The bell above the bakery door gave a light, tinny ring as Samuel stepped inside. It was exactly six in the morning. The air in the street had been cool and damp with fog, but inside the shop, the warmth from the kitchen ovens felt thick and smelled like caramelized sugar and dark coffee.
Kate was behind the glass counter, stacking fresh glazed twists onto a large metal tray. Her hair was tied back in a neat bun, though a small smudge of white flour sat right on the curve of her cheekbone. She looked up, her tired eyes softening as she recognized him.
"You're a man of your word, Sam," she said, setting the tray down. "Six on the dot."
"I told you I had a weakness," Sam said, walking up to the counter with an easy, slow stride. He laid a five-dollar bill on the wood. "One cup of black coffee and whatever you think is the best thing that came out of that oven today."
Kate smiled, grabbing a paper bag and a pair of metal tongs. "The cinnamon rolls just
finished cooling enough to frost. They're still hot in the middle." She slid one into the bag and poured dark, steaming coffee into a paper cup. "Keep the change. Neighbors get a discount on opening day."
"I won't argue with that," Sam said, taking the cup. He took a sip, letting the hot liquid settle.
The bakery wasn't empty. In the corner booth, three older men in faded overalls and trucker hats were huddled over their mugs. One of them was Carl, the masonry worker from Bill's construction crew who had taken a break on the property a few days ago. The men were
talking in low, rough voices, their faces drawn tight under the bright fluorescent lights.
Sam didn't sit down at a separate table. He leaned against the counter near the corner booth, casual and relaxed, nodding to Carl. "Morning, Carl. Bill give you the day off?"
Carl looked up, his weathered face looking older than it had on Thursday. He rubbed his eyes. "Nah. We're heading out to your brother's place by eight. Just getting some fuel in the tank first." He tapped his coffee mug, then looked back at the other two men. "I was just telling these boys about what my cousin saw down in Columbus yesterday."
"The flu thing?" Sam asked, keeping his voice light, like he was just making conversation to pass the time.
"It ain't a flu," the old man sitting next to Carl grunted. He had a patch on his vest that read State Road Department. "They shut down the entire western transit corridor near the river.
My supervisor got a memo from the state office at midnight. They're telling our crews to stage the heavy barrier trucks near the county line. Said it's a quarantine measure, but they won't tell us what we're keeping out."
"My cousin said the ICU at her hospital is overflowing," Carl whispered, leaning in closer so his voice didn't carry to the kitchen. "They had to call in the national guard to set up tents in the parking lot. She said people are showing up with their skin all gray, high fevers, biting at the nurses like mad dogs. She sounded like she was going to cry on the phone, Sam. She's been a nurse for twenty years, and she's never seen the state lock a hospital down like
that."
Sam took a slow bite of his cinnamon roll. The sugar was sweet, but his mind was cold, calculating the distance between Columbus and this valley. Less than two hours by the highway. If the state was already setting up road barriers, the main highway would be a parking lot within two weeks.
"Sounds like the city is getting messy," Sam said, shaking his head with a look of mild concern. "Good thing we're out here in the country. Not much down here but trees and cows."
"For now," the road department worker said, staring into his black coffee. "But people flee when things get bad. If Atlanta goes dark, those folks are going to head south down the secondary roads. They'll hit this valley like a wave."
Kate walked back out from the kitchen, holding a fresh pot of coffee to refill the men's mugs. She caught the end of the conversation and her brow furrowed. "You old boys need to stop watching the news so much. You're going to scare away my customers before the sun's fully up."
Carl gave her a weak smile. "Just talking about the roads, Katie. Nothing to worry your pretty head about."
Sam watched Kate's face. She didn't look completely convinced, but she forced a cheerful nod and moved back to the register. Sam caught her eye and gave her a reassuring wink,
which made her cheeks color slightly. He stayed for another twenty minutes, listening to the men talk about local supply shortages and the sheriff's deputies being called out to the highway intersections. He was building his map, piece by piece, learning which roads
would close first.
Ten miles out of town, the valley was waking up to a different kind of noise.
The black pickup truck sat near the eastern boundary of the 161 acres, its bed loaded down with four massive sections of corrugated steel drainage pipe. Marcus stood near the edge
of the creek bank, holding a heavy iron pry bar. His white hair was dusted with dry red clay, and his boots were sunk two inches into the damp earth.
Elias was down in the trench they had spent the last three hours digging by hand. The ditch was four feet deep and cut straight through the rocky ridge that divided their land from the Greene family's lower pasture.
"This is the last section," Elias called up from the pit. He didn't have a shirt on, his wide, heavy shoulders slick with sweat and red dust. His muscles looked thick and unnatural, shifting like braided steel under his coarse, rough skin. He didn't look tired at all. His breathing was slow and measured, his heart beating at its usual lazy rhythm. "Drop it
down."
Marcus didn't use a winch or a tractor. He wrapped his thick hands around the rim of the four-foot steel pipe, braced his feet against the clay, and lifted the entire twelve-foot section off the truck bed by himself. A normal man would have broken a bone trying to balance that much weight. Marcus simply walked to the edge of the trench and lowered it down to Elias with a smooth, controlled motion.
Elias caught the end of the steel pipe, his feet sinking an inch into the mud as he absorbed the weight. He didn't strain. He used his physical power to slide the seam directly into the previous section, the metal letting out a sharp, ringing screech as it locked into place.
"Perfect," Elias said, tapping the iron with his knuckles. "The alignment is straight. When the heavy rains hit, the water will shoot right through here and dump straight into Hershel's low wash. The road won't flood, and our basement stay dry."
"We need to pack the gravel around the sides before Bill's trucks get here," Marcus said, grabbing a heavy steel shovel from the truck. "If they see the depth of this trench without the pipe already covered, they're going to ask why we didn't use an excavator."
The two brothers worked in silence for the next hour, their shovels moving with a speed that looked mechanical. They didn't stop for water. They didn't take breaks. Their peak-human stamina allowed them to move hundreds of pounds of gravel and dirt in minutes, filling the sides of the culvert until the steel pipe was completely buried beneath a thick layer of grey stone and red earth.
The rhythmic sound of horse hooves on the dirt road made Marcus stop. He leaned his
shovel against his hip and wiped his brow with the back of his hand, his rough skin scraping lightly against his forehead.
Maggie Greene rode through the treeline on a large, high-stepping bay mare. She was wearing her old riding boots, denim jeans, and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded her eyes.
She pulled the horse to a stop at the edge of the clearing, her dark eyes taking in the freshly turned earth, the buried pipe, and the two brothers covered in red dust.
"You boys don't lose any time, do you?" Maggie said, leaning forward over her saddle horn. She looked at the length of the new drainage ditch, her expression a mix of surprise and skepticism. "My dad said you were going to lay some pipe this weekend, but I thought you were going to wait for Bill's crew to bring the big yellow machines."
Marcus walked over to the horse, his tall frame making him look nearly even with her while she was in the saddle. He gave her that small, relaxed smile. "The machines cost money by the hour, Maggie. Elias and I had some free time yesterday and this morning. It's easier to
just get it done ourselves."
Maggie looked from Marcus to Elias, who was now putting his dirty shirt back on. She
looked down at the freshly packed stone over the culvert. "You did all of this since Friday night? Just the two of you? With shovels?"
"We work fast," Marcus said simply.
Maggie shook her head, a low, respectful chuckle escaping her. "You're either crazy or you're trying to prove something, Marcus Daystar. Otis and three of our hired hands took four days just to clear a ditch half this size last spring. You two look like you barely even need to catch your breath."
"The dirt here is soft if you know where to dig," Elias said, his voice raspy as he walked over to the truck bed and grabbed a water bottle. He didn't look at her directly, his dark eyes scanning the woods behind her out of habit.
Maggie ignored Elias's distant tone, her focus staying on Marcus. She slid out of the saddle, holding the reins loosely in one hand as she walked over to the edge of the creek bank where the pipe opened up. She knelt down, looking at the stone reinforcement Marcus had placed around the mouth of the culvert to prevent erosion. It was clean work. The rocks were fitted together tightly, like an old river wall.
"This is good," she said, running her hand over the smooth grey limestone. "Really good.
The water's going to hit that lower pasture exactly where we need it. My dad was worried you'd just dump the mud onto our fence line, but this is cleaner than what the county civil engineers do."
"We told you we'd take care of it," Marcus said, standing a few feet behind her. "A good neighbor doesn't ruin the next man's grass."
Maggie stood up, wiping her dusty palms on her jeans. She looked up at him, her dark eyes steady. There was a quiet appreciation in her face now, the kind of respect that country
folks only gave to people who knew how to use their hands. "Well, you kept your word. I appreciate it. My dad does too. He told me to tell you that if you need to borrow our tractor to haul those heavy fence posts next week, just come down and take it. It's sitting in the secondary barn."
"Thanks," Marcus said. "We might take him up on that. The outer perimeter is going to take a lot of steel."
Maggie looked toward the center of the 161 acres, where the wooden frame of the three-story house was rising out of the trees. "It's a big house for three bachelor brothers. You planning on bringing a lot of family down from the city later?"
"Eventually," Marcus said, his voice dropping into that quiet, deep tone. "The city isn't a good place to stay long-term anymore. Things are getting crowded. Sickness spreads too fast in those high-rises. We wanted a place where we could all fit under one roof if things ever got complicated."
Maggie frowned slightly, her hands dropping to her hips. "You talk like something bad is going to happen, Marcus. Sam said the same thing at dinner. You city boys think the sky is always falling."
"Sometimes the sky does fall, Maggie," Marcus said, his eyes locking onto hers with a
sudden, intense seriousness that made her breath hitch for a second. "And when it does, the people who built a roof are the only ones who stay dry."
Maggie stared at him for a long moment. There was no fear in her eyes, just a sharp, questioning look. She was used to stubborn, independent men—her father was the
definition of one—but Marcus had a strange weight to him. He didn't feel like a paranoid survivalist hiding in the woods, he felt like a general preparing for a winter he knew was coming.
"Well," Maggie said slowly, her voice soft but firm. "If the sky falls, I reckon this valley is as good a place as any to be standing. We've survived bad winters and bad droughts before. We'll survive whatever else comes down the road."
"I'm sure you will," Marcus said, the tension breaking as his small smile returned. "But it doesn't hurt to have a drainage pipe just in case."
Maggie let out a short laugh, turning back to her horse. She swung herself into the saddle with an easy, practiced grace. "I need to get back to the south pasture before Otis lets the
heifers into the alfalfa. Bill's crew should be rolling past our gate in about ten minutes. Don't work yourself to death before they get here, Marcus."
"We'll try not to," Marcus said.
He watched her turn the bay mare around and gallop down the dirt road, her dark hair flying out from under her hat until she disappeared around the bend.
Elias stepped up beside Marcus, watching the dust settle where the horse had been. He spat his lollipop stick into the gravel. "She's sharp. She looks at things too closely. If she stays around while we're setting the second layer of wire, she's going to see the traps."
"She won't see anything we don't want her to see," Marcus said, his voice returning to its
cold, administrative baseline. He picked up his shovel and tossed it into the truck bed. "The heavy framing crew will be here in a few minutes. We need to get our shirts back on and
look like ordinary owner-builders. Where's Sam?"
"He texted an hour ago," Elias said, pulling a small black flip phone from his pocket. "He's at the apartment. He says the town pharmacy had an incident this morning. Some old man went wild and tried to bite the pharmacist. The local deputies handled it, but Sam says the townspeople are starting to buy up extra flour and fuel. The panic is starting to trickle
down."
Marcus looked up at the sky. It was blue, clear, and perfectly peaceful. The birds were singing in the pine trees, and the smell of damp earth was fresh in the morning air. It was beautiful, but Marcus knew the rot was already chewing through the edges of the state.
"Eighty-two days," Marcus said quietly. "We keep digging."