If you watched him around his wife or grandkids, you saw the soft side of him. He might treat drivers like they were raw recruits on their first day at Parris Island sometimes but he never barked at her.
Behind the Missing Man table, there were three rifles, bayonets affixed, muzzles down in a small rectangular plot of dirt with the period correct battle helmets perched atop the shoulder stocks.
There was an M1 Garand, an M-16 and an M-4, each representing their own era of American Fighting Men. Behind that, in a sturdy case against the wall, was a glass-fronted box half filled with coins with “All proceeds go to the Veterans” written across the front of it.
There was an O scale train track that ran right over the top of the box and around the entire circumference of the diner near the ceiling. It wound its way through the walls into the main Quonset hut and down to table level in an area near the arcade room.
Cobb had cleverly modified the trains to look like Semi Trucks and the tracks to look passably like roads. So instead of train yards modeled on the extensive tabletop layout, there were buildings and loading docks and model trucks and cars in the miniature town. He had built a funnel for pocket change on the loading docks so the children could drop in their coins.
When one of the Semi trucks with the custom made hopper came by, it would trip the lever dumping the money into its trailer. The trucks ran in a continuous loop around the C-store and over the Missing Man table where they would trigger the bottom release and dump their load of coins into the box for the Veterans.
The kids loved it. They followed their chosen truck around to watch it dump, squealing with delight and ran back to parents asking for more change. The parents didn’t mind, it kept the kids busy so they could browse and it was for a good cause.
Cobb liked it because it kept a steady stream of money coming into the box and he gave it to where it was needed, whether to the POW/MIA groups, the Wounded Warrior Project or to some vet whom he knew needed a little help.
It was too early for the kids to be up and active, so the trucks rolled quietly by on their never-ending journey as they entered Martha’s Diner.
Cobb’s Vietnamese wife’s real name wasn’t Martha, though. When Gunny had asked Cobb what it really was one day, he growled out that he couldn’t pronounce it and it sounded like Martha, so that’s what her name was. And that Gunny should mind his own business. And he should see the barber over in Driver’s Alley ‘cause he was looking mighty scruffy. And that his truck was dirty and he needed to take that rolling scrap heap around to the Truck Wash to get cleaned up some so as to quit disgracing his parking lot with it. Then he walked out of the diner, saying something to her in very fluent Vietnamese.
The café was already starting to fill up with the early birds. There were a few dozen people in the main dining area. Families with sleepy-eyed kids or couples on scenic day trips up into the mountains. Guests from the Airbnb trucks. A group of cowboys at the counter drinking their coffee, a couple of bike riders wearing full leathers with their crotch rockets parked out front, getting ready to go carve up the mountain.
It was going on 7:30 and the “Professional Drivers Only” area was already half full with men working on their breakfast platters and bottomless cups of coffee although the conversation was sparse. Gunny knew most of them by name, or at least their CB handles, and there were nods of acknowledgment and half raised coffee cup salutes as they made their way over to a booth by the windows looking out over the gas pumps.
They were a motley looking bunch, the men and women in the driver’s area. They weren’t scary looking men in an outlaw biker gang sense, but these were indeed some quietly hard men. Most were 40ish, calloused hands and laugh lines. Cowboy hats or steel toed boots. Jeans, of course. The type of men who held doors open for people, whether man or woman. Men who would say please and thank you and Ma’am.
These were men who would apologize if they bumped into you at a crowded bar or offer to buy you another drink if they spilled some of yours. But men whose hold on their bottle would innocuously go from a grip to sip beer to a grip to wield a weapon if you were unwise enough to push the issue into a confrontation. Men who wouldn’t back down.
Owner operators, most of them. Men who owned their trucks and took pride in them. Spent money on extra lights and lots of chrome. These men hauled heavy and oversize, live cattle and swinging beef. They were the guys who strapped loads of steel with 100-pound tarps and logging chains in blistering July heat. They slung iron and rolled through the mountains on chained up tires when the snows were piling up and the other drivers were hunkered down in the truck stops.
Most were bearded, tattooed and former military. Men who couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office or warehouse. Men who wouldn’t tolerate having a boss looking over their shoulder or telling them what to do. Some because that’s just how they were built, some because they suffered varying degrees of PTSD and knew they were better off away from people, for the most part.
Men who got out of the service and couldn’t hold down a normal job so they turned to trucking. The career choice had probably saved a lot of marriages also. A team of psychiatrists would have a field day, diagnosing them with everything from oppositional defiant disorder to excessive patriotic zeal.
America had been at war in the Middle East for over 20 years and nearly everyone that sat in the driver’s area had done his time over there. They’d seen death up close and personal and now they knew the importance of living life, not just going through the motions.
They rode America’s highways and saw what there was to see, getting off the four lane and onto the small roads whenever they could. These were the men who took the time to stop and help a stranded motorist change a tire or give them a ride to the gas station. Some of the older guys had even taken part in the Trucker Wars back in the 70s.
They were the old school Knights of the Road who tolerated all the new laws and regulations that came down every year when they were tolerable and ignored them when they weren’t. In short, they were men who could take care of business, and it didn’t matter what that business might be.
The few ladies in the crowd were just as tough, if in a different way. They had to be in order to be accepted. Their nails weren’t long and painted; their hair was usually short or in a ponytail. They had to be able to drive better than most men because when they pulled up to a dock, more often than not a small crowd would gather to watch them back in. Some expecting them to take five or six attempts to get it right so they could look at each other and smile knowingly.
Gunny slid over against the window and Scratch plopped down beside him, leaving Tiny room to spread his bulk out on the other side of the booth.
“Check that out!” Scratch pointed out the window to a gleaming red Ferrari parked at the main entrance. “Man, I’m gonna have one of those someday.”
“You gonna be as big an ass as he is?” Tiny asked. “He’s in the handicap spot.”
“Maybe he’s got a dose of Affluenza.” Scratch laughed back.
Gunny grabbed the menus slotted behind the condiments rack and passed them out, announcing, “I’m having the special, and I don’t care what it is. It’s always good.”
The TV was usually muted with the weather channel on, something that affected all of the drivers. Today the volume was up, not loud but enough to be heard over the quiet clinking of silverware and coffee cups, and they turned to watch as they settled in.
It was a local channel, the Reno Morning Show which usually didn’t cover a lot of hard news. It was the early morning friendly banter, cooking tips and today's weather show with a healthy dose of celebrity gossip thrown in.
There was a banner running across the bottom of the screen stating ‘viewer discretion is advised’ and they kept using the same footage over and over of some extremely violent protesters or rioters attacking people. It was a long distance shot and shaky but it got the point across.
It was brutal to watch and it left the three spe
echless for a few moments. When the show hosts came on again, they were talking about out of control gangs and police budget cuts and whatever else they could come up with off the top of their heads when they really didn’t know anything. The two local personalities seemed completely out of their depth, trying to cover something so deadly serious.
“Damn.” Tiny said quietly. “You see that guy just body slam that girl? It had to break bones. That hurt me just watching it. I didn’t take hits that hard when I played ball. And we had pads on.”
“Yeah. That ain’t normal” Scratch said.
“Why don’t they have CNN or Fox on?” Gunny asked
“The feed is out.” Scratch said. “I asked the same thing when I was in here earlier. None of the cable channels are working.”
Gunny fell silent, just watching the film loop and ignoring the chatter of the anchors and their guests. “You see that?” he asked suddenly, “Watch in the background, to the far left. See that body with the guts hanging out. That guy is dead. Has to be. Now watch.”
The body was still as they stared at the TV, the camera fully zoomed in from a balcony overlooking the street from the looks of it. It was shaky, the operator obviously frightened. The main focus was of some guy in a suit jumping up from yet another bloody man writhing on the ground. He plowed into a screaming woman at full bore as hard as he could, knocking her out of camera view.
But in the corner of the frame, just for a scant second, the gutted man in the background started to sit up. The film ended abruptly and started looping again.
“Dude, that’s whack! Why did they cut it there?!” Scratch demanded. “I’m telling you, Man. Alex is right. They’re covering something up!”
“It probably just got way too bloody, they can’t show that stuff on TV.” Tiny said “It was rigor mortis or something. Or somebody grabbing him. Folks with their insides hanging out don’t sit up.”
Kim-Li rattled a plate of toast and three cups down on the table and started filling them from her coffee pot.
“You boys know what you want?” she asked, whipping out her order pad, her perky Midwestern accent a surprise to anyone who had never heard her speak before. Most people assumed she would sound like she looked. Vietnamese. “Hey, did you see Jimmy Winchell over there?” she continued, not giving them a chance to speak and obviously excited, pointing with her pencil to a handsome thirty-something cowboy sitting with a few of his friends at the counter.
“Well I’ll be,” said Gunny. “He’s on tour? Is he playing in Reno?” quickly shifting mental gears from weird news footage to everyday small talk.
“I don’t know, I can’t ask him that,” Kim said, slightly flustered.
It was obvious to all that she was crushing on him.
“Who’s Jimmy Winchell?” Tiny and Scratch deadpanned.
“Tiny, you ain’t got no excuse, I know you like country music and Scratch, well, your brain is melted from all that heavy metal screamo noise you listen to.” She scolded them. “He’s only the biggest country music star ever!”
“Bigger than Johnny Cash?” asked Scratch.
“Bigger than Charlie Pride?” Tiny joined in.
She gave them the stink eye and they bantered back and forth for a few minutes while she took their orders then she was off to freshen up more coffee cups and take care of her other tables.
“Better not let Old Cobb catch you staring at his granddaughters’ ass,” Tiny told Scratch.
“I wasn’t,” he quickly said, turning back to face the table. “I was checking out the Super Star.”
“Uh huh” Tiny laughed.
Gunny sighed heavily and glared at his phone. When he felt them looking at him, he glanced up. “I can’t get through. Was going to call home, see if the Mrs. has heard about any of this stuff down near us.”
“Try texting.” Scratch said while stuffing his face with buttered toast. “That is if you know how. It will go through even when voice won’t.”
Gunny gave him the bird then opened the messenger app on his phone. He sent a quick note then got busy buttering his own toast.
Tiny grunted and set his phone down. “I can’t get through either. Who’s your carrier?”
“Verizon,” Gunny said. “You?”
“AT&T” Tiny replied, opening a jelly packet. “I got plenty of bars, strong signal. The call won’t go through, though. I’m getting an ‘all circuits busy’ message.”
“I didn’t even get that,” Gunny said. “Just rang a few times and disconnected.”
Scratch dug his phone out of his pocket and tried to call his dispatcher again but also got nothing. “They don’t pay me to sit around, I need to know what they want me to do,” he said. “I’ll run this freight in, I ain’t worried. Some jacked up crack head tries to mess with me, he’ll meet Mr. Hook.” He snapped the claws on his left arm together quickly.
“What you gonna do, clap at him?” Tiny asked
“Stick your finger in there and feel the clap.” Scratch retorted, holding the ominous looking claw wide open.
“No thanks,” Tiny said dryly. “Ol’ lady would kill me if I came home with a case of V.D.”
Gunny laughed, shook his head. “You walked right into that one,” he said.
They passed the time waiting for their breakfasts, watching the looping newsreel and speculating about what was going on. They overheard snatches of conversation from other tables with the same questions and concerns they all had.
Gunny turned in the booth, addressing the next table over “Hey, Firecracker. Did you just come up from the Shakey ?” He knew the man had a dedicated route running raw cabinets from LA to Salt Lake City every week. He figured if there were madness going on, it would be heaviest down there.
“Yeah I did, Gunny. But there wasn’t anything going on down there when I left yesterday. I mean, anything worse than normal.” He amended. “That where you headed?”
“No, I’m going to the Gay Bay. This news has got me starting to get worried now. Wondering if it’s safe to get in.”
“Can’t say, man, I’m headed to Salty City. Maybe check with Wire Bender, see if he has contact with anybody there.”
“Good idea,” Gunny said. “I’ll check after grub. Thanks.”
“That IS a good idea” Scratch chimed in. “When does he open up?”
Nobody wanted to drive into a city that was having riots in the streets and road closures from protesters. They all remembered Reginald Denny, the driver who was drug out of his truck and pummeled mercilessly during the L.A. Riots years ago. All of it caught on film and played over and over again until it was ingrained in every trucker. If a situation like that came up, lock the doors and hit the gas.
“He’ll probably be open by the time we’re finished eating,” Tiny said. “He keeps early hours. Half the time, he just racks out on that cot he has set up in there.”
Out of the window, they saw the County Sheriff’s car pull past the gas pumps and into one of the parking spots in front of the building.
“Good, maybe he knows what’s going on,” Tiny said and heard the same thing chorused from a few of the other tables at the window. A lot of the drivers had tried their phones and only a few had gotten through. It was troubling and the concern in the room was starting to ratchet up.
Kim-Li brought their plates over and passed them out, then started refilling their cups
“Hey, this ain’t that Haji Bacon is it?” Scratch asked, eyeing it suspiciously. “You can take it back if it is, I ain’t eating that crap.”
Kim cocked her head and looked at him hard, never spilling a drop going from one cup to the other with the steaming coffee pot.
“You forget where you’re at, Scratch?” She asked “You think Pawpaw would serve that here? And you owe a dollar to the cuss jar.”
“What?” he spluttered “Crap’s not a cuss word!”
“That’s two bucks and yes it is,” she smiled sweetly. “Everybody’s learned not to curse in here anymore, so we’ve e
xpanded the unacceptable words list.”
“Damn, that’s extortion,” Scratch said under his breath, digging out his wallet to put the money into her outstretched hand.
“Three bucks. Want to go for an even five?” She said, snapping her fingers. “I’ve got my eye on a new purse I need.”
He just smiled grimly and made a zipping motion across his lips as Tiny and Gunny snickered at him. He held up his claw to them as she walked away and asked, “Guess which finger I’m holding up right now?”
The sheriff’s deputy came in, looking a bit harried, and quickly walked up to the counter. Martha was behind it at the coffee urns, filling up another filter with fresh ground. She glanced over her shoulder and asked him in her accented English “You want brak-fast?”
“Not today,” he said. “Can you give me a dozen sausage and egg biscuits for the office? I’ve called everyone in and some of them just got off shift an hour ago.”
Martha yelled back to Cookie who manned the grill. “You hear?” she asked. “Chop Chop! Make first!”
“Coming right up!” he hollered back over the din of the sizzling griddle and the dirty dishes being loaded into the dishwasher.
Deputy Billy Travaho was a lean, rangy man. Sun baked by the Nevada summers, his Shoshone tribal features were prominent. His jurisdiction in the county covered everything from just north of the densely populated Reno area all the way up to the Oregon border. Nearly 6,000 square miles of sparsely populated and rugged terrain.
The sheriff took care of business in the cities of Reno and Sparks south of them. Everything else Travaho ran as he saw fit from his office just a few miles from the Three Flags. It was a quiet job for the most part. The occasional domestic dispute or marijuana operation up in the mountains. He had grown up just down the road from the truck stop, and old Cobb had given him his first job washing trucks when he was 14.
He knew about the illegal poker games in the back rooms. The working girls who sometimes drifted in, plying their trade among the truckers. He knew about the bare-knuckle cage fights in the junkyard that drew in the Reno crowds where some pretty substantial sums changed hands. He knew the truckers used this route to get around the California inspection stations.
Zombie Road (Book 1): Convoy of Carnage Page 2