The outdoor store appears through the trees late in the morning, broad roof sagging under a winter it was never meant to endure without maintenance. Half the letters have fallen from the sign. The parking lot is a quilt of cracked asphalt, dirty snow, and shallow meltwater, with weeds already pushing through the seams where the sun reaches.

We stop short of the lot and watch for several minutes. Nothing moves except water dripping from the gutters.

“This better be worth two days of crawling north,” Danielle says beside me. Two days is not an exaggeration. What once would have been a thirty-minute drive now takes days. Wrecks and abandoned cars turn short stretches into long detours, and after the winter storms, fallen trees have become another problem. We cannot simply destroy them without drawing attention to ourselves. Danielle and Marcus spent the winter getting used to the mobility their bikes gave them. Cars are proving much less forgiving.

“It’ll be if the roof has kept the weather out,” James answers.

Marcus studies the empty road behind us. “And if nobody else cleaned it out first.”

That is the larger question. The place was worth the detour because it sits far enough from the towns to have escaped some of the first scavenging, but close enough to the river road that anyone moving through could have found it. Small enough to not be a target, large enough to have useful equipment. I see no Dominion eye on the building or pavement. That comforts me less than I would like.

We leave the cars under tree cover and approach on foot. Mio stays with Angela, Nathaniel, and the girls until we clear the building. James takes the side entrance while Danielle and Marcus circle the rear. I go through the front.

The glass doors have already been broken. Cold, damp air hangs inside, carrying dust, mildew, and the faint chemical smell of rubber. Racks of jackets stand crooked beneath a dark ceiling. One display of bright plastic kayaks has collapsed across an aisle, absurdly cheerful in the gray light.

I find the clerk behind the counter.

What remains of him is folded against a cabinet, clothes dried tight around bone. A name tag still clings to his vest. I look away from the name before I can read it. There are times when knowing is a kindness. There are others when it only gives grief another handle.

James joins me and stops when he sees the body. “Back door’s clear,” he says quietly.

“So is this side.”

James helps me move him to the bathroom at the back of the store. We close the door behind us and leave him there. Once the others come in, the store becomes work.

Danielle takes charge almost immediately checking off her list. We work through the camping aisles first, replacing the worst of our cold-weather gear and gathering repair supplies, filters, lights, rope, and whatever else earns its weight. In the back we find frame packs, collapsible carts, even two electric mountain bikes still boxed, with enough spare tubes and patch kits to make Marcus grin like he has discovered buried treasure.

Selena holds up a hammock. “Important survival equipment.”

Danielle does not look up from a shelf of batteries. “Put it in the maybe pile.”

Liora finds a second one and carries both toward the carts. “Two important survival equipments,” she says. I catch Mio smiling before she turns away.

The store is valuable enough to create a different problem. We cannot take everything. The sleeping section, for instance, has more than bags and pads. There are air mattresses meant for two, raised on folding frames so they sit well above cold or wet ground. I start to question the weight, but the looks from Mio and Angela stop me. James, wisely, finds something else to inspect. We take two. Selena and Liora get new cold-weather sleeping bags, while Marcus picks out a lighter raised cot for himself. Danielle considers his choice for a moment and adds another to the pile.

On the other hand, James stands over three folding camp tables while Danielle points toward the trailers we found behind the building, one small enough for the lead car to tow without turning every hill into a fight.

“One table,” she says seeing James starting to move the tables.

“Two would be useful.”

“One.”

Marcus lifts a cast-iron camp oven from a shelf. “What about this?” Danielle looks at the weight in his hands. He puts it back without waiting for the answer.

The choices become easier once we start carrying things outside. Every useful object has weight. Weight becomes fuel. Fuel has become distance.

The best surprise waits in a locked storage cage behind the service counter. James pries the bent latch free and finds sealed metal cans marked as stabilized emergency fuel. Not much. Six five-gallon cans, and one has leaked enough that it thumped mostly hollow and the floor beneath it still smells pungent.

He checks the others carefully before nodding. “These others should still be good.”

“Twenty-five gallons,” Danielle says.

“Yea, about that.”

Her expression does not brighten as much as I expect. She looks toward the cars instead. “Good. Not good enough to get careless.”

We load the intact cans and leave the leaking exposed one. Twenty-five gallons gives us room to move.

By early afternoon the trailer is packed tight with the gear worth carrying. The electric bikes ride strapped upright with our older bicycles around them. The larger folding solar arrays earn their space, along with the battery packs that still take a charge. Two powered chest coolers make the cut as well, ordinary camping coolers at a glance except for the compact compressor units built into them.

The firearms require a different kind of sorting. We keep the ammunition secured and the rifles protected from weather and careless handling. But in this world, ignorance is an even greater danger. Selena and Liora will learn how to check a weapon, carry it safely, and know when not to touch one long before I expect them to use it.

Marcus picks up one of the rifles, quickly checks the action, and slings it over his shoulder before reaching for another crate.

It occurs to me that I have no idea whether anyone beyond the movies ever taught him properly. “Perhaps I should include you in the safety lessons.”

He glances at me. “I was being safe.”

“That is what concerns me.”

The rest of the shop stays behind. I stand in the loading bay for a moment before we leave. There are enough tents here for dozens of people. Enough coats for more. Blankets, sleeping bags, spare clothing. We cannot carry it all, and we have already taken what we need.

We test the trailer only a few miles away that first evening. Marcus checks the hitch twice. Danielle retightens the load. James decides one crate rides too high and makes us repack it. We find a clearing before dark and begin setting up the new camp. Rain starts while we are still unpacking. Marcus holds it off the clearing long enough for us to stretch the new tarp between the cars and trailer. Once the last line is tight, he lets the rain fall.

He looks up as the first drops strike the fabric. “No more standing around keeping the fire dry.”

Danielle glances at him. “You mean no more complaining while keeping the fire dry.”

“Exactly. Progress.”

The stove hums beneath the tarp. Nathaniel stirs in his carrier, soothed by Angela’s hand against his back. The girls unroll their new padded sleeping mats, spread their new sleeping bags over them, and test every zipper and pocket as if the equipment might vanish if they do not use all of it at once.

One lantern flickers and dies. James turns it over, finds a loose wire, and sets it aside.

“Fixable,” he says. “We are not driving back for one light.”

Selena has already moved onto the hammocks.

Danielle looks at me as the girls string them between two trees.

I raise my hands. “I did not approve the packing list.”

“You did not stop them either.”

“No.”

The laughter under the tarp is small, but it is ours.

Later, after we eat, Danielle settles into one of the hammocks with a paperback of her own. Across the camp, Mio nudges Angela and tips her chin toward Danielle. I follow her glance to the cover: a bare-chested man standing beside a horse. Angela presses her lips together, but the smile gets through anyway.

That first camp still feels new. Within a week, repetition has turned most of it into routine.

The store brought us farther north than we intended, so we turn southwest again toward the lake. We move in short pieces, rarely taking the route a map would choose for us. A bridge that should save six miles is blocked by abandoned cars. A county road disappears beneath a slope of wet earth. Twice we reverse several miles because the pavement ahead has simply broken away.

The distance on the map remains almost insulting. The distance traveled feels much longer.

Cold rain follows us more often than not. The road shoulders soften enough to swallow a boot or tire, and water gathers in the low places faster than the ground can absorb it. What snow remains survives mostly in dirty patches beneath the trees in the shade.

Our routines adjust over time. At first we discuss every campsite: how to set things up, who sleeps where, where the food and supplies go, what needs to be unpacked.

By the second week, we barely need to. Tents go up while someone unfolds the solar panels into whatever light remains. The new batteries keep the coolers running and give us brighter lamps after dark, and on the colder nights Mio turns on one of the electric blankets before we climb in. The raised mattress beneath us is an extravagance I have stopped feeling guilty about.

Marcus and Danielle begin taking the electric bikes out from camp, scouting for supplies, buildings, and the condition of the roads ahead. We spend more time camping while they explore possible routes, but less gasoline discovering that a road ends three miles after we commit two cars and a trailer to it. Our map begins accumulating marks where roads have become impassable.

Mio keeps her mist light while they are gone, spread thinly enough through the surrounding woods and roads to warn her of movement without hiding the camp. By the time Marcus and Danielle return, she often knows they are coming before I hear the bikes.

The first time Marcus takes one of the rifles hunting, the action carries back through the trees clearly enough to pull my attention from the map in my hands. I look toward Mio.

She considers the mist for a moment. “Nothing close. Maybe Marcus?”

It is.

He and Danielle return later with enough venison to make the powered coolers worth the space they occupy. The rifle allowed Marcus to hunt as easily as he suspected, but at a cost. Its sound traveled much farther than any of us expected. He still takes it with him after that, but when hunting, he relies usually on his bow and arrows.

Hearing the shot from that far away also prompts me to begin teaching Selena and Liora how to handle the rifles safely sooner rather than later.

The road remains slow despite the scouting. Some days Marcus and Danielle find a route the cars can manage. Other days we remain in camp while they search farther out, waiting for a way to move two vehicles and a loaded trailer through a landscape no longer maintained for any of them.

Fuel still limits us. The sealed cans from the store disappear one by one into the tanks. The trailer pulls hard on hills, and mud makes the engines work for every mile we do drive. When we are lucky we find more. Scouting saves us also from wasting gasoline on the worst routes, but it cannot make the roads themselves any easier.

Nathaniel is more alert in the carrier now, following movement with his eyes and grabbing at Angela’s collar whenever she leans close. Still small though. He has begun making a soft, indignant sound when he is bored. Marcus claims it is Nathaniel’s first complaint about management.

Angela does not find that as funny as Marcus does. “Well, you are HR,” Marcus says.

“Was.” Angela looks at him. “I was.”

“Nathaniel doesn’t know that.” He grins, earning a playful smack.

A washed-out bridge appears on one of the scouting runs near the end of the second week. There is no reasonable way around it that they can find, and by the time they return, James is already asking questions about the creek bed, pretty sure he can get us across.

We drive as far as we safely can the next morning and stop well short of the edge.

The creek beneath the missing span is swollen and fast, not deep enough to drown a car but strong enough to push one sideways. Concrete slabs hang from either bank where the center used to be. James crouches beside the road for a long moment, then looks across to the far side.

“Yea, I should be able to get the cars across.”

Danielle steps closer to the bank. “With the trailer?”

He studies the water again. “With the trailer.”

James sets both hands to the ground. The creek bed answers with a grinding crack that rolls through the hollow. Mud boils through the water as stones push upward beneath it, first scattered, then gathering into a rough wide ridge. Water sprays against the newly formed obstacle.

Danielle closes her eyes and shifts one foot.

“Water’s pushing harder on the left side.” James adjusts. Another section rises. “Better. Pressure is pretty even now.”

He thickens it slightly, leaving shallow channels for the water to pass through instead of over the crossing. Mio glances toward the trees. Behind the ridge, the creek is already beginning to rise.

Marcus is checking the trailer straps while the girls climb back into the car.

I take the lead vehicle through first. Water splashes against the doors and trailer frame, pushing at us as we cross. The tires slip once, catch against stone, then climb the far bank. The second car follows.

Danielle crosses last on foot. She looks back at what James has left spanning the creek. “We can’t leave that behind us.” James gives a small nod. They turn to Mio.

She listens for another moment. “No one close.”

Danielle plants one foot quickly against the road and sends the vibration back through the ridge.

The crack is sharper than I expect. It echoes from the slopes before the first section gives way, followed by the heavy rush of stone and earth dropping into the creek. Water surges through the opening and begins carrying the loose material downstream.

Marcus watches it go. “I was starting to like that bridge.”

“We can’t leave signs of what we can do,” Danielle says.

We are moving again before the water fully clears.

After that, the road becomes as much a question of waiting as driving. Marcus and Danielle range farther on the bikes while the rest of us make camp, and another line or cross appears on the map whenever they find pavement the cars can no longer use.

We find Dominion markers along the way as well.

The first ceramic disc makes us stop. The eye and star are printed cleanly into its face, identical to the ones we saw before winter. I turn it over in my hands before marking its location on the map. James breaks it against the road and buries the pieces in the mud.

By the fourth, I mark the location while he is already removing it.

The camping gear has stopped looking new by then. Mud stains the tent bottoms, one tarp has a repaired tear near a grommet, and the girls have stopped keeping track of which hammock belongs to whom. Whoever reaches one first gets it.

Our gasoline has fallen below the point where anyone jokes about it.

Danielle keeps the fuel log. What we use continues to disappear faster than we find anything fit to replace it. Eventually there is only a gallon of stabilized fuel left in the cans. After that, we will have whatever remains in the tanks and whatever chance gives us ahead.

The days are beginning to smell like early spring. The cold still settles in after dark, but rainwater runs through the ditches and buds have begun to swell along the bare branches.

It has taken us weeks to move a distance that once would have been an easy afternoon.

That is when Marcus sees the smoke.

We are crawling along a narrow ridge road, tires finding the firmest edges of thawed pavement, when he leans forward in the passenger seat.

“Smoke ahead.”

He points through the trees. At first I see only trunks and the pale glare of wet sky. Then a thin gray thread rises from the hollow below. Danielle signals from the second car. Nothing on the map suggests a town here.

We pull the vehicles off the road into a shallow hollow, far enough back that they will not be obvious to anyone passing. Angela tightens Nathaniel’s carrier against her chest. He reaches for the edge of her coat and misses.

“Keep the girls close,” I tell Mio. “We will look first.”

She nods. “Be careful.”

I kiss her temple, then leave with James and Danielle.

The smoke comes from a farmhouse at the bottom of the ridge. Children move around it. I count seven before one disappears behind the barn. Two carry hay. A smaller girl drags a sled that has long since lost any use for snow, loaded now with split wood. Another child works at a fence. Goats crowd near a trough. Somewhere inside the barn, something moos. The chimney smoke is steady and pale.

The oldest children look perhaps ten or eleven. I have seen children that age carry households before, in centuries when no one thought it unusual.

“No banners,” James whispers.

“No patrol marks,” Danielle adds.

The sun is already lowering behind the ridge.

“We wait until morning,” I say. “Walking into their yard at dusk with weapons would be a poor introduction.”

Neither argues.

We camp a quarter mile away and keep the fire low. That night the temperature drops hard enough for frost to rim the tarp. Nathaniel wakes twice. The second time, I take him while Angela eats and watch his fingers close around one of mine.

Mio settles beside me and touches one of his hands. “Do you remember when the girls were this small?”

“I seem to remember them being louder.”

She gives me a look. “You remember Selena being louder.”

“That is probably true.”

I smile. Five months, give or take a few days. Nathaniel has spent most of his life in winter.

Morning comes pale and wet. By midmorning the frost has already softened into droplets. We leave the cars where they are and approach the farmhouse on foot with food, a few tools, rope, and one of the water filters. Our weapons stay visible but low.

The children notice us before we reach the yard. Work stops in pieces. One girl freezes beside the goat pen, and a younger boy drops a handful of kindling. Then an older boy comes off the porch and snatches up a longbow propped near the door. He nocks an arrow quickly, if not smoothly, and raises it without drawing. His arms shake as he holds it.

“Morning,” I say, keeping my hands where he can see them. “We saw your smoke yesterday. We wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“You’re adults.”

It comes out almost as an accusation.

“We are.”

His eyes move across us and stop on Angela with Nathaniel against her chest. The bow lowers perhaps an inch. “Is… Are you Dominion?”

“No,” I say. “We are not.”

A girl steps out behind him. She looks a little older, or perhaps only more tired. Her dark hair is tied back with a strip of cloth, and she keeps one hand on the porch rail as she studies us.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“To talk, if you are willing. We brought some food and tools. If you want help with anything, we can offer that too.”

The boy looks toward her. She does not answer immediately, but finally nods once, and he eases the bow down.

“I’m Alexander,” he says. The name seems reluctant.

“Rebecca,” the girl adds. “He’s my brother.”

I give them our names, not all at once and not as titles.

Alexander’s eyes catch on the twins. “You’re about our age?”

“About,” Selena says. “How old are you?”

“Ten,” Rebecca says for him.

“Ten and a half,” Alexander corrects. “Almost eleven.”

Rebecca gives him a look. “I’m eleven.”

Liora looks at the bow. “Did you make the string?”

Alexander blinks. “No. Dad had it.”

A moment passes. Liora only nods. “It looks better than ours.”

Rebecca gestures toward the house. “We don’t need much.” Her gaze moves to the packs anyway.

“The gutter’s loose,” Alexander says. “And the trough leaks.”

“Then we can start there,” James says.

The younger children resume moving first. Their caution does not disappear, but work is stronger than their curiosity when there are animals that need feed. Evie, perhaps nine, keeps staring at Angela.

“Is that a baby?”

Angela shifts Nathaniel higher. “He is. His name is Nathaniel.”

“How old?”

“About five months.”

The girl looks toward Rebecca as if checking whether such a thing is possible. Rebecca’s expression changes too, though she hides it faster.

“You had him after?” she asks.

Angela understands. “After everything started. Yes.”

No one asks more.

We work.

For the first few minutes, we assist like anyone would. Danielle sets the ladder while Marcus digs packed leaves from the gutter by hand. James wrestles a fence post back into place with Alexander. A pair of chickens scratch through the wet grass nearby, scattering when James steps too close. The work is possible. It is also slower than it needs to be.

Marcus waits until Alexander carries a tool back toward the porch before leaning closer. “This would go a lot faster if we stopped doing everything the hard way.”

Danielle glances at him, then at me. James does the same.

I look around the yard. “Small things. Nothing obvious.”

Marcus’s mouth quirks. “Subtle. Got it.” I cannot help but sigh. I have a feeling our definitions are not quite the same.

After that, the work moves faster. Danielle steadies the ladder while Marcus clears the gutter, giving the packed leaves a small push of air when his hands hide the movement. James helps Alexander reset the fence post and firms the earth around it with a touch too subtle to see. Somewhere behind the barn, a cow moos again.

Rebecca shows me a corner of the yard where runoff has been cutting toward the root cellar. The children have laid boards across the mud, but the next heavy rain will carry more water straight against the foundation.

“You need to send it around the house, not block it here,” I tell her.

She looks at the slope. “We tried digging a ditch. It filled back in.”

I take a shovel and walk uphill with her. “Start farther up, before the water turns toward the cellar. Give it somewhere easier to go.”

We cut a shallow diversion channel along the natural fall of the ground, bracing the softest section with flat stones. Alexander joins us after the fence is done.

“That’s it?” he asks.

“For now. After the next rain, see where the water goes. Fix the places that fail.”

Rebecca studies the channel. “So we just keep extending it until the water goes where we want.”

“And correcting it when the water proves you wrong.”

She nods. “We can do that.”

James brings over a broken section of gutter and shows Alexander how to cut a patch from thin sheet metal and fold the edges so they do not slice a hand. Danielle finds two loose roof boards and teaches Rebecca how to brace them from beneath instead of wasting their few good nails driving them into rotten wood.

They know how to keep the farm running. We are mostly showing them the things no one had time to teach them.

Liora and Selena spend most of the morning with the younger ones.

Evie shows Selena how they portion grain for the animals. Selena listens seriously for nearly a minute before one goat shoves its nose into her coat pocket.

“He likes you,” Evie says.

“He likes the crackers.”

“Same thing.”

Selena laughs and gives the goat half of one anyway.

Liora sits beside Alexander while he repairs an arrow. She watches him bind the fletching, then asks, “Who taught you?”

“My dad.”

“Mine taught us too.” She glances toward me. “He still corrects everything.”

Alexander looks across the yard at me, then back at the arrow.

“You still have both parents?”

Liora’s fingers stop against the porch board.

“Yes.”

Alexander is quiet for a moment, then returns to the arrow.

Liora watches him work. “Can you show me how you tie that?”

He looks up, a little more life in his face. “Yeah.” He shifts the arrow between them so she can see his hands.

Later I see Selena carrying a bucket beside Evie while two smaller children trail them. Selena is talking enough for all four. Liora sits with Alexander and Rebecca over a pile of arrows, asking short questions and remembering every answer.

At lunch, the farm offers beans, broth, and a few different cheeses. We add dried pasta and one of our remaining meat packs, and eat together.

James asks about Dominion only after the bowls are nearly empty.

“You said you knew who they were. Have their people been through here?”

Alexander’s shoulders tighten.

“Last fall. Two kids. Older than us. They had eyes painted on their coats.”

“Dominion eyes?” Danielle asks.

Rebecca nods. “Same symbol from the television. They said we should go with them.”

“What did you say?”

“No.” Her answer is immediate. “This is our house. The others came here after their parents died.”

Alexander adds, “They said we’d be safer with Dominion. Said they had towns and soldiers and adults with powers.”

“Did you see anyone use those powers?” I ask.

“No. They just said their general could.”

“Did they threaten you?”

Rebecca shakes her head. “Not really. They acted like we were stupid for staying. Like they owned everything already.”

“And they left?”

“Yeah.” Alexander looks toward the road. “Said they’d be back sometime.”

“Anything since?” James asks.

“No.”

Rebecca hesitates. “They talked about another place north of here. Said those kids told them no too.”

“How far north?”

She shrugs. “Near the river. A bridge, maybe. We didn’t ask.”

I unfold the map on the porch step. “Somewhere along the Delaware?”

Alexander points vaguely north. “I think.”

The nearest crossing that makes sense is Barryville. I mark a question beside it.

Rebecca watches the pencil. “Why are you looking?”

“If there are people there who need help, we want to find them. And the more we know about what Dominion is doing, the better.”

She studies the map. “Would you bring them with you?”

“If they wanted to come.”

“Where?”

I hesitate. Danielle is watching me now, waiting for my answer.

“We have not figured that out yet.”

By afternoon the sky darkens. Marcus notices first.

“That front’s moving faster than I thought.”

I look toward Mio. She is already studying the ridge. A few seconds later, she nods. “He’s right. Big one.”

Marcus glances between us. “You know I can do this too.”

“I know.” Mio smiles, and Marcus shakes his head.

Clouds have stacked over the ridge, heavy and low. The air starts having the smell of a storm about to break. The farm children notice fairly quickly afterward as the wind picks up. Rebecca starts issuing orders before any of us can offer help, sending the smaller children inside while Alexander heads for the barn doors. We join them.

James and Danielle climb to the porch roof to secure a loose tarp while Alexander feeds nails from below. Marcus and I help at the barn. Two cows shift uneasily in their stalls while the goats crowd together farther back. Marcus braces the door and takes just enough force out of the gusts to keep it from tearing free. Angela and Mio move the younger children inside. Selena follows with Evie, carrying a basket of wet laundry. Liora helps Rebecca bring the last feed sacks under cover.

I check the drainage ditch.

The first hard rain reaches us while I am still there. Water sheets down the slope, strikes the shallow cut we made, and turns. Not perfectly. One section begins spilling over.

Rebecca sees it with me. “There.” She grabs the shovel before I do and cuts the low edge deeper. The water follows. She looks up at me through wet hair. I nod. “Exactly.”

The rain comes hard for twenty minutes, wind driving it sideways. James and Danielle shore up a porch support while Marcus keeps the worst gusts off the barn.

When the front finally moves east, the yard smells of mud, wet wood, and animals. James and I are soaked. Danielle looks no better. Marcus is almost dry.

Danielle stares at him. “Seriously?”

He brushes one sleeve. “Good positioning.”

“Mmmhm.”

“Experience.”

“Smugness.”

“That too.”

Rebecca laughs before she catches herself. It is the first time I hear her do it.

We spend another hour checking what the storm exposed. The drainage channel has washed wider but held. Rebecca and Alexander reinforce the soft bend with stones without asking us how. James repairs the last section of gutter with Alexander watching his hands, while Angela shows Evie a better way to keep the stored seed packets dry.

By late afternoon, the children begin looking toward the lowering sun. Rebecca finds us near the fence collecting our things. Her caution has returned, though not as sharply as before.

“You didn’t have to stay through the storm,” she says.

“No,” I answer. “But it is always useful to have more hands.”

She nods. “Thank you.” Then she looks toward the house. “We’re not used to people being here at night,” she says. “It is quieter when it is just us. Safer.”

James starts to answer, but I speak first. “Then we will leave before dark.”

Rebecca looks at me, then to her brother and back. “You’re okay with that?” Alexander asks.

“It is your home.”

Rebecca and Alexander exchange another glance. She disappears inside, and when she returns, she is carrying a small bundle of farm goods: several wrapped pieces of cheese and more eggs than Angela looks willing to accept.

“You don’t have to give us all this,” Angela says.

“The hens lay more every day.”

Angela looks into the bundle, then at Rebecca. “All right. Thank you.”

Before we go, I leave the water filter and one roll of repair tape with Alexander. “You might need these more than we do,” I say.

He looks toward our packs. “You sure?”

“We can manage without them.” He nods and takes them.

Rebecca walks us to the fence. “If you find that town,” she says, “don’t tell them where we are.”

“If there are good people there, we still will not tell them without checking with you first.”

She nods.

Liora and Selena say goodbye last. Evie hugs Selena without warning, and Selena returns it immediately. Alexander holds one of the repaired arrows out to Liora. “For practicing,” he says.

Liora takes it, studying the binding. “I’ll bring it back if we come through again.”

“You can keep it.”

She looks at him for a moment. “Okay.” She carries it carefully when we leave.

We leave the farm while there is still light enough to find the ridge path without lamps. The children return to their work before we reach the trees. I look back once. Rebecca is already checking the drainage cut where the rain washed through. Alexander is at the fence. Evie is carrying the empty grain bucket back toward the barn.

The cars have sunk slightly into the mud while we were gone. James firms the ground beneath the tires while Marcus checks the hitch. Danielle already has the fuel log open when I reach her.

“How bad?” James asks.

“We’re under a quarter in the lead car. The other one’s not much better.”

Marcus looks toward the road. “How much in the cans?”

“Just a big one unopened.” The stabilized fuel from the outdoor store bought us time. Since Pond Eddy, we have found little worth much. Only a few pints and quarts of stabilized fuel meant for lawn equipment. We poured in everything we found, but it was never enough to make much difference.

I unfold the map across the hood. Damp paper curls at the corners. The farmhouse is still marked from this morning. I erase it. Farther north, I place a question near the Delaware crossing.

“Barryville is likely the bridge they were talking about,” I say. “If the settlement survived the winter, it may be there or at least close to it.”

Mio stands beside me. Angela is a few steps away with Nathaniel sleeping against her chest. “And if the bridge is gone?” Mio asks.

“Then we do not wast the fuel trying to cross.”

Danielle taps the log. “We have maybe a slow day of driving there if the roads cooperate.”

“They haven’t shown much interest in cooperating so far,” Marcus says.

Daniele sighed. “No.”

I trace the Delaware north with one finger until I reach the question beside Barryville. Tomorrow, we find out what is there.

---