It wasn’t quite a lost civilization, but sure as God made little green apples, it was a mystery. She felt a little ghoulish for the thrill—she was pretty sure the only way the people who had lived in Wild Sign could be silenced for months was if they had been killed. But it looked like no one else was pursuing this the way they—her pack—could.

“Let’s go look at the post office,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find some clues about who lived here.”

The post office was easy to pick out—it had its own sign. The door was ajar and the two windows were open to the air, the shutters designed to protect the interior from bad weather still hooked back.

There was a flutter of black wings and caws when Anna stepped inside. Even after the birds had escaped out the windows, the interior smelled of crow. It wasn’t a large space, maybe ten feet by ten feet. Shelves lined the wall opposite the door, empty of everything except a couple of birds’ nests. A newish, dust-covered camp chair emblazoned with the name of its manufacturer had been shoved against the shelving—Anna could see the drag marks in the dirt floor.

“They cut this lumber themselves,” Charles said, a hand on one wall. “It was well done, but there’s just a little more irregularity than you’d expect to find in commercially produced boards.”

“I don’t see any clues here,” Anna said, glancing at Charles to see if he had noticed something, something more than the lumber origin. But he shook his head in agreement.

So she said, “Your turn to pick where we go next.”

“Latrines.” He backed out of the post office and brushed aside a spiderweb trying to attach itself to the back of his neck.

She found herself grinning—because the speed of his decision had indicated he’d been thinking about it, and it was a very good place to look … and because it was honestly the last place she’d have suggested.

She followed him toward another clearly marked building behind the post office and a dozen yards downhill. She hadn’t noticed it before, but like the post office, there was a sign hung on the wall that read The Lavatories. There wouldn’t have been a real need for signs in a town this small. Someone must have enjoyed making them. Maybe the same someone who cut the lumber they’d used for their buildings.

“The Lavatories” was twice the size of the post office. There was a ladies’ entrance and a men’s, and each of them had two curtained stalls with composting toilets inside. Anna’s experience with composting toilets was nonexistent, but Charles didn’t flinch at opening them up and examining the waste receptacles—which were empty. All of them.