Fiona adjusted the box in her arms. “Back roads or going back to the highway?”
“We’re taking back roads for as long as possible,” I said. “And we are avoiding all bridges.”
“No argument here,” Libby said.
I took one last look around the clinic. The makeshift beds, the reorganized shelves. The place had kept us alive and bought us two weeks we’d badly needed.
But we’d stripped it of everything useful, and there was nothing left to stay for.
I pushed the back door open a few inches and scanned the alley. Still. Quiet. The morning light sat flat and gray over the empty road beyond.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s move.”
We filed out one by one—Libby, then Fiona with her medical arsenal, then Lily, with Doc Fluffbutt surveying the alley through his mesh window like a naturalist observing new terrain.
I came out last, pulling the door shut behind me.
And then, against my better judgment, I glanced at the cat.
Doc Fluffbutt blinked at me once—slow, deliberate, the blink of a creature with absolutely nothing to answer for.
I held my fingers up in a shushing motion.
He blinked again.
“Lord help me,” I muttered, and followed my people down the alley.
Forty One
Road Burn -Libby
Finn stepped out first, favoring his still-healing left side, his eyes already scanning the alley and the street beyond with quiet attention.
“It’s clear,” he said.
That was enough.
Three minutes later, we were loaded: bags, bins, Fiona’s medical supplies, and Lily, who folded herself into the back seat with Doc Fluffbutt strapped to her chest like a small, indifferent general.
“Okay, buddy,” she whispered to him, adjusting the carrier as she settled. “We’re leaving now.”
The cat blinked at the back of the headrest, unfazed.
I pulled the door shut, unfolded the map across my knees, and within seconds, we were moving.
The town vanished in the rearview mirror, replaced by long, open stretches of road flanked by treelines that sat too still in the morning air. I didn’t trust the quiet.
Finn drove with one hand on the wheel, the other tapping an irregular rhythm against the gearshift, his gaze cycling between the road and the mirrors with practiced, almost unconscious, precision.
I watched him for a moment. He looked better. He still favored his shoulder, not quite back to his pre-bridge self, but the fever had never come, the wound had stayed healthy, and he was here, upright, driving us north.
That covered everything that actually mattered.
“Do you have a plan for a boat?” I asked, breaking the quiet.
He glanced at me. “Yeah. I’ve got one stashed at a marina up in Minor. About a hundred miles north.” He paused, his gaze returning to the road. “If it’s still there, we’re set.”
“Minor it is,” I said, circling the town on the map.
