Four days after Barryville, the house already feels half swallowed by the woods when the light fades. Vines have climbed the porch rails and reached the roofline, and one shutter hangs crooked from a rusted hinge. There is nothing remarkable about finding it. Most of the houses we pass are empty now. What matters is that this one sits back from the road, the roof still holds, and the trees hide most of it from anyone moving north.

Marcus comes in from the front room, hair damp from the evening air. “Saw another group on the road. Maybe half a dozen. Flashlights only. Heading north, moving fast.”

James looks up from his pack. “Any sign they saw you?”

“No. They weren’t searching the houses. Just moving.”

I study the ink marks across the map between us. Since Barryville, our route has become a collection of small roads, abandoned houses, and detours chosen mostly because they are slower for everyone else too. We left enough behind in Barryville for Dominion to know we went north. The patrols suggest they have some idea where to look.

How much they know is harder to judge.

Danielle taps the river line with one finger. “They’re getting ahead of us on the main roads.”

“Because we keep giving them the main roads,” Marcus says. “We take three back roads around a hill. They ride one decent road straight up the valley.”

“We also stay unseen,” Angela says. Nathaniel shifts against her shoulder, one small hand tangled in the front of her coat. “That still matters.”

James folds the map to the next section. “There’s a bridge back downriver. We check it before we decide anything else.”

Mio leans over my shoulder. “And if they got there first?”

“Then we learn something.”

That is enough for now.

We leave after dark.

Two bicycles pull the trailer while the others carry most of the remaining weight. The batteries help on the grades, but there is no road left that feels simple. Pavement breaks into gravel. Gravel narrows into old county lanes with branches reaching across them. We stop whenever light moves through the trees and wait until it passes.

The cold has sharpened since Barryville. Not winter yet, but close enough that breath shows when we stop and fingers stiffen around handlebars.

Halfway up a long incline, James slows.

“Tree.”

It lies across both lanes, too large to lift without making a project of it. At first glance it could have fallen in one of the autumn storms. Then Danielle crouches near the trunk.

“Cut.”

The pale wood is fresh beneath the bark.

Marcus nudges the trunk with his boot. “Could still be somebody clearing something somewhere else and dropping it here.”

“Could be,” Danielle says.

Liora studies the ditch. “But it blocks the road really well.”

“It does,” I say.

That is all we know.

James kneels beside the exposed roots and places one hand against the ground. Soil loosens with a low crunch. The trunk shifts just enough for us to roll it toward the ditch while Marcus and Danielle guide the weight. We take the bicycles and trailer through one at a time.

On the other side, Angela looks back. “Can we put it back?”

“Close,” James says. “Not perfect.”

“Close is enough.”

We work it back across the road. James settles the soil around it again, and Angela draws flattened grass and loose vines across the disturbed edge.

We are gone before dawn.

For another hour, the road climbs and falls beneath us. Once, through a break in the trees, lights move north along a lower road nearer the river. They pass us quickly and disappear.

Marcus watches the last glow vanish. “That’s what I mean. They can’t have enough people to cover everything.”

“No,” Danielle says. “They don’t.”

He looks at her. “That sounded like you were about to tell me why I’m still wrong.”

“I’m waiting until I know.”

Mio smiles faintly. “Growth.”

Danielle gives her a look, and Marcus manages a tired grin before we move again.

Near dawn we find another house, this one a sagging two-story with a detached garage behind it. The garage has no windows toward the road and enough room to hide the bicycles and trailer.

We bring the gear inside the house.

Marcus and Danielle unhook the trailer first. James checks the tires and axle while Selena and Liora carry packs upstairs. I help angle the solar panels where the morning light can reach them without making them obvious from the road.

Angela changes Nathaniel on one of the beds while he objects loudly to the cold.

Marcus drops his pack beside the door. “He gets it.”

“He also sleeps more than you do,” Danielle says.

“That is because nobody asks him to scout.”

James sits with the map across his knees. “We sleep first. Bridge after dark.”

No one argues.

Mio settles beside me. Her shoulder finds mine before her eyes close. The others quiet by degrees, gear put away, food rationed, batteries charging.

When darkness returns, we leave the house and angle back toward the river.

The road descends through bare-limbed trees. Mio keeps a thin mist close around us, not the enormous net she held around Barryville. This one reaches only far enough to give her warning if something moves through it too quickly. Every so often her attention shifts toward one side of the road, then relaxes again.

A deer breaks through the brush uphill.

Mio turns before I hear it.

A moment later hooves strike dead leaves and vanish into the dark.

“Large,” she whispers. “Fast.”

Danielle, walking near the front, tilts her head. “And noisy.”

The distinction has become useful.

We leave the bicycles well short of the bridge. James and Danielle go ahead on foot while the rest of us wait in the trees.

The river is louder here. I can hear it below us even when the wind moves through the branches.

Time stretches.

Mio sits with one hand against the ground, eyes open but unfocused. The mist lies between the trunks ahead of us. When something disturbs it near the road, her head lifts.

“Two.”

Marcus tightens his grip on the bicycle.

“Walking,” she adds after a moment. “Coming back.”

James and Danielle emerge less than a minute later.

Danielle crouches beside us. “Blocked.”

James takes the map from his jacket. “Barricade across the bridge. Trees, wire, sheet metal. Two guards where we could see them. Maybe a third farther back.”

“Armed?” Angela asks.

“Rifles,” Danielle says.

James’s mouth tightens. “Young.”

“How young?” Mio asks.

“Twelve, perhaps. One older.”

For a moment, I see the image without having been there. Narrow shoulders under coats made for someone larger. A rifle carried with hands that should still look too small around it.

Danielle continues. “They know how to hold them. They’re not standing around playing soldier. Mostly watching the road and shoreline on this side.”

Marcus exhales through his nose. “They got there first.”

“Yes.”

Angela looks toward the river. “Can we get around the bridge somehow?”

“Not with the trailer,” James says. “Not there.”

I look at the map.

One guarded bridge proves very little. They know we left Barryville heading north, and this is an obvious place to watch for anyone trying to cross the river.

“All right,” I say. “We go north.”

Marcus looks at me. “That simple?”

“For tonight.”

Danielle folds the map. “Works for me.”

We turn inland before dawn.

The next days settle into a rhythm I stop measuring by distance. We travel mostly at night. When the roads pull too close to the river, we turn inland and accept the extra miles. When lights appear below us, we stop and let them pass. They almost always do.

Dominion has roads. We have everything between them.

The difference keeps us unseen. It does not make us fast.

By the second morning, we find a farmhouse at the end of a narrow drive nearly hidden beneath fallen leaves. The garage door is already half obscured by vines. Marcus and Danielle get the bicycles and trailer inside while Angela kneels beside the wall and works the loose growth back across the places we disturbed. James scatters leaves over the tracks we left in the drive. By the time he lowers the door, little about the garage suggests anyone has touched it recently.

Inside, the house smells of dust and old wood. Nathaniel objects to being changed on one of the upstairs beds until Angela gives him a sock to hold. He immediately becomes absorbed in it.

Marcus watches from the doorway. “That is all it takes?”

Angela looks at him. “For you?”

“Probably.”

Danielle passes behind him carrying two packs. “We know.”

The kitchen gives us something better. I find the first case beneath a fallen shelf in the pantry. Bottled water. Two dozen bottles still wrapped in plastic, another case opened beside it.

Mio stops when she sees them. She says nothing. She simply closes her eyes for a moment, takes one bottle from the case, and drinks half of it before helping me carry the rest into the other room.

We take as much as the trailer can spare weight for. That evening, she still draws a thin mist through the trees when we leave, but she does not have to spend part of the afternoon gathering drinking water a handful at a time.

The miles continue north. A washed-out culvert costs us most of one night. Another road ends beneath three fallen trees, and we backtrack nearly four miles before finding a way around. Twice we hear engines somewhere nearer the river. Both times they fade north before we move again.

The cold follows us into the houses now. At one stop, Selena and Liora claim the least damaged bedroom while Marcus searches a cabinet in the living room. He makes a quiet sound of discovery.

Danielle looks up from the map.

Marcus holds up a box. “Monopoly.”

“No.”

“I have not said anything.”

“You were going to.”

“We could use the morale.”

“We could use sleep.”

Marcus considers the box, then puts it back.

Selena has taken his place beside the map by the time he returns. Narrowsburg is marked farther upriver. The road there follows the Delaware more closely than I would like, so James and I have been tracing alternatives through the smaller roads inland.

Selena leans closer. “What is this?”

Her finger rests on a thin black line crossing the river before Narrowsburg.

James shifts the flashlight. “Railroad.”

“It crosses?”

“Yes.”

Selena looks between us. “Could we use it?”

For a moment, nobody answers. I study the line. The crossing would be awkward with the bicycles and worse with the trailer. There is no reason to expect a clear surface between the rails, and getting everything onto the tracks without being seen may prove difficult.

It is also not a road bridge.

Marcus crouches beside Selena. “If I were blocking bridges, I would start with the ones people can actually drive across.”

Danielle looks at him. “That almost sounded useful.”

“I have my moments.”

James traces the route from our position toward the tracks. “It takes us back toward the river.”

“How far?” Angela asks.

“Not far.”

I look at Selena. She is still studying the crossing, tracing the rail line toward the river with one finger.

“It is worth checking,” I say.

She nods and shifts aside so James can work out the route.

We change course the following night.

The detour takes longer than the map suggests. A road that should carry us toward the tracks disappears beneath a washout, forcing us farther inland before we can turn back. Near dawn, we leave the bicycles and trailer in an empty garage and sleep in the house beside it. Angela restores the weeds we flattened near the garage door while James works loose gravel back across the narrow tire marks.

By the next evening, we are close enough to scout on foot. Danielle comes with me.

We leave the others well inland and work down through bare trees toward the tracks. The river reaches us first as sound, water moving somewhere below the slope. Then the rails appear through the branches, and the bridge comes into view a little at a time. Steel above dark water. Wooden ties. Open spaces between them.

Crossing it with the trailer would be unpleasant.

Possible, perhaps.

I am still studying the span when Danielle’s hand closes around my sleeve.

I stop.

A figure stands beside the tracks ahead. Young. Rifle held low.

He turns toward us, and Danielle and I drop behind the remains of a stone wall.

The boy’s attention moves slowly along the tracks and into the trees on either side. He stays there long enough that my knees begin to complain against the cold ground. Then he looks away.

We move.

Twenty yards farther, Danielle stops me again. Another guard sits near the bridge itself, partly hidden behind a section of old equipment. A third moves along the rail bed beyond him.

We wait.

The standing guard turns toward the bridge. For several seconds, his attention carries across the river.

Danielle starts forward.

The first boy turns back toward the New York tracks.

We are down again before his gaze reaches us.

This time the wait is longer. When he finally looks away, we move far enough to see the entrance to the span clearly.

There is no barricade. There does not need to be.

The guards have positioned themselves where anyone approaching along the tracks or coming out of the trees on our side has to enter open ground. One occasionally looks across the bridge. Another checks the road below. Then their attention returns to the tracks and shoreline in front of us.

Danielle catches my eye.

I shake my head.

Getting back takes longer because the guards keep looking our way. We reach the others well after midnight.

Marcus is awake when we enter the house. He takes one look at Danielle.

“No.”

“Three that we saw,” she says.

He stares at her. “Really? The railroad bridge too?”

“Yes.”

“Come on.”

Selena looks down at the map.

I sit beside her. “It was worth checking.”

She nods, though the disappointment remains.

James shifts the flashlight north along the river. “Narrowsburg.”

The destination we were already trying to reach.

We leave the following night.

The days after that grow colder. Our route bends inland whenever it can. Roads wash out beneath us or vanish into gravel. Batteries drain on hills and recover too slowly beneath weak autumn sun. Houses give us beds, walls, and occasionally something useful left behind. They also begin to blur together.

One has a woodstove and enough dry wood stacked beside it to give us a few hours of warmth before sunrise. We let the fire die while the sky is still dark. Another has enough canned food left in the basement to replace what we have eaten since the railroad bridge. In a third, the trailer sinks into mud behind the garage before we can get it under cover.

Liora catches the bicycle as it tilts. Selena grabs the trailer frame.

“I’ve got it.”

“I know,” Liora says through her teeth. “The road doesn’t.”

Mio crouches beside the buried wheel, and Selena joins her. Water beads across the mud and gathers toward their hands. The rut slowly loses its shine while James presses his palm to the ground beside the tire.

The mud firms beneath it.

“Now,” Danielle says.

Marcus and I lift while the twins pull. The wheel comes free with a wet sucking sound.

Nathaniel laughs from Angela’s arms.

Marcus turns toward him. “You could at least pretend to be concerned.”

Nathaniel laughs again.

“He has chosen a side,” I say.

Marcus looks at me. “I expected better from you.”

“You should know better.”

We get the trailer inside before the next lights pass along the river road. They are gone long before we finish hiding the tracks.

We continue north.

By the time shaded puddles keep a skin of ice through the afternoon, Narrowsburg is close.

We do not reach the bridge. We do not need to.

Danielle and I are still well back among the trees when movement near the river stops us. Two figures stand where the road descends toward the crossing. Another pair is farther down, nearer the bank.

Four this time.

One of the first pair turns slowly toward the trees. I lower myself behind a trunk before his attention reaches us.

A minute passes. Then another.

When I look again, he is watching farther along the New York shoreline. His partner has moved closer to the road. Below them, one of the other pair walks partway toward the bridge, looks across the span, then turns back toward our side.

Danielle shifts beside me.

We cannot get closer without giving them something to see.

I settle against the cold ground and wait.

The light is beginning to fail when movement on the road draws all four of them.

Two more riders approach from downriver on a tandem bicycle. Packs are strapped behind the rear seat, and one of them carries a rifle across his back.

They slow before they reach the bridge.

There is no alarm. No rush.

One of the pairs waiting near the road meets them. They speak for less than a minute. A pack changes hands. One rifle is passed over, checked, and slung across a new shoulder.

Then the pair that had been standing watch takes the tandem bicycle.

They ride north.

The replacements separate. One remains near the road. The other works down toward the bank.

Within minutes, the same watch resumes.

Danielle’s eyes follow the departing bicycle until the road carries it behind the trees.

I watch the new guard instead.

He looks toward the bridge once.

Then back along the New York shoreline.

The railroad bridge returns to me.

The long waits every time Danielle and I tried to move. The tracks watched from this side. The occasional glance across the water before their attention came back toward us.

And before that, James returning from the first bridge.

Mostly the road and this bank.

I look across the Delaware. The Pennsylvania shore lies dark and quiet beyond it.

Three crossings.

Three groups watching for someone approaching from this side.

They know we left Barryville.

They know we went north.

But they do not think we crossed the river.

Danielle and I stay another twenty minutes, long enough to make sure what we saw was not an exception. The replacements settle into the same positions as the pair before them. One watches the road and the trees above it. The other works closer to the bank. Across the bridge, Pennsylvania receives an occasional glance. Our side receives everything else.

When we finally work our way back through the trees, Danielle waits until the river is well behind us before speaking. “You saw it too.”

“Yes.”

“The bridge?”

“That too.”

She looks at me. “The bicycle. They changed guards, and the other two kept going north.”

I think of the pair disappearing upriver. “Yes.”

Danielle pulls her coat tighter around herself. “I don’t think Narrowsburg is the end of this.”

Neither do I.

The others are waiting in a house several miles inland. No lights show from the road when we approach. Mio knows we are coming before anyone else does, and the back door opens as we cross the yard.

Marcus looks past us. “Please tell me you found one bridge in this state nobody cares about.”

“No,” Danielle says.

He closes the door behind us. “Worth trying.”

James already has the map spread across the dining table. Selena and Liora sit on opposite sides of it while Angela feeds Nathaniel from a jar whose label disappeared years ago. He has more interest in the spoon than its contents.

I remove my coat and join James at the table. “Four guards. Two pairs. Another pair arrived before we left and relieved two of them.”

“From where?”

“Downriver,” Danielle says. She pulls out a chair but remains standing behind it. “The pair they replaced took the bicycle and continued north.”

James’s attention drops to the river on the map.

“They’re moving people along the crossings,” Danielle continues.

“How far?” Angela asks.

“We don’t know. But they weren’t going home.”

Marcus leans against the wall. “So we find the next bridge and hope they got tired?”

“No,” I say. “At the railroad bridge, most of their attention stayed on the tracks and shoreline on our side. They looked across the river, but not often. Tonight was the same. James, at the first bridge you said they were mostly watching the road and shoreline on this side.”

“Yeah.”

“They are not guarding these crossings equally.”

James studies the map for several seconds. “They’re watching New York.”

“Yes.”

Mio looks at me. “For us.”

“For whoever they believe left Barryville and went north.”

Marcus straightens slightly. “Which is us.”

Angela shifts Nathaniel higher against her. “So they think we’re still here.”

“I believe so.”

Danielle finally sits. “And if they’re moving guards north, I’d bet the next bridge looks exactly like the last three.”

“You don’t know that,” James says.

“No. But I know which direction that bicycle went.”

James does not argue. For several seconds, the only sound is Nathaniel knocking the spoon against the rim of the jar. Selena catches it before he can send it to the floor.

Marcus comes to the table. “So we stop using bridges.”

Danielle looks at him. “That was more or less the conclusion.”

“No.” He points at the Delaware. “I mean we stop using bridges. We make our own.”

James stares at him. “Do you remember the creek?”

“I remember getting across it.”

“I remember half the valley hearing us do it.”

Danielle gives a tired laugh. “And then hearing us tear it apart afterward.”

Marcus looks between them. “That was smaller.”

James blinks once. “That is not helping your argument.”

“I meant the creek.”

“I know what you meant.” James turns the map toward himself. “That creek was swollen and narrow. I had both banks close enough to work from, and moving the bed still backed water against what I built. This is the Delaware.”

Marcus’s expression loses some of its humor. “Can you do it?”

“Somewhere? Maybe. Here?” James taps the river on the map. “I have no idea.”

“And even if he can,” Danielle says, “we can’t leave it sitting there afterward. They find a new stone path across the Delaware, they don’t need to guess where we went.”

Marcus considers that. “So we knock it down.”

James looks at him again.

“Right,” Marcus says. “More noise.”

“A lot more.”

Mio leans over the table beside me. “I can hide us if we find somewhere far enough from them.”

“But not the sound,” Danielle says.

Mio shakes her head. “No.”

Marcus rubs both hands over his face. “I liked this idea better thirty seconds ago.”

“You usually do,” Danielle says.

Across the table, Selena has stopped watching the argument. She reaches for the folded stack Calla gave us before we left Barryville, road maps mixed with campground sheets and tourist brochures collected from places that no longer have tourists. We have used the maps. Most of the rest has remained folded in the bottom of the bag.

Selena works through several pieces before opening one across the corner of the table. “What about this?”

James looks over. “What about it?”

She turns the paper toward him. “The river.”

It is a campground brochure. The photograph across the front shows a broad stretch of the Delaware broken by exposed stone. People stand on the rocks and in the water between them, the current splitting around long shelves of gray rock before joining again downstream.

James takes the brochure from her.

Selena reaches for the road map. “Skinner’s Falls Campground. It’s here.”

Liora leans closer before James can answer. Her finger lands just below Selena’s. “There’s a bridge.”

“I see it,” Selena says.

“Right next to the campground.”

Selena looks back at the brochure. “But this isn’t the bridge.”

Danielle takes the photograph next. “Do we know where around the campground this was taken?”

Selena shakes her head. “No. But there are rocks.”

James holds out his hand, and Danielle gives the brochure back. He studies the photograph longer this time.

Marcus leans over his shoulder. “That looks better than the creek.”

“It looks like a photograph,” James says.

“Of rocks.”

“Of some rocks. At some water level. At some point before all of this.”

Marcus nods. “There’s the optimism I was waiting for.”

James ignores him, his attention still on the photograph. “If enough of this continues across the channel, maybe I have something to work with.”

“You could get us across?” Angela asks.

“I need to see it.”

Danielle points to the bridge on the road map. “And we need to see this. If they’re rotating people upriver, we have to assume somebody’s there until we know otherwise.”

“How long to get there?” Mio asks.

James sets the brochure beside the map and studies the roads rather than the straight distance. “A day if we used the roads we shouldn’t.”

Danielle almost smiles. “So two.”

“Probably.”

“Two,” Angela says.

No one argues.

Nathaniel chooses that moment to get hold of the spoon again. This time he drops it. It strikes the floor with a sharp metallic clatter, and every adult in the room goes still.

Nathaniel looks delighted.

Marcus closes his eyes. “Excellent timing.”

Angela retrieves the spoon. “You’re on cleanup.”

“I wasn’t even involved.”

“You encouraged him.”

“I did not.”

Nathaniel reaches for Marcus.

Danielle looks back at the map. “That feels like evidence.”

The tension loosens just enough for James to fold the road map and tuck the brochure inside it. “We get there first. We see the river, we see the bridge, and then we decide whether this is possible.”

“And if it isn’t?” Liora asks.

Nobody answers immediately. There are more bridges upriver. There are also more bicycles traveling toward them.

“We learn that before we put anyone in the water,” I say.

Liora accepts that with a small nod. Mio reaches across the table and rests two fingers against my hand. Skinner’s Falls is still only a name on a map, an old photograph taken for people looking for somewhere to spend a Sunday afternoon.

We know enough to go look.

James puts the maps away. We sleep until dark, and when we leave the house, we turn upriver again.

It takes most of two nights.

The roads nearest the Delaware would make it faster. We avoid them. Twice we stop while lights move through the valley below us, and once we spend nearly an hour walking the bicycles through woods because the road ahead leaves too little cover. By the second morning, Skinner’s Falls is close enough that we stop trying to make distance.

The house James chooses sits back from a narrow road beneath trees that have dropped most of their leaves. An attached garage hides the bicycles and trailer, and the rear of the property falls away into woods. The roof holds. The windows are intact. After two weeks of measuring houses by increasingly modest standards, it feels almost luxurious.

We sleep first.

By early afternoon, James, Danielle, and I are moving through the woods toward the river.

Mio remains with the others. Her mist would give us warning, but carrying it near a guarded bridge would introduce something that does not belong there. Three people are easier to hide than ten.

We leave the road well before the river and work down through the trees. The ground grows steeper beneath us, rock breaking through the soil more often as we descend. James notices before I do. He stops once to press the toe of his boot against a slab protruding from beneath the leaves, then continues without comment.

The river appears between the trunks in pieces.

So does the bridge.

We settle above the road where fallen stone and brush give us a view without putting us against the skyline. From here, I can see most of the span and part of the road on either end. The campground is farther downstream, hidden behind the bend and trees.

James looks that way first.

“Can you tell anything?” Danielle whispers.

“Not enough.”

He points through the branches toward the shoreline below us. Stone interrupts the bank in broad shelves, with more breaking the surface near the edge.

“But Selena’s picture wasn’t lying.”

Danielle settles beside a tree and checks her watch. “Good. One problem at a time.”

The bridge has four guards.

Two stay near the New York approach. The other pair work closer to the span and river. Their positions change occasionally, but their attention does not. Most of it remains on this bank, the road, and the ground approaching from our side.

No surprise anymore.

We watch.

For almost half an hour, nothing changes.

One of the guards walks onto the bridge, speaks to another, and returns. A bicycle passes on the Pennsylvania road without stopping. Somewhere below us, water works against stone with a steady sound that makes smaller noises difficult to separate.

Danielle checks her watch again.

“What?” James asks.

“Nothing yet.”

Another ten minutes passes before movement appears downriver.

Two riders.

They come north along the road on a tandem bicycle, packs secured behind them. The guards notice them well before they reach the bridge. Nobody raises a weapon. One of the riders slows long enough to speak with the pair nearest the road, then they continue upriver.

Danielle presses the button on her watch.

I glance at her.

“Starting somewhere,” she whispers.

We remain where we are.

The sun moves behind the trees. Cold settles into the ground beneath my knees, and the stone at my back seems determined to find every bone I possess.

James shifts once.

Danielle does not.

Twenty-seven minutes after the riders disappear upriver, another pair appears from the south.

Danielle looks at her watch.

“Twenty-seven.”

“Close to thirty,” James says.

“Once.”

The new pair stops at the bridge. This time one of the guards walks over to meet them. The conversation lasts perhaps a minute before the riders continue north.

Nothing else changes.

Danielle starts the watch again.

We wait.

The next movement comes from upriver.

I see the bicycle through the trees before I can make out the riders. They come south at an easier pace than the previous pair, disappearing behind bare trunks and returning as the road bends toward the bridge.

Danielle looks down.

“Forty-six.”

James turns toward her.

“Minutes,” she says.

The pair reaches the bridge, exchanges a few words with the guards, and continues downriver.

Danielle resets the watch.

James watches them disappear. “Different distances?”

“Maybe.”

“Or different speed.”

“Maybe.”

I look upriver. “We saw one of these exchanges at Narrowsburg. People are moving both directions along the corridor.”

Danielle nods. “If the next post south is closer than the next one north, this would make sense. But I need another pass.”

“How long?” James asks.

“Long enough to know whether I’m making a plan out of two bicycles.”

So we stay.

The second cycle is not exact.

It is close.

The next movement from downriver reaches the bridge a little over half an hour later. The next pair from upriver takes several minutes less than forty-five.

Danielle writes both times on the back of an old receipt.

“Call it thirty and forty-five,” James says.

“Call it approximately thirty and approximately forty-five.”

“That was implied.”

“Not if we’re putting everyone in a river because of it.”

James accepts the correction.

I look toward the bridge again. Four guards. The same attention on the New York side. Riders moving through in both directions, not searching the woods because they believe the river and their posts have already narrowed the problem for them.

It is efficient.

It also leaves space between them.

Danielle folds the receipt and puts it into her pocket. “If we’re going to try this, we want the southbound pass.”

“Forty-five,” I say.

“Approximately.”

“Approximately forty-five.”

She gives me a brief look. “Thank you.”

James glances downstream again.

“I still need to see the crossing.”

Danielle checks the bridge. “Now?”

“Not from here.”

We wait until the latest riders are well downriver before withdrawing into the trees.

Getting closer to the campground requires us to move away from the bridge first. We climb inland, circle through the woods, then work back toward the Delaware farther downstream. It costs us nearly an hour to cover a distance that would take minutes on the road.

The photograph Selena found begins to make sense before we reach the water.

Rock is everywhere.

It pushes through the forest floor in long shelves and breaks the bank into uneven steps. When the river finally appears below us again, pale stone interrupts the current well beyond the shoreline.

James crouches behind a fallen tree.

For a while, he says nothing.

I let him look.

The campground itself is empty. Picnic tables sit among the trees. The open areas have begun surrendering to weeds and fallen branches. Beyond them, the Delaware spreads across broken stone, water dividing and joining around exposed sections before narrowing again farther downstream.

It is not the photograph.

The water is higher. Some of the rock Selena showed us is submerged now, and from this angle I cannot tell how deep the channels between the exposed sections run.

James can tell more than I can.

His eyes move from one section of current to another, then toward the Pennsylvania side.

Danielle waits longer than I expect before asking, “Well?”

“Maybe.”

She exhales through her nose. “You and that word.”

“You want a different one?”

“I want the right one.”

“Then maybe.”

He points toward the river.

“There’s more stone under that water. I can feel some of it from here, but not enough to map the bed. The exposed sections tell me it isn’t one deep channel all the way across.”

“Can you use it?” I ask.

James watches the current.

“If what’s under there connects the way I think it does, I can raise some of it. Shift some. Fill the worst gaps.”

“Without building another creek?”

“That’s the idea.”

Danielle looks toward the river, then back in the direction of the bridge we can no longer see. “How long?”

James shakes his head. “I won’t know until I’m in it.”

That is not the answer any of us wants.

It is the only one available.

We do not move closer. Seeing the river is one thing. Walking its edge in daylight is another, and there is nothing here worth exposing ourselves to learn yet.

We circle inland again and return to the house before dark.

Mio opens the door before we knock.

Marcus is waiting behind her. “Please tell me the brochure was not lying.”

James takes off his coat. “The brochure was optimistic.”

Marcus’s face falls.

“I didn’t say useless.”

“You could lead with that.”

Everyone gathers around the dining table again. James lays out the map while Danielle puts the receipt beside it.

“Four at the bridge,” she says. “Two pairs. Same as the others. We watched traffic in both directions for most of the afternoon.”

Selena looks at the numbers. “Thirty and forty-five?”

“About thirty when they’re coming from the south. About forty-five from the north.”

Liora studies the map. “Why?”

“My guess?” Danielle points first below the bridge, then above it. “Whatever they’re using as the next stop downriver is closer. The one upriver is farther away. Could also be the roads, hills, how fast they ride. We don’t know.”

“But it happened more than once?” Angela asks.

“Yes.”

Danielle taps the forty-five.

“That’s the window I want.”

Marcus looks at the number. “Forty-five minutes to get ten people, bicycles, a trailer, and a baby across the Delaware.”

“Approximately forty-five,” James says.

Danielle looks at him.

He almost smiles.

Mio turns to James. “And the river?”

He unfolds the campground brochure beside the map.

“Rockier than most of what we’ve passed. The water’s higher than it is in this picture, but there’s enough exposed stone that I think there’s more underneath I can work with.”

“Think?” Angela asks.

“I can’t know until I’m closer. But yes. I think I can get us across.”

Nobody celebrates.

Forty-five minutes does not feel like enough time for celebration.

Danielle takes the receipt back. “I want to check the pattern once more before we trust it. We can go back later, watch another cycle, and make sure today wasn’t unusually convenient.”

“And if it matches?” Marcus asks.

She looks at the map.

“Then we wait for them to come from the north.”

The pair passes the bridge, continues south, and the clock starts behind them.

Approximately forty-five minutes.

That is what we have.

We sleep before making the attempt, not enough, but more than we have been getting. The second watch matches the first closely enough that Danielle stops calling the pattern coincidence. The exact minutes shift, as they did before, but the longer interval still follows the riders coming from upriver and continuing south.

When I wake near sunset, Mio is still beside me. Across the room, Angela is feeding Nathaniel while Danielle checks the straps on the trailer. Marcus checks them behind her and receives a look when he reaches for one she has already tightened. Selena and Liora sit near the window sharing the last of something from a jar. Liora says something too low for me to hear. Marcus looks over, and Selena notices before anyone else does. She hides a smile behind the jar. I do not ask.

By full dark, we are moving again. We reach the wooded ground above the river well before the window we intend to use. Everything that can be secured already is. The bicycles are unloaded from the trailer, and their harness is strapped across the top where Marcus can reach it quickly once we are across. Nathaniel is wrapped beneath Angela’s waterproof outer layer with only his face exposed. Mio keeps the mist close to the river and woods around us. Not enough to announce itself as fog from a distance. Enough that movement through it gives her warning.

We wait beneath the trees. The bridge lights remain visible through bare branches. Danielle checks her watch occasionally but otherwise keeps her attention on the road. James studies the river below us, although there is little more he can learn from here. At last, a bicycle appears from upriver. Two riders come south toward the bridge. They stop only briefly, exchange a few words with the children stationed there, then continue downriver. We watch until the light disappears. Danielle starts her watch. “That’s it.” We move.

The descent takes longer with the trailer than it did on foot. Marcus and Danielle control the front while I keep it from swinging behind them. James firms one section of loose ground beneath the wheels, and Angela draws brush back across the worst disturbance after we pass. We are not trying to erase ourselves. We only need to avoid leaving an obvious route from the road to the river. Mio follows with the twins and bicycles, her attention divided between her footing and the mist around us. “Nothing close,” she says. Danielle glances at her watch but does not give us the number yet.

We reach the rocky bank. The river looks different when I know we are about to enter it. Black water divides around exposed stone and folds white through the narrower channels. What looked promising from above now presents itself as a collection of bad choices, some merely less bad than others. James moves ahead of us. He has seen this stretch already. Now he crouches at the edge and places one hand against the exposed stone. For several seconds he does nothing. Marcus shifts his grip on the trailer. “James?”

“Give me a minute.”

His attention remains on the river. I have watched him read roads, walls, and ground before. This takes longer. Whatever he senses beneath the water is hidden from the rest of us, stone and soil continuing where my eyes see only current. He moves several yards along the bank, touches another exposed shelf, then returns halfway.

“There.”

Danielle looks from him to the river. “You’re sure?”

“No.” He stands. “But I know what I’m working with now.”

That is as much certainty as the Delaware intends to give us. James steps into the shallows. The water reaches his boots, then his calves. He stops beside the first exposed shelf and lowers one hand. Nothing happens at first. Then the water changes around a dark line several feet ahead of him. Stone rises slowly beneath the surface. Not enough to break completely through it. The current thins over the top, revealing the shape for a moment before covering it again. James waits. Another section shifts farther out.

The sound is there if I listen for it, a low grinding beneath the constant rush of the river, but nothing like the creek weeks ago. He is not forcing the bed upward all at once. He is finding what is already there and moving it a little at a time. Danielle listens toward the bridge. Nothing changes. James advances, and we follow. The trailer goes first. Marcus and I push while Danielle controls one side, all three of us keeping the wheels on the route James gives us. Mio stays close enough to help if we lose it but keeps most of her attention on the mist. Behind us, Selena and Liora each guide one bicycle into the water.

The first stretch is easier than I expect. That worries me more than it should. Water runs over the stone James raises rather than around it. There is no dry path, only a sequence of submerged shelves high enough to keep us from stepping into the deeper channels between them. Sometimes he shifts an existing slab. Sometimes the footing beneath us rises by inches. Once he stops and takes us several feet sideways because whatever he finds ahead is not what he expected. The trailer wheels slide twice but recover.

“Fourteen,” Danielle says.

James nods without looking back, and we keep moving. The cold works through my boots and trousers. Marcus mutters something when the water reaches above his knees, and Danielle tells him to save his breath for pushing. He does. James reaches another gap and stops. This one takes longer. His hand disappears beneath the water. For almost a minute, nothing moves except the river. Then a submerged shelf rises slowly enough that I notice the change first in the current. Water begins sheeting over something that was not close enough to the surface before. The grinding is louder this time. We all stop.

Danielle turns toward the bridge. Mio does the same, her eyes unfocused for a moment as she feels through the mist.

“Nothing,” Mio says.

Danielle checks her watch. “Twenty-one.” James looks at the route ahead. “Keep the trailer coming.” We do. The next several yards cost us nearly ten minutes. James refuses to hurry. He moves one section, waits for the water to settle around it, tests the footing, then moves the next. The Delaware keeps flowing over everything he changes, sometimes shallow enough to see our boots and sometimes high enough that I feel the current pressing against my thighs. We reach the far side of the deepest channel with the trailer still upright.

“Thirty,” Danielle says.

This time James looks at her. “I know.” The Pennsylvania bank is closer now, but close has become a deceptive measurement. James raises another section. Marcus and I force the trailer over it, and Danielle moves ahead far enough to pull from the other side. One wheel strikes stone and twists. Marcus catches the frame before it tips.

“Hold it.”

We do. James reaches down. The stone beneath the trapped wheel moves perhaps an inch. Enough. The wheel comes free, and we push again. When the trailer finally reaches the Pennsylvania shallows, Danielle gets both hands on the front and helps Marcus drag it onto gravel. I push until the wheels clear the water.

“Thirty-four.”

Marcus is already reaching for the harness strapped across the top. “Leave us. Get the rest over.” Danielle looks back toward James. He is already moving. The twins are halfway across with the bicycles, Liora following the route we used while Selena fights to keep her front wheel from turning sideways in the current. Mio stays near them, one hand catching Selena’s bicycle when it slips. Angela waits with Nathaniel until the girls clear the worst channel, then she enters. I go back toward her.

“You don’t need to.”

“I know.”

She gives me the same look she gave me at the house. I take her free hand anyway. Behind us, Marcus has the first bicycle against the trailer and is working the harness into place. Danielle checks her watch.

“Thirty-eight.”

James does not answer. His movements change. Not much at first. A submerged slab rises faster than the ones before it. The grinding beneath the river becomes distinct enough that I feel it through my boots as much as hear it. Danielle looks at him. “James.”

“I know.”

“We don’t have slow anymore.”

Another section rises. This time the river reacts immediately. Water bulges against the changing bed, spills across the newly raised stone, and tears white through the gap beside it. The sound carries. Mio turns her head toward the bridge. “Nothing yet.” We move faster. Liora reaches Pennsylvania first and Marcus takes her bicycle from her. Selena follows moments later. Danielle wades back far enough to grab the front of Selena’s bicycle and pulls it through the last stretch while Marcus secures Liora’s to the harness. Angela is almost across. The route beneath us shudders, and she tightens her hold on Nathaniel.

“I have you,” I say.

“I know. Move.”

Fair enough. We reach the shallows. Marcus takes Angela’s arm as soon as he can reach her. I turn back. Mio is still in the river. James is farther behind her. Danielle looks at her watch. “Forty-one.” Nobody needs her to explain what that means. Mio comes toward us quickly now, no longer trying to keep her steps quiet. Her mist remains low across the water and bank, but I can see the strain in the way she watches both it and the submerged footing beneath her. A stone shifts under her boot, and Selena catches her from the shallows.

“I’ve got you.”

Mio regains her footing. “Thank you.” They move. James raises the last section he needs. The riverbed answers with a crack. It is not subtle. Stone grinds hard beneath the current. Water surges across the raised shelf and slams into the rocks below it. Danielle’s head snaps toward the bridge. For several seconds, nothing happens. Then white light appears through the trees.

“James.”

“I see it.”

A second beam joins the first. They are not on us yet. They move across the river bend, disappear behind the trees, then return. Mio reaches the bank, and Danielle takes her arm and pulls her onto gravel.

“Gabriel.”

I turn. James is still in the river.

“Go,” he says.

“What about you?”

“I have to put it back.”

Of course he does. Leaving the route intact would tell Dominion exactly what happened here. I move toward him.

“Don’t. Get them off the bank.”

He does not look at me. I retreat. Marcus has both bicycles connected to the trailer now. Angela is already moving Nathaniel toward the trees. Selena and Liora gather the loose packs and anything we removed before the crossing. Danielle stays at the waterline.

“Forty-three.”

James releases the first section. The stone settles instead of falling, slowly at first, almost as carefully as he raised it. Danielle stares toward the bridge. “James.”

“I know.”

“We’re done being quiet.”

His hand tightens against the rock. The next section drops harder. Water rushes into the space above it, and stone knocks against stone beneath the surface with a grinding crack. A light catches the mist and turns it white. Voices carry faintly above the river. James releases another section. Too slowly. Danielle steps into the shallows beside him. “What do you need?”

“Everyone gone.”

“They are.”

She looks at the water, then at the loose stone along the bank. James releases another section, and the river roars through the opening. Danielle moves away from him. At first I think she is coming toward me. She is not. She climbs several steps along the bank toward a fractured shelf of stone above the water.

“Danielle.”

She puts one hand against it.

“Danielle, what are you doing?”

“Trust me.”

After forty minutes of policing every unnecessary sound we make, she drives a vibration into the bank. The crack is violent. A section of loose stone gives way beneath her. Dirt and smaller rock pour first, followed by a slab large enough that I take an involuntary step backward when it breaks free. It strikes the river. The impact throws water into the air and sends a sound through the bend that makes everything James has done seem small.

“What the hell?”

“Move!”

Another section of bank follows the first. Danielle jumps back as it collapses, catches herself against a tree, then runs toward us. Behind her, James releases what remains of the raised route, and water tears through it. For several seconds there is no clean distinction between the stone settling beneath the river and the section of bank that has just fallen into it. James reaches the shallows. Danielle grabs his arm. “Now.” They run. Across the river, lights swing toward the collapse. We are already moving into the trees.

The wet ground immediately betrays the trailer. Two parallel grooves follow the wheels away from the river, too regular to mistake for anything else. James stays behind it, disturbing the ground as we move, collapsing the grooves wherever they hold their shape. He does not try to erase our passage. He only breaks the pattern. A light sweeps across the Pennsylvania bank behind us. We drop among the trees until it moves away. Danielle listens while Mio feels through the mist around us, but neither catches anyone approaching from our side.

“Move,” Danielle says.

We do. James continues breaking the trailer tracks until the woods finally give way to a narrow road. The tires roll onto cracked pavement, and he looks back once before following us.

“Enough,” I tell him. “They cannot follow the wheels from here.”

He nods, and we turn west. We put as much distance between ourselves and the Delaware as the remaining darkness allows. The wet clothes become a problem once the effort stops keeping us warm, so we change what we can at an abandoned shed and keep moving. Nathaniel, buried beneath Angela’s layers through the entire crossing, remains warm and dry. Near dawn, we find a farmhouse well away from the river road. There is no smoke, no recent sign of use, and the back door opens when Marcus tries it. The roof holds and the rooms are dry. We bring everything inside.

For several minutes, getting warm matters more than talking. James ends up on the kitchen floor against a cabinet while the rest of us find blankets and strip off wet outer layers. Danielle is wringing water from one sleeve when I finally look at her.

“The bank.”

She glances up. “What about it?”

“You spent the entire crossing telling us to be quiet. Then you dropped part of it into the river.”

“They had already heard us.” She gives up on the sleeve and lets it fall across her knees. “Once the lights came out, quiet was not buying us anything.”

“So you made more noise.”

“I gave them something to find.” Danielle looks toward the dark window. “They heard rock moving. They heard the river change. Now there’s a fresh collapse sitting where all that noise came from. Maybe they decide that’s what they heard.”

“And if they do not?”

“Then we didn’t lose anything.”

I cannot tell whether Dominion will accept the explanation. Neither can she.

We sleep through most of the day. When I wake, the light outside has already begun to fade again, and Marcus and Liora are gone.

I sit up too quickly.

“Scouting,” Danielle says from across the room. “They’ve been gone twenty minutes.”

I reach for my boots.

“You can wait five.”

“I can.”

I put them on anyway.

They return before I reach the door. Marcus comes in first, Liora behind him, both carrying the cold in with them. Neither looks hurried.

“Nothing,” Marcus says.

James looks up from one of the bicycle chains. “Nothing what?”

“No people. No fresh tracks on the road. No bikes. No engines.” Marcus pulls off his gloves. “We checked the houses closest to the road too. Nobody’s using them.”

“That you saw,” Danielle says.

“That we saw.”

Liora nods. “They look like they’ve been empty for a while.”

Better, at least as far as Dominion is concerned.

Nathaniel has worked his way across the floor toward Marcus while we talk and reaches for one of the straps hanging from his pack. Marcus catches it just before it reaches his mouth.

“Absolutely not.”

Nathaniel objects. Liora laughs and takes the strap away from him while Marcus continues.

“There’s nothing new on the roads either. No markings. Nothing like what we were seeing before the river.”

That matters.

We eat before moving again. The meal is quieter than usual, though not with the same tension as the nights before. Nobody trusts the difference yet.

When darkness comes, we travel west.

The next few days settle into something closer to our old rhythm. We use the roads when we can, leave them when there is a reason, and conceal the kinds of disturbances that would draw attention rather than trying to erase every sign that we passed. Mio keeps her mist near us when we stop. Danielle occasionally puts a hand to the ground and listens for the heavier vibrations that would mean bicycles, engines, or a group moving somewhere beyond Mio’s reach.

Neither finds anything.

At first, that is reassuring. Then it becomes strange.

The houses are empty. So are the barns, sheds, and small stores we pass. We find no fresh cook fires, no recently repaired windows, no gardens being kept alive against the coming cold. There are no children watching us from a distant porch or disappearing into the trees before we reach them. Even the roads lack the small evidence we have learned to notice: a bicycle track newer than the rain, a gate tied shut with fresh cord, a path through weeds that someone still uses.

There are no bodies either. The land simply feels abandoned.

At one muddy crossing, Marcus walks back after we pass and studies the road for several seconds.

Danielle finally asks, “What?”

“Our tracks are the only fresh ones.”

She looks past him toward the empty road behind us. “Good.”

It is, although I am no longer certain that is the only thing it means.

By the time October gives way to November, the Delaware is no longer beside us. We can still find it on the map behind our route, but I no longer hear it at night. The silence that replaces it is deeper than I expected.

At our next stop, James spreads the map across a dining table gray with dust.

“South eventually,” he says. “But not tonight. We need a full rest before we start making distance again.”

“Batteries too,” Danielle says.

I look over the roads ahead of us. “Any reason not to?”

No one offers one.

Danielle puts a hand against the floor for several seconds, then lifts it again. “Nothing.”

This time Marcus does not make a joke about it.

I do not know what Dominion believes happened at the river. I do not know whether they found our damaged trail, accepted Danielle’s collapse, or guessed exactly what we did. I know only that no one has followed us west.

James traces one of the roads south with his finger. “This one?”

For most of the last two weeks, every road has been another way Dominion might close around us. Now I study the map because we need to decide where we want to go.