The Last Riders
Chapter 1: The Girl in the Road
The first time I saw the girl, she was standing barefoot in the middle of the old highway, arms out like a ghost trying to stop a train that wouldn’t come.
We’d been riding half a day without water, the heat coiling up from the broken asphalt in writhing snakes. My horse, a hard-boned Appaloosa named Blue, kept tossing his head and showing more rib than spirit. Cameron rode behind me, perched light on his own mule, a crow-feathered hat pulled low over his raw-burned face. He was talking to himself again, low and steady, the way he did when the Waste got too big and empty around us.
“Don’t stop,” I muttered. Dust cracked in my throat like dry riverbed. “Ain’t our concern.”
Cameron shifted in the saddle. “She’s just a kid.”
I spat dry. “Out here, that’s old enough to die.”
The girl didn’t move. Wind whipped her hair into a pale tangle against the brown-gray sky. She wore a dress that might’ve once been yellow, now the color of old bones, and clutched a battered satchel against her ribs like it might hatch salvation if she squeezed it hard enough.
Blue shied sideways, hooves striking sparks off the road. I pulled him around, cursing under my breath.
I knew better than to stop for strays.
You stop for a stranger in the Waste, you’re as good as dead—whether from what’s chasing them, or from the lie they’re carrying inside.
Still. I reined up.
“Sam,” Cameron said, voice taut. “What if she’s the one?”
I didn’t answer. Just stared at her, heart kicking against my ribs.
The Waste teaches you quick: every choice you make might be the last one you’ll ever get right.
I swung down from the saddle. Dust exploded around my boots, thick as gunpowder smoke. Blue snorted and danced back a step. Cameron muttered something and stayed mounted, hand near the revolver he wore too low on his skinny hip.
The girl raised her chin as I approached. I saw the shimmer of something dark on her cheek. Not sweat. Not tears, neither. Blood.
She stood her ground.
“Name?” I asked.
Silence.
Closer now, I saw that her feet were cut up bad, soles blackened from the road. Her eyes were the washed-out green of river weeds. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Maybe younger. Old enough to know better than to trust a man on the road.
I lowered my hands slow, palms out.
“Name,” I said again. “Ain’t gonna ask a third time.”
She licked her cracked lips. “Mae.”
That was all.
“Mae what?”
She blinked. Slow, stubborn. Then: “Just Mae.”
Almost smiled. Almost. Names meant ownership once. Now, they meant you had something to lose.
Behind me, Blue shifted. The air went tight.
That’s when I heard it—a low whine building on the edge of the horizon, slicing through the dead wind.
Engines.
I turned slow. Dust blooming far off.
Three, maybe four bikes, low and mean, kicking up long tails of smoke behind them.
Hounds.
“Sam,” Cameron said, his voice cracking. “Those’re Red Hounds.”
I already knew.
The girl didn’t cry. Didn’t plead. She just clutched that satchel closer and squared her feet like she was ready to take a bullet standing up.
I reckon she had.
I looked at her, looked at the smoke closing in, felt the weight of every bad decision I’d ever made pressing down on me like a thumb on a snake’s head.
There was a second—no more than the time it takes a hammer to fall—where I thought about leaving her.
Just ride.
Let the Waste take her.
Better her than us.
Blue stomped under me, impatient, and I realized I hated myself already for even thinking it.
“Up,” I said.
She hesitated.
“Now.”
I grabbed her under the arms and threw her up into Cameron’s saddle before he could argue. He gave a startled yelp but clamped his knees hard and caught her. Good boy.
I swung back onto Blue, rifle already in my hands.
The bikes howled closer. I could see them now—rusted-out machines held together with wire and prayer, men strapped to them like corpses stitched to nightmares. Leathers, masks, long knives catching the sun.
“Ride!” I barked.
Cameron kicked his mule hard, heading east, toward the low hills where the broken highway peeled off into canyons. I spurred Blue after him, feeling the old gelding shudder under me with something close to rage.
The Hounds opened fire.
Bullets whined past us, chewing up the cracked pavement. I hunched low, tasting the acrid sting of burning oil on the air, feeling the heat of gunfire in the hairs on my neck.
No thinking. No praying. Just riding.
The girl clung to Cameron’s waist like a shadow. Her satchel bounced wildly against her side, something metallic glinting at the lip where it wasn’t fully closed.
We hit the first bend, sliding into a narrow draw where the road dropped out beneath a wash of red sand and broken rock. Blue nearly lost his footing, slipping hard on a patch of shale. I yanked him upright, cursing him alive.
Cameron’s mule stumbled worse—dropping to one knee—but the boy yanked hard on the reins and somehow kept them moving. Mae didn’t scream. Not once.
A bullet struck the edge of the canyon wall ahead, shattering stone across my face. The taste of blood bloomed iron-sharp in my mouth. Another shot rang out—closer now—and I twisted in the saddle, firing once, twice.
One of the bikes skidded sideways, rider tumbling end over end into a dry arroyo. Dust swallowed him whole.
Three left.
We thundered down into the guts of the canyon, the walls rising up close on either side, their red rock faces bleeding heat. The engines roared louder, closing, snarling at our heels like wolves scenting weakness.
We weren’t going to outrun them.
Blue panted under me, his flanks slick with dust and sweat. Cameron’s mule staggered with every step. Even the canyon itself felt ready to crush us.
Another shot cracked out—louder, sharper—and I saw Cameron’s hat spin off into the dust.
“Go!” I shouted.
But he hesitated. Turned. Drew his pistol with a shaking hand.
The girl grabbed his arm.
“No,” she said, soft but clear.
And somehow, that was enough.
We turned into a narrow side cut—barely wide enough for one horse at a time—and the Hounds missed it, flying past, engines screaming in frustration.
We climbed, slow and staggering, up into a broken rise of boulders and scrub. The canyon stretched out behind us, an empty, broken throat gasping dust into the sky.
We didn’t stop riding until the stars came out.
We made camp in a dry hollow, shielded by a fallen slab of concrete that might once have been part of a bridge. Blue and the mule dropped where they stood, too exhausted to even drink.
I checked the girl’s feet. Torn to ribbons, raw and filthy. I tore strips from my shirt and bound them as best I could. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t say a word.
Only after the fire burned down to coals did she sit forward and pull her satchel into her lap.
I watched her carefully.
Something about the way her fingers moved—careful, reverent—made the air around us tighten again.
She unwrapped a scrap of filthy linen, folding it back with a tenderness that hurt to watch.
Inside was a silver badge. Sheriff’s star, old style. Broken clean down the middle.
And underneath it—carefully folded, worn thin at the creases—was a map. Hand-drawn, ink faded but still clear.
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
Because I knew.
Whatever lay at the end of that map—it wasn’t just gold, or silver, or salvation.
It was war.
It was hope.
It was a death sentence wearing the face of a second chance.
Mae looked up at me, her eyes catching the firelight.
For the first time, I saw her fully.
Not a lost girl.
Not a burden.
A rider.
Same as us.
Maybe better.
Cameron whispered, “Sam… what do we do?”
I didn’t answer.
Not with words.
Mae took the satchel and set it in her lap, staring down like she could see the road ahead written on it.
The fire hissed low, chewing the last of the kindling.
We sat there a long time.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t need to.
When the cold started bleeding up from the ground, I threw a blanket over Blue and checked the cinch on the mule. Cameron curled up near the fire. Mae stayed sitting straight, clutching that satchel like a knife.
There was nothing left to say.
We’d chosen.
Come morning, we’d ride.
Not because it was smart.
Not because it was safe.
Because some things, you don’t ride away from.
Chapter 2: Hollow Bend
The mule went down first.
One second we were riding across the cracked salt pan, the next its front legs folded like busted sticks and Cameron pitched into the dirt, dragging Mae with him.
I hauled back hard on Blue’s reins, felt the old gelding skitter sideways under me. The sun was a hammer overhead, beating the Waste flatter by the hour. Every breath scraped my throat raw. My skin felt tight enough to split.
“Get up!” I barked.
Cameron scrambled to his knees, coughing dust, hands flying over Mae like he could will her whole. She was breathing. Hurt, maybe, but breathing.
The mule didn’t move.
Behind us, far on the horizon, a dust plume crawled into the sky like a devil’s finger pointing us out.
Not Red Hounds this time. Something worse.
Men with banners stitched from human hides, riding jeeps and rusted tanks that still rumbled to life when the old gods wanted blood.
The Carrion Barons.
I swung down and yanked Cameron to his feet. Grabbed Mae under one arm.
“We run,” I said.
“Where?”
I pointed east. Across the pan, across a broken line of scrub and rusted cars half-buried in sand, to a black smear on the horizon.
“Hollow Bend,” I said.
Cameron stared at it. “There’s nothing there.”
“That’s the idea.”
We ran.
The sun had teeth.
It chewed us as we moved, tongues thick in our mouths, boots scraping raw. Every step tore something loose in my chest — breath, pride, maybe something softer.
The girl kept up better than either of us.
Didn’t cry.
Didn’t stumble.
Just kept that satchel clutched against her ribs like it was welded there.
The Carrion Barons gained with every minute, the roar of their engines a black river running faster than our feet could carry us.
By the time Hollow Bend rose out of the dust — more dead than alive — we were half ghosts ourselves.
A rusted sign swung from a single chain, clanging against a broken post:
WELCOME TO HOLLOW BEND
POP. 327 — GOD HELP US
Not anymore.
Maybe a dozen buildings left.
Two streets.
A gutted church with its steeple blown sideways.
One saloon, doors swinging empty in the furnace wind.
And one sheriff’s office.
Squat, square, sunken into the earth like a stubborn tooth.
The badge Mae carried burned a hole through the air between us and that office.
I felt it.
So did the Barons.
The first shell whined overhead and burst against the far edge of town, throwing up a column of salt and bone dust.
We staggered into the street, dragging Mae between us.
Old windows stared at us like blind eyes.
No one came out.
No help.
No safety.
We were alone.
I kicked the sheriff’s door open.
Inside, it stank of old blood and rust and something worse. A desk half-burned.
A wanted poster peeling off the wall.
Handcuffs rusted into red stains.
On the wall behind the desk, half-buried under soot and bullet holes, hung a star.
Bigger than Mae’s.
Heavy enough to hammer law into broken bones if a man had the guts for it.
I looked at Mae.
She looked at me.
No words.
She pulled her badge from her satchel — the one we’d bled to keep — and crossed the room, boots scuffing slow across the splintered floor.
She climbed up on the desk, small and defiant, and slammed her broken badge into the wall beside the big star.
The echo cracked the silence wide open.
Outside, the Barons roared closer.
The first jeep plowed into the edge of town, spitting machine gun fire into the dead buildings. Windows shattered. Wood splintered.
I yanked Cameron behind the desk, shoved Mae down beside him.
“You run when I say,” I snapped. “Not before.”
He nodded, wild-eyed.
Mae didn’t blink.
I rose up slow, rifle braced on the desk, heart beating like a slow drum inside my skull.
The first Baron rode into sight — a man stitched in leather and bone, goggles glinting in the ruin light.
I sighted him clean.
And pulled the trigger.
The shot took him full in the chest, snapping him backward off his rig. Dust ate him alive before he hit the ground.
Another Baron swung a rusted machine gun toward the sheriff’s office.
I didn’t wait.
I fired again.
Again.
Again.
The world narrowed to blood and recoil and dust and the raw, stupid fact of staying upright.
Cameron screamed once — whether from rage or terror, I didn’t know — and scrambled out to drag a broken shotgun off a dead man’s belt.
Mae never moved.
When the dust cleared, there were six bodies sprawled across Hollow Bend’s main street.
The rest of the Barons, what few were left, peeled off, engines shrieking as they vanished into the Waste like cockroaches when the light hit.
I sat down hard, back against the desk, lungs clawing at the hot air.
Cameron slumped beside me, bleeding from a nick across his scalp.
Mae climbed down from the desk.
She crossed the floor, slow and steady, and pulled the star off the wall.
Cradled it against her chest like she knew exactly what it cost.
Like she knew exactly what it meant.
No speeches.
No promises.
Just a badge, and the ruins of a town that might still, by some stubborn miracle, remember what it meant to stand for something.
I looked at Cameron.
I looked at Mae.
I hauled myself upright.
Outside, the wind carried the smell of blood and cordite and something else.
Hope.
No bigger than a bullet.
No heavier than a badge.
But still breathing.
Still burning.
Chapter 3: Ash and Betrayal
The first shot didn’t come from outside the town.
It came from the saloon.
I was across the street, gut-deep in repairing the east barricade when the window blew out in a hail of glass and screams.
By the time I got inside, four bodies were already cooling on the floor — two townsfolk, two newcomers. Blood seeped into the warped wood, running lazy rivers between broken boots and spent shells.
Cameron was crouched behind the bar, his shotgun trembling in his hands. Mae stood dead center in the room, the broken sheriff’s star gleaming on her chest like a dare.
No tears. No shouting.
Just the crackling hum of violence still hanging in the air.
I stepped in, boots crunching glass. Smelled blood, sour whiskey, and the old stink of men who hadn’t believed in anything for too long.
“You alright?” I asked.
Mae nodded once.
Cameron blinked like he couldn’t believe it was over so quick.
It wasn’t.
Not by a long shot.
Hollow Bend had grown since we put up the star.
Word traveled fast.
Faster than bullets.
Fugitives, settlers, dreamers — all pouring in like rats swimming toward a drowning ship.
For a while, it worked.
We had a law.
A place to sleep.
A hope you could bite and not chip a tooth on.
Then the wrong ones came too.
Men with hungry eyes.
Men with old grudges.
Men who wanted to carve a piece for themselves and call it justice.
The four dead ones today were only the first to spill blood over it.
Not the last.
By sundown, the saloon was boarded up.
The bodies were planted shallow in the hard ground behind the livery stable.
No markers.
No prayers.
Mae said a few words, soft and sure, while Cameron and I stood silent with our hats over our hearts.
The air smelled like hot iron and old sweat.
At dusk, I met with the town council — a handful of old ranchers, a blacksmith with a busted leg, a preacher who hadn’t smiled since the world burned, and an ex-slaver trying to find absolution in digging latrines.
They wanted to know what we were gonna do.
I told them.
Simple words.
No pretty paint.
“We hold.”
The attack came three days later.
Not from the Carrion Barons.
Not from raiders.
From inside.
Men who’d sworn to Mae’s badge.
Men who smiled when they swore it.
They hit just after dark, setting fire to the grain stores and shooting anyone still wearing the old tin star we’d hammered onto the front of the sheriff’s office.
I woke to gunfire and the stink of burning hay.
Ran into the street, rifle in one hand, boots half-pulled on.
The sky was a bleeding wound above Hollow Bend.
Orange and black and screaming.
Mae was already on the move, dragging Cameron with her toward the east wall.
A shot cracked the dirt between her feet.
Another clipped her satchel.
I saw the shooter — a man named Vance I’d shook hands with not two days ago — lining up for a clean kill.
I shot him first.
Hard.
Fast.
No second shot needed.
I don’t miss when it matters.
It was chaos.
Friends turned to wolves.
Families split down the middle.
By midnight, Hollow Bend was a burning ruin.
By sunrise, it was a graveyard.
Maybe thirty survived.
Maybe fewer.
Mae survived.
Cameron survived.
I did too.
Though parts of me stayed dead in that ash heap.
In the end, we rounded up the traitors — the ones who hadn’t already bled into the dirt — and hauled them into what was left of the sheriff’s office.
No trials.
No speeches.
Just Mae, standing on the broken steps, holding the badge high over her head.
And a choice.
Leave Hollow Bend.
Or hang for what they’d done.
Most left.
One didn’t.
We buried him quiet in the same ground he’d tried to steal.
Hollow Bend didn’t die that day.
It hurt.
It bled.
It shrank down to a hard knot of grit and bone and stubbornness.
But it lived.
Because we chose to live.
Not because we were better.
Not because we were stronger.
Because we were too damn stubborn to quit.
When the fires burned out, I found Mae sitting on the sheriff’s porch, swinging her boots over the edge like she didn’t have the weight of a dying town on her shoulders.
I sat down beside her.
She didn’t look at me.
Didn’t need to.
“You did good,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
Just clutched that battered star tighter against her chest.
The wind rose, carrying the ash and the salt and the memory of every man we’d left behind.
I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
Didn’t matter.
We’d bought today with blood.
Chapter 4: The Last Stand
We heard them before we saw them.
Engines.
Marching boots.
The low, bone-deep thunder of something bigger than tanks, bigger than anything the Waste had thrown at us before.
I stood on the east wall of Hollow Bend, rifle slung over my back, hands resting light on the battered wood.
The sun hadn’t even burned the mist off the valley yet, but I could feel the heat coming — heat from men, and guns, and the kind of hatred that outlived reason.
Mae climbed up beside me, light on her feet like always, the broken star pinned to her chest.
Cameron followed, his hat pulled low to hide the bruise blossoming under his eye.
Below us, the town waited.
Thirty-five souls, if you counted the babies.
Men and women who had bled and buried and built with whatever pieces the old world hadn’t stolen.
We weren’t ready.
We were never going to be ready.
Didn’t matter.
They were coming.
And we were still breathing.
The Waste had finally sent its worst.
All of them.
The Red Hounds, what’s left of the Carrion Barons, a dozen minor gangs waving black banners stitched with teeth and knives.
They hadn’t come for the badge.
They hadn’t come for the town.
They came for the idea.
The idea that a broken world didn’t have to stay broken.
The first shells hit just past sunrise.
Blew the west stables flat.
Turned half the grain stores into a burning storm.
I pulled Cameron down behind the barricade and shouted orders till my throat split.
Mae ran the rooftops like a ghost, dropping shots through windows and cracks, hitting harder than grown men twice her size.
The sky went black with smoke.
The air tasted of salt and iron and death.
It wasn’t a battle.
It was a culling.
And we were the ones pinned against the fence.
Hours bled into each other.
I lost track of time.
Lost track of blood.
Only thing I knew was the heat of the rifle in my hands, the bite of splinters in my palms, the endless roar of hate battering at our walls.
We fell back street by street, building by building.
The old saloon went first, torched out from the inside.
Then the livery.
Then the chapel, its broken steeple finally toppling with a scream like the earth itself giving up.
We pulled everyone back to the square.
One last stand.
One last breath.
I found Mae near the dry fountain, kneeling beside a wounded man — Old Webb, the blacksmith — trying to patch his leg where it had been torn near clean through.
She looked up when she saw me.
Not scared.
Not crying.
Just… steady.
Like the weight of it had finally settled in her bones.
I crouched beside her.
Pulled a scrap of rag from my belt and tied it tight around Webb’s thigh.
The old man nodded, teeth clenched.
“Sam,” Mae said.
Her voice was quiet.
Sure.
“We don’t run.”
“No,” I said.
“We don’t surrender.”
“No.”
“We hold.”
I looked at her.
Looked at the dozen faces gathering around, guns low, eyes high.
Dust and iron.
That’s all we had left.
And it was enough.
The final assault came at dusk.
They charged the square like a flood, screaming and firing and ripping what was left of Hollow Bend into ragged ribbons.
We fired until the barrels burned our hands.
Fought with fists and knives and teeth when the bullets ran dry.
I lost track of Cameron somewhere in the smoke and screaming.
Lost track of myself too.
When it ended, it ended fast.
The last of them broke.
Fled.
Ran screaming into the Waste, leaving their dead behind.
We didn’t chase.
Didn’t cheer.
Just stood there, broken and bloody and breathing.
Alive.
There wasn’t much left of Hollow Bend when the sun rose.
Charred skeletons of buildings.
Ash swirling in the streets.
Blood soaking into the dust.
But there were still people.
Still souls who had chosen to stay, chosen to fight, chosen to bleed for something bigger than a meal or a gun.
We gathered at the fountain — what was left of it — and Mae climbed up onto the broken stone.
She held the star high.
Cracked.
Blackened.
Still shining.
Not because the world made it easy.
But because we made it matter.
I leaned against what used to be the saloon doorframe, feeling every cracked rib and bruised bone like old friends come to visit.
Cameron limped up beside me, blood caked to his face, his mouth split in a grin.
Mae looked out over Hollow Bend — what was left of it — and said five words.
Quiet.
Clear.
Steel in every letter.
“We are the last riders.”
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
We didn’t rebuild right away.
Too much to bury first.
But by the time the dust settled and the rains finally came, Hollow Bend still stood.
Not because of luck.
Not because of mercy.
Because we chose it.
Because we stayed when the world said run.
Because even a broken badge still means something if you’re willing to pay for it in dust and iron.
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