Chapter 65
Mason emerged with the dog pressed against his leg, both moving with the care of creatures who had learned that the distance between safety and danger could be measured in inches. When Mason saw Rivera, he stopped at the tree line and didn’t come closer until Charlotte nodded.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s with the National Guard. He’s hurt, but he’s going to help us.”
Mason studied Rivera with the curiosity of a child, taking in the bandage, the partial uniform, and the fact that the man had come from the same battlefield where people lay in shallow graves.
After a few long seconds, Mason extended his hand.
Rivera took it carefully, adjusting to the smallness of his bones, and when he released it, something in Mason’s posture relaxed.
The dog was less easily convinced. It circled Rivera twice before settling at Mason’s feet, its eyes fixed on the soldier.
They prepared to mount. Charlotte assisted Rivera onto the mare behind her.
The gelding was already carrying Mason and their supplies, and since the mare was the larger animal, Charlotte felt Rivera’s weight settle against her back, distributed carefully as if he were trying not to impose.
His injured arm rested at his side, and Charlotte could feel the heat of the wound through her hazmat suit.
“We’ll take you as far as the junction,” she said. “Two miles east. There’s a settlement marked on the map. If your unit’s rally point is beyond that, you’ll have better luck finding transportation there than alone on foot.”
“Appreciated,” Rivera said.
They rode east along the highway, the horses moving at a walk that spared Charlotte’s lungs and Rivera’s injury.
The battlefield fell behind them, and the night opened into a darkness pierced only by stars and the occasional silhouette of a tree or abandoned vehicle.
As they rode, Charlotte pulled the messages from the pouch on her chest. She sorted them by flashlight, separating the ones bound east from those bound west. There were five places Rivera would pass, or near enough that the detour would be small. She held them out to him.
“These are for people east of here,” she said. “You’re going that way. If you have the capacity to carry them, the people who wrote them would want them delivered.”
Rivera examined the messages in the flashlight beam, reading the addresses. “I can do that,” he said. It was the flat acceptance of a task to be completed.
They reached the junction an hour later.
The settlement on the map showed as a cluster of lights in the distance, probably fires or lanterns, and Rivera dismounted with the care of someone running on discipline rather than strength.
Before he turned east, Charlotte delivered the sixth message herself.
It was addressed to a family on Ridge Road, three miles north of the junction.
Rivera confirmed the location from his patrols before the fighting, and they detoured to a farmhouse set back from a gravel driveway where a single lantern burned in the front window.
Charlotte approached alone. Mason waited with Rivera and the horses at the tree line, and the dog sat between them in alert silence.
The door opened before she reached the porch.
A woman in her fifties stood in the frame with a shotgun held at port arms, not pointed but present, and when Charlotte raised her empty hands and stated her business, the woman lowered the weapon and stepped aside.
The message was simple. A neighbor said they had evacuated south, that the house was intact, and that the cellar held food if needed.
The woman read it in her doorway with lantern light catching the tracks on her cheeks, then folded the paper and slipped it into her apron pocket with the care one might use for a photograph.
“Thank you,” she said. “We’ve been watching the road for three days.
Every vehicle that passes, I think it might be them coming back. ”
Charlotte nodded. “They’re alive. The letter says so. That’s something.”
The woman’s hand found Charlotte’s arm through the hazmat suit. “You’re heading west?”
“Yes. With a child. Toward West Virginia.”
“Then you need to know about the routes. The highway is being watched. SNA patrols have been conducted twice daily since the fighting started. They’re setting up checkpoints at the major intersections.
Anyone moving west on the paved roads gets stopped, questioned, sometimes detained.
” She pointed north. “There’s a fire road along the ridge.
An old logging track. It connects to County 12 about eight miles north, and from there you can cut west through the state forest. No vehicles except the ones already there when the EMP hit.
The SNA doesn’t have the manpower to cover terrain that rough. Not yet.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
The woman nodded. “The child. How old?”
“Eight.”
“God keep him.”
The words carried the gravity of a woman who had decided children were the only kind of hope still worth naming aloud.
Charlotte returned to the tree line where Mason waited with Rivera and the horses.
The dog rose to meet her. Rivera was ready.
He had secured the five eastbound messages in his vest pocket and stood with his weight on his good leg, his injured arm cradled against his body.
When Charlotte approached, he offered his hand. “Staff Sergeant,” she said.
“Ma’am.” He turned to Mason. “You listen to her,” he said. “She’s got good instincts.”
Mason nodded. The gesture was small and perfect in its acceptance.
Rivera turned east toward the settlement lights and began walking at a measured pace, as if he had calculated the distance and his ability to cover it.
Charlotte, Mason, and the dog didn’t move until his silhouette disappeared into the dark.
Then she helped Mason onto the gelding, mounted the mare, and turned westward toward the ridge where the fire road waited and the new route began.