The mail truck had been an inspiration, a fairly new olive green job that did not blatantly advertise its presence when parked off the road, and having the added advantage of heavy steel construction, construction which fitted the government's specification to the manufacturer of “armored truck.” Gary stepped-up the armored truck's mileage by adding a water-spray injector to the carburetor and pumping the tires hard beyond their rated capacity. They transferred their stock of staples and ammunition from the farm truck they had been using, and took leave of the remnants of civilization which clung to the river. The truck was not comfortable and rode hard, crawling through the hills at a snail's pace, but it offered a safety to themselves and their provisions otherwise lacking.
They had journeyed back to the river and that particular bridge twice, just twice. One visit each month.
Lieutenant MacSneary had not changed his mind during those eight weeks and on both trips the answer had been the same, with a pair of machine gunners beside him to enforce the refusal. On that first trip back, Gary and Oliver had found a dozen or so people camped ground this end of the structure, patiently prepared to wait out the quarantine. There had been a brief conversation across the length of the bridge with Oliver's ragged flags, and that was the end of it. Oliver ended it by flagging out a single word addressed to the officer, a word much loved and used by the army's rank and file. The officer stiffly turned his back.
The second and final trip to that bridge had been far different. While still some distance away they saw that the refugee camp had been abandoned; closer inspection showed the abandonment had been in haste. Three bodies sprawled out on the steel span, bodies that while still alive had foolishly attempted a dash for the barricade. The machine gunners had been faster. Oliver stepped out of the newly acquired mail truck and signaled his question, carefully avoiding the bodies with his eyes but unable to escape the stench of them. The answer was a curt no, and thereafter they refused to answer at all. Gary turned the truck around and started back.
“You should have asked them about our pay,” he said.
“Have a good idea what that answer would be.”
“Those boys ain't slow on the trigger.”
“No. I wonder what I'd do, in their place?”
When another four or five weeks had rolled by and the time arrived for the usual monthly trip, neither of them suggested the journey. With unspoken accord they thought it best to avoid the bridge. And so they remained in the hills, meeting no one, watching the woods slowly turn color with the approach of autumn and the coming of cool nights, chilly dawns. When they could, they raided an occasional isolated farm or cultivated hillside patch, taking what could be stolen on the run. The hen and her few eggs had come from one of these.
More than three months had passed since the bombing.