Chapter 22
The bicycles changed everything. Rachel had forgotten the freedom of moving under her own power without every step grinding against blisters and raw shoulders.
They covered twelve miles before midday on secondary roads that wound between neighborhoods and abandoned gas stations, then turned onto a county route south of the worst refugee traffic.
Rachel kept the map in her back pocket, folded to show each day’s route within a twelve-mile radius.
They slept wherever they could stay out of sight.
Each morning, they rode west within an hour of sunrise.
Every mile carried them farther from Sophie’s aunt’s farmhouse and closer to Brenton.
The speed brought a problem Rachel should’ve seen coming.
Bicycles were valuable. In a world where walking had become normal and anything faster needed fuel that no longer flowed, two working bicycles drew attention.
Travelers watched them pass with quick interest that hardened into want.
One woman offered a gallon of water for five minutes on Sophie’s bicycle, claiming she only wanted to remember what riding felt like.
A man pulling a handcart loaded with canned goods called after them, offering a Swiss Army knife and a box of matches for Rachel’s bicycle.
The offers grew less polite as the days passed.
A family camped beside a stream demanded to know where they’d found bikes that still worked.
Two men walking east along a railroad track went quiet as Rachel and Sophie rode past, and she checked behind them three times in the next mile.
They found a hand pump beside an abandoned farmhouse, where weeds grew through the cracked concrete pad.
The iron handle still produced cold, clear water after twenty hard pulls.
Rachel filled their bottles while Sophie stayed on her bicycle, one foot on the ground and her attention on the road.
A man approached from behind them. He looked to be in his forties, unshaven, and wore a canvas jacket despite the heat.
A woman and two children came with him, all of them carrying bundles and staring at the bicycles.
“Those are nice bikes,” the man said.
“They get the job done,” Rachel said.
“My kids have been walking for eight days. My daughter’s got blisters worse than hers. That smaller bike would make a difference to us. You can’t need it as much as we do.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter’s feet, but we’re not selling the bicycles.”
The man moved before Rachel finished speaking. He gripped Sophie’s handlebars just above her hands and leaned toward her. He didn’t touch Sophie, but he was close enough that she pulled her hands into her lap.
“Come on. Be reasonable. There are two of you and one bike that fits her. The other one’s too big. You could manage with just yours,” the man said.
Rachel stepped beside Sophie’s bicycle. Her hand settled near the handlebars, close enough to make the boundary clear without touching him.
“Take your hand off the bicycle,” Rachel said.
The man didn’t move. Behind him, his family watched with tired, guarded faces. Several other travelers had stopped at the pump. They all watched without stepping in.
“Last chance.”
The flat certainty in her voice reached him. Her hand remained near the handlebars, and keeping his grip would mean crossing that line. He released the bicycle, stepped back, and raised both palms.
“Didn’t mean anything by it. Just asking,” the man said.
“You weren’t asking. You were taking. There’s a difference,” Rachel said.
He turned back to his family. The woman spoke too quietly for Rachel to hear, and he shook his head without answering.
Rachel filled the second water bottle, secured both bottles in her pack, and mounted her bicycle.
Sophie followed, pedaling unsteadily for the first hundred yards before finding her rhythm again.
Neither of them spoke about what had happened.
Two days later, the county road turned rough.
Fall leaves had fallen in thick drifts that hid the pavement beneath red, gold, and brown.
Rachel rode ahead along the shoulder where the leaves were thinner and called back warnings about potholes she could see.
Sophie followed three lengths behind, tracking Rachel’s path with careful trust. The pothole was invisible.
It was a deep, jagged break in the asphalt, eight inches across and hidden beneath a smooth layer of leaves.
Sophie’s front wheel hit it at fifteen miles an hour.
The impact traveled up the fork with a metallic crack that Rachel heard from ahead.
The wheel jerked sideways, twisted against the steering column, and pitched Sophie over the handlebars in a slow arc.
Rachel dropped her bicycle onto the roadside gravel and ran.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Sophie lay in the ditch beside the road, one leg twisted beneath her, arms out, face pressed into dead leaves and dirt. She wasn’t moving.
“Sophie. Sophie,” Rachel said.
Rachel kneeled beside her and checked her neck, pulse, and limb alignment. Sophie opened her eyes, blinked twice, coughed leaf fragments from her mouth, and tried to push herself upright.
“Don’t move. Stay still for a second. Tell me where it hurts,” Rachel said.
“Everywhere, but I can move everything.”
Rachel helped her sit up slowly and watched her face for signs of sharper pain.
Sophie rotated her right wrist, flexed both knees, and twisted at the waist. Her right forearm was scraped raw from wrist to elbow where she’d hit the gravel.
A bruise had already started along her left hip through a tear in her jeans.
Her chin was bleeding lightly, leaving a dark smear when she wiped it with the back of her hand.
“Nothing’s broken,” Sophie said.
“Nothing’s broken,” Rachel replied.
Relief loosened Rachel’s chest, and she realized she’d been holding her breath.
The bicycle was badly damaged. Rachel lifted it from the ditch and set it on the roadside.
The front wheel was ruined. Three spokes had snapped clean through, and their broken ends jutted from the hub like bent pins.
The rim had folded inward at two points, creating a wobble so severe that the tire rubbed against the fork with every partial turn.
When Rachel tried to push the bicycle forward, the bent rim caught against the brake and locked the wheel.
She spent ten minutes trying to straighten the worst bend by hand.
The aluminum shifted slightly, resisted, then bent again in the wrong direction.
Without a spoke wrench or a proper repair stand, she was making it worse.
Sophie stood beside the road with her arms wrapped around herself while Rachel worked the metal.
The scrape on her forearm seeped in a thin line toward her wrist. Her new shoes were scuffed but intact.
Her face had gone still and empty, as if she had expected the day to break. They stood on the county road with one working bicycle, one injured teenager, and a broken machine that had carried half their speed toward Brenton only twenty minutes earlier. Leaves kept falling around them.