Chapter 21
The outdoor store smelled of canvas, rubber, and old stock left on the shelves too long.
Metal carabiners hung from a pegboard wall.
Ropes sat coiled in bins. Camping stoves, unused and still boxed, filled a shelf behind the counter where the owner could reach them without turning away from the door.
He was in his fifties, with a close-trimmed beard going gray at the edges and weathered hands that matched the gear around him. He watched Rachel and Sophie enter.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“We need equipment. Backpacks, rain gear, water purification, and shoes that fit her,” Rachel said.
The man studied Sophie’s feet beneath the cuffs of her jeans. They were wrapped in T-shirt strips, and the right heel was swollen enough to show through the fabric.
“I’ve got all of that. The question is what you’ve got to pay with,” he said.
“Cash and trade, if you’re interested,” Rachel said.
“Cash still works for now. I’m starting to think it won’t for much longer, but today it buys what’s on the shelf. What are you trading?”
Rachel set her pack on the counter and opened the county emergency kit.
She’d learned that showing everything at once weakened a bargain.
She removed items one at a time and kept the medical supplies she couldn’t replace deep in the bag.
The duct tape came out first, followed by the flathead screwdriver.
She kept the Phillips screwdriver and the folding knife, then set the trade items in a small pile.
“This still has value,” the owner said.
“So does the screwdriver,” Rachel said.
“Everything has value if you’re patient enough. I’ll take the tape and the screwdriver.”
Rachel added twenty dollars to the pile.
The owner went behind the counter and pulled down two internal-frame backpacks larger than the ones they carried.
They had padded shoulder straps and hip belts to shift weight away from Rachel’s raw shoulders.
The fabric was heavier, with more compartments and loops for extra gear.
He added two rain ponchos folded into small packets, a box of water purification tablets, and two pairs of thick wool hiking socks.
For Sophie, he produced women’s hiking shoes that matched her wrapped feet.
They were the previous season’s model, marked down before the EMP and priced at forty dollars despite the handwritten sale sticker still attached to the box.
Sophie tried them on beside the counter and winced as her heels settled into the new padding.
“They’ll hurt for the first day. Then they’ll hurt less than what you’re wearing now,” the owner said.
Sophie didn’t argue. She kept the shoes on and stuffed her old pair into her backpack without being asked.
The total came to ninety dollars after the trade.
Rachel counted out the cash, nearly everything she had left, and accepted the paper bag for the new gear.
The owner made change from a metal box beneath the counter, then paused.
“You know about the bike shop? It’s two blocks north under the blue awning.
An older guy named Ed runs it. He has a few bicycles that still work because they don’t have computers.
Pre-2000 models, mostly. He’s bartering for medicine, tools, and cash if you’ve got it.
Might be worth a look if you’re trying to cover distance,” the owner said.
Rachel understood the value of bicycles before the owner finished speaking.
Mechanical bicycles didn’t need electronics or fuel.
They needed legs, balance, and parts that still moved.
On bikes, they could cover twenty or thirty miles in a day instead of the eight or ten they managed on foot.
Brenton no longer felt two weeks away. It became a distance they could count in days.
“Medical supplies are what he wants most. Antibiotics, pain relievers, anything for infections. He’s got a bad knee and a wife with arthritis,” the owner said.
Rachel looked at Sophie, then at the first-aid kit still tucked in her pack.
She had half a roll of gauze, medical tape, scissors, nitrile gloves, and a nearly full bottle of generic pain relievers.
She could spare some of the pain reliever, but not all of it.
She couldn’t spare the gauze or medical tape.
Infections killed quickly when supplies ran out, and she’d seen enough wounds on the highway to know what happened without clean dressings.
“Let’s go look,” she said.
The bicycle shop occupied a narrow storefront beneath a faded blue awning.
Bicycles hung from ceiling hooks and leaned against the walls.
Dozens of them waited in various states of repair.
Ed was thin and in his sixties, with grease beneath his fingernails and careful movements that spared his body strain.
He listened to Rachel’s request, studied Sophie’s wrapped feet, and pointed toward the rear of the shop.
“I’ve got two that might work for you. They’re not pretty, but they’re simple. No electronics, mechanical shifters, steel frames, rim brakes, and tires that hold air,” Ed said.
He led them to a workbench where two older mountain bikes stood on kickstands. Both had straight handlebars and scratched paint. One was slightly larger than the other. Ed checked each wheel, tested the brakes, and adjusted the smaller seat by sight to fit Sophie.
“The chains need oil. I’ve got some. The tires are at pressure. The brakes work. The seats are uncomfortable, but that’s true of every bicycle ever made,” Ed said.
“How much?” Rachel asked.
“What have you got?”
Rachel offered the cash she had left and half the pain reliever from the first-aid kit. She counted the capsules into a small plastic bag, enough to make the trade worthwhile without leaving herself and Sophie with nothing.
“Deal. Listen, these parts won’t be easy to replace. If a spoke breaks, you’ll need one that fits. If a tire goes, you’re walking until you find another that matches the rim. Bicycles are simple until they aren’t. After that, they’re dead weight,” Ed said.
Rachel understood. She’d carried enough dead weight to recognize the difference between useful and essential.
The bicycles were both. She paid him, accepted the bottle of chain oil, and helped Sophie adjust the smaller bike’s seat.
They transferred supplies into the new packs, strapped the larger pack across the rear rack of Rachel’s bicycle, and secured Sophie’s smaller pack to her handlebars with the bungee cords Ed included.
They wheeled the bicycles onto the sidewalk.
Rachel swung her leg over the frame, settled onto the seat, and placed her feet on the pedals.
The bike responded with solid mechanical certainty after days of walking.
She pushed off, and it carried her forward smoothly enough to catch her breath.
Behind her, Sophie mounted more carefully.
Her blistered feet found the pedals, and then she was moving, too, the smaller bicycle tracing a shaky line behind Rachel’s steady pace.
They rode east for two blocks, then turned south onto a quieter residential street where the pavement was intact, and the houses had curtains drawn.
The wind pushed against Rachel’s face, cool and constant, carrying the smell of cut grass and distant smoke.
Her legs found a rhythm she hadn’t used in years, and the pain in her shoulders eased as the weight transferred to the bicycle frame instead of her back.
For the first time since the highway, since the lights went out and the world went quiet, Rachel let herself believe Brenton might be days away instead of weeks.
She pedaled toward it with both hands on the handlebars while Sophie rode three lengths behind her, the new shoes already easing the damage from the old blisters.