# Chapter 3: The Town

The park's stock trailer had been sitting behind the maintenance shed since the budget cuts, and it smelled like it. Hay, rust, mouse. Dan and Erica stood inside it while Johnson backed the truck up and Gutierrez checked the hitch twice, then a third time, then a fourth.

"Rule one," Gutierrez said, swinging the rear gate shut. "Don't lean on the wall. Rule two, if you go down, go down on your side. Rule three, it's twelve miles and eleven switchbacks and there's a washout at mile four, so just, you know. Be cool."

"We'll be cool," Erica said.

The gate latched. The truck started. The trailer lurched, and Dan's hooves slid six inches on the aluminum floor before he caught himself on the rail.

"Cool," he said.

The first mile was fine. The second mile was where Dan learned that a horse body is mostly a set of springs with opinions, and that every pothole on Harlow Ridge Road had been personally installed by someone who hated him. He bounced. He slid. He ended up wedged against Erica's shoulder with his hip against her flank, and neither of them moved away, because the alternative was falling down.

"Switchback," Erica said.

"I counted."

"How many's that?"

"Six."

"That was seven."

"Great."

They rode the rest of it in silence, mostly, which was its own kind of work. Dan's heat had gone quiet overnight but it woke up around mile nine, the way a dog wakes up when a car pulls into the driveway. He could smell Erica the whole way down. He kept his eyes on the little window at the front of the trailer and counted switchbacks and thought about literally anything else.

At the bottom, Johnson pulled into the lot of Harlow Ridge K-12 and killed the engine. The radio was still on, low, tuned to the county AM station, and a woman with a calm voice was reading a list of countries.

"...confirmed across all six inhabited continents. Airspace remains closed over most of the northern hemisphere. The International Red Cross has asked member nations to open humanitarian corridors by Friday..."

Johnson turned it off.

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The school was a long brick building with a gym on one end and a flagpole out front, and the parking lot was full. Not full like a school event. Full like the last day before …