The saloon door has a sway the wind hasn’t seen before. A squeaky back and forth, a sound usually disguised by the loud men playing cards alone, not to mention the band, the drinkers, the rest of the gleeful patrons. Ah, even the brawlers, they’d brought a merry round of entertainment once they were kicked out onto the road.
Now, the only whisper of their voices is the squeak, squeak, squeak.
Dust gathers on the hinges, just as it does throughout the rest of the town. The only thing living here now is the flies, and the horse with dementia, who licks from an empty trough and whinnies for attention.
He is hounded by a cortège of memories and forgetfulness. Figures who he believes are still there, who aren’t.
Down the road, the river has dried up. The ground is cracked and gnarly with the few roots that thought they could survive here. A streak of red apocalypse. A tell-tale sign of the absence. One long, solitary clue…
There are others, if you search long enough.
The unfinished train tracks that run by the post office. The rusted pistols in the sheriff’s station. The man with stretched skin down by the farm, lizards using his corpse as home.
But none of those things matter, because no one ever goes looking.
Not a visitor, not the horse, not a soul.