Note: The Road consists of 51 sections that are unnumbered in the book. Numbers have been added for this summary for the sake of clarity.
Section 1:
“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.”
The main character of the story wakes up in the woods, his child sleeping next to him. It’s dark and cold. When it starts to get light, the man leaves the boy and walks out to the road. They’ve been sleeping away from the road so as not to be seen. The man judges the time of year to be October and knows they must head south to survive the winter. Once it’s light enough, he uses binoculars to scour the devastated land around him cluttered with soft ash and dead trees. He returns to the boy and wakes him by taking off the tarp under which they were sleeping.
As he watches the boy wake, he realizes they’re not safe there. They’re too close to the road and can be seen in the light of day. They head out onto the road with their grocery cart holding most of their things. They each wear a knapsack carrying essentials in case they have to leave the cart. They come to an abandoned gas station and the man searches for anything they might need, but at first finds nothing. Then he thinks to turn over a trash drum and pick out quart bottles of oil. The man and the boy drain the bottles of remaining oil into one of the quarts to use for their lamp.
Section 2:
“Will I see you at last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.”
On the road, the man and his son get to the top of a hill where they can see out over what used to be a city. It starts to rain. They leave the cart in a gully, covering it with the tarp, they huddle together under a rock overhang until the rain stops. They retrieve the cart and go back to where they were, making their camp in the dry dirt.
The city disappears into the night and the man lights their little lamp. Since it’s too wet to make a fire, they eat their meal cold. As the boy tries to fall asleep, he asks his father if they’re going to die. His father says sometime but not now. He tells the boy they’re going south to be warm and to go to sleep, turning off the lamp. The father listens in the dark to what the world has become, wishing he didn’t feel anything.
He wakes before dawn and watches as the gray day breaks. He walks out through the trees covering their camp and crouches, coughing for a long time. He asks God if he’ll finally see him. Once they’re awake, they walk through the city as the day progresses. The man keeps a pistol on top of the tarp folded in the cart. The city is mostly burned, showing no signs of life. They see a corpse, and the man tells the boy to be careful what he puts in his head as memories because they stay forever.
Sections 3-4:
“The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees.”
They continue moving south in the days and weeks that follow. They travel through hill country along the road. Everywhere around them, the land is burned away, ash blowing in the wind. It’s unbearably cold. The man holds the boy closely to him in the darkness of the night. A wheel on their cart starts getting wobbly.
There isn’t much the man can do about it, but it makes it harder to push. One night the man wakes to thunder. He worries about it raining and that they might not survive that in the bitter cold.
Section 5:
“Mostly he worried about their shoes. That and food. Always food.”
It takes two days for them to cross through the hill country, and then it starts to snow. As the wet gray flakes fall, they cover themselves with the tarp as they keep walking. Gray slush accumulates on the road. The man thinks that the bloodcults must have all killed each other since the road is empty and they haven’t run into roadagents or marauders. They come to a roadside garage and build a fire on the floor of the garage. The man uses his tools to fix the wobbling wheel on the cart. They continue walking in the morning. They see a boarhide nailed to a barn door and three bodies hanging from the rafters inside the barn. They boy says they might find something useful in the barn. The man disagrees, and they keep walking. In a smokehouse they pass, they find a ham and they fry it over their fire that night. The man wakes later in the dark and hears drums beating.