“Generally.”
They wandered off the paved road Lynn had been following, veering onto one patched with potholes. Lucy’s boots had conformed to her own feet fairly quickly, but the blister hadn’t formed a callus yet, and the pink, raw skin still chafed at the end of every day. Picking over the holes in the road wasn’t doing her any favors.
The grass grew higher than their heads on both sides of the road, arching inward and brushing against their faces as they made their way west. Trees towered overhead, forming a total canopy that cooled the black tar beneath their feet, drying their sweat. The setting sun burned in front of them, sending red rays into their faces.
Lucy fought a prickle of annoyance when Joss stepped on the back of her heel.
“Sorry,” Joss muttered from behind her. Lucy waved off the apology, too tired to speak. Even so she couldn’t help but notice that Joss always stayed closer to her if they were in an area that was wooded, or anywhere along the road where cover could hide an attacker.
She voiced this to Lynn when she was sure they were alone by the stream they found that evening, filling their water bottles.
“She’s using you for cover,” Lynn said. “Probably figures if anybody pops off a shot at one of us, they’re going to aim for me first, as I’m the leader. You might be smaller, but you’re less likely to be a target. And she knows it.”
“Nice.” Lucy capped her bottle tightly. “And here I kinda liked her.”
Lynn shrugged. “She’s doing what’s she’s done her whole life to survive, that’s all. And it could be she just would rather walk with you than me, has you figured for the kind one.”
“Right. You’re the brawn, I’m brain.” She splashed some water over her face and looked down with distaste at her wet shirtfront. “I was holding out hope, but I think I may have to admit that you’re the boobs of this outfit too.”
Lynn laughed for the first time since the road. “For all the good it does.”
Their sounds brought Joss down the creek, water bottles in hand. “What’s so funny?”
Lucy glanced back down at her chest. “Oh, I wouldn’t exactly call it funny,” she said. Lynn laughed again, the sound bouncing back off the water and into the cold, clear night.
“I got some news for you,” Lynn said to Lucy halfway through the next day.
“What’s that?”
“We’re out of Ohio. Have been since we passed Fort Recovery.”
“Huh,” Lucy said, surveying the land around her. “So we’re in what, Indiana?”
“Yep,” Lynn said as she readjusted her pack on her shoulders.
“Indiana is awful flat. So what’s our route?” Lucy asked.
“Not much in our way. We head due west, and we’ll get to Illinois.”
“Is it flat?”
“Not sure.”
“How’s your water?”
Lynn reached over her shoulder and into her pack without breaking stride, pulling a half-empty bottle from it. Lucy was down to her last one as well, the water warm from being carried next to her body. She didn’t know how much Joss had left, and their companion wasn’t offering up the information.
“Will we stop soon?”
“Soon enough,” Lynn said, shooting Lucy a look that told her not to worry.
Abandoned fields that had once been farmed for corn and beans were returning to prairie all around them. The greenness of the new grass matched Joss’ eyes and was almost painful to look at as the sun beat down from the cloudless sky. The road was the only mark of past civilization, a streak of black that sliced its way forward, Lucy’s feet doggedly eating up the miles it created.
Hours later, Lynn broke to the north, tapping Lucy soundlessly on the shoulder and striding off the black and into the green without a word. Lucy followed, and she felt rather than heard Joss move through the tall grass behind her. On the horizon, a streak of darker green broke the skyline.
“There’s another stream up ahead,” Lynn said. “Be pretty hard to guard every inch of moving water, and I haven’t seen a house for miles.”
“Can we stop for the night?” Lucy asked, even though the sun was hours away from the horizon. She’d told herself supper from the night before was the last meal she could spare to set some aside for Carter. Her knees threatened to buckle underneath her, and her legs felt like lead. Being on the road was sapping her strength in ways she had never imagined. Life at the pond hadn’t been easy, but there was always energy left over to spend as she pleased, running through overgrown fields with Maddy or chasing after Carter to see who dove into the pond first. Now only stubbornness put one foot in front of the other, and Carter was the one left behind.
“May as well, but we’ll camp away from the banks, and make no fire.”