Chapter 15 #2
"That's exactly what it is. Just faster and it doesn't splinter into somebody's skin."
Gloves mattered more than David expected. Karen held up a case of them at one point, turning it over like she couldn't quite believe what she was holding.
"I haven't thrown away a glove in months unless it tore," she said. "Just wash them until they don't hold up anymore."
That told David more about the last eight months than a longer explanation would have.
Not everything survived. She built a real reject pile alongside the take pile — medications she couldn't trust because of age or storage, anything temperature-sensitive that had sat too long uncontrolled, packages compromised by moisture or pests, anything she didn't trust enough to carry all the way home and hand to somebody who needed it to work.
This wasn't a magic railcar where everything inside had survived perfectly. But enough had survived, and enough of it mattered, that the trip had already paid for itself several times over before they'd loaded a single carton onto the wagon.
Eventually Karen stepped back and looked at what she'd built — piles of what they could take and what they'd have to leave crowding the floor of the railcar, more good material than David had let himself hope for back at the billboard.
"How are we doing?" David asked.
Karen looked around at all of it. "We can't carry all this."
David heard disappointment in it at first, until he caught her expression and understood she meant the opposite. They had too much good material, not too little.
Curtis climbed up into the car and looked over the take pile with a different kind of attention, already doing the weight math in his head.
"You're not carrying all that either," he said.
Karen looked at him, and David saw the argument coming before either of them said another word.
"We came all this way for medical supplies," Karen said.
"And I'd like the horses to make it all the way back with them," Curtis said.
"How much can they take?"
Curtis thought about it, working through weight and distance the way he worked through everything, out loud once he'd already turned it over privately first. "Give me a number I can work with instead of everything you'd want in a perfect world."
"There's nothing perfect about any of this."
"No," Curtis agreed. "Which is why I'm asking."
That mostly ended it, though Karen didn't concede without making her case first — every carton in that take pile could save somebody's life eventually, and leaving any of it felt like leaving people to suffer for a decision made this far from where it would matter.
Curtis didn't argue the value. He argued the road.
Five miles on level pavement was one thing.
Two hundred miles through mud, hills, detours, and at least one creek crossing that hadn't gone well the first time was another problem entirely, and Waylon and Willie weren't going to solve it by wanting to badly enough.
David let them work through it without taking a side, because they were both right in the ways that mattered to each of them.
Karen didn't sulk once Curtis gave her a number to work within.
She went back through her own take pile like the professional she was, re-ranking everything by what would save the most lives per pound rather than what looked most impressive sitting in a box.
More antibiotics stayed. More saline stayed.
IV equipment, the prenatal vitamins, the sterile wound supplies, the gloves, the highest-value medications — all of it stayed.
Bulkier material they could improvise around at home got set aside with real reluctance but no argument.
Curtis took over the physical loading once Karen's final pile was set, working the wagon like a puzzle he'd already solved in his head before he touched the first carton.
The heaviest medical supplies went low and centered — saline first, packed tight enough that it wouldn't shift with every rut in the road, weight balanced so it didn't pull too hard on the tongue or crowd too far back over the rear axle.
Lighter cartons built up and around the heavier base, everything wedged snug rather than left to bounce loose.
David carried boxes over. Karen carried others. Curtis placed everything, and when David set one carton where he thought made sense, Curtis moved it without comment a moment later.
"I just put that there," David said.
"I know."
"Then why'd you move it?"
"Because you put it there."
David let that go, mostly because arguing wagon-loading with Curtis was a fight he wasn't going to win regardless of how reasonable his own placement had been.
Karen kept careful track of where her highest-priority cases ended up, close enough to reach without unpacking half the wagon if she needed something fast on the road.
Daniel's records pointed them toward a nearby car holding general clothing freight, and David walked over to check it once the medical loading had settled into a rhythm Curtis didn't need help with.
No boots. He didn't want the weight or the bulk for something the Hollow could manage without. What he wanted was lighter — cartons of plain T-shirts, underwear, socks, all of it exactly the kind of ordinary clothing the Hollow had been making do without for months.
Socks mattered more than people gave them credit for. Everybody at the Hollow worked, walked, rode, and wore through what they had faster than anybody could mend it. David loaded a reasonable quantity, thinking only about getting it home.
Then he looked at the medical cargo already settled into the wagon. Looked at the stacked clothing waiting to go in beside it. Looked back at the wagon as a whole.
"Don't pack those yet," he said.
Curtis understood before Karen did, David could tell from the way his eyebrows went up rather than down.
They weren't just bringing clothing home. They were about to build themselves a disguise.
The medical cargo stayed exactly where Curtis had settled it, centered and low, and they built the concealment layer around it with the same care they'd given everything else.
David worked methodically, packing shirts into the gaps between medical cartons first, tamping them down snug so nothing would shift and expose a seam of boxes underneath once the wagon started hitting ruts again.
Karen followed behind him with underwear and socks, filling in anywhere David's shirts hadn't reached.