRay studied him, then Mara. "She stays. Kid's noise travels. You and I walk."
Mara didn't argue. She pressed her lips to Elijah's hair and disappeared into the cooler, sliding the door until only a hand-width remained open for air.
Preparation started immediately. RayRay emptied a canvas mail tote and filled it with essentials: two MREs, one canteen each, the road map, a flashlight with red filter, the small first-aid kit, and a length of paracord. Wes cleaned the M4, counted eighteen rounds total, one fired the night before, and taped the magazines grip to grip for faster change. He left the remaining loose cartridges on the counter for Mara, a silent promise they intended to return.
At eighteen hundred they opened the back dock. Sun hung a finger-width above the western mountains, sky bruised orange and violet. Heat still rose from the asphalt in shimmering sheets. RayRay led, moving at a steady pace that favored silence over speed. Wes walked five paces behind, rifle low, eyes sweeping the scrub lining the old frontage road.
They kept to the gravel shoulder. Every footstep crunched, but the wind covered most of the noise, scraping sand across pavement in constant hiss. RayRay halted every hundred yards, knelt, and listened. Each pause felt longer than the last. Nothing answered except the heat and the smell of distant fires.
After a mile the road curved toward a low rise. At the crest stood a roadside chapel, little more than a stucco rectangle with a white cross bolted to the front. The door hung open, banging gently against stucco in the breeze. A single pickup truck sat parked at an angle, driver door ajar, interior light long dead. A scoped hunting rifle lay across the hood, barrel pointing sky.
RayRay motioned: circle left. Wes obeyed, boots crunching. They approached from opposite sides, weapons raised. The truck cab was empty, keys gone, blood caked on the windshield but no body insight. RayRay lifted the rifle from the hood: bolt-action, four rounds in the magazine, warm to touch. He showed it to Wes, then pointed at the chapel door.
Inside, pews cast long shadows across a narrow aisle. Sunlight filtered through a broken stained-glass window, painting red fragments across an altar. A man sat slumped against the pulpit, legs stretched, hat tipped forward. His right hand clutched a .38 revolver, barrel tucked beneath his chin. The top of his head was gone, pattern sprayed up the cross behind him. Flies circled, loud in the silence.
RayRay knelt, examined the remains without touching. "Fresh," he murmured. "Maybe six hours." He lifted a crumpled note from the man's left hand and passed it to Wes.
Paper was gas-station receipt, ink smeared but readable:
"I drew them off the family. They ran north toward the power station. No ammo left. Fever started this morning. Tell my boy the world was bigger once. -J. Halvorsen"
Wes read it twice, then folded it into his pocket. The name meant nothing, but the weight settled anyway. He looked at the body and saw not a corpse but a ledger: one father, one choice, zero alternatives.
RayRay searched the chapel and found a canvas satchel beneath the pew: four full boxes of .30-06, two bottled waters, and a road atlas with hand-drawn circles around the power station twenty miles north. He handed Wes one bottle, kept the other. They drank small sips, caps tight when not in use.
Outside again, RayRay scanned the horizon with the scoped rifle. Heat waves distorted distance, but for a moment he stiffened. "Movement. Two o'clock. Approx half a mile."
Wes lifted the M4, looked through the carry-handle sight. Shapes moved along the ridge, silhouettes walking single file, maybe six, maybe seven. They followed the road but did not hurry, heads low, arms slack. Dust rose behind them like a warning.
RayRay lowered the scope. "Not the family. Too many. Drawn by the shot." He glanced back toward the diner, invisible behind bends and brush. "We loop south, stay off road, come in back. They'll hit the pumps first. We'll be ready."
They left the chapel, left the body, left the note taped to the altar because every story needs a place to finish. Sunset bled across the mountains as they moved, shadows stretching long enough to swallow footsteps. Behind them the cross kept knocking against stucco, counting wind in a rhythm no one would measure again.
By the time the diner's roofline came into view, stars had surfaced and the first distant moans carried on the breeze, drifting ahead of the shapes that made them. RayRay checked his watch: twenty-one hundred. They had been gone three hours. The world outside had already grown larger, heavier, and more silent than when they left.
They slipped in through the back dock. Mara waited, rifle raised, face pale in the battery lamp. She saw their load of ammunition, saw the set of their jaws, and asked no questions. Together they barred the door, killed the lights, and climbed to the roof to wait for whatever followed the echo of a man's last kindness.