The wind shifted somewhere around Spring Green.

Cronauer had been walking for days, sticking to back roads and abandoned rail lines, sleeping in what was left of old sheds or under low brush when the weather allowed. His breath had started to fog again, which meant winter wasn’t done with him yet.

He passed through Mazomanie in silence. A rusted-out truck lay on its side across Main Street, its tires long stripped, its cabin half-swallowed by weeds. Somewhere down the block, a door creaked rhythmically in the wind, slapping against the frame like a slow metronome.

No people. No bodies. Just ghosts and rust.

The towns blurred together — Arena, Spring Green, Lone Rock. He didn’t stop unless he had to. There was no food in the grocery stores, no fuel in the stations. But every so often, if you knew where to look, there was something useful: a jar of aspirin under a collapsed sink, a box of .22 rounds buried under a workbench, a pack of cracked water purification tablets still sealed in foil.

He took only what he could carry.

In the evenings, he scanned the bands. Shortwave. Ham. Civil bands. FM when the clouds were thick enough. He’d catch snippets — voices arguing over static, a preacher reciting Revelation, a lonely kid singing badly into a CB mic. But once, near the edge of Richland Center, he heard something that stopped him mid-stride.

“…still no contact with 91.7. Repeat: no contact with the Viroqua repeater. All relays fallback to silent mode. Out.”

It was brief. Clear. No sign-off, no call sign. But it was the kind of broadcast only Norm would make — clean, clipped, encoded in routine.

Cronauer hiked harder after that.

By the time he hit Viola, his legs were fire and his last energy bar was just a wrapper in his pocket. The houses there had mostly burned, but a church basement had a dry corner and enough dust to tell him no one had been there in weeks.

He slept with the radio against his chest and woke to the first sound of rain in three days.

He was close now. He could feel it. Liberty Pole wasn’t far — and from there, if the roads still followed the old maps, Viroqua was just over the ridge.

He paused on the edge of town that morning and listened. Just static. But beneath it, like a heartbeat under floorboards, was the hum of something waiting.

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