Chapter 16
Rachel later remembered the previous two days as a blur.
Exhaustion bent time until each mile felt separate from the last. Her shoulders had moved past sharp pain into a dull ache under the pack straps.
Sophie had developed a second blister beside the first, and she had stopped mentioning her feet at all.
They ate the last beans cold from the can because neither of them had the energy for a fire.
The packet of nuts and the last mints were all that remained.
Rachel had filled their bottles from a stream on the fourth morning, then boiled the water over a small fire.
It still tasted of mud and minerals, but it was safer than drinking it untreated.
By the fifth morning, she counted the miles against landmarks from the map.
A water tower, a crossroads with a faded billboard, and a Baptist church with its doors chained all marked progress.
Each landmark meant they were closer, and each one meant Sophie had walked another mile on feet that needed rest.
The road to the aunt’s property was gravel and narrower than the map suggested. Rachel had expected a farm visible from the road, with a driveway and outbuildings. Instead, the address led them down a lane between pines and into a clearing where the house sat farther back than she’d expected.
The clearing felt wrong before Rachel knew why.
It was quiet. Not the thinner quiet of back roads, but the deep kind that carried no engines, voices, or movement.
The house was a two-story farmhouse with a covered porch and white paint grayed at the edges.
No cars were in the driveway. The chimney gave no smoke, though the morning was cold enough for a fire.
One neighboring house had plywood visible through the windows.
Another sat with its front door open and no movement inside.
North beyond the tree line, a thin column of smoke held against the pale sky.
It was too small for a structure fire. Rachel noted it and turned back to the house.
The mailbox had the number painted in fading white.
Rachel checked it against the address on her paperwork, folded inside her pack and smudged from the road. She confirmed it twice.
“This is it,” she said.
Sophie had been walking three steps behind her for the past hour. At the words, her careful gait straightened. Her chin came up, and her eyes fixed on the house. She walked past Rachel and down the gravel driveway, her backpack bouncing against her hips.
“Aunt Diane? Uncle Mark? It’s Sophie. Sophie Calder,” Sophie called.
The porch stayed empty, the windows dark. Sophie’s footsteps crossed the gravel, and a crow called from beyond the barn. She reached the porch steps, winced when her right foot hit the wood, and knocked hard on the front door.
“Aunt Diane? It’s Sophie. Please, it’s me,” Sophie called.
Rachel came up the driveway more slowly, her pack pulling at her shoulders.
She circled the house while Sophie kept knocking.
No broken windows. No splintered frames.
No blood on the steps or siding. That was the first thing Rachel looked for and the first thing she was relieved not to find.
The back door was locked. The garage doors were padlocked from the outside.
Beside the garage, a tended garden held neat rows of turned soil and young plants.
Someone had been there recently. Rachel returned to the porch.
Sophie had stopped knocking and stood with one hand on the doorframe.
“It’s locked,” Rachel said.
“I know,” Sophie said.
Rachel was about to suggest checking the neighbors when she saw the plastic freezer bag taped to the front door.
A folded sheet of notebook paper sat inside it.
The black marker on the outside read, For relatives.
Sophie saw it, too. She worked at the tape with clumsy urgency, pulled the paper free, and unfolded it so Rachel could read over her shoulder.
Rachel already knew from Sophie’s face that the note wasn’t what the girl had hoped to find.
The handwriting was neat and slanted, written in blue ink on lined paper.
If you’re reading this, we survived the EMP.
The house is secure, and we have supplies.
Sophie’s cousins were at school in Millerton when everything stopped.
We left with the Hendersons to get the children and bring them home.
We’re using back roads and being careful.
We’ll return as quickly as we can. If Sophie arrives, please wait for us.
There’s a key under the mat by the garage door and canned food in the cellar. We love you, Sophie. Stay safe.
It was signed by Aunt Diane and Uncle Mark and dated two days after the EMP.
Sophie read it again, slower, as if the words might change. They didn’t. She folded the paper and slipped it back into the bag. Then she stood on the porch with the bag in her hand and looked at the empty driveway, the quiet yard, and the dark windows of the house where she’d been sent to live.
“How long do we wait?” she asked.
The question wasn’t directed at Rachel. Sophie seemed to be asking the porch, the door, or the plastic bag in her hand. Her voice was flat, as if she already knew the answer.
Rachel checked the date on the note again. “I don’t know.”
Sophie nodded, tucked the bag into her backpack, and sat on the top step with her knees pulled to her chest. She looked smaller than she had in days.