Trust is a thing the Smiths cannot afford to give and cannot afford to withhold. Inside a shelter that has already begun to rot from the inside, one man stands apart from the people who run it, and the only way out runs straight through the question of whether he is worth believing. Daniel Reeves has the hands of a man who used to keep people alive for a living. He also has every reason a careful family has learned to fear.

When the situation breaks, it breaks all at once, and there is no time left to vet anyone. Reeves does not ask for trust. He earns it the only way it can be earned under fire, by being the steadiest man in the worst room, and he helps the family break contact and get back toward the high ground of Camp Ridge. Everyone who walks out does not walk out the same, and the road home costs more than the team meant to pay.

What the Smiths carry back up the ridge is the first real ally they have brought inside the wire since the collapse - a former EMT whose competence rewrites the camp's survival math overnight, and a man whose word now carries weight at a gate that trusts almost no one. Mark does not like needing help. He likes the alternative less. And somewhere in what Reeves knows is the name of another man out in this county, a search-and-rescue operator who could change everything for Camp Ridge, if he can be found at all.

They came home with more than they left with. They also came home to a ridge that has grown more dangerous in their absence, and to a threat the camp can feel before it can see.

Remnant drops Saturdays and Sundays at 1200pm ET for paying subscribers — seven days before the public feed.

Subscribers also get the companion article that expands the story beyond what the audio carries, plus access to the community where Guardians work through what each episode means for their own families.

Everyone else waits until 700pm ET the following weekend.

Subscribe HERE — don't wait on the story that's already being told.

THIS EPISODE WAS PUBLISHED A WEEK AGO FOR SUBSCRIBERS

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Trust is a thing the Smiths cannot afford to give and cannot afford to withhold. Inside a shelter that has already begun to rot from the inside, one man stands apart from the people who run it, and the only way out runs straight through the question of whether he is worth believing. Daniel Reeves has the hands of a man who used to keep people alive for a living. He also has every reason a careful family has learned to fear.

When the situation breaks, it breaks all at once, and there is no time left to vet anyone. Reeves does not ask for trust. He earns it the only way it can be earned under fire, by being the steadiest man in the worst room, and he helps the family break contact and get back toward the high ground of Camp Ridge. Everyone who walks out does not walk out the same, and the road home costs more than the team meant to pay.

What the Smiths carry back up the ridge is the first real ally they have brought inside the wire since the collapse - a former EMT whose competence rewrites the camp's survival math overnight, and a man whose word now carries weight at a gate that trusts almost no one. Mark does not like needing help. He likes the alternative less. And somewhere in what Reeves knows is the name of another man out in this county, a search-and-rescue operator who could change everything for Camp Ridge, if he can be found at all.

They came home with more than they left with. They also came home to a ridge that has grown more dangerous in their absence, and to a threat the camp can feel before it can see.

Remnant drops Saturdays and Sundays at 1200pm ET for paying subscribers — seven days before the public feed.

Subscribers also get the companion article that expands the story beyond what the audio carries, plus access to the community where Guardians work through what each episode means for their own families.

Everyone else waits until 700pm ET the following weekend.

Subscribe HERE — don't wait on the story that's already being told.

Four miles north of Camp Ridge, a white country church is still keeping its gravel raked. Hot water for strangers. Firewood split to even lengths. A cross high on the gable and a pastor at the door with a smile that never slips. Two weeks into the collapse, with the living staying off the roads and the dead past counting, somebody up there is spending calories on appearances. Calloway sends a vetted team to find out why, and the answer starts going wrong before the trucks stop rolling.

Inside, the warmth is a mechanism. The pews face front because somebody decided they would. A woman against the wall has taught herself not to look at the door. A child has learned that stillness is the only thing that costs nothing. And moving through the middle of the performance with a water bucket and eleven days of silence is Daniel Reeves, a former EMT who walked in looking for shelter and found out what this sanctuary actually collects. He is the one man in the building who may still be what he says he is, and the team has no safe way to ask him.

What follows the trucks home changes everything Camp Ridge thought it knew about its own wire. The church was told they were coming before they ever left. A midnight figure comes up out of the dark with empty hands and a truth that starts a clock: people locked under a church floor, trucks coming to take them south, and one daylight left to do anything about it. In a corridor where Pryor's reach buys medicine, radios, and pulpits, and where even the rumors run armed, the camp keeps hearing one more name on the wind: a former Black Ops Search and Rescue technician living off-grid somewhere in these hills, a man Pryor wants found. Trust was already the scarcest supply on the ridge. Tonight it gets rationed.

Remnant drops Saturdays and Sundays at 1200pm ET for paying subscribers — seven days before the public feed.

Subscribers also get the companion article that expands the story beyond what the audio carries, plus access to the community where Guardians work through what each episode means for their own families.

Everyone else waits until 700pm ET the following weekend.

Subscribe HERE — don't wait on the story that's already being told.