Chapter 33
Frost cracked beneath Barb’s boots before the first hint of sun pushed over the ridge.
The air tasted sharp, tinged with smoke that still drifted from the direction of town, a bitter reminder of what had burned weeks earlier.
She kept her shoulders straight despite the weight of the pack strapped tight against her spine.
The meat inside it shifted with each step, cold against the cloth.
The shells tucked into the inner pocket clinked faintly, a sound that felt too loud in the quiet morning.
The world looked hollow along the broken highway.
She stayed off the asphalt, keeping to the tree line, her steps weaving through fallen branches and patches of frostbitten grass.
Every few minutes, she paused to listen for movement.
Birds stayed silent, and there were no voices.
Only the distant creak of metal from abandoned vehicles ahead.
The highway had once carried people to supermarkets, schools, and work.
Instead, it held wrecked sedans, overturned vans, and trucks stripped to their frames.
Fire had eaten chunks of rubber. Windows stood shattered.
The grocery store on the right had collapsed inward, the roof caved in from heat and neglect. Charred aisles lay exposed.
Barb avoided the open stretches. The county had changed.
Smoke lingered in low pockets, drifting between hills like a bruised ghost that refused to lift.
Rust spread across anything metal that the fires hadn’t consumed.
The skeletons of old billboards loomed overhead, their empty frames rattling faintly in the wind.
She crouched behind a burned-out SUV, scanning the area ahead.
The sound of shouting drifted from somewhere beyond the next rise.
Metal clanged together, dogs barked, and somewhere a crowd murmured.
People in groups were unpredictable. People with nothing to lose were worse.
She shifted the pack’s weight and continued forward.
The trees thinned until she could see the edge of what had become a trading hub.
The old farm supply store was half-burned, half-standing.
Charred beams stuck out at odd angles. The parking lot had transformed into a cluster of barrels where small fires burned.
People circled the flames in tired huddles, hands cupped around the warmth.
Their clothes were layered with mismatched fabrics, torn coats, and scarves made from old shirts.
Some held weapons openly, machetes and sharpened pipes.
Others hid their hands in pockets, their posture wary.
Barb stayed in the shadows at first, observing.
A man with a cracked leather jacket guarded a pile of scavenged tools.
A woman with a wagon filled with jars of home-canned vegetables sat on an overturned bucket, watching everyone with distrust. A teenager with mismatched gloves carried a rope over his shoulder.
Dogs wandered between the groups, ribs visible through patches of fur.
Salt appeared only twice among the visible goods.
One man carried a small fabric pouch of it and held it close to his chest. Another woman had a jar that looked half full, sealed with wax and tied shut with a string.
The rarity made Barb’s shoulders tense. If salt was scarce, trading for it meant she had to be careful.
She stepped closer to the crowd. The first faces that noticed her did so with suspicion. Strangers were threats until proven otherwise. A man with dull eyes stepped in front of her path, his hand resting against the handle of a knife tucked in his belt.
“You trading?” he asked.
“Yes,” Barb said.
“What for?”
“Salt and seeds, if possible.”
“What do you have?”
Barb lifted a corner of the cloth, revealing the wrapped meat. Steam hovered faintly in the cold.
The man’s eyes sharpened. Hunger flickered across his face. He licked his lips, then stepped aside. “Try the woman with the cracked hands,” he said. “She does honest trades. The others will rob you blind.”
Barb nodded and continued on. She found the woman near a barrel fire.
Her hands carried the scars of years of farm work, deep cracks from cold weather, and stains that looked permanent. She examined Barb with a level gaze that lacked both hostility and warmth. “You are carrying meat,” the woman said.
“Yes,” Barb said.
“Fresh?”
“Processed yesterday.”
The woman’s eyebrow lifted slightly. “You did the work yourselves?”
“Yes.”
“That must have taken strength.”
Barb didn’t answer, and the woman nodded toward her pack.
“Show me the cuts.”
Barb unwrapped the cloth enough for the woman to inspect. She studied the marbling, pressed a finger into one slab, and checked its firmness. Her breath fogged the air as she considered the trade.
“I have salt,” the woman said quietly. “Not much, but enough to buy you time.”
“How much?”
“One pound. Maybe a little more.”
Barb waited.
The woman tapped her finger against the barrel rim, thinking. Then she met Barb’s eyes. “Two pounds of beef. Five shells.”
Barb held her expression steady, even though the price made her stomach tighten. Meat weighed more than salt, but salt preserved everything else. Without it, the winter would become a season of starvation.
“That’s high,” Barb said.
“It’s honest,” the woman replied. “Salt is rare now. People die over it. Fire took the stores, and flooding took the rest. What little remains is guarded.”
“I know.”
“Then you know the price is fair. Your beef is good, not watered or spoiled. You’ll get days of preservation for what you give.”
Barb considered the woman’s posture, her steady breathing, and the tension in her shoulders. She wasn’t lying. She wasn’t testing for weakness. She simply dealt in reality, and Barb respected that. “Deal,” she said.
The woman nodded and began scooping salt from a sealed jar into a cloth sack. The grains glimmered like pieces of crushed bone. Barb handed over the meat and five shells, counting them slowly so the woman knew she wasn’t being cheated.
When the exchange finished, the woman tied the salt tight and pressed it into Barb’s palm. “Keep it close,” she said. “Men here would slit a throat for less.”
“I will,” Barb said.
She secured the pouch inside her coat and stepped back. The weight of the salt settled against her ribs, warmer than she expected, almost comforting. She moved to another trader, a man with a tarp laid out behind him. Piles of seeds sat in small bowls with handwritten scraps for labels.
The man had sharp features and a hollow jawline, eyes that scanned her pack and her hands before rising to her face. “You looking for seed?” he asked.
“Yes,” Barb said.
“What kind?”
“Something that winters well and is resilient.”
The man nodded slightly. “That’s most of what I have left.”
She traded a small handful of dried meat scraps, pieces too thin or uneven to keep for the farm.
The man accepted them quickly, his hunger obvious.
He handed her two small pouches of seeds tied with twine.
She placed them in her pack and turned to leave, but a hiss of whispers caught her attention.
Two men stood near the burned wall of the store, voices low and faces tense.
One kept glancing toward the crowd as if expecting someone to appear.
“They hit the ridge last week,” one man whispered. “Took everything. Livestock first. Then the people.”
“Took the women,” the other man said. “All of them.”
“They aren’t drifters. They’re organized.”
“Uniform scraps. Old gear. Some of them wore tags.”
Barb’s pulse slowed into something cold and controlled. The men kept talking.
“They carved the mark into posts.”
“They killed two men and left them hanging.”
“Scouts came first. A boy, a woman, and a man with a machete.”
Her breath went thin. The description matched perfectly—same number, formation, and purposeful movement.
She felt the weight drop into her stomach like a stone sinking through water.
The raiders hadn’t been passing through.
They had been mapping their land. She stepped away before anyone noticed her listening and continued through the crowd with her posture unchanged.
Her face stayed calm while her pulse thudded in her ears.
The final trade was with a teenager who offered her a small bag of dried mint in exchange for meat trimmings.
The mint would help the goats through the winter.
With everything secured, she tightened the straps on her pack, positioned it flush against her spine, and wrapped her coat around it.
The path home would be long, and visibility near the woods had grown thinner with the shifting smoke.
She moved toward the tree line. Behind her, the trading hub murmured with voices and clatter.
Ahead of her, the world narrowed into silence.
The weight of salt hit her with a new sense of urgency.
Ten pounds meant survival, but the information she carried weighed far more.
The raiders weren’t wandering; they were hunting.
Barb stepped into the forest. Every twig snap, rustle in the leaves, and shift in the wind carried new meaning.
The trio who had scouted her land hadn’t been alone.
They had been the beginning. She tightened her grip on her coat and walked deeper into the woods, the cold settling around her like armor.
Home waited ahead, and so did whatever would follow.