His problem was that his morning walks and intelligence gathering missions weren’t gathering any intel. And at least one of them proved to be very dangerous.
Some mornings he didn’t come across anybody at all to ask about the red pickup truck and team of horses. Even when he found people to talk to, no one thus far had admitted to seeing it.
He was starting to wonder whether he was even on the right track.
Perhaps the couple who’d kidnapped his daughter changed their mind. Perhaps they decided to go east instead? Or farther south, where they wouldn’t have to worry about the coming winter.
It was a worrisome thought. For Albuquerque was the only clue he’d had from the beginning. If they weren’t going there, they could be anywhere.
And if he was indeed on the wrong track – if he was on a wild goose chase, then as each and every day went by he was getting farther and farther off track.
He decided on a change of plans.
New Mexico was dotted with dozens of tiny towns.
Some existed back in the heyday of Route 66. Route 66 was the original east-west interstate highway, and followed roughly the same path as the modern-day Interstate 40.
Route 66 was a mecca for travelers. Little towns sprung up from one end of the famous highway to the other. Towns lived and died on the travelers who went through it.
Other, more modern towns, came along later. Chain restaurants and motels forced mom and pops out of business. Miniature golf courses and water parks replaced live rattlesnake exhibits and freak shows.
But all of it… the entire stretch of I-40 was fairly well inhabited, with towns or attractions or places of interest every few miles.
Dave’s old plan – to query the occasional nomads he just happened up on his morning walks – simply wasn’t working. No one he talked to thus far had seen them, and he wasn’t far from Albuquerque now.
No one had been able to confirm he was on the right track. And as each day went by, he was thinking more and more that he wasn’t.
Granted, it had been months since the red Ranger passed through here, if it did. Nomads come and go with the wind, and many of the current ones wouldn’t have been here then.
But some of the nomads… many of them, in fact, set up homes along the highways far from the city. They quite literally lived off what they could find in the abandoned trucks. In some cases, they set up little communities at the rest stops and abandoned truck stops along the way.
Dave’s new plan was simple. He would walk in to some of these camps, or little towns. And he would ask the people who weren’t wanderers.
He’d ask the people who probably were around six months before.
The night had been downright boring except for the rain. Around three a.m. a few fat drops hit the windshield and he thought he might have to stop for the night.
The wipers didn’t work on the Explorer, and it was hard enough to see already.
Oh, a few weeks before when he was driving north through Texas toward Kansas City, he’d driven through the night rain.
But it was stupid. He’d come close to hitting several vehicles he hadn’t seen until he was right up on them. It was an unnecessary risk which could well have disabled his vehicle and left him on foot.
Dave would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the tool shed. That he sometimes acted on impulse. Sometimes made some irrational decisions. But one thing he was good at was learning from his mistakes.
He realized now that driving at night, in the rain, was a risk he shouldn’t have taken. And he wouldn’t do it again.
When the drops hit his windshield she started looking closely at each shadowy truck he passed, hoping to find one with a sleeper cab. If he’d found one, he’d have pulled his Explorer just past it and then stopped to see if the sleeper was unoccupied.
But it turned out he didn’t have to.
Because the raindrops suddenly stopped.
It was just a passing shower.
Other than that, it was an uneventful night.
He checked his watch. It was a bit after 4:30 a.m.
Dave was unfamiliar with this part of New Mexico. He’d driven through here only once, when he and Sarah left the girls with a neighbor for a week and drove to Hoover Dam and to Las Vegas for a few days to celebrate one of their anniversaries.
Their fifth? Sixth? He couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter. He shook the thought out of his head and went back to scanning the side of the highway for signs.
Since he wasn’t familiar with New Mexico, he didn’t know what was coming up in the next few miles. Or right around the next curve, for that matter.
He relied on the highway signs to tell him.
The signs along the interstate were either green or blue in color.
And both had white reflective letters that were easy to read at night because they caught a vehicle’s headlights. They were designed that way.
The designers probably never considered how they’d look to someone wearing night vision goggles. But they worked fairly well that way too.
As long as there was a partial moon in the sky or the night was lit by stars, and as long as he wasn’t going too fast and was paying attention, Dave could make out the words on the signs as he passed.
Green signs were informational signs. They told Dave how many more miles he had to go to get to Albuquerque, for example. Or how many miles until the next exit.
Blue signs typically led the way to area hospitals, or to picnic areas.
Or to rest areas.
He was scanning the signs trying to find a good place to stop for the day.
Someplace where there was likely to be lots and lots of people.
And he hoped and prayed that one of those people would be able to tell him he was on the right path.
Chapter 35
Dave was a helper.
It was just the way he’d been brought up.
When he was eight years old he noticed old man Jackson, his neighbor across the street, struggling with a lawnmower. He was eighty if he was a day, and looked as though he was going to fall dead from a heart attack at any moment.
Dave was in the middle of a game of California kick in the middle of the street with his friends. He’d just caught a punt from the opposing team and advanced the ball ten paces before he drop-kicked it back.
And there was old man Jackson, struggling with the mower, and apparently losing the battle.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he told his best friend Joey, and dropped out of the game.
Joey and the rest of his team weren’t happy with him.
“Oh, man! We’re winning. You can’t drop out!”
Dave was the best kicker and best passer on the team. His absence would hurt. But he did indeed drop out.
Because some things were just more important than a game.
Dave took the lawnmower away from Mr. Jackson and finished mowing the lawn for him. And for the next two years, until the old man died in his sleep, Dave was there every weekend to mow it again. During the winter months he shoveled snow from the man’s sidewalk and driveway as well.
He never asked for a dime. When the man heaped praise upon him he sluffed it off. When the man offered him money he refused.
They became good friends, he and Mr. Jackson. The old man shared stories of his past. Stories of the great depression. The battles he’d fought in the war. The way he’d romanced Mrs. Jackson, who died before Dave was born.
Mr. Jackson died when Dave was ten. It was one of the few times in his childhood Dave remembered crying.
Yes, Dave was a helper. He was the kind of guy who opened doors for people, helped the neighbor ladies carry in their groceries, took flowers to co-workers who were ill.
He also stopped to help every time he saw a motorist on the side of the highway with a flat tire or overheated radiator.
Without fail, he stopped when he came upon an accident, unless he saw that police and medical professionals already h
ad things under control.
One thing he’d learned from personal experience was to always pass the wrecked cars by. Then to pull over, and to walk back to the accident scene.
Years before he’d come upon a major accident. He didn’t witness it, but got there less than a minute after it happened. When the shattered radiators were still steaming and before the injured came out of their stunned dazes and started to wail.
The first on the scene, he parked behind the damaged vehicles and spent twenty minutes helping the injured get out of the wrecked cars and administering first aid.
It took the police several minutes to arrive. The ambulances, two of them, showed up two minutes later. Then a fire truck, followed by a second a few minutes later.
After the firemen assessed the situation and decided they weren’t needed, they went on their way. But they were immediately replaced by two tow trucks, who sat by idly while they waited their turn to jump into the action.
When Dave had finished his part as a Good Samaritan, he returned to his car. But it was another forty five minutes before he could leave. He was boxed in not only by the wrecked cars and array of emergency vehicles. But also by a traffic jam which stretched for two miles.
That day he learned a very valuable lesson. After that he stopped as always before. But now he stopped well past the accident, where he could do his thing and be on his way.
He would apply the same principal on this particular night.
Sort of.
For although the situations were totally different, some of the key principals were similar.
Dave didn’t want to find himself in a bad situation in front of him, that he would have to pass by to get away.
For that reason he would pass by the place he planned to stop, then work his way east back to it.
Instead of parking east of the location and then having to drive west through it.
Just in case he encountered some hostiles like the ones he’d had to shoot it out with.
Chapter 36
A few miles farther up the highway Dave saw what he was looking for.
A blue rectangular sign which read, in white letters:
REST AREA
1 MILE
Dave had traveled on the interstate highway system enough to know the difference between rest areas and picnic areas.
Both had covered picnic tables and grill pits.
And both had ample parking, for big rig drivers who wanted to get off the highway for a few hours’ sleep as well as anyone who wanted to use the picnic facilities.
Only the rest areas had restrooms.
Before the blackout, the restrooms located at highway rest areas were very well maintained. Most had janitorial people posted at the site, or who visited the site several hours a day to keep everything neat and clean.
The facilities had running water from nearby wells and some had showers as well.
These days the facilities had fallen into disarray, since there were no longer any maintenance or janitorial personnel coming around to keep them nice.
However, Dave happened to stop at one on I-44 in northern Texas on his way to Kansas City.
And he was impressed by the ingenuity of the nomads there, who’d broken into the well house, tapped into the well line, and were able to siphon safe drinking water for everyone who happened by.
He suspected the same thing had happened at other rest areas as well. Perhaps all of them. For the nomads were mostly a breed of peaceful people who shared what they had and helped each other out.
There were some notable exceptions, like the men who tried to kill him and take his guns.
But for the most part the nomads Dave had encountered on his journey were the live-and-let-live kind. Not unlike the hippies and flower children of the 1960s.
With clean water for drinking and bathing, covered eating areas and grills for cooking, the areas understandably served as a gathering point for such nomads.
So Dave would pass the rest area by a mile or so, then hike back and pretend to be one of them. He’d mingle with the crowd and tell them he was looking for some friends he believed had come this way.
And hopefully someone would relieve his anguish by saying yes, they’d seen the evil monsters who’d stolen his daughter, and that he was hot on their trail.
By the time he parked his vehicle, fifty yards in front of a flatbed trailer with a spanking new sleeper attached to it, he had only half an hour before sunrise.
His gun bag was twice as heavy as before. The additional weapons and ammunition were ones he could have left behind. Could have done without.
But since he was a young boy, he’d been taught by his father to be a responsible gun owner. The Corps had been big on gun safety. He knew that a gun in the hands of someone who was responsible and who knew how to use it could be the best tool ever invented by man.
That same gun in the hands of a fool was an accident waiting to happen.
In the hands of a bad man it would be used to kill the innocent.
Left alone on the highway, the weapons had a fair chance of falling into the wrong hands. So even though he didn’t need them, he might come across someone who could use such weapons to feed their family. Or to defend themselves.
And if he found no such persons?
He’d just give them to the Dykes brothers upon his return to Karen’s farm. To show his appreciation for their taking in his family and watching over them in his absence.
In the meantime, though, they were going to be a major pain in the ass.
He took six bottles of water from beneath a blanket in the Explorers’ cargo bay. Then two bags of jerky and four cans of Wolf brand chili.
No beans. His favorite.
He shoved everything in his backpack, along with a change of clothes, and put the pack on his back.
Next he slung his rifle over his shoulder, unhooked the strap holding his handgun in place and closed the hatch door.
He picked up the heavy weapons bag from the ground, marveling at how it had seemingly gained twenty pounds since the evening before.
Then he looked around in all directions, trudged west about three hundred yards until he came to a cement mixer.
It would make an excellent marker. It was likely the only such vehicle for a hundred miles or more in either direction. There was little chance that, stumbling around in the dark on his way to retrieve his weapons late that evening, he’d stumble across the wrong mixer and waste valuable time hunting in the wrong spot.
Once again he looked in every direction to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Then, starting at the mixer’s front bumper, he made a bee-line into the wilderness, counting each step as he went.
Twenty minutes later he was back on the highway, this time headed east. Past his Explorer, then past the tractor trailer with the empty flatbed that he’d use as his home for the day.
A little farther on he smelled honest-to-goodness bacon frying.
“What the hell?” he mumbled to himself as his mouth began to water.
Dave was a sociable guy by nature. Before the blackout he was one of those guys who always got invited to the best parties because he was likeable and funny. He always seemed to have the best jokes and funniest stories and by party’s end he’d always made a lot of new friends.
He hoped his ability to make and keep friends didn’t fail him now.
Chapter 37
“Hello, stranger.”
Dave turned his head to see a white haired old man with a long beard of the same color.
He’d have resembled Santa Claus except he was rail thin. But then again, pretty much everybody was these days.
“Hello,” Dave said. “Name’s Dave. Is that bacon I smell?”
The old man laughed.
“Hell, if I had a gram of silver shavings for every time I’ve heard that lately I’d be a rich man. Follow your nose long enough and you’ll stumble across Stutterin’ Walt. That’s where the smells comin’ from. But it ain’t bacon.”
<
br /> “It’s not?”
“You’re close though. It’s pork jerky. Tastes like bacon, but it’s a little tougher. Lasts a hell of a lot longer. Stutterin’ Walt will sell you some if you’ve got some gold or silver. I’m John.”
John held out his hand. Dave was eager to shake it. Now he knew someone inside the camp. He had his bona fides.
“What’s this camp all about, John?”
The old man looked a bit puzzled.
“You’ve been walkin’ the highways and this is the first rest camp you’ve seen? How is that possible?”
Dave wasn’t stuck without an answer. He’d been reviewing his road map the day before to see how much farther it was to Albuquerque.
He remembered a state highway stretching north from the bowels of the state and intersecting with I-40 just east of where he was.
“I came up Highway 70. From Las Cruces. I’ve only been on the interstate for a short time.”
“Las Cruces. Nice town. Kinda hot for my liking. But it was friendly ever’ time I went through it. Where ya headed?”
“Albuquerque.”
“Mind if I give you some advice?”
“Sure. Advise away.”
“You’re better off in Las Cruces. Small towns are better. And safer. Big cities have mostly been taken over by the gangs. Or bands of outlaws. Albuquerque’s that way. The gangs killed what few cops were still around. The judges too. Now the city’s divvied up by sections. Crips own one part, Bloods another. MS-13 has the biggest piece. Dalton’s Raiders, Castro’s Raiders, Bates’ Army. They’ve all got their own pieces of the city, and each one has their own rules for how things go.”
“Trust me. If it was up to me I wouldn’t go anywhere near Albuquerque. But I’m looking for some people who stole my daughter. I’ve been tracking them since I left Kansas City. I got word they were headed to Albuquerque several months ago. That’s the only lead I have, so I’ve got to get to Albuquerque to see if I can find them.”
“What did they look like?”
“I never saw them myself. All I know is they’re an older married couple. And they have my baby with them. She’s eight years old. Her name is Beth.”
Her Name is Beth: Alone: Book 5 Page 12