Chapter 17
Rachel decided on the porch while Sophie sat on the steps below her.
Leaving now meant walking away from the only family Sophie had reason to believe was still alive.
Staying meant every hour at the farm was an hour Rachel wasn’t moving toward Hannah and Caleb, and that knowledge pressed hard against her ribs.
“We’ll wait. Not forever, but we’ll give it a few days,” Rachel said.
Sophie nodded without looking up. The note was in her backpack, and her hands stayed fixed on her knees.
The equipment shed stood thirty yards from the house, with corrugated metal walls and an unlocked sliding door.
Rachel found it while checking the outbuildings before dark.
The shed smelled of motor oil and dry hay, and the concrete floor was clean enough for the wool blanket.
Tools lined the walls. A workbench stood along the rear wall.
No vehicles, no generator, and nothing with an engine or battery remained.
Rachel left the blanket packed since they would be sleeping in the house.
“We’re not breaking into the house. The note says there’s a key under the garage mat and that if you arrive, we should wait here. You’re family. We’re using the house,” Rachel said.
“So, we can stay in the house?” Sophie asked.
“Yes. Your aunt left the key for this.”
Sophie accepted that with the same resigned nod she’d used since they found the empty house.
She set her backpack against the wall. Rachel left her there and walked to the boarded neighboring property because it was closest and they needed water.
An older couple lived there. The husband answered with a shotgun held low, and his wife stood behind him with her arms crossed.
Rachel explained who she was, why she was at Diane’s property, and what she needed.
The man considered this longer than Rachel had expected.
Then he lowered the shotgun and pointed toward the hand pump beside his barn.
“Pump’s there. Water’s there. Stack the firewood behind the house, and you can fill what you’re carrying,” the man said.
“Deal,” Rachel said.
She worked for two hours that afternoon, stacking split oak against the rear wall of the couple’s house.
Each heavy piece sent pain through the skin the pack straps had rubbed raw.
Sophie carried smaller logs with the careful gait her blistered feet forced on her.
By the time they finished, the stack stood waist-high, and the man let her fill both bottles and a plastic milk jug from the pump.
That evening, Rachel divided the cellar food at the kitchen table.
The full meal changed their situation immediately.
For the first time since leaving the SUV, neither of them had to measure every bite against the miles ahead.
They ate in silence, and Rachel set aside three small portions for the next day.
The note had told Sophie about the cellar, so using the food wasn’t stealing.
Rachel still rationed it carefully because Diane and Mark might be gone longer than they expected.
The first day passed without the aunt and uncle returning.
Rachel checked the road morning and evening and found nothing.
On the second morning, she left Sophie at the shed with strict instructions to stay put and walked to three nearby homes.
The first homeowner hadn’t seen Diane and Mark since before the EMP.
The second remembered them leaving with the Hendersons in a horse-drawn wagon two days after the lights went out.
They’d headed toward Millerton, twelve miles northeast. The third neighbor had only one useful fact. Nobody had seen them return.
“Roads are getting worse, not better,” he said. “Every day more people are walking, more fences going up, more folks deciding their neighbor’s problem isn’t theirs anymore. If they’re not back by now, I wouldn’t count on them making it at all.”
Rachel thanked him and walked back. The facts should have helped.
Instead, they pressed against the same sore place in her chest. Hannah and Caleb were more than two hundred miles west, waiting in a broken world without their mother.
That evening, Rachel spoke privately with the older couple while Sophie stacked kindling near the firewood pile.
She kept her voice low and her questions direct.
“If Sophie’s family doesn’t return, do you know anyone nearby she could stay with? Someone you trust who might take her in temporarily?” Rachel asked.
The wife studied Rachel carefully. “There’s a family two properties east. They’ve got two kids, and the mother used to teach at the elementary school. They’re good people. They’d take her if we asked,” the wife said.
“That’s all I needed to know. Thank you.”
Rachel turned to leave and found Sophie at the bottom of the porch steps with kindling in her arms. Her face had gone flat, the way it did when she was holding herself still.
She’d been close enough to hear at least part of the conversation.
Sophie stayed silent for the rest of the evening.
She stacked the kindling, ate without looking at Rachel, and went upstairs without saying goodnight.
Rachel tried twice to talk and got one-word answers.
Later, Sophie slept facing the wall while Rachel lay awake downstairs.
Before dawn, Rachel woke because the house felt wrong.
The silence seemed emptier. She reached for her pack, found it where she’d left it, then went upstairs to check Sophie’s room.
The bed was empty. Sophie’s backpack was gone from beside it.
Rachel checked the bathroom, the hallway, and the other bedrooms before the truth settled in.
Sophie wasn’t in the house. She checked the shed, then the downstairs rooms. Sophie’s shoes were gone from beside the door, and some of the food for the next day was missing, too.