Chapter 53
They left the marina via the northern access road, staying close to the trees where the pines provided a comforting shield from the shoreline.
At first, Charlotte carried Mason, his small weight resting against her hip, feeling his warmth close to her.
As the cover thickened around them, she gently set him down, allowing him to move at his own pace.
The dog scampered ahead and back, offering the kind of protection Charlotte had come to trust. When the dog paused, ears perked, she instinctively halted, too, her heart in tune with the animal’s instincts.
As the dog relaxed, she felt a moment of relief and moved forward.
The access road eventually joined a county highway that led inland, where abandoned vehicles were scattered across the pavement.
Their drivers had fled on foot, caught off guard when the EMP abruptly disabled their engines.
Charlotte guided Mason carefully between the cars, using them as cover while scanning the road and tree line, her mind alert to the reality that the greatest danger came from other people.
A sudden cough seized her, forcing her to take cover behind an overturned delivery van.
Turning away from Mason, she braced herself against the cold metal, allowing the spasm to work through her chest. It felt worse than before.
The wet rattle had deepened, and when she straightened up, the inside of her mask carried the unsettling, warm, metallic taste she had been trying to ignore since they left the community center.
She caught Mason’s gaze, filled with concern and curiosity, and his quiet focus felt like a gentle reminder of the vulnerability they shared.
Charlotte wiped the inside of her faceplate with a gloved hand, taking a moment to reassure him before wrapping her fingers around his.
She wanted him to feel safe as they continued together.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”
They followed the highway for a mile, witnessing the landscape shift from the familiar coastal pine barrens to the scattered residential developments at the inland edge of Tuckerton.
As they moved away from the coastline, the signs of devastation from the gas seemed to fade, offering a glimmer of hope.
The houses told a story of evacuation rather than contamination.
Cars were packed with belongings, front doors left open, and gardens untouched.
The EMP had taken a heavy toll, disabling anything with a circuit, but thankfully, the gas hadn’t reached that far.
They passed a convenience store, its front window shattered, a stark reminder of the chaos that had unfolded.
Inside, shelves lay bare, stripped in the aftermath of looting.
At an intersection, Charlotte paused to check the maps in her pouch.
The map indicated that the contamination zone stopped roughly two miles inland.
With the marina map in hand, she pinpointed their current position and found the road leading west. Holding Mason’s hand tightly, with the dog trotting closely at their heels, she felt a mix of determination and apprehension.
Then, a half mile later, they encountered signs of SNA activity that made her heart race.
An improvised checkpoint was in front of them, with concrete barriers hastily dragged across the road.
A military Humvee, parked at an angle, stood as a symbol of the uncertainty surrounding them.
Two soldiers in dark uniforms, the same ones Charlotte had seen on the shoreline, stood beside the barriers, rifles slung across their chests and masks sealed against their faces.
She couldn’t help but feel the weight of the moment, understanding the fear and the protection that had driven them to that point.
Charlotte pulled Mason into the trees before the soldiers spotted them.
They crouched behind a fallen pine, its trunk thick enough to break their silhouette, and watched through the needled branches as a civilian vehicle approached the checkpoint from the opposite direction.
An ancient pickup, its bed loaded with supplies, was moving at a cautious pace.
The soldiers stopped it. They spoke through masks, examined paper documents, then waved the truck through after a delay Charlotte could feel from fifty yards away.
She understood then. It wasn’t the aftermath.
The SNA was establishing control. The systematic occupation of territory after its defenses were dismantled.
They had taken down the grid, delivered the gas, and were moving in to claim what remained.
It was an invasion. Watching two masked soldiers wave through a civilian truck on a rural road twenty miles from the crater where her house had stood, Charlotte finally allowed herself the word.
She waited until the checkpoint cleared, then led Mason through the trees parallel to the road, keeping enough distance so their movement wouldn’t be detected. The dog moved low beside them.
They covered two miles this way, crossing open stretches at a run when cover failed.
The afternoon light took on the amber quality of evening, and Charlotte knew they needed shelter before dark.
Her body was failing, and she could no longer pretend they were reversible.
The trees thinned to reveal a two-story farmhouse set back from a gravel driveway, a barn behind it, pasture beyond that, and no vehicles in the driveway.
Charlotte approached from the tree line, Mason’s hand in hers, the dog ranging ahead to the edge of the gravel where it stopped and went still.
The bodies were in the front yard. A man and a woman in their sixties lay beside a garden bed where tomato plants had withered on their stakes.
They had been shot. She pulled Mason behind her and put her body between him and the yard, but he had seen.
She could feel it in the way his hand tightened around hers.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t look.”
The yard told its story clearly. Violence had come after the collapse. Recently enough that the blood on the grass hadn’t dried completely. Charlotte studied the house. The barn door was partially open, and darkness was visible within. She made her decision quickly.
“We’re going to check the barn,” she said. “Stay behind me. Don’t let go of my hand.”
Mason nodded. His grip on her fingers was firm and didn’t waver, and in that grip, Charlotte felt something she hadn’t expected to feel on a gravel driveway beside two bodies in a yard she would never have chosen to bring a child to.
The weight of being chosen and the responsibility that came with it.
They crossed the yard with the dog, giving the bodies the wide berth the dead deserved, and approached the barn, where the partially open door offered darkness and whatever it contained.