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Carly was quiet for a moment. “You’re ripping up someone’s dreams.”
Justin stopped. “Carly, they’re gone. They don’t care.”
“It just doesn’t seem right. If I think of someone tearing up my mom’s wedding dress, I—” Carly stopped suddenly. Tears filled her eyes, not at the thought of the dress being destroyed, but at the realization she’d never be able to wear it when she got married as she’d always dreamed.
“What would your mom think?” Justin asked. He laid aside the cloth and took Carly’s hand in his own. “If her dress could help someone survive, wouldn’t she want them to use it?”
She knew she was being overly sentimental, and she tried hard to keep the emotion from her voice as she answered him. “Yes, she would want them to use it.” She gave his hand a squeeze.
“Because it’s people who matter, Carly, not things.” Justin gestured with his other hand, indicating the items in the room. “All of this is nothing compared to life. When I die, I hope someone finds my things and is able to use them. Hell, they can hollow out my body and use it as a canoe for all I care.”
Carly sat down beside him. She picked up one of the large sections of the dress, and began to help him rip it into strips.
“Were you ever in love?” Carly asked that question one afternoon as they coasted down a slight incline. Justin was throwing a tennis ball for Sam, who galloped ahead to catch it and then trotted up beside Justin to drop it into his hand. She was amazed at how fast Sam was. He could sometimes catch it on the second bounce, leaping high into the air with a graceful twist.
Justin cast a quick glance at her—one she couldn’t interpret—before he answered. “No, I never was. Thought I was once, but that was when I was very young, and very hormonal.”
“So, it was just physical?”
“Just a crush,” Justin said and didn’t add any more detail to it.
“Did you—”
“Oh, shit.” Justin coasted his bike to a stop.
“What? What is it?”
“Look,” Justin pointed ahead. Carly followed his gaze to the river ahead, though she still didn’t see the problem. She parked beside him and then was able to see from his angle.
“Oh, shit,” Carly whispered, her voice faint. Up ahead, the bridge across the river was broken about half way down the span. The opposite bank was torn away, eroded back at least twenty feet by the river, which had decided to change course and eat away at the embankment until the end of the bridge fell away from lack of support.
“Is there another crossing nearby?”
Justin was already fishing around in his pack for the map. He unfolded it on top of the tarp over the canned goods and scanned it.
“Fuck!” He traced the route they would have to take and then looked at the river and then at Carly speculatively. “How well can you swim?”
“I can do laps in a pool, but I’ve never tried to swim across a river.”
Justin rubbed his chin. She could almost see the gears turning in his mind.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Justin. We don’t know how strong the current is.”
He nodded to acknowledge Carly’s words but continued his thinking, staring at the river as though he was trying to gauge their chances.
“They always tell you not to drive your car through a flood, let alone try to swim it.”
“It’s not flooding right now. See the marks on that bank over there? The river is at its normal stage.”
How the hell he could tell by striations on a bank, she had no idea.
“It’s either swim or backtrack over three hundred miles, Carly. We’re going about ten miles an hour now, so that’s thirty hours of riding. That’s at least four days at our current pace and another four to get us back to where we are now. Eight days of progress lost.”
“How would we get the wagon over?”
“The tarps are waterproof. We can run a tarp beneath and bind up the sides, and it just might have enough displacement to make it float. I’ll attach a rope, swim to the other side and then haul it across, and just hope like hell the bastard doesn’t sink. Even if it does, the meds and everything fragile are stored in those waterproof plastic tubs. I’ll tie everything down well, so even if it does get wet, it won’t float out and get lost.”
“I still think this is a bad idea,” Carly said. “What about Shadowfax and Sam?”
