The stump came out with ease this time, and laid in the street like a dead soldier who’d finally met his fate.
The brothers, Bobby and Mike, high fived each other. Bobby then turned to Tony and said, “As much as I hate to admit it, you were right about the chain saw. I didn’t realize how heavy it would be after a couple of hours. Whenever you get tired of digging, I’ll switch back out with you.
Tony Pena smiled.
“You’re much too soft, young whippersnapper. I’ll take it off your hands for the rest of the day. Tomorrow you can take it back for a bit. Build up your stamina a little bit at a time. Maybe using it’ll make a man out of you.”
Mike countered, “That’ll never happen. He’s been a big sissy all his life. He’ll always be a sissy.”
“Shut up, you big jerk. I’ll show you big sissy.”
The brothers were grown up now, but still liked the banter of their youth. In a cruel and chaotic world, it somehow made them feel a little more normal when they battled. So many things had changed in the world in recent years, but one constant they’d enjoyed since their childhood was the joy they derived from giving each other grief. And it was all in fun, every bit of it. For they were as close as two brothers possibly could be. No damn meteorite could take that away from them.
Now that the tree was out of the way, Bobby and Mike began digging up the front yard of Widow Spencer’s home as she sat in a rocking chair on her porch, cat in her lap, and watched them.
Other men might have taken offense at her presence on the porch, or might have insisted that she do something… anything, to help them.
But these were good boys, raised proper. Their parents had seen to that. They were respectful and helpful to their neighbors. They knew that Widow Spencer was all alone since her husband had died the year before Saris 7 hit. Most of her relatives were dead and those who weren’t lived way up north somewhere. She and Walter never had any children. So now it was just her and her cats, and she was old and frail and just a tad bit senile.
She would never have survived on her own for those six long years. Not if the Pena family hadn’t stepped in to care for her. Actually, it was the boys’ idea. They looked in on her daily, and brought her food. Even scrounged the abandoned houses in the neighborhood for cat food for her tabby Monica and her calico Chelsea.
Their own grandmothers had died years before, and Widow Spencer took on that role. So it was therapeutic for all of them.
They started at one end of the front yard, where it connected with the driveway of the adjacent house. And they took their shovels and dug down ten inches, turning each shovel full of dirt. Then they took the sharp shovels and broke up the dirt to make it looser, so it would be easier to rake through and pull out as much of the grass and roots as they could.
They planned to turn the dirt and repeat the process at least twice more. It would be a tedious process, and they weren’t looking forward to it.
They stopped to take a break.
“This is gonna take forever.”
“No joke.”
But they had a surprise coming around the corner at the end of the block. It was Jesse, and their neighbor Joe, returning from a run to the local Home Depot. In the back of their pickup was another load of rain gutter and fifty gallon garbage cans.
And a very large box that said “Garden Tiller” on the side.
“Woo-hoo!” Mike yelled. Then he looked at his brother. The look on his face said, “Why didn’t we think of that?”
Joe backed the truck into Widow Spencer’s driveway and the boys took the tiller off the back. Within an hour they had it assembled and running. Within another hour they’d worked their way halfway through the front yard.
Joe, Jesse and Frank, meanwhile, picked up their own project where they’d left off the day before when they ran out of gutter parts. They were installing gutters on every house on the block. On every side of the house. And on each corner of every house, they were installing a rain spout that would pour water directly into a fifty gallon trash can.
Their logic was sound. San Antonio got heavy rains an average of fifteen times a year. They planned to capture as much of these rains as possible, by removing the lids on the trash cans on rainy days, and letting the water running off the roof fill them up. Then they’d replace the lids so it didn’t evaporate.
This probably wouldn’t provide all the water they’d need to irrigate their crops. But it would certainly make a big dent. And it would greatly reduce the number of times they’d have to drive the pickup to the playa lake several blocks away to fill up water containers.
If all went well, by the end of the summer they’d have enough wheat and corn stored to help them survive the winter. Some of it would be dry. Some of it would be canned. But all of it would be a welcome addition to the food they were bringing home from the Symco warehouse.
Life definitely wasn’t good. Not by a long shot. But it was much better than it had been in awhile.
Chapter 10
At the Trucker’s Paradise Truck Stop, Marty Hankins had his own project that was keeping him busy.
One by one, Lenny hooked up to a trailer full of food and other merchandise and towed it over to the front doors of the main building. Then the two of them worked together to go through each pallet of goods and determine what to take inside and place on the shelves.
It was funny. Marty had never pictured himself as a shopkeeper or a grocer. He’d never pictured himself as anything other than a long haul trucker.
But those days were obviously over forever. It would probably be years before any company got organized enough to start manufacturing things again. Heck, Marty didn’t even expect city governments to be back on line for awhile. And he couldn’t even fathom how long it would be before law enforcement started enforcing laws again, and money became worth something again.
He wasn’t even sure how many people were left out there. After they got the generator going and the buildings had power again, they’d turned on John’s old ham radio. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and most of it was from places far away. But they did talk to several people in nearby San Antonio who said there were still survivors in pockets here and there.
John was the truck stop manager who’d closed the place down just before Saris 7 struck the earth. He was the one who tossed Marty the keys and said, “I’m going home to spend my last days with the family. Help yourself to whatever you need. And good luck to you.”
What Marty and Lenny needed more than anything was a purpose in life. A new mission. Neither of them had any living family that they knew of. And even though they weren’t two men who would have been friends before the meteorite hit, fate somehow threw them together. Now they were two peas in the same pod.
Two peas with a lot of time on their hands, and nothing to fill it with.
It was actually Lenny who came up with the idea.
“Hey, people will probably be getting out again soon. They’ll see the sign from the highway and stop to see if we have food or other provisions. Just to kill time, why don’t we stock the shelves with whatever edible food we can find and help them out?”
“Lenny, I’ve never operated a cash register in my life. And I wouldn’t have a clue how to price the stuff.”
“Shoot, Marty, I doubt if they’ll have any money. And if they did, I don’t know if it would be worth anything. Let’s just tell them to help themselves. That would be the neighborly thing to do. We can put a big jar up, and tell them that if they have any money and want to contribute something to feel free.
“If there comes a time when the money is worth something again, we’ll be rewarded for our efforts. If not, we’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we helped some people out.”
It seemed like a good plan, and they had no other real options they could think of. And so it was that Marty and Lenny, a truck driver and truck yard manager, became the proprietors of a mom and pop store full of free merchandise and a truck stop to boot.
Two months after moving to the compound, the group was getting settled. The mine was emptied out and put on caretaker status. Mark and Bryan went over once a week or so just to start up the generators and let them run for a few minutes, and to replace any of the handful of lights that had burned out.
The mine was still their emergency evacuation point, so it could never be abandoned completely. But after living there for so many years they were quite honestly tired of looking at it.
Everyone had their chores to do, which kept them busy for a few hours a day. In addition, the entire crew pitched in to plant their first corn, wheat and sorghum crops. It was while doing the planting that they discovered the first serious oversight in their preparations.
They’d forgotten to buy a seed planter.
It took all of them, working in shifts, a full two weeks to plant an acre each of the three crops. Crawling on hands and knees, poking holes in the ground with Phillips screwdrivers and dropping seeds into the holes was for the birds.
But the worst part of it was the realization that this was just a partial crop. The plan was to use a good part of these seeds to plant two acres of each the following year.
It was obvious they needed a seed planter. Mark put that at the top of his “to do” list.
They had a pretty good idea where to find one. There was a farm implement place about fifteen miles west on Highway 83, just outside the city of Eden.
And they knew when they needed to go: quickly. Before too many other survivors started getting out and about. The sooner they could get their planter and get it back to the compound, the less chance someone would see them with it. Anyone who saw them carrying it on the back of their truck, and who knew what it was used for, would know that they had seeds. And in a world where the survivors would be scratching for whatever food they could find, the knowledge that somebody was growing crops on a large scale could mean big trouble.
Brad said, “There’s another factor we need to be concerned with.”
“What’s that?”
“There was a prison in Eden before the meteorite hit. The San Angelo TV station did a story on it a couple of days after the collision. They said most of the prison guards had abandoned their posts. Some were joining the suicide lines at the coliseum. Others were headed down to Mexico and trying their luck down there. The warden told the interviewer that of the two hundred person staff they only had about thirty that were still coming to work. And that they weren’t sure what they were going to do.”
“So?”
“So… what if somebody decided it was inhumane to just leave them in there to die in their cells of starvation. Or to freeze to death once the power went out.
“What if somebody just let them all out?”
“Wow. I hope not. They would have created havoc in Eden, and probably in San Angelo too.”
“No, San Angelo is a hundred miles away from there.”
“You don’t think hardened criminals would have a problem stealing or hijacking cars?”
Mark looked at Bryan, and saw that Bryan was thinking the same thing he was.
“When Roxanne and Rachel joined us in the mine, those two men who shot their father on Highway 83. They were both wearing light blue jumpsuits and identical dark blue jackets.”
“Do you think those were prison uniforms?”
“I thought prisoners wore orange jumpsuits.”
“Not always. I’ve seen those late night prison shows on the cable channels. They wear all different colors, depending on the prison.”
“So, if they let out several hundred criminals, most would probably have dispersed to the bigger cities. Either San Angelo or San Antonio. But maybe some of them stayed around here. Maybe they took over some of the abandoned houses in Eden. Maybe they’re still there.”
“Maybe. Or maybe most of them are dead like everybody else?”
“Well, the implement place is on this side of town, and a couple of miles away from it. So we can get the planter and bring it back without ever going into the town. Whether or not we can do it without being seen is the real question.”
“I don’t even know what a planter looks like. Do you drive it, like a tractor or a harvester?”
Brad said, “No. My Uncle was a farmer. I helped him plant his fields sometimes when I was a kid. It’s an implement. You tow it behind a tractor.”
“Will it fit on the back of our twenty five foot trailer?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, now the real question is, do we want it bad enough to go get it?”
“I vote yes. We can’t be spending two months every year and breaking our backs planting crops. And now’s the time to go. The longer we wait, the more people will be out and about. A lot of them are probably still holed up in their homes, afraid to venture out because they’re not sure what dangers are out there.”
“I agree. Now’s the time to go. Implement places have boom lifts or forklifts to load stuff like that. We’ll take a spare battery in case theirs is shot, throw the planter on the back of the trailer, and get the heck out of there.”
“Okay, I agree. That makes it unanimous. One of us can operate the lift and the other two will provide cover. Now, which one of you wants to volunteer to tell the girls we’re going?”
That detail was going to be at least as hard as going on the mission itself.
Chapter 12
The girls were worried. And they were upset, and a little bit angry. But they weren’t just angry at the guys. They were equally angry at themselves. They thought to purchase or lease tractors, sprayers, harvesters and irrigation sprinklers to use to farm their new land. They’d remembered to stock up on fertilizer, herbicide and insecticide.
But not a single one of them ever thought about a seed planter.
They sat down together, the six of them, and went over various scenarios. They tried to brainstorm things that might go wrong, and how to deal with them.
“What if you get part of the way there and the road is blocked with armed men?”
“We’ll go slow enough to see them from a distance. That section of the highway is fairly straight and flat. If we see a roadblock in the distance, we’ll turn around and come back. Then we can sit back here again and come up with Plan B.”
“What if you’re in the yard at the implement place and they block the exit so you can’t get out?”
“No problem. The yard is surrounded by a chain link fence. It’s no match for the truck. We’ll just crash through it and haul ass out of there.”
“And what if the truck breaks down and you’re stranded out there?”
“We’re going to take two vehicles. Bryan can drive the truck. Brad and I will take one of the Humvees. The one with the sun roof. That way if someone is following us, we can get a good shot at their radiator to disable them. And if the truck breaks down, we’ll abandon it until we can figure out what to do next.”
In the end, they figured they had a solution for any scenario likely to come up. That wasn’t to say they were comfortable with the idea. But at least they were confident that the odds of getting there and back without being shot were on their side.
They checked and rechecked their own vehicles, weapons and radios.
And when they were sure they were ready, they set out.
Mark and Brad, in the Humvee, took the lead, with Bryan driving the flatbed truck right behind them.
About seven miles away from the compound they crested a hill and stopped dead in their tracks.
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know. But it looks like it goes on for miles.”
“Isn’t there a truck stop up ahead somewhere?”
“Yes, two or three miles up. Do you think it goes that far?”
“That’s my guess, yes.”
“Holy crap!”
The pair looked in amazement out the front windshield of the Hummer, at what appeared to be a graveyard of abandoned trucks. For as far as
the eye could see, both shoulders of the highway were lined with trailers. A few still had tractors attached. But most of the trailers were simply dropped and left behind.
They started again, and drove slowly past the trailers. There were hundreds of them, marked with all types of company logos. Home Depot. HEB Supermarkets. Walmart. Rooms To Go. It seemed endless.
When they drove past the truck stop, they figured out what happened in the days following the collision of Saris 7.
The parking lot at the truck stop was packed with the same kinds of trucks. So much so that even the entry and exit were no longer accessible.
“I guess the truck drivers were abandoning their trucks and making their way back to their families. They were probably trying to do so at the truck stop, until there was no more space. Then they had no choice except to abandon them at the roadside.”
“That would make sense. That’s why most of the tractors are missing. They dropped their trailers and then bobtailed it back to wherever home was.”
“I wonder why some of them left their tractors.”
“Just a guess, but I’ll bet if you checked their fuel tanks, they were short on fuel. Remember, CNN did a story a day or two after the meteorite hit that said all the gas stations were running out of fuel. A lot of people were tanking up trying to get down to Mexico, or to be with their families in other parts of the country. I’ll bet the same thing happened with diesel. Either the truck stops ran out of it, or they were so blockaded like this one, nobody could get to the pumps.”
“So instead, I’ll bet the drivers who were low on fuel just parked their rigs and hitched rides with other truckers going in the same direction.”
“Makes sense. And that would also explain those two rigs we passed that stopped dead in the roadway. I’ll bet they ran out of fuel trying to make it to the truck stop.”
“It must have been chaos.”
“And hell, rolled right in together. Kind of makes you realize how easy we had it, compared to the rest of the world.”
Breakout (Final Dawn) Page 4