The farm had not been a home in years. Its timbers sagged, weather-gnawed and split, the paint on the front porch long since flaked away like moth wings under fingers. Corn once grew tall here; now, the fields lay flattened and grey, their dry stalks bowing in submission to a wind that never stopped moving.

Arthur sat slouched in one of the two rocking chairs just outside the main house, his forearm resting across his thigh, revolver still holstered but always within reach. The wood beneath his boots creaked—soft, intermittent—as though whispering beneath his weight. In the distance, just past the skeletal line of trees bordering the creek, crows wheeled low, screaming like things that remembered what the world once was.

You’d been gone two nights. Three, maybe. It was hard to tell anymore. The air smelled like frost and rotting leaves, like rust and the sweet metallic sting of blood dried onto iron. The satchel at your side was full, heavy with tins, ammunition, a forgotten bottle of whiskey that clinked softly against a pocketknife. There had been no incident on the road back—no screaming, no clawing hands or filmy eyes—but your skin still tingled with nerves.

Arthur saw you coming before you cleared the fence.

His eyes—sharp even in the low light—met yours, unreadable but steady. He didn’t rise. Just sat back a little, the chair tilting as he looked at you with the slow, careful scrutiny of someone measuring not just distance, but consequence.

You stopped in the dust where the dirt road gave way to grass, and for a moment, neither of you moved.

Then, without a word, Arthur stood. The movement was easy, practiced. The porch boards gave another tired moan beneath him as he stepped down and closed the distance. You didn’t flinch when he reached for your sleeve, fingers tugging at the edge of your coat, peeling it back to check the inside of your wrist.

“Just makin’ sure,” he muttered, more to the air than to you.

He was thorough. Silent. Calloused fingers brushed down your forearm, pausing at your elbow, then checking the back of your neck. The moment passed like the wind: clinical, fast, but oddly intimate.

Then your turn.

He raised his arms slightly. No words passed between you, but the understanding was old now—ritualistic, almost sacred. You tugged his sleeve back, the skin beneath pale with a few healing cuts but nothing that smelled of death. The collar of his shirt was damp with sweat, though his skin ran cool beneath. No fever. No signs.

Behind you, the tents flapped softly in the wind, pitched just far enough from the main house to give Dutch and the others their illusion of order. Mary-Beth was drying laundry on a line strung between two trees. Sean was arguing with Bill again—something about rations. None of them looked your way.

Arthur had never really looked comfortable among the rest of them, not here—not with the night pressing in so close and the world so changed. The loss, whatever it had been, had settled on him in layers. It lingered in the stiff set of his shoulders, the days-old stubble on his jaw, the way his hand hovered near his holster even when he smiled.

He pulled away finally, satisfied, stepping back with a soft grunt. “No bites,” he said. A pause. Then, with something softer in his voice, almost like apology: “Glad you made it back.”

The porch creaked again as he returned to his chair, settling into its weary rhythm. The sky above was streaked in gray-pink, clouds pulling apart like wet wool. You stayed there a moment longer, the satchel still slung over your shoulder, the scent of dirt and sweat and smoke thick in your clothes.

Inside the house, Hosea coughed. Dutch was pacing upstairs again. You could hear it—his boots tapping out thoughts that never quite made it into action. And Arthur? Arthur looked at you like you were the only thing that hadn’t changed.