Last time he’d driven out here, Joe had asked Mike why he’d stayed behind when so many others were gone. Why not move somewhere less isolated? Even then, almost a full month ago, folks had been clumping up in Longview, barricading the school, jail, and hospital. Had to be safer, if you could buy your way in. Being white helped, too. They said it didn’t, but Joe Davis knew it did. Always had, always would. Things like that just went underground for a time, that’s all. Times like these the ugly stuff festered and exploded back topside.

Mike wasn’t quite as old as Joe-sixty-three to Joe’s more cumbersome seventy-one-but Joe thought he was foolhardy to keep the place open. Sure, all the stockpiling and bartering had made Mike a rich man, but was gasoline and Rice-A-Roni worth the risk? “I don’t run, Joe. Guess I’m hardheaded.” That was all he’d said.

Joe had known Mike since he first built his cedar cabin in 1989, after retiring from his berth as supply sergeant at Fort McArthur. Mike had just moved down from Alberta, and they’d talked movies, then jazz. They’d discovered a mutual love of Duke Ellington and old sitcoms. Mike had always been one of his few friends around here. Now he was the only one.

Joe didn’t know whether to hope his friend would still be there or to pray he was gone. Better for him to be gone, Joe thought. One day he and the kid would have to move on, too, plain and simple. That day was coming soon. That day had probably come and gone twice over.

Joe saw a glint of the aluminum fencing posted around Mike’s as he came around the bend, the end of the S in the road. Although it looked more like a prison camp, Mike’s was an oasis, a tiny squat store and a row of gas pumps surrounded by a wire fence a man and a half tall. The fence was electrified at night: Joe had seen at least one barbecued body to prove it, and everyone had walked around the corpse as if it weren’t there. With gas getting scarcer, Mike tended to trust the razor wire more, using the generator less these days.

Mike’s three boys, who’d never proved to be much good at anything else, had come in handy for keeping order. They’d had two or three gunfights there, Mike had said, because strangers with guns thought they could go anywhere they pleased and take anything they wanted.

Today, the gate was hanging open. He’d never come to Mike’s when there wasn’t someone standing at the gate. All three of Mike’s boys were usually there, with their greasy hair and their pale fleshy bellies bulging through their too-tight T-shirts. No one today.

Something was wrong.

“Shit,” Joe said aloud before he remembered he didn’t want to scare the kid. He pinched Kendrick’s chin between his forefinger and thumb, and his grandson peered up at him, resigned, the expression he always wore these days. “Let’s just sit here a minute, okay?”

Little Soldier nodded. He was a good kid.

Joe coasted the truck to a stop outside the gate. While it idled, he tried to see what he could. The pumps stood silent and still on their concrete islands, like two men with their hands in their pockets. There was a light on inside, a super-white fluorescent glow through the picture windows painted with the words GAS, FOOD in red. He could make out a few shelves from where he was parked, but he didn’t see anyone inside. The air pulsed with the steady burr of Mike’s generator, still working.

At least it didn’t look like anyone had rammed or cut the gate. The chain looked intact, so it had been unlocked. If there’d been trouble here, it had come with an invitation. Nothing would have made those boys open that gate otherwise. Maybe Mike and his boys had believed all that happy-talk on the radio, ditched their place, and moved to Longview. The idea made Joe feel so relieved that he forgot the ache in his knee.

And leave the generator on? Bullshit.

Tire tracks drew patterns in hardened mud. Mike’s was a busy place. Damn greedy fool.

Beside him, Joe felt the kid fidgeting in his seat, and Joe didn’t blame him. He had more than half a mind to turn around and start driving back toward home. The jerky would keep. He had enough gas to last him. He’d come back when things looked right again.

But he’d promised the kid a Coke. That was the only thing. And it would help erase a slew of memories if he could bring a grin to the kid’s face today. Little Soldier’s grins were a miracle. His little chipmunk cheeks were the spitting image of Cass’s at his age.

“Daddy,” she’d called him on the radio. “Daddy.”

Don’t think about that don’t think don’t-

Joe leaned on his horn. He let it blow five seconds before he laid off.

After a few seconds, the door to the store opened, and Mike stood there leaning against the doorjamb, a big, ruddy white-haired Canuck with linebacker shoulders and a pigskin-sized bulge above his belt. He was wearing an apron like he always did, as if he ran a butcher shop instead of a gas station. Mike peered out at them and waved. “Come on in!” he called out.

Joe leaned out of the window. “Where the boys at?” he called back.

“They’re fine!” Mike said. Over the years, Joe had tried a dozen times to convince Mike he couldn’t hear worth shit. No sense asking after the boys again until he got closer.

The wind skittered a few leaves along the ground between the truck and the door, and Joe watched their silent dance for a few seconds, considering. “I’m gonna go do this real quick, Kendrick,” Joe finally said. “Stay in the truck.”

The kid didn’t say anything, but Joe saw the terror freeze his face. The kid’s eyes went dead just like they did when he asked what had happened at the house in Longview.

Joe cracked open his door. “I’ll only be a minute,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“D-don’t leave me. Please, Grandpa Joe? Let me c-come.”

Well, I’ll be damned, Joe thought. This kid was talking up a storm today.

Joe sighed, mulling it over. Pros and cons either way, he supposed. He reached under the seat and pulled out his Glock 9mm. He’d never liked automatics until maybe the mid-80s, when somebody figured out how to keep them from jamming so damned often. He had a Mossberg shotgun in a rack behind the seat, but that might seem a little too hostile. He’d give Kendrick the Remington 28-gauge. It had some kick, but the Little Soldier was used to it. He could trust Little Soldier not to fire into the ceiling. Or his back. Joe had seen to that.

“How many shots?” Joe asked him, handing over the little birder. Kendrick held up four stubby fingers, like a toddler. So much for talking.

“If you’re coming with me, I damn well better know you can talk if there’s a reason to.” Joe sounded angrier than he’d intended. “Now…how many shots?”

“Four!” That time, he’d nearly shouted it.

“Come on in,” Mike called from the doorway. “I’ve got hot dogs today!”

That was a first. Joe hadn’t seen a hot dog in nearly a year and his mouth watered. Joe started to ask him again what the boys were up to, but Mike turned around and went inside.

“Stick close to me,” Joe told Kendrick. “You’re my other pair of eyes. Anything looks funny, you point and speak up loud and clear. Anybody makes a move in your direction you don’t like, shoot. Hear?”

Kendrick nodded.

“That means anybody. I don’t care if it’s Mike or his boys or Santa Claus or anybody else. You understand me?”

Kendrick nodded again, although he lowered his eyes sadly. “Like Mom said.”

“Damn right. Exactly like your mom said,” Joe told Kendrick, squeezing the kid’s shoulder. For an instant, his chest burned so hot with grief that he knew a heart attack couldn’t feel any worse. The kid might have watched what happened to Cass. Cass might have turned into one of them before his eyes.

Joe thought of the pivoting, bloated freak he’d killed, the one that had smelled him, and his stomach clamped tight. “Let’s go. Remember what I told you,” Joe said.