Chapter 55
The rain started two days after they left the Keller farm.
It came as a thin drizzle, soaked through their ponchos within the hour, and never let up.
By midday, the secondary road had softened into mud that pulled at their boots with every step.
Rachel kept her eyes on the horizon instead of the ground.
Looking down made the walking worse, and it was already hard enough.
The left strap of her pack dragged across the healed cut beneath her ribs.
She adjusted it twice before accepting the steady rub as part of the day.
Sophie walked ahead, hood drawn tight and hands jammed into her pockets.
She hadn’t spoken much since they left the farm.
The carved wooden bird stayed in her right pocket, and Rachel sometimes saw her fingers press against it through the wet fabric.
The silence wasn’t sullen. It held the strain of a child trying to live with a choice she hadn’t been allowed to make.
They made camp that evening beneath the partial cover of a highway overpass.
Water dripped from the concrete in steady lines and found every gap in their poncho shelter.
Rachel built a small fire with the driest deadfall she could scavenge, but the flames sputtered against the damp wood and barely warmed them.
They ate cold beans from a dented can and split the last of the dried apples.
Her side ached. It wasn’t the sharp pain of the original injury.
It was deeper and warmer, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.
She blamed the pack, the walking, the cold, and the weeks her body had spent healing before she dragged it across wet roads again.
The rain continued through the night and into the next morning.
They woke to the same dull light and the steady patter against the concrete above them. Everything they owned was damp.
By midmorning, Rachel’s side had developed a heat her clothing couldn’t hide. The warmth spread outward from the scar in a slow wave, and the pack strap felt like a hot wire across her skin. She stopped beside a rusted mailbox and set her pack on the wet ground.
“I need to change the bandage,” she said.
Sophie stayed back while Rachel unzipped her jacket and lifted the edge of her shirt.
The girl’s attention followed every movement of Rachel’s hands.
The gauze came away stained with a yellow fluid.
Rachel tried to tell herself that was normal for a healing wound.
The skin around the railroad-yard cut was red and swollen, with angry lines spreading from the deepest part of the scar.
Near the center, where repeated movement had pulled at the closed tissue, a narrow split had reopened.
It wasn’t bleeding, but the edges were wet and inflamed.
“It’s irritated. It’s nothing serious,” Rachel said.
She cleaned it with the last of the antiseptic wipes Thomas had given her. The liquid stung against the open tissue, and she swallowed the sound before it escaped. Sophie’s face stayed still, but her eyes fixed on the wound. Rachel hurried the gauze back into place.
“We should keep moving,” Rachel said.
Rain fell harder, and the road thickened with mud.
Rachel’s boots grew heavier with each mile.
The heat in her side spread upward along her ribs until every breath took concentration.
She counted her steps to distract herself from it.
One hundred steps, then another hundred, then the next landmark on the folded map in her back pocket.
Brenton was still west. The repetition pulled her forward when nothing else could.
By afternoon, the chills started. They came in waves that didn’t match the weather.
Rachel’s teeth chattered despite the effort of walking.
Her hands shook badly enough that she shoved them into her pockets to hide them.
The road seemed to tilt beneath her feet, and she tried to steady herself by planting each step harder in the mud.
“You’re shaking,” Sophie said.
“I’m cold. It’s the rain,” Rachel said.
“You’re not cold. You’re sweating.”
Rachel touched her forehead and found a fever that the rain hadn’t caused.
It explained the chills, the dizziness, and the way the road shifted when she looked at it too long.
She’d seen enough infected wounds in fourteen years of home visits to know the pattern.
Admitting it would mean admitting she had a serious problem on a muddy road with no good way to treat it.
“We need to keep moving. Stopping in this won’t help anything,” Rachel said.
“Stopping might keep you from falling over,” Sophie said.
“I’m not falling over.”
Ten minutes later, her left leg buckled.
Her knee gave way first, then her ankle turned on the slick mud, and Rachel pitched toward the roadside ditch.
Sophie grabbed her arm, but the girl’s weight wasn’t enough to stop both of them.
They stumbled together. Sophie’s boots slid in the mud, and Rachel’s balance vanished.
They hit the shoulder on their sides. Rachel’s pack drove into the inflamed tissue beneath her ribs, and for several seconds the world went white.
When Rachel could see again, Sophie was kneeling beside her with both hands on Rachel’s shoulders.