He started to watch for a big rig with a sleeper cab, in the right lane. Preferably one which belonged to a major trucking company.
He’d learned from past experience that those sleepers tended to be cleaner and well maintained. Trucking companies were extremely image-conscious. Back in the days when the world was normal, they insisted that their truckers get their rigs washed and cleaned out, from top to bottom, at least every week.
Three miles farther up the road he saw what he was looking for. Even through the gray-green tint of the night vision goggles he could make out the big “ROADWAY” in blue letters against the trailer’s unpainted silver background.
The orange tractor would be his accommodations for the coming day, unless it was occupied by someone else.
Dave pulled in front of the truck, drove another fifty yards or so, then came to a dead stop in the middle of the road.
He stepped out, put his backpack on first, then slung his rifle over his shoulder. That way his rifle sling wouldn’t get hung beneath the backpack in case he came under fire and he had to return fire quickly.
He took his weapons bag from the back of the vehicle and closed it softly. Just in case there was anyone sleeping nearby.
Then he carried the heavy bag another fifty yards or so, until he found a distinctive vehicle he could use as a marker.
In this case it was a Chevy pickup that had been towing a boat when it was zapped by the EMP.
Adjacent to the front bumper Dave walked onto the shoulder of the highway and toward the heavy brush, counting his steps as he went.
At forty two paces he came to a barbed wire fence. He couldn’t see the wire in the inky blackness, but he knew it was there. For he could plainly see the wooden posts which supported the wire, spaced evenly fifteen feet apart.
He reached over the top strand of wire and placed the bag on the ground on the other side of it.
Then he gingerly stepped over it himself.
Picking the bag up again, he resumed his count.
At three hundred paces he stopped and looked around. He found a large patch of brush and went directly to it.
And he shoved the bag beneath it.
Then, as was his habit, he said a brief prayer and asked God to watch over it and make sure it was still there when night fell once again and he returned for it.
Back on the highway, Dave returned to the Roadway truck and pounded the palm of his hand loudly on the door.
“Hey, anybody in there?”
He paused for a few seconds before continuing.
“I mean you no harm. I’m just looking for a place to sleep. If anyone is in there just yell. I’ll leave you in peace.”
There was no sound from inside the rig.
He tried the door.
It was locked.
“Damn it!”
He had no qualms about breaking a window to gain access to the rig. He’d done it before.
The only problem was, he’d be less secure during the day when he was most vulnerable: as he slept.
But sometimes he had no choice. And nothing was guaranteed any more. Even getting up each day was a risk unto itself.
He went around to the passenger side and tried the door. It opened easily.
“Well, I’ll be darned. Thank you, Jesus.”
He crawled in, once again announcing himself. Just in case a nomad was in the sleeper.
But the curtain was wide open and he could peer into the sleeper as soon as he stepped up into the cab. It was empty.
He stepped into the sleeper and took off his goggles, then lay his rifle and backpack upon the bunk.
From the right leg pocket of his BDUs he pulled a penlight and turned it on to examine the bunk further. It was in good shape and didn’t appear to be infested with bed bugs. He shone the light around the rest of the sleeper. It was relatively clean. The door was ripped off the tiny refrigerator, probably by a nomad angry because he didn’t find any water there. Everything else was in good repair.
It would be an adequate place to get a few hours of rest.
But not quite yet.
First he had to get something to eat, then take his morning walk to unwind from a stressful night of driving.
And more importantly, to try to gain some intel.
He sat in the driver’s seat, yawned and stretched, and pulled his backpack into his lap.
The sky was starting to brighten now and he no longer needed the goggles. He folded them up, tied the head strap around them, and tucked them into the pack. In exchange for the goggles, he took out two cans of canned ravioli he’d liberated from a Sysco truck and three bottles of Aquafina. Also from the same truck.
He was famished.
And he knew it would be better than any food he’d ever eaten in any fancy restaurant.
Chapter 26
The highway walkers tended to get started early in the morning, not long after the sun came up. There were several reasons for this.
The most prevalent was that the morning sun started heating the fiberglass truck cabs around nine a.m., and by ten they started getting pretty hot. Hot enough to be uncomfortable.
Not for Dave, necessarily. But for most others.
Dave was able to sleep in the hot sleepers during daylight hours because he was tough. He was a former marine who’d served two tours in the burning deserts of Iraq, sleeping in fiercely hot tents. He was used to it.
He’d also brought back some tricks of the trade.
Most people think the best way to sleep in hot conditions is to strip naked, or at least down to their underwear.
Dave knew that wasn’t true. He did indeed strip naked each day when he was safely tucked away in whatever sleeper cab he was spending the day in.
But then he’d soak a cotton t-shirt in water and put it back on.
He hated putting it on, for regardless of the heat it was painfully cold and always took his breath away. It was not unlike stepping into an ice-cold shower.
But within seconds he got over the shock and was quite comfortable. The wet shirt cooled the core of his body quite nicely and allowed him to drift off into a deep slumber.
About four hours into his sleep the shirt would be dry, and he’d typically wake up in a sweat. He would wake up, pee into an empty water bottle, then repeat the process.
By the second time he woke up he was usually well rested.
Most of the highway nomads didn’t know the trick of sleeping in a hot sleeper cab, so slept at night instead. And they got up early to move on, both to get out of the cab before it started to get hot, and to get into the trailers before they did.
The trailers, made of sheet steel instead of fiberglass or plastic, heated up even faster than the sleepers.
Those nomads who traveled the highways, getting their provisions from abandoned trailers, knew they had to get in and out of them in the morning hours. By afternoon they were stifling hot. Crawling around inside of them was more than uncomfortable. It was dangerous. Some of their lot had passed out from heat exhaustion, even died from heat stroke, from spending too much time in the hot boxes.
Dave liked that the nomads traveled by morning. It was much more convenient for him, for he spoke to as many of them as he could find.
It wasn’t that he was hungry for human interaction, although that was a small part of it.
Mostly he was desperate for confirmation he was headed in the right direction.
On his morning walks he always walked toward the west, so he could engage eastbound travelers. And on this particular morning, not long after he’d left the Roadway rig and headed out with the sun at his back, he saw two heads pop up on the horizon.
Instinctively he reached down and unsnapped the strap holding his handgun into place. He tucked it into his belt. Just in case. He’d been lucky enough thus far in that he hadn’t encountered any violent men. But he doubted his luck would last forever.
There were two types of men who traveled the roads in these troubled times. There were the
friendlies, looking to meet new people and share information, and there were the suspicious, who just wanted to be left alone.
Dave could tell these two were friendlies. One of them waved as they approached, and both wore broad smiles.
“Good morning!” the waver yelled as they got within earshot.”
“Good morning,” Dave answered.
The taller of the two men, a Hispanic biker type with a bushy beard, asked, “Any good food trucks up that way?”
“There’s a Roadway rig about half a mile back, but I didn’t look to see what was on it. About two more miles there’s a Walmart rig that doesn’t look like it’s been picked too much. How about west of here?”
“Coca Cola truck in the eastbound lanes, about two miles or so. Good chance to fill your pack with bottled water. Fresh water sure beats the hell out of boiling nasty stream water.”
“Thanks for the tip. Hey, I’m looking for some friends who’re headed for Albuquerque. I was wondering if you’ve seen them.”
“Heck, we see a dozen people a day. What are their names?”
“You’d remember their rig easier than their names. They took an old quarter ton pickup truck and stripped it down. Took the engine and tranny out of it and built a wooden bench into the engine compartment. It’s being pulled by two horses. Have you guys seen anything like that?”
The two men looked at each other and both smiled.
One said, “No, but that’s pure genius. I wish we’d have thought of that. Something like that sure would be a blessing to my sore feet.”
The other one clarified.
“If your friends are headed for Albuquerque they’ll likely be on I-40 the whole way. We’ve only been on 40 for four days now. We were traveling north out of Alamogordo before then. So they’re more than four days ahead of you. I hate to tell you, friend, but if you’re on foot and they’ve got horses, you’ll never catch them.”
“Yeah. I was afraid of that. But I’ll eventually get there myself. A few miles at a time. Hey, thanks for the information.”
“You bet. Safe journeys to you.”
As Dave went on his way, he could hear one of the men say to the other, “We need to find us an old pickup and a couple of horses…”
Chapter 27
Perhaps Dave shouldn’t have gotten complacent and thanked God for his good luck. For it was about to change.
He’d gone on a mile or so after he said goodbye to the friendly nomads before he kneeled down to tie his shoe and down a bottle of water. Then he turned around and started making his way east again, back to the Roadway truck and the cot that was starting to call him home.
As before, he saw men appear on the horizon. Only this time there were three of them. And this time, they had rifles slung over their shoulders.
That didn’t necessarily mean they were bad. Dave had a rifle slung over his own shoulder. The vast majority of armed men on the highways carried weapons for hunting or self-defense. Not to do innocent people harm.
Nonetheless, he nonchalantly reached over and used his right thumb to make sure his holster’s strap was still stuck into his belt.
Couldn’t be too careful.
As he walked, he watched the three men. At the same time, he made a point to be more aware of his surroundings. Which abandoned automobile he could dart behind at the first sign of trouble. Which ones might be able to stop a bullet. And which ones might be made of plastic and which would barely slow a bullet down.
He was a quarter mile away from them now and felt a knot in his stomach. It wasn’t fear, but it did tell him to be on his toes. It told him there was something just not right about the approaching men.
They seemed to walk with a swagger. A swagger he’d seen before. A bully’s swagger.
They all walked at the same fast pace, and closed the distance between them quickly. Finally, forty yards away, the men stopped.
They waited until Dave was upon them before speaking.
“Good morning,” Dave said, and mimicked the typical question of the nomads. “Any good trucks up the road?”
One man seemed ridiculously short. And exceptionally mean.
He literally growled, “None worth a damn. Not for what we’re looking for, anyway.”
Dave was hoping he could win the men over with his charm.
“Oh? What are you looking for? Maybe I’ve seen it in one of the trucks west of here.”
“We’re looking for weapons. And ammunition. And we’ve been checking all the Walmart trucks we’ve come across and ain’t seen any.”
Now, Dave knew full well that Walmart didn’t ship weapons on its marked trucks. Walmart shipped weapons by courier or UPS, so they could be tracked during each step of the process.
He suspected the grumpy short man knew that too. But they outnumbered him, so he wouldn’t call him on it.
“No, my friend. I’m sorry, I haven’t seen any either. But good luck to you men.”
That didn’t seem good enough to the squat man.
“How about you sell us your guns? We’ll pay top dollar.”
“Well, thank you kindly for the offer, sir. But I need my handgun for self-protection. And I use my long gun for huntin’. Rabbits mostly these days. Most of the other game is gone. But I’ve developed a powerful taste for rabbit lately. Can’t even think of doing without it.”
“You ain’t listening to me son. I’m not making you an offer. I’m making you a demand. You seem like a smart feller. You can count, I take it. You can see we outnumber you. You either sell us your guns or we’ll take them away from you.”
So much for Dave winning them over with his charm.
He tried a different tactic.
“Well, now. Given such an offer, I might be apt to sell them after all. How much will you give me for them?”
“That ‘pends on their condition. Let me fire them a couple o’ times and see how well they work.”
“On second thought, I think I’ll keep ‘em. But thanks anyway.”
The little guy dug deep into his feeble mind and came up with a line from Cool Hand Luke.
“It seems what we have here… is a failure to communicate…”
Dave said, “Oh, I think we’re communicating just fine. You’re saying you want to buy my guns, and if I don’t sell them you’ll take them anyway. And if I let you buy them, you want to test them first. And if I let you test them, you’ll test them by shooting me in the head. Is that about it?”
“Hey, the boy seems to understand real well after all.”
“Right. But what you gentlemen don’t understand is that my sidearm is locked and loaded and I’m the fastest draw in this part of the country. I’ve already got eight notches on my gun to prove it. I’d offer to show them to you, but I’d have to take my gun out of the holster to do it.
“And the only time I take my gun out of the holster is to shoot some idiot who thinks they can rob me and get away with it.”
Dave smiled sweetly. The little man swallowed hard and suddenly lost his voice.
But one of his friends had something to say.
“But… but…” he stammered, “But they’s three of us an’ only one of you.”
Dave was unmoved.
“That may be true, my friend. But I’m fast enough to take out two of you before you get me. So y’all just need to decide, which two of you want to die today?”
He smiled again.
The little man got brave and said, “He’s bluffing.”
Dave, before the little man got the last word out of his mouth, wheeled around and put his face inches from the man’s. They were close enough to kiss.
But Dave wasn’t there to be romantic. His face skewed and contorted into the face of a madman and he screamed, “Then try me, asshole!”
Spittle flew from Dave’s mouth onto the man’s face and he backed away.
He was suddenly terrified and wanted to be somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
His bluster and bravado were gone.
He turned to his friends and squeaked, like a tiny mouse, “Let’s get out of here. This guy’s crazy.”
Dave watched as the men went on their way, walking twice as fast as they had when they’d approached him.
He couldn’t help but notice their bully swagger was long gone.
Dave watched them until they disappeared over the horizon, then sat under a shade tree for twenty minutes to see if they’d return.
They didn’t.
He got back up and headed east, back toward the Roadway truck, looking forward to stretching out and getting a few hours’ sleep.
While walking he wondered why it was that some men worked hard all their lives to earn what they had, and had hearts kind enough to share with those less fortunate.
And why others were too damned lazy to work. And found it easier to just take from others.
He decided there was no good answer. It was just the way of the world. And one of the harsher realities of post-apocalyptic existence.
As Dave walked past a Chevy Impala that would have been immaculate were it not for the inch of dust on it, the Impala’s driver’s side mirror exploded.
He immediately ducked for cover behind the car.
And he cursed himself.
He should have waited longer.
Chapter 28
Dave instantly went into wartime mode. He’d been fired upon several times in Fallujah, and his training saved his life.
Use the sun to your advantage. Wait for the best shot. Make yourself invisible. If hiding behind a vehicle, keep the engine between you and the bad guys.
He had the sun at his back, since the bad guys were approaching from the west. But it was too high in the sky now to hide his movements.
He slowly rose until he could see his attackers, headed his way like idiots down the middle of the highway. They obviously weren’t combat veterans. If they were, they slept through basic infantry training. The part where it said not to bunch up. To put space between yourself and your comrades to make yourselves a harder target.
These guys were just fools, taking a shot at someone and then strolling toward them as though they had no care in the world.
Her Name is Beth: Alone: Book 5 Page 9