Chapter 5
Three days out, and the road had already taught David more about this stretch of country than any map could.
June carried him at an easy walk, Whiskey's lead rope slack in his free hand, the morning cool enough that both horses had steam coming off their backs.
Karen rode Waylon a length behind, and Curtis held the rear on Willie, rifle across his lap the way it had ridden since the first morning.
Smokey ranged ahead in loose loops, nose down, coming back to check on them every few minutes before pushing out again.
They'd covered close to fifty miles since the Hollow, more than David had expected given the mud and the two bypasses they'd already worked around.
Yesterday had been the hardest of the three days so far — a long stretch of washed-out low ground that had cost them the better part of an afternoon finding a way around, and Karen had gone quiet with saddle soreness by the time they'd made camp, though she hadn't complained once out loud.
This morning she sat Waylon easier than she had the day before, and David figured that was its own kind of progress.
The river was another ten miles ahead, according to Rebecca's map, and David had been turning that fact over since they'd broken camp.
He reined June up at a creek crossing to let the horses drink and pulled the map out to check it again, though he'd already memorized the relevant stretch.
"Worried about the bridge?" Karen asked, swinging down to stretch her legs.
"More interested in who's using it."
Rivers did that. A hundred back roads could carry a traveler through open country without anybody noticing, but a river could only be crossed in so many places, and every one of those places pulled people toward it the way a fence gap pulled cattle.
If anybody had settled near this crossing, David wanted to know before he rode up on them blind.
Curtis, checking Willie's girth a few feet off, didn't need it explained. "Figured that was coming."
They rode on with the subject sitting in the air until Curtis brought it up plain.
"We're going to look strange to anybody watching that bridge," Curtis said. "Three people, four horses, all of us armed, headed toward Charlotte. Somebody's going to ask why."
"I've been thinking about it," David said. "We need to decide what we're telling people before anybody asks. Inconsistent stories get noticed faster than no story at all."
"You mean lie," Karen said.
"I mean don't tell strangers where we live or why we're going to Charlotte."
"Sounds like lying," Curtis said.
"Then we're lying."
Karen almost laughed at how plainly he said it. "All right. What's the story?"
David had been circling it since the crossing first came up. "Family works best. Somebody people don't push on."
"My brother," Karen said, before David had finished the thought.
He looked at her. "You have one?"
"For the next hundred miles I do."
Curtis grinned. "What's his name?"
"Mark," Karen said.
"Why Mark?"
"Looks like a Mark," Curtis said.
"You've never seen him."
"Still does."
Karen shook her head, but she was fighting a smile.
They built it out as they rode — Mark had lived outside Charlotte before the EMP.
Somebody traveling west before winter had said he'd survived that first bad stretch.
Karen hadn't been able to get to him until the roads dried out enough to risk it.
David and Curtis were friends who'd offered to make the trip with her.
"What about a wife?" Karen asked. "Kids?"
David thought about that a second and shook his head. "Keep him single. Whiskey's the only spare horse we've got. We start inventing more people for him to bring home, we've got a problem we can't solve with what we're carrying."
"Poor Mark," Karen said.
"Man doesn't even exist and you're already ruining his life," Curtis said.
"Somebody has to be realistic about his prospects."
David let them have that one before he brought it back around. "Here's what matters. Nobody hears the word Hollow. Nobody hears Harlan. Nobody hears Cal. Nobody hears Rebecca or Daniel or medical supplies or railcars. If somebody asks where we're from —"
"West," Curtis said.
"That's not going to satisfy anybody," Curtis added, before David could say it himself.
"It doesn't have to satisfy them. It just has to be boring enough they stop asking.
" David had turned this over enough times on the ride to have it settled in his own head.
"We're not mysterious. We're boring. A small farm place west of the river, barely getting by. No name. Nothing worth remembering."
"And if somebody pushes past that?" Karen asked.
"Then we give them just enough to sound real without being useful," David said.
"An old road, maybe a landmark we already passed miles back.
Something that points them nowhere near where we live.
But only if we're pushed. The second we start volunteering details, we've made ourselves interesting, and interesting is the last thing we want to be out here. "
"I've traveled with you three days," Karen said. "That part shouldn't be difficult."
Curtis laughed loud enough that Willie's ears flicked back at him, and David gave her a look that didn't have much heat behind it.
The first sign came a few miles on, and it wasn't the kind that belonged in a story somebody told to scare children.
A fallen tree had been cut and dragged clear of the road, the stump-end still pale where the saw had gone through.
Two rusted cars sat shoved half into the ditch, leaving a lane wide enough for a wagon between them.
The dirt showed wheel ruts that hadn't had time to dry hard, and fresh manure sat steaming faintly in the cool air — somebody's horse, somebody's wagon, within the last hour or two.
A board leaned against a fence post up ahead, hand-lettered in charcoal.
CROSSING OPEN
Under it, smaller:
STOP AHEAD
"Well," Curtis said. "Somebody's home."
David didn't answer right away. He was reading the rest of it — smoke rising from what looked like two or three chimneys past a stand of trees, an old feed store or filling station near what he guessed was the bridge approach, and beyond that, fields with the early marks of someone working them.
Not a handful of scavengers squatting behind a roadblock.
People who'd decided to stay and make something of the ground around a river crossing.
That distinction mattered more than David could have explained quickly. Scavengers reacted. People who'd built something defended it, which was a different kind of danger and, in its way, a more predictable one.
They came up over a rise and got their first full look at the bridge.
It was old concrete and steel, two lanes originally, spanning a river running high and fast with the spring thaw.
One approach had taken damage — a stretch of pavement had dropped several inches on the near side, and an abandoned pickup sat wedged half against the guardrail where somebody had shoved it out of the main path rather than haul it clear entirely.
Past the truck, the roadway narrowed to something closer to one careful lane, boards laid across what David guessed was a gap in the surface, a length of rope strung along the worst of it at about waist height for anybody walking.
Somebody had put real work into keeping that crossing usable.
Debris cleared. A washed section shored up with what looked like railroad ties dragged from somewhere.
Painted markers on the pavement showing where a wagon wheel needed to track to stay clear of the drop.
That wasn't the work of people squatting behind a gate hoping travelers wouldn't test them.
That was months of labor by people who understood exactly what they had and meant to keep it standing.
Two men stood near the near end with rifles slung rather than raised, watching the road rather than staring them down. A third sat on an overturned crate closer to the toll board, in no apparent hurry.
David counted without making a show of it — three visible, probably more he couldn't see from this angle, nobody with a weapon pointed his direction.
Forcing this crossing, if it ever came to that, would be a fool's plan against people who knew the ground and had cover built into the terrain itself.
He noted it and moved on without needing to say it out loud.
Smokey drifted back close to June's legs on his own, sensing the shift in David's posture before David had said a word.
"Stay," David told him, and Smokey did, pace matching the horses instead of ranging.
A man came out to meet them before they'd fully reached the approach — late forties, maybe older, weathered in the way that came from outdoor work rather than hardship alone, a rifle slung but not raised.
"Crossing's open," he said.
"Good to hear," David said.
"Didn't say free."
Curtis almost smiled at that.
"What's it cost?" David asked.
"Depends what you've got. Food, ammunition, salt, soap, tools. Labor if you've got nothing else and want to earn it instead." He looked over the four horses, unhurried. "Three riders, four animals. That's a fair crossing, not a light one."
David didn't argue the terms. He climbed down, opened one of Whiskey's packs, and came back with a couple pounds of dried meat and a small sack of meal — enough that it cost them something, not enough to put a real dent in what they had left for the road ahead.
The man checked it over, nodded once, and seemed satisfied.
"Appreciate it," he said, tying the sack off and setting it with a small pile of similar offerings near the crate — dried food, a coil of wire, what looked like a jar of nails.
Whatever this crossing cost travelers, it clearly went somewhere useful rather than into one man's pocket.
"Keeps this place standing another season.
Bridge doesn't fix itself, and neither does feeding the people who watch it. "