Chapter 5 #3
Curtis looked at the four horses, the rifles, the three of them sitting in plain daylight in front of armed strangers. "We're not invisible."
"We're poor."
"Better," Curtis said.
That was closer to the truth of it. Nobody remembered poor travelers. Everybody remembered a loaded pack train.
They rode a few more miles before David laid the rest of it out.
"If Daniel's records are right and we find something worth hauling home, we can't just ride back the way we came," he said.
"Every farm we passed, every crossing, every person who got a good look at us — that's somebody who remembers three riders and four horses went east light and empty.
If we come back the same road loaded down, that's not a coincidence anybody misses. "
Karen understood the shape of it fastest, given what she knew about what they were hoping to find. "A case of bandages isn't just cargo anymore. Somebody figures out what we're carrying, that's worth fighting over."
"So, what do we do?" Curtis asked.
"Start finding the road home now," David said. "Not later."
That meant carrying two maps in his head instead of one — the fastest reasonable route to Charlotte, and a second, quieter route back that didn't retrace the first. He started marking what he saw as they rode: occupied houses, this crossing, the smoke from other settlements, anywhere people gathered or watched the road.
But also the things that mattered for the other list — unused county roads, old farm lanes, places a wagon or loaded packhorses could cross a creek without a toll and without an audience.
It wasn't as simple as vanishing into the woods with a fortune in medical supplies. Loaded animals still needed water, still needed decent footing, still needed somewhere to rest without breaking down. Secrecy that ignored those things would kill the whole plan as surely as getting caught would.
"How do you even start mapping a road you've never traveled?" Karen asked.
"Same way I found my way home after the EMP," David said.
"Ask careful questions, remember what people tell you without meaning to, and trust your own eyes over anybody's directions.
" He nodded toward the country ahead of them.
"That crossing back there told me plenty without anybody meaning to tell me anything.
County road that loops instead of running straight usually goes somewhere quieter.
A bridge nobody maintains means fewer people know it's there.
Small things add up to a route, eventually. "
Curtis considered that. "And if the whole plan falls apart? If every road quiet enough to avoid people is also too bad to move a loaded horse down?"
"Then we carry less and make more trips," David said. "Or we find something better than horses to move it. Either way, that's a problem for when we have something worth hauling. Right now we're just building the map."
"Fifteen miles south," Curtis said, a while later.
"Maybe," David said.
"You asked about it because you were already thinking about coming back a different way."
"I asked because I didn't know the answer."
"Same thing," Curtis said.
David didn't argue the point, mostly because Curtis wasn't wrong. He pulled his map out at their next stop and made a small notation beside the crossing they'd just used.
OLD brIDGE — 15 S — LAST KNOWN STANDING FALL
Not confirmed. He wasn't going to detour fifteen miles out of their way this early in the trip just to look at a bridge that might not exist anymore. But it was the first mark on the second map, the quiet one, and that mattered more than the miles it would have cost to check it now.
By afternoon they'd come within sight of another small cluster of houses, smoke rising steady over the trees, the direct road running straight through the middle of it.
A week ago David might have ridden through without much thought. Now he reined up and checked the map instead.
"County road loops around," he said. "Costs us maybe two extra miles."
"Two extra miles," Curtis said.
"Yeah."
"We're taking it," Karen said, before David had finished deciding out loud, and he looked at her, faintly surprised at how quickly she'd absorbed the rule.
They took the longer road. Nothing happened, which was exactly the point — no ambush waiting, no trouble they'd avoided by dumb luck, just three riders and four horses choosing not to add themselves to one more stranger's memory of the day.
The lesson from the bridge had already changed how David rode, and it had taken less than an afternoon to settle into the rest of them too.
They camped that evening well off the road, away from any house or crossing, in a stand of trees with a creek close enough for water but far enough that the sound of it wouldn't cover anybody's approach.
David picked the spot the same way he'd picked every campsite since the Hollow — cover at their backs, a clear line of sight toward the only approach worth watching, and enough distance from the road that a passing traveler wouldn't see firelight even if they were looking for it.
David checked Whiskey's back for rub where the bridge crossing had shifted his balance, found nothing worse than a little warmth that would fade by morning, and moved on to June without finding anything there either.
Curtis ran his hands down both of Willie's legs, checking for heat or swelling after the sideways lurch on the boards, and came up satisfied.
"Nothing," he said. "Maybe a scrape he'll forget about by tomorrow."
Karen stood by Waylon, rubbing a hand along his neck. "You did good today."
"Don't tell him too much," Curtis said. "He'll get proud."
Karen glanced toward Willie, who'd already worked his nose into the flap of her saddle bag again. "Think that one's got enough pride for both of them already."
"See?" Curtis said, pulling Willie's head away by the halter without much heat behind it.
David spread the map out while there was still light enough to see it — Charlotte still ahead, the crossing now behind them, the alternate bridge marked to the south, three or four other occupied places already noted along the road they'd traveled.
"How many roads are you planning?" Karen asked, watching him work.
"Two."
"One there and one back?"
"One people see us on," David said. "One they don't."
They ate a plain supper once the horses were settled — jerky, the last of the biscuits Grace had packed for him, softened enough by three days in the saddle bag that they didn't need much chewing.
Karen offered around a strip of dried apple from her own share, and Curtis took it without comment, which David had learned by now was as close to thanks as Curtis usually gave anybody.
Curtis settled near the fire David had kept low and small, more for cooking than for light. "What happens if every crossing's got people on it?"
David looked east, toward the country still ahead of them, dark now against a sky just beginning to lose its color. "Then we find the one with the fewest."
"And if they're all bad?"
"Then we solve that when we're carrying something worth worrying about."
"That's comforting," Karen said.
"Wasn't meant to be."
Nobody said much after that. David folded the map, made one last mark beside the crossing they'd used that morning — not a warning, not a skull, just two words in his own shorthand — and tucked it back into the case where it would ride safe until morning.
AVOID WESTBOUND.
Then he put it away, checked the horses one more time by feel in the dark, and settled in for what was left of the night.