by Nathan Jones
Matt shook his hand absently, still staring down at the gun in his pocket. “Yeah. Uh, thanks for this.”
Trev nodded and climbed into his car. Then, finally, he started the engine and turned himself in the direction of home, leaving Matt waving in his rearview mirror.
Chapter Three
Mistakes
Trev was finally on his way, although that meant he was immediately bogged down by traffic once more. He wanted to shout at these idiots to get off the road and stop wasting gas, but then again he was one of them.
Although he supposed the streets couldn't stay this congested for long since eventually each and every one of these vehicles would run out of gas and have no way to refuel. Which wouldn't matter much to him because he'd already be long gone.
As he drove he turned on his radio, something he hadn't done for a long time since he preferred to plug in his phone and listen to playlists. Unsurprisingly all the stations were broadcasting news or talk show host commentary or rebroadcasting the President's speech, with music few and far between. Trev flipped around a bit looking for something he was interested in.
For the moment all the news was either grim discussion about the Gulf refineries attack and speculation on who'd carried it out, or hopeful stories about people all over the nation calling in to express their love of their country and commit to helping out their communities any way they could.
Trev appreciated the sentiment, but none of what he heard sounded very practical. He was far more interested in one talk show host commenting on the run on gas stations from east to west coast, although he could've done without the man's mockery of morons waiting at closed pumps after the President had already claimed that fuel for more important government purposes.
As he left the populated areas behind and made his way up Spanish Fork Canyon the traffic faded until he was one of the only people on the road: apparently the business that had people flooding the streets in their vehicles was centered around town. The smartest thing they could've done would be to get in those cars and drive as far away from any population centers as they could on the gas left in their tanks, but Trev supposed they were still too invested in their houses and lives for such drastic action.
He hoped they didn't come to regret that decision in a few weeks when they were starving and the city around them was being torn to the ground by rioters.
After the tenseness of his departure the drive was almost disappointingly routine. He'd gone between college and Aspen Hill dozens of times in the last few years visiting family, spending time with Lewis fishing up in the Manti-La Sal mountains or building the shelter together, or just unwinding on school breaks.
To get to Aspen Hill he just had to follow Spanish Fork Canyon and then continue along Highway 6 towards Price, turning west fifteen or so miles north of the city onto a smaller road for the last several miles to get to the greener valley Aspen Hill nestled in between a few hills and the foothills leading up to the Manti-La Sal range farther to the west. Trev had followed the scenic route route through the canyon often enough he practically could've driven it in his sleep, although he always enjoyed driving it this time of year with the hillsides taking fire as the autumn trees turned.
He'd gone about a third of the way home and had not too long ago passed where Highway 89 split off from 6 in a long winding road down into the valley below. Now he was nearly to a point where the route ahead reached a downhill series of curves and switchbacks, but unfortunately at the last part of the uphill climb leading to it his engine started sputtering in a way that suggested his hopes for the limitless capacity of his gas tank were in vain.
Trev stared at the the fuel gauge in shock: he hadn't expected this. Maybe he really would've been better off just leaving immediately.
Without much choice but to squint his eyes, ease off the gas to try to make it last as far as possible without losing momentum on the upward slope, and pray he could make it, Trev listened to the sputtering get worse and worse. About ten feet short of the top of the slope with his car slowed almost to a stop his engine died, sputtered back to life, and started making horrible noises as it struggled to burn the last few wisps of fumes still in the tank.
It died for good, and Trev actually held his breath as his car coasted the final few feet, teetered, and then slowed on the slight level stretch before the downhill slope.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and leapt out of the vehicle before it could come to a complete stop, throwing his shoulder against the doorframe and pushing with all his strength. His car kept moving, helped by his effort and its last bit of momentum, and Trev did his best to keep it going. The long downhill slope felt like it was far, far away, but somehow he managed to push the distance to it and threw himself back behind the wheel, panting, as the car began to pick up speed again.
After a moment he yanked the door shut and focused on navigating the curving road that hugged the gently curving downward slope to a saddle below before the road began going uphill again through the steepest and most mountainous part of the drive. With the engine dead he'd lost power steering and brakes, which was the last thing he wanted while going downhill on these roads, so even though he knew it was horrible for the brakes he rode them constantly to keep to a reasonable speed, putting his whole body behind his foot to push the stiff pedal. He also moved over to the left lane as far as possible from the dropoff beyond the road's shoulder.
The steering was a bit more hair raising without power, especially since even though the road wasn't too bad the edge was a steep slope dropping hundreds of feet to level ground below that would be almost as bad as a cliff. Using his own muscles he had to yank the wheel hard around even these wide corners to avoid that fate. The entire time, as he felt his speed increasing in spite of his efforts to brake and his car veered dangerously close to the edge at every turn, he couldn't help but think of some of the horror stories he'd heard growing up of accidents on these winding roads. He eventually put down the emergency brake partway, which mostly solved the problem, although he had to endure the stink of brake pads burning the rest of the way down.
Finally after over a mile of downhill driving he reached the bottom and released the e-brake, coasting towards the uphill stretch farther along. After letting momentum take him as far as it could he finally pulled onto a wide shoulder well off the side of the road and stopped the car. Once there he took a few moments to settle his rattled nerves, then punched the steering wheel.
He'd had more than enough gas in the tank to make the drive, he was sure of it! There was no way the driving he'd done this morning, even with idling at stop lights in traffic, had used up so much that he only had enough in the tank to go 25 miles. Either the gauge was off or his tank had a small leak or he'd overestimated how far he could go with the gauge at that point or something. Maybe all the extra weight of supplies in his car had eaten up more fuel than he'd expected?
But like it or not here he was, out of gas in a world where gas was near impossible to get. With that in mind, not long after he'd reached the bottom of the hill he'd had a momentary temptation to abandon all common sense and yank the wheel sideways. The wild maneuver would've sent his car veering off the road and onto a short but steep downhill slope to the valley below, bumping and jouncing its way towards a copse of trees at the bottom. With some luck he might've survived the wild descent and managed to roll behind their modest cover where the vehicle couldn't be seen from the road.
He'd opted to park right here on the side of the road instead. It wasn't that he was hoping to be seen and hopefully rescued, since he had a feeling no vehicles would be coming by any time soon. And even if they did they probably wouldn't stop, while if they stopped he could almost guarantee they wouldn't loan him any gas. He wouldn't be able to hitch a ride to the nearest station to fill up a tank, either.
If he'd been truly on his own he probably would've made that decision to give his car up as lost and try to hide it and its precious contents from potential thieves, but thankfully even i
f he was a screwup who misjudged what he could manage in an emergency Lewis wasn't. Thanks to his cousin at least it wasn't the end of the world.
Well it was, but he wasn't exactly out of options thanks to Lewis's foresight and preparedness. He pulled out his phone. “Hey man,” he said when his cousin answered. “I'm out of gas about 25 miles southeast of Orem.”
“That's it?” Lewis demanded. “I thought you were keeping enough in the tank to make the drive down here if you needed to.”
“Enough plus a bit extra,” Trev agreed, trying to keep his voice calm as his anger at the situation flared up again. “I had less than I'd expected, or maybe I wasted more than I thought this morning trying to fill the tank before fuel vanished entirely.”
“Yeah you were talking about that before that guy tried to mug you. Were the gas stations all tapped out?”
“Nah, it was the President's speech. Someone in the government had already gotten to all of them and purchased everything in their tanks for emergency purposes.”
There was a long pause. “Well at least the fire departments and police stations will be able to get their vehicles where they're needed in the face of the inevitable coming riots.”
Something in his cousin's tone let Trev know Lewis had one of his unorthodox opinions on the matter. “You don't think it was a good idea to get control of the fuel supply in the hands of the people who could do the most good with it?”
He could almost sense Lewis's shrug. “Good for the government's continued operation, sure. But depriving citizens of the chance to buy fuel, and doing it everywhere all across the nation, will have ramifications of its own. For one thing it's going to stall the economy, and I mean shifting to reverse while going 75 miles per hour and dropping the transmission stall it, to the point that it would take a miracle for it to get going again.
“One unintended consequence of the government snatching up all the fuel is that almost immediately all the trucks scheduled to deliver necessary shipments won't be able to refuel. None of the cities will care about that, and in fact they'll probably be happy that trucks full of food and other useful things are stranded there where they can make use of them. But it means that every place food is produced is instantly cut off from every place where food is consumed, which means for perishables you're going to see most of the nation starving while a comparatively small part of the population is sitting on food going bad faster than they can eat it. To say nothing of the huge stockpiles of nonperishables like grain and corn, where a few people will have it but they can't ship it where it's needed. Which is great for them but sucks for literally everyone else.”
“Yeah, that's a bit more of a problem,” Trev agreed. “And like you said the cities with those massive stockpiles are going to be even more eager to hold shipments and keep the food and the fuel for themselves.”
“There's also the fact that without fuel almost none of the nation's crops are going to get harvested this fall. That means even if we could manage to find fuel somewhere we're looking at major food shortages next year and probably farther down the line as well. And that's just commercially. On the private side of things not having access to fuel is going to strand everyone who's currently traveling wherever they were after the President's speech, or the next place they try to gas up afterwards. That includes all the planes that have been grounded to save fuel for emergency flights.”
“Well that certainly applies to me,” Trev said, slapping the steering wheel.
“You and a surprisingly large percentage of the population. Even during this last year with fuel prices climbing steeply, with the way our society functions a lot of people have to travel for work or to visit distant relatives or for countless other reasons. Access to relatively cheap, plentiful fuel has made us a mobile people, and now that the fuel's gone the nation's going to boil like a kicked anthill as all those stranded people scatter in every direction trying to get home. And they're not going to have an easy time of it since everywhere they go will be as bad as where they left.”
Trev always liked discussing current events and possible future dangers with his cousin, but now didn't really feel like the time. “Speaking of not having an easy time of it, I've got a long walk ahead of me and you've got a ton of fuel in a tank in the shed. Can you come pick me up?”
“Sure, let me gas up the truck and I'll call you when I'm on the way. You're still on the highway, right?”
“Right,” Trev said, thinking of his wild urge to ride the steep slope off the road. He must've been half crazy.
“Okay, I'll see you soon.” Lewis abruptly hung up, and Trev put the seat back to rest until his cousin showed up. It had been a mostly sleepless night, and combined with the morning's excitement he was surprisingly tired. It felt good to just shut his eyes.
When his cousin's ringtone sounded Trev was almost annoyed, even though it signaled help he desperately needed. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket. “Hey. On your way?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “Um, actually . . . I'm having a bit of trouble with the gas.”
“You've got to be kidding me,” Trev said in disbelief. Lewis, who thought of everything, caught as off-guard as Trev had been by all this? “I thought you had a 50 gallon tank that you kept full.”
“I've got my tank, sure, but the last time I refilled it was a year ago and I just topped off what was already in there, going back over two years.” Lewis made an annoyed sound. “It's not that the tank's even empty: I've still got over 30 gallons in there, give or take. It's just I haven't had to use any of it for months and, well, it's old gas.”
Trev did his best to control his rising dismay. “But you had fuel stabilizer in there, right?”
“Duh.” His cousin sounded equal parts sheepish and impatient. “That only does so much though. I didn't even realize there was a problem with the gas until I filled the truck and tried to start the engine, and let me just say it wasn't a pretty sound. I might be able to get away with using gas this old for chainsaws and other small tools, maybe even ATVs that have more leeway with that sort of thing, but I wouldn't want to try it in any more vehicles.”
Trev stared at his windshield. “I've got most of my most important stuff I've been gathering for years with me, not to mention I spent the rest of my money, emptied my bank account, and maxed out my credit card buying a ton of food at a store before starting down. My car's filled with things we could really use.”
Lewis was one of the most pragmatic people Trev knew, not one to just walk away from useful supplies. “Well I guess I could take my wagon cart and make a trip of it,” he said slowly. “But that would be a lot of effort and we probably still wouldn't be able to take everything. It would also take me a few days to get up there and I'd have to leave the shelter unguarded just when people might be most tempted to ransack it. Is it really enough to be worth it?”
Trev thought of all the stuff in his car, over five thousand dollars worth of incredibly useful and important items. Then he estimated how much he and his cousin would eat on as many round trips as it took to bring everything, even if for later trips he'd be able to bring his own wagon cart. He thought they'd still definitely be able to ferry down way more than they'd use, a net gain.
Then again, compared to the stores of food they had piled in the shelter what he had in his car was just a bonus, not to mention that at any point while he was away somebody could come and loot his car and make any further trips a waste. Lewis was right that it was better not to risk themselves any more than necessary when it came to the difficulty of travel and possible attack. Besides, if he had to he could just pack down his most valuable stuff like his guns and a decent a mount of ammo and still be fairly well off with what he had down in the shelter.
“I guess it's better not to travel in an emergency situation if you can avoid it,” he admitted reluctantly. “Especially not if somebody stole our place out from under us while you were out bringing down my junk.” He sighed. “I just hope whoever finds this stuff
sitting on the side of the road gets good use out of it.”
There was a bit of an uncomfortable silence before his cousin finally spoke. “Um, I hate to point out the glaringly obvious but why don't you just cache everything? You've got a shovel and some tarps, don't you?”
Trev slapped himself on the forehead. “Right, I really should've thought of that.” But then his mounting excitement faded. “It would still be sitting right here, though. We'd have all the same problems getting to it that you just brought up.”
“I'm sure you'd rather have the option of solving those problems later than losing your stuff entirely,” Lewis replied. “I mean if worse came to worst you could always let people in Aspen Hill know it's there, that way if anyone wants to make the trip to go after it at least it'll be a neighbor benefitting rather than some random looter.”
He supposed that made sense. “Okay I'd better get to work. See you in a few days.”
“For 50 miles with a full pack?” his cousin said lightly. “I expect to see you here tomorrow before noon.”
Trev grimaced at his phone after his cousin hung up. He seriously hoped that was a joke, since to go the distance in that time he'd pretty much have to walk nonstop. That would be brutal even without lugging as much as half again his weight in a backpack.
Time to worry about that later, though. He spent a few minutes digging out his spare tarps and the folding camping shovel from his backpack. All bought at Lewis's suggestion, since he wouldn't have even thought of them. Then he set them on top of a pair of buckets and made the first trip down the steep slope to the copse of trees he'd spied earlier. He might not be able to hide his car behind them but he should be able to find a great spot for a cache.
There was one, near the middle of the copse in an ideally sized clearing with trees blocking the view of the outside world in every direction. His first task was to dig down as deep as he planned the hole to be and then wait a bit in order to make sure no groundwater seeped out: caching all his expensive, important stuff in what basically amounted to a well was about the best way he could think of to destroy it.