Chapter 17 #2
"I was going to say that."
"No, you weren't."
She laid out the minimum version, the only one she wanted either of them carrying in their heads.
They were brothers. She was their sister.
Sick three days, started with fever and cough, breathing worse since yesterday.
Heading west because they'd heard about a doctor somewhere that direction, though they didn't know exactly where. They didn't know what she had.
"If somebody asks what's in the wagon," Karen said, "it's her bedding and our supplies."
"Why not just say farm supplies?" David asked.
"Because sick people need supplies too."
"And underwear," Curtis said.
Karen looked at him flatly. "Don't mention the underwear."
A few miles on, they hit the day's real obstacle — a small bridge or wide culvert crossing, the road surface intact on one side but the far edge collapsed where winter runoff had eaten the shoulder out from under it, exposed rebar and crumbled concrete visible where the water had done its worst.
Horseback, it would have cost them nothing. Loaded wagon, David wasn't sure at all.
He and Curtis walked it together, checking the surviving width, the soft edge, the drop where the collapse fell away, measuring it against the wagon's wheel spacing in their heads.
Curtis crouched at the edge and worked a boot heel into the remaining shoulder, testing how much of it was solid ground and how much was loose fill waiting to give way under real weight.
Karen stayed back with the horses. Smokey moved between the two men and the wagon, patrolling the short distance.
"Can we make it?" David asked.
"Probably," Curtis said.
"I don't like that word anymore."
"You're learning."
Curtis thought they could get the wagon across if he drove it carefully enough, staying tight to the solid side and trusting Waylon and Willie to hold a straight line under pressure, but neither of them liked the risk on the first real day of the return trip.
One wheel dropping through that edge could snap an axle, break a leg, or worse, and there was nobody left in the world who'd drive out with a replacement part.
"Not worth it," David said.
"No," Curtis agreed.
They backtracked to an old farm road David had noticed splitting off a half mile back, adding distance neither of them wanted to add, and David marked the failed crossing on his map before they moved on.
The farm road ran rough but held together, winding more than David liked through empty fields gone to weed and past one collapsed farmhouse, its roof caved in from some winter storm nobody had been around to prevent.
Curtis liked the road anyway — firm surface, nobody around, no reason for anybody to be watching it. Willie tried twice to angle toward roadside vegetation during a brief stop, and Curtis corrected him both times without much heat.
"He's more interested in eating his way home than reaching it," Karen said.
"He's got priorities," Curtis said.
David checked their progress against the map. They'd covered more ground physically than they'd gained toward the Hollow, the whole cost of traveling with a wagon instead of three riders who could cut wherever the ground allowed.
Late morning, Smokey noticed the people first, ears up, attention fixed on a farm property ahead where two figures stood near the road.
David saw them a moment later — a man and a woman, no weapons raised, already watching the wagon approach. Turning around now would look stranger than continuing.
"Keep going," David told Curtis.
Karen saw them too, and her hand went toward the mask she'd tucked into her coat. "Want to try it?"
"Now?"
"That's generally when plans work best."
They had enough distance left to prepare.
Karen swung down off Whiskey, climbed into the wagon bed, settled onto the clothing layer covering the medical cargo, pulled a blanket over herself, and fit the mask over her face.
She lay on her side, looking as miserable as she could manage on short notice.
David put his mask on. Curtis put his on too, muttering something under his breath about not liking the feel of it.
"You'll survive," Karen said, muffled.
"Comforting," David said.
Whiskey came along on a lead behind the wagon, and they closed the distance toward the farm.
The farm had a modest garden already turned, a couple of chickens scratching near the porch, ordinary signs of people trying to make a life work rather than anybody looking for trouble. That made the trick feel almost unfair, but David didn't let the thought slow him down.
The strangers had clearly been curious about the wagon before they noticed the masks, and one started walking toward it, the woman close behind him.
David raised a hand. "I'd stay back."
That stopped him faster than a raised rifle would have.
"Why?" the man asked.
David glanced toward the wagon. "Our sister's sick."
Karen coughed from beneath the blanket, rough and tired, nothing theatrical about it, the kind of cough that came from somewhere real even when it wasn't.
Both strangers took a visible step back, the man's hand coming up instinctively to cover his own mouth for a second before he seemed to realize how little good that would do at this distance.
"What's she got?" the woman asked.
"We don't know," David said.
"She thinks it might be some bad version of COVID," Curtis added, and the strangers' eyes went straight to the masks, which did more work than any explanation could have.
"Fever. Cough. Having trouble breathing," David said. "We're trying to get her to a doctor."
The man took another step back, putting himself half behind his wife without seeming to notice he'd done it. "Where's the doctor?"
"West," David said, and left it there.
The woman asked if they needed food or water, which told David plenty about who these two were regardless of the lie sitting between them.
He declined politely, careful to keep his voice easy despite the mask muffling it.
She gave them a warning about a washed section of road a mile ahead and which way to go around it, useful information that had nothing to do with the trick they were running.
The man who'd started toward the wagon clearly had no further interest in it. "You keep your distance," he said, backing another step toward his own porch.
"That's the plan," David said, and they rode on without trouble.
Once they were well clear, David checked the road behind them. Nobody followed.
Karen sat up in the wagon bed, pulling the mask down.
"That worked," Curtis said.
"Of course it worked."
"You sound surprised that we're surprised," David said.
"People will risk getting shot over food," Karen said. "They won't risk coughing themselves to death over somebody else's wagon."
Curtis pulled his mask off with obvious relief. "I'm taking this thing off."
"Keep it where you can reach it," Karen said.
David folded his carefully and tucked it into his coat pocket. "We're keeping these handy."
Karen swung her legs over the side of the wagon, then paused. "You said I was having trouble breathing."
"You told me to."
"Then you let me climb back onto a horse and ride away."
David looked at her.
Curtis started laughing.
"You didn't mention that part," David said.
"Because I assumed you could think."
"That's where you went wrong," Curtis said.
David pointed at him. "You're sick next time."
"No."
"He'd be terrible at it," Karen said.
"Why?" Curtis asked.
"You'd argue with everybody trying to help you."
Curtis considered that. "That's fair."
They agreed, without much debate, that Karen would stay in the wagon until they were well out of sight next time, and that Whiskey would come along on a lead rather than carrying her back into view too soon.
Karen climbed back onto Whiskey.
"Next time cough worse," Curtis told her.
"Next time you get to be sick."
"You're the nurse."
"Exactly. I should be the healthy one staying away from you."
"She's got a point," David said.
"No, she doesn't," Curtis said, and that ended it.
David turned the trick over as they rode, working out why it had worked as well as it had.
Outbound, they'd carried little worth stealing, and it showed.
Now the wagon announced they owned enough to need one, covered or not.
The masks bought them distance from anyone tempted to look closer, but they couldn't stop somebody from watching from farther back, following at a distance, or telling the next traveler down the road what they'd seen.
David didn't let it turn into paranoia. He simply changed how they moved — camping farther from roads than they had outbound, stopping where nobody could watch them from a distance, keeping the masks within reach at all times, saying less about where they were headed than they had on the way out.
They stopped for a proper midday break in a stand of trees well off the road, nobody in sight, nothing following, the horses finally allowed to graze and rest without half an eye kept on the tree line.
David, Curtis, and Karen ate sitting near the wagon, and Karen reached back at one point and rested a hand flat against one of the medical boxes, quiet for a moment.
"She's going to lose her mind when she sees this," Karen said.
"Good way or bad way?" David asked.
"Nurse way."
"What's nurse way?" Curtis asked.
"She'll complain about how we packed it while trying not to cry."
David could picture that clearly enough — Rebecca running her hands over cases of saline and antibiotics with the same restrained focus she brought to everything else, the emotion showing only around the edges.
"She mentioned prenatal vitamins before we left," Karen said. "Half-joking that if anybody ever brought back real ones, she'd consider it a personal favor she'd remember for a long time."
"Noted," David said.
Karen looked at the wagon a while longer. "You know what's funny?"
"Probably not."