Wes stayed on the roof after RayRay went below. He told himself someone had to keep the next watch whole, but the truth sat heavier: he needed distance from the kitchen where Mara had thanked him with eyes that expected protection he still did not know how to give.
The sun had slipped another hand-width toward the west, heat still rising from tar seams. He walked the parapet slow, counting paces the way his father once counted rosary beads, not for faith but for rhythm, something the body could trust when the mind would not stay still. Every third step he paused, listened, scanned the lot. The shapes RayRay had spotted at dusk had never reached the pumps; they had drifted north, following tire ruts that led toward the power station and the family Halvorsen had died to save. Wes wondered if the man's boy was still running, if he understood the price paid for his head start.
He stopped at the front edge and looked down on his own car. The Corolla sat where he had parked it what felt like years ago, windshield dusty, driver door unlocked. Rascal still hung from the mirror, paws limp, button eyes catching sunlight in small white flashes. Wes felt an unexpected tug to go down, to retrieve the toy, to place it somewhere safe, as if protecting cloth and stuffing could prove he was still capable of guarding anything living. He stayed on the roof. Movement invited eyes, and eyes invited teeth.
Instead he opened the note again, the receipt paper creased soft as fabric. The ink had dried brown in places, but the words remained clear. Tell my boy the world was bigger once. Wes read the sentence three times, then once more aloud, voice barely above the wind. He tried to imagine saying such a thing to Elijah, to any child, and found the shape too large for his mouth. He folded the paper, slid it into his breast pocket next to the magazine he had taped for quick change. Paper against metal felt like two kinds of prayer meeting.
A sound reached him, faint but close: metal dragging across asphalt, slow, deliberate. He raised the rifle, knelt behind the parapet, and searched. Between the diner and the chapel road, a figure limped among the abandoned cars, one leg trailing a length of chain or cable that sparked each time it touched ground. Man or woman, Wes could not tell; clothes hung in rags, skin sun-cooked to leather. The head moved side to side, not sniffing but listening, ears tipped toward any echo that might mean food.
Wes eased the safety off, lined the post on the chest, exhaled. Eighteen rounds minus one makes seventeen. He waited. The figure passed between two sedans, disappeared, reappeared closer, dragging its anchor. Thirty yards. Twenty. It stopped beneath the neon sign and lifted its face. The eyes were gone, sockets dried shut, mouth open in a silent howl that showed teeth still white. It turned toward the diner, tilted its head, and listened.
Wes fired. The crack split the afternoon open. The figure dropped, chain clattering still. He chambered the next round, watched for a second shape, a third. Nothing moved. The chain settled into stillness, links cooling under desert sun.
He lowered the rifle, throat tight. Seventeen left. He wrote the number on the back of the receipt note, folded it again, and forced himself to breathe slow. The wind carried the smell of gunpowder away from the building, out toward the empty road where no more silhouettes walked. For now the lot belonged to the dead, and to him, and to the toy raccoon that waited in a car he could no longer reach.
Footsteps rose through the vent shaft. RayRay climbed into view, surveyed the roof, saw the fresh shell casing glinting near Wes's boot. "One?" he asked.
"One," Wes answered.
RayRay nodded, offered no praise, no criticism. He simply took a knee beside the parapet and raised binoculars scavenged from the chapel truck. He studied the body, the chain, the surrounding cars. After a full minute he lowered the lenses. "Anchor's new. Means they learn tools. Means we keep distance."
Wes swallowed. "Copy."
RayRay looked at him, not at the corpse. "You shook. That's fine. Shake in private, not in the trigger. Next time fire sooner. Anchor man couldn't climb, but noise travels."
Wes met the cook's eyes, saw no anger, only measurement. He nodded once, the kind that locked a decision in place rather than bowed to orders.
RayRay handed him the binoculars. "Finish the hour. Watch the body. If it moves again, burn the rest of the brain. If others come, count them, call me. We learn their pattern before they learn our walls."
He descended the ladder, boots echoing once on metal before the hatch closed. Wes stayed, knees against sun-warmed tar, rifle across his thighs, binoculars loose around his neck. He looked at the chain, at the sign that still buzzed MOM'S 24-HOUR EATS, at the empty miles beyond. Then he looked at his own hands, steady now, and felt something settle, not comfort, but recognition. The fifth night was still coming, and he would meet it here, on a roof that stank of grease and gunpowder, counting down from seventeen, one round at a time.