Chapter 13
The road curved east, away from the highway, and fewer people walked beside them with each mile.
Rachel checked the map twice, counted intersections, and kept to the smaller road toward the nearest town.
The shoulder pressed gravel and weeds against the asphalt, and her pack dug into her shoulders.
They passed a sedan with all four doors open and the trunk propped.
A cardboard box sat beside the bumper, holding a paperback book, one worn sneaker, and a plastic bottle of shampoo.
Farther on, a torn leather suitcase spilled clothing across the gravel.
“What’s the point of bringing it if you’re just going to dump it?” Sophie asked.
“Sometimes people pack before they understand what carrying it means,” Rachel said.
“It’s stupid.”
Sophie was right, though Rachel understood the impulse.
Need and fear blurred once everything had to be carried.
They passed a family pushing a grocery cart down the road with three bags rattling inside.
By eleven, the sun pressed through Rachel’s clothes, and sweat gathered beneath the pack straps.
Sophie’s walk had changed. She shifted her weight to the outside of each foot, and her steps had shortened.
When the trees opened on both sides, Rachel stopped and set her pack in the gravel.
“We should check your feet,” Rachel said.
“My feet are fine,” Sophie said.
“They’re not, and we both know it. Sit down.”
Sophie sat on the dirt shoulder and pulled off her right shoe and sock without looking at Rachel. Red skin marked her heel, and a small blister had formed at the edge. Rachel knew it would worsen with every mile.
“This one I can fix. The next one will be worse. Take off the other shoe,” Rachel said.
The left foot had matching redness but no blisters yet. She cleaned the skin around the right heel. Sophie didn’t flinch. Rachel knew that kind of stillness; the lesson had started long before this road.
“You should’ve said something earlier,” Rachel said.
“You would’ve stopped,” Sophie said.
“Yes. That’s the point. Try not to change the way you walk too much. The extra sock should cut down on the rubbing, but tell me the second it starts getting worse.”
“What happens when both feet have blisters?”
“Then we stop until they heal,” Rachel said.
Sophie put her shoes back on and stood without complaint.
Rachel shouldered her pack, and the weight settled across her aching shoulders.
The road stretched before curving past a stand of oaks.
The first farmhouse sat two hundred yards back from the road.
An elderly man sat beside the front steps with a shotgun across his lap.
She stopped at the edge of the driveway with Sophie slightly behind her.
“We’re looking for water,” Rachel called. “We can pay, or we can work for it.”
The man studied them both. “Hand pump by the barn. Takes about twenty strokes to prime it. I’ve got three barrels filled, but they’re for my wife and me. I can’t spare more than what you can carry.”
Rachel thanked him and walked toward the barn. The iron pump handle was worn smooth, and it took more than twenty strokes before water came in weak spurts. She filled one bottle halfway and handed it to Sophie.
“I appreciate it,” Rachel said.
“There’s another place a mile east. Bigger farm, red barn. They’ve got a deeper well and a better pump. They were still filling containers this morning,” the man said.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m sending you away empty.”
They walked the mile east and found the red barn. Fifteen people waited in the farmyard, each holding something to fill. Some carried plastic bottles. Others had gallon jugs or dented cooking pots. A tired man in his fifties stood beside the pump with his arms crossed.
“One container per person. Fill it and move on. I’m not running a relief station,” the farmer said.
A woman near the front argued that her children needed more than one bottle could hold.
The farmer didn’t budge. Three men behind her spoke in low, angry voices.
Rachel watched their hands and eyes more than their words.
Need became demand, and demand became anger.
Rachel and Sophie waited at the end of the line.
When their turn came, each filled one bottle, and the farmer waved them on.
Behind them, the argument grew louder. A man pointed at his five-gallon bucket, and the farmer’s voice carried across the yard.
“I said one container. That’s not one container. That’s a week’s worth of water for my family, and you’re not taking it,” the farmer said.
They walked east without looking back. The shouting followed them for half a mile before the trees swallowed it.
Sophie drank from her bottle in small sips, and Rachel did the same.
The water was cold and tasted faintly of iron, but it was the best thing Rachel had tasted since the highway.
By midafternoon, Sophie’s pace had slowed enough that Rachel checked behind them more often than ahead.
The girl didn’t complain, but she’d stopped hiding the way she walked.
When they reached an abandoned produce stand with a partial roof and two benches, Rachel called a stop.
“Take your shoes off. Let me see your feet,” Rachel said.
That time Sophie didn’t argue. Both heels had blistered through the tape, and the right one had opened. Rachel cleaned both heels, applied fresh tape, moved heavier items into her own pack, and handed Sophie one cracker.
“We’re stopping for the day. Right here,” Rachel said.
“There’s still light.”
“There’s also tomorrow, and I’d rather you could walk when it comes.”
Rachel spread the map across a wooden bench and found their position from the road number and last intersection.
She measured the distance to Sophie’s aunt’s address twice.
They’d covered twelve miles since leaving the SUV, and more than forty still waited ahead.
At their pace, with stops and Sophie’s worsening feet, they were looking at four more days of walking.
It could become five. Every day east meant another day Hannah and Caleb wondered if she was coming home.
Rachel folded the map before Sophie could study her face. The produce stand’s roof kept off the worst of the sun. Rachel divided the remaining crackers and handed Sophie her portion. The girl ate slowly while she watched the road east.