Chapter 12 #3
Tracks ran in every direction, more sidings than he could count from here, rows of freight cars stretching farther than his eye could follow — boxcars, tank cars, containers stacked and unstacked, switching structures rising over all of it like skeletal towers.
Weeds pushed up through the ballast between rails that hadn't carried a train in the better part of a year.
Some cars sat scorched black, burned out for reasons David could only guess at.
Others looked untouched, as if the yard had simply been paused mid-motion the day the world stopped.
Beyond the tracks, the city itself rose in the distance — a scatter of buildings against the sky, none of them lit, none of them showing any of the smoke that marked an occupied place from this far off. Just shapes, waiting.
"Tell me he wrote down where in there," Karen said, staring at the size of it.
David checked Daniel's records again, though he already knew what they held. A yard designation. A last known position. A railcar number. Enough to narrow the search considerably, but nowhere near enough to walk straight to the car and put a hand on it.
"That's a lot of railroad," Curtis said.
"Yep."
Whiskey shifted under Karen, ears pricked toward the strange new shapes ahead, and even June stood a little tighter in her stance than she had all afternoon, picking up on something in the air that none of the humans could name outright.
Smokey sat at David's stirrup without being told, watching the yard the same way David was.
David had daylight left, and he refused to use it entering unfamiliar industrial ground he hadn't studied properly.
He watched the yard a long while from their position, looking for smoke, movement, dogs, recent tracks, anything that suggested somebody had claimed a corner of it as home.
He counted what buildings he could make out from this distance — a long low structure that might have been a maintenance shop, a tower that had probably controlled the switching before the power went out, a scatter of smaller sheds along the yard's near edge.
Nothing obvious showed itself, which meant exactly nothing.
A yard this size could hide people easily enough that absence of evidence proved nothing at all.
Karen understood without needing it explained. Curtis agreed without argument. They had a wagon now, a team that had worked hard today after close to two years away from harness work, and no good reason to push into strange ground tired with the light failing.
"Tomorrow we go in on foot first," David said. "See what's there before we decide anything else."
Curtis nodded. "Wagon stays put till we know it's worth bringing."
David found them a place to spend the night well outside the yard's edge — an old maintenance building near a spur line, fenced enough to give the horses some sense of enclosure, concealed enough from the main road that headlights, had there been any left in the world, wouldn't have found them easily.
Curtis unharnessed Waylon and Willie the moment they'd settled, running his hands over their shoulders and chests where the collars had ridden all day, checking carefully for heat or rubbing.
"Nothing," he said, satisfied. "Not even close."
That mattered more tonight than it had all week. Tomorrow might ask considerably more of them than today had.
Karen helped where she could, picking out Whiskey's feet and running a brush over June's coat while David walked the perimeter of their shelter one more time before settling.
Smokey paced the fence line twice, sniffing at every gap, before he decided the ground met his standards and came to lie down near David.
They ate a quiet supper, nobody talking much. The day had asked enough of all of them without needing conversation on top of it.
David studied Daniel's papers again once the meal was done, railcar number and yard designation and last known position laid out beside the darkening shape of the rail complex just visible past their shelter.
They'd found the wagon. It worked, better than he'd let himself hope for back at the billboard. They had harness that fit, and two horses who'd remembered their old job faster than either of them expected. They'd reached Charlotte, or close enough to see it.
What they hadn't answered, what no amount of preparation could answer until tomorrow, was whether Daniel's railcar sat where his last records said it did.
"How early?" Karen asked.
"First light."
"On horseback?" Curtis asked.
David looked toward the disguised wagon, dull and unremarkable now in the last of the evening color. They weren't driving it blind into ground they hadn't scouted.
"We scout first."
Curtis nodded, satisfied with that.
"And if we find it?" Karen asked.
David looked at the wagon a moment longer. "Then we find out how much those two can really bring home."
"We find out how much I'm willing to let them bring home," Curtis said, immediately.
David looked at him.
"Fine."
"Those are different numbers," Curtis said, and David didn't argue the point, because he suspected Curtis was right.
He looked out toward the rail yard one more time before the light gave out entirely, not with any grand feeling behind it, just running the shape of tomorrow's problem over in his mind the way he'd run every problem since leaving the Hollow.
Somewhere out there, if Daniel Hale's last careful notes held true, sat a railcar that could give Karen and Rebecca medical supplies neither of them had expected to see again.
Tomorrow, they'd find out.