He didn't trust quiet anymore.
Not the kind that came after gunfire. Not the kind that came after a wager closed and the air unclenched.
This was a different quiet.
It sat on the land like a hand laid flat on a throat.
Cole rode east with the mule's hooves placing themselves careful, one after another, like the animal had learned the cost of making noise in the wrong places. The road was mostly gone. Just a pale memory of asphalt showing through sand in patches, black skin under peeled scab. Old paint lines flashed up now and then—yellow, cracked, faded—like the world trying to remember order and failing.
Dusty ranged ahead.
Too steady.
Too obedient.
The dog used to run like a thing born for it. Zig-zagging, nose down, tail working, ears catching every lie the wind told. Lately he moved like he'd been trained. Like he'd been instructed. Like something inside him had been put on a leash he didn't know he wore.
Cole watched him more than the horizon.
Not because he was afraid of Dusty.
Because he was afraid of what Dusty meant.
The Ace of Spades sat inside Cole's coat, cold against his ribs. It never warmed. Not with sun. Not with sweat. Not with blood.
The Ten of Clubs rode beside it, wrapped in oilcloth and habit. A second piece of a deck that didn't belong to him. A second nail in the same coffin.
He didn't touch either.
Some things got worse when you acknowledged them.
The wind came thin from the north, dragging grit in a low whisper along the road's broken edge. It sounded like shuffling if you listened wrong. Cole didn't listen wrong. He'd learned not to give the world extra meanings it hadn't earned.
Ahead, the land dropped into a shallow basin, then rose again into ribs of dead rock. Scrub clung to the slopes like it was too stubborn to die. A few scattered billboards leaned against the sky. Empty frames. Rusted bones.
Cole kept to the high line.
Back to the wall. Clear sightlines.
The kind of position you took when knowing mattered more than being known.
That part still worked.
He had learned early—before the House, before the cards, before the world decided odds were a currency—that survival was a series of small refusals.
Refusing to drink from a puddle that looked fine.
Refusing to camp where a man could be silhouetted.
Refusing to chase a sound into a wash without checking the edges.
Refusing to believe the first story the land offered you.
Most men died because they accepted things too quickly.
Cole didn't accept.
He counted.
He measured.
He watched.
The mule's ears twitched back and forth, catching distant nothing. The animal's nostrils flared now and then, scenting the air the way it scented the ground—like both could hide a trap.
Cole kept his hands loose on the reins.
No hurry.
Hurry was how roads took more than they offered.
Dusty stopped at the lip of the basin.
He didn't bark.
He didn't growl.
He just turned his head and looked back at Cole like he was checking whether Cole still existed.
Cole slowed the mule and studied the dog.
Dusty's eyes were bright. Too bright in the midday glare. The pupils pinched tight, then loosened a fraction, then tightened again like he was focusing on something that wasn't there.
Cole's mouth went dry.
"Alright," he said, quiet.
Dusty didn't move until Cole moved.
That was new.
Cole rode down into the basin with his gaze sliding left and right, catching the edges—rock breaks, scrub shadows, the shallow cut of an old drainage ditch where someone could lay still with a rifle and wait for a silhouette to wander by.
Nothing moved.
No birds.
No insects.
Even the wind seemed to avoid the bottom, passing over it like the basin had a smell.
Cole didn't like places the world avoided.
He guided the mule toward the far slope, then eased off and walked the last stretch on foot. Boots on sand. Slow. The mule followed, head low. Dusty moved just ahead of Cole, not ranging now, staying close enough that Cole could see the dog's ribs rise and fall.
The air felt… normal.
That was the problem.
After everything, normal was just another mask.
Cole reached the top of the slope and stopped.
From here, the view opened. The road—what was left of it—snaked through a series of shallow cuts toward the east. Far off, a haze sat on the horizon. Not storm. Not smoke. Just distance turned into a thing.
Cole lifted a hand to shade his eyes.
No town signs.
No caravan dust trails.
No movement.
He could've liked that once.
Now it felt like being watched by something that didn't need to be seen to be real.
Dusty sat.
Sat.
Like a dog waiting for a command.
Cole stared at him.
"You ain't a house dog," Cole said.
Dusty's ears flicked. He didn't look away. He held Cole's gaze like it was a wager.
That part still felt like Dusty.
But the obedience didn't.
Cole knelt and put a hand on Dusty's neck. The dog's fur was warm from sun. Solid. Real. The heartbeat under Cole's palm was steady.
If Dusty was a debt, he was a debt that breathed.
Cole stood and scanned again.
The land didn't answer.
They moved on.
Hours passed the way they did out here—slow in the body, fast in the mind. The sun climbed, then started its long, indifferent slide. Heat pressed down. The sky stayed blank. The earth stayed cracked. Nothing offered relief.
Cole used the time the way he used silence.
As a tool.
He reviewed what still worked.
Sightlines.
Back to the wall.
Water rationing.
Ammo discipline.
Distance from strangers.
He reviewed what didn't.
Luck.
Luck had turned into something unreliable. Sometimes it came in hard and clean. Sometimes it vanished right when he reached for it. The House had taken a bite out of it early on. Then taken another. Then smiled without a face and offered him "opportunities."
Cole didn't call them opportunities.
He called them traps with paperwork.
He didn't like paperwork.
The road rose toward an old overpass that led nowhere. Concrete cracked. Rebar showing through like broken ribs. Below it, a dry riverbed ran wide and empty, littered with dead debris—shopping carts, twisted metal, scraps of plastic that had survived longer than most people.
Cole guided the mule onto the concrete slow.
Halfway across, Dusty stopped.
Not at the edge.
Not because of height.
He stopped because of something in the air.
Cole stopped too.
He didn't move his head quick. Moving your head too quick was a way of telling the world you were nervous. The world liked nervous.
He let his eyes slide instead.
Under the overpass, in the shadow of a pillar, the darkness looked thicker than it should've. Not darker. Thicker. Like it had weight. Like it could hold something upright without hands.
Dusty stared at that shadow like it had said his name.
Cole's jaw tightened.
He waited for the cold letters to appear. For the flat font to type itself into the air and pretend that made anything fair.
Nothing.
No interface.
No terms.
No offer.
The pressure behind his eyes rose anyway—soft at first, then steadier, like a finger pressing in to check how much he'd flinch.
Cole breathed through his nose and kept his hands still.
He didn't touch the Ace in his coat.
He didn't touch the Ten.
He didn't give the dark the satisfaction of knowing what mattered to him.
Dusty took one step forward.
Then stopped like he'd hit an invisible line.
The mule snorted once, uneasy.
Cole watched the shadow.
Watched the space where something could be.
He wanted to go down there. Wanted to confirm. To put proof under his boot.
Wanting was how you got handled.
He turned the mule instead.
Not fast.
Just decided.
Dusty didn't move right away. His body stayed angled toward the pillar as if something in him had been called. Then he shook once—hard, full-body—and trotted after Cole like he hadn't almost forgotten which way the road went.
Cole rode off the overpass without looking back.
He waited until the concrete was behind them, until the riverbed was just another scar in the land.
Then he glanced over his shoulder.
The overpass stood the same as it always had.
But the shadow under it seemed… patient.
As if it had known he'd choose to leave.
As if leaving had been the point.
Still no text.
Still no words.
The House wasn't speaking.
It was counting.
Cole faced forward again and kept riding.
Because the only thing that still worked—
was refusing to stop.
And the quiet stayed close, not like peace—
like a hand that had learned the shape of his throat and decided to rest there.