Chapter 33
The road curved east along land Charlotte had driven a hundred times in her mail truck without really seeing.
On foot, with evening thinning the light and her lungs burning, the same pavement felt abandoned.
She walked on the shoulder because the center of the road felt too exposed.
The borrowed T-shirt hung loose, stiff with dried blood and ash, and the bandages on her hands had begun to loosen with sweat.
Every twenty paces, the cough took her, bending her forward until she spat onto the roadside before forcing herself onward.
Her father’s watch was in her right hand.
She had considered putting it in her pocket but couldn’t let go.
The crystal pressed into her palm with each step.
She held the water bottle in her left hand, taking small sips because Ellen had told her to stay hydrated, and Charlotte still followed instructions when they made sense.
The first stalled vehicle appeared around a bend: a blue sedan pulled onto the shoulder with its driver’s door open and keys still in the ignition.
A child’s stuffed animal lay on the passenger seat.
Charlotte approached slowly, though she already knew what she would find.
The dashboard was dead, with no battery indicator or radio display.
Fifty yards later, a pickup truck sat across both lanes, its front bumper against the guardrail.
The bed held a suitcase, a toolbox, and a folded tent.
The scene was eerily familiar. Charlotte noticed twelve vehicles in the first mile, all abandoned with no signs of damage.
They remained still, their electronics lifeless along with the power grid, while their occupants had presumably wandered off on foot or found older, more reliable vehicles.
As she continued down the road, she caught sight of a house set back in the shadows, dark and empty except for a curtain that fluttered gently in an upstairs window.
Someone was home, quietly observing the road and pondering whether the lone woman walking east was a threat or just another sign of the bizarre circumstances enveloping them all.
As she made her way farther along, the road dipped into a shallow valley where the trees grew denser, bringing a welcome drop in temperature.
Charlotte embraced the coolness. It was a relief from her persistent cough, which had settled into a painful yet steady rhythm, allowing her to press on.
Her heart ached as she passed a roadside diner that loomed dark and empty, save for a car with its trunk thrown open and luggage strewn across the asphalt.
The front door hung ajar, revealing tables still set, as if diners had abruptly departed, leaving behind the warmth of their meals and the laughter that had once filled the air.
It was a heartbreaking reminder of the lives that had been interrupted, lost in the strange turn of events.
A handwritten sign was taped to the inside of the glass.
“Closed until further notice. God Bless.” The emptiness wasn’t just the absence of people.
It was evidence of how suddenly they had gone.
She saw her first living person a half mile into the valley.
It was a man in his sixties moving west with a backpack and a walking stick.
He angled toward the opposite shoulder without breaking stride.
Their eyes met across the road. He nodded in acknowledgment and kept going until the trees swallowed him.
The second person was a woman pushing a stroller at a pace just short of running.
She never looked at Charlotte. Her attention stayed fixed on the westward road that everyone except Charlotte had chosen.
She was three miles from where the wagon had left her when she found the first body.
It lay in the tall grass beside the road.
Charlotte wouldn’t have seen it if the boot hadn’t caught the light.
She stopped and bent through another coughing fit.
When she straightened, she made herself look.
A man in his thirties, lying on his side with one arm outstretched toward the road as if he had been crawling when he stopped.
His face was turned away from her, pressed into the grass, and Charlotte was grateful for that small mercy.
She had seen enough of death to recognize its signature even without the details.
The gas that had filled her lungs on Crestview Street and left her spitting blood onto ash.
The man had been running from it, or toward help, or simply away from whatever he had seen behind him, and the gas had reached him and taken him as efficiently as it had taken the people on their porches in Tuckerton.
Charlotte stood looking at the boot, at the denim jacket, at the unremarkable fact of a dead man lying in grass that would continue growing regardless of what had happened to the world above it.
She should have felt something. Horror, perhaps, grief for a stranger, or the renewed certainty that returning to Tuckerton was suicide.
What she felt instead was a focused clarity that settled into her chest.
She stepped around the body, giving it the space the dead deserved, and continued east. The road curved ahead, following the land as it had for decades. Charlotte followed it, one painful step at a time, toward whatever came next.