When Jack brings Nana over the next morning, I ask if he’ll teach me how to siphon gas, and he wants to know why.
“Grandpa’s not letting us get gas for the tillers from the Mint, so we need to get some of our own.”
“What are you gonna do? We already siphoned all the gas in the cars around here.”
“Take some guys and go to other neighborhoods, or down the main roads.”
“Cars on main roads have been looted down to scrap metal. People already took the gas. We never got a chance to have our talk about it, but I’ve got a better way. Let’s go to my house.”
Jack kisses Nana goodbye, and then he takes me to his garage.
“You know I used to manage the H-E-B grocery on Slaughter Lane,” he says.
“I remember.”
“They have a gas station in the parking lot, and when they got a new hand-pump for their underground storage tanks, they sold me the old pump for fifty bucks.”
Jack reaches into a corner and pulls out a hefty device with a hand crank on it and a piece of pipe shooting out the bottom. He grabs a coil of hosing off a shelf.
“You attach this hose to this pipe, then thread the hose into the underground tank, and pump.” He thrusts the pump and hose out toward me. “Here. It’s a gift for the cause.”
“Holy shit! Thank you. I didn’t know you had this.”
“Some of us men used it a couple of times at the beginning of this thing, back when your Nana didn’t want you boys to leave home at night.”
“Seems like all the gas would be gone by now,” I say.
“It could be. But I don’t think many people have the means to pump it.”
“Probably somebody does. Like those guys who had the GTO and old truck that still ran.”
“Yep, and whoever drives trucks up and down Menchaca sometimes. Some storage tanks will be empty, but there are probably fifteen gas stations within two miles of here.”
Jack gathers up a bunch of empty gas cans and threads a length of rope through the handles, tying a double-knot.
“To carry them home,” he says. “You’ll need these and any other gas cans you can find.” He explains all the different kinds of caps the underground tanks can have and the various tools you use to get in.
Jack sits down on an upturned plastic bucket, and I notice how he’s sagging a lot, with more wrinkles around his eyes, like this life is wearing him out. He explains that each station will have three or four tanks for diesel and different grades of gas. Then he tells me we need motor oil, too, and says to look in the pits under the repair bays at lube and mechanic shops.
“For a lot of these tanks,” he says, “even if they’re locked, you can get in through the hole for the dipstick that measures how much fuel is left in the tank. You should check the dipstick first, anyhow. You don’t want to pump from a tank that’s real low. That fuel will gunk up the machinery.”
“Wish you could go with us to show us how to do it.”
“Yeah, but I need to stay with Bea.”
“I appreciate that,” I say, wondering if he’ll be able to take care of her much longer. He looks like someone needs to take care of him.
I take the pump and hose and pick up the string of gas cans. “Thanks, man. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
Before I start work in the gardens, I go to our garage and grease the wheels and handle joints on the four wagons we’ve got over here. There are two more wagons at the Mint, six in all. We call them wagons, but they’re garden carts—much longer, wider, and deeper than a kid’s wagon, with wooden side rails and big-ass wheels that can handle a heavy load. I tighten bolts until not one wagon squeaks or rattles. I fill three of them with Jack’s gas cans and ours.
Then I pad up the fourth wagon with rags to keep tools from clanking together—the hand pump and hose, hacksaw, crowbar, pipe wrench, hammer, plus the only two flashlights I can find that still have working batteries. Last of all, I add four loaded rifles and some bottles of water, and I lock the garage up tight.
As I work in gardens for the rest of the day, I run into Milo and my friend Max. He’s the only other guy my age in the neighborhood—a tall, skinny guy with dark hair who might be more of a nerd than I ever was. I recruit these two to go with me tonight and ask them to meet me at our garage after dark.
I need one more person to pull the fourth wagon, but out of the fifty people here, I can’t think of anyone who isn’t patrolling tonight, or isn’t too slow or too old or too young, or who doesn’t have a twisted ankle or some other thing that rules them out.
Shit. I might have to pull two wagons—either that or get less gas. Hard to guess how heavy the wagons will be when the gas cans are full.
Alma’s not thrilled about me going, but she understands how much we need gas. I hate that I have to put her through so much worry. I’m supposed to be taking care of her instead of driving up her stress load.
I go to the garage a little early and test the wagons, trying to decide whether or not I should pull two of them. I’m leaning toward pulling only one so I can move faster. But then I think of Greta. She’s a middle-aged woman who’s pretty strong and usually gung-ho about helping. Why didn’t I think of her sooner? I’m about to go ask her when Milo shows up with his stocky friend Danny, who’s a little older than him, maybe fifteen. These guys love to play soccer in the street at night, screaming out cuss words in the dark.
“I brought Danny,” Milo says. “You need another guy, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“You have four wagons and only three guys.”
“Noticed that, did you? You might be growing up.”
“Hey, fuck you,” he mutters, and he gives me a shove.
“I was only kidding.” Guess it’s a bad idea to tease him in front of another guy.
Max trots up to the garage and looks over the scruffy crew and the wagons loaded with gas cans. “Wow. We’re gonna get that much gas?”
“If we can. We need as much as we can get. If this works out, we’ll go back every so often until we drain every gas station around us.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?” Max asks, fretting with the dark hair hanging in his eyes.
“Then we’re fucked.”
My three helpers gulp at me, their eyes a little buggy.
“Not totally fucked, but we’d have to work the ground by hand. Everyone, grab a wagon. Let’s get some gas and save ourselves a shit ton of work.”
We roll east down our street. It’s cloudy, so there’s not much light from the moon and stars. I hope the northern lights don’t come out from behind the clouds and put us under a spotlight.
“We need motor oil, too,” I say, “so I’m thinking we should try that Valero station on William Cannon first. It’s got a lube shop next door. There’s a street across from the park that we can take through the abandoned neighborhood north of us—at least I hope it’s abandoned.”
I explain the other places we can try and how we’ll go in a circle to end up at home.
As we turn into the abandoned neighborhood, I say, “No talking at all, okay? No coughing or loud breathing. When we get to a station, we may have to talk a little, but Jack told me how to get to the gas, so I’ll point and give you directions without words.”
From what I can see of the guys’ faces, they look serious and determined to do this right. That’s all I could ask of this ragtag group of kids.
At the Valero station, it takes us a while to figure out what we’re doing. We’re clumsy, and we have to break one of the storage-tank caps. Every tank is empty down to the dregs, except for the diesel. We manage to get three ten-gallon cans of that.
As long as we make it home with the diesel, we’ll have one good working tiller, so that’s a relief. But the lube shop next door is half-burned-down, and from the look of the blackened basement, it seems like the oil sto
red down there is what fueled the fire. What the hell is wrong with people to waste so much stuff that we need to survive? And who’s doing all this burning? Those guys in camo or random berserkers? Kids that no one cares about anymore?
Silently, we head down William Cannon toward the Shell station at the corner of Menchaca, sticking to the shadows as much as we can.
The street used to be Manchaca, and everyone called it Man-Chack, which never made sense. But the city changed the name not long before the sun zapped us to match the historical spelling of some hero of the Texas Revolution, like it’s a good idea to honor men who helped steal Texas from Mexico. But people around here are proud of that shit—at least white people are. Nana and almost every other adult kept on calling the street Man-Chack, which would be fine if they would spell it that way in the first place.
I’m thinking all this shit to keep my mind off the spine-chilling quiet. We haven’t seen one other person, but my Spidey-Senses have me on alert that others are slinking around where we can’t see them. They could be following us, so I guard the rear of our little wagon train, walking backward with my rifle in front of me. I don’t see anyone. Still, the hairs on the back of my neck will not settle down, like they’re antennae picking up evil vibes and warning me to watch the fuck out.
I stop walking, and the other guys stop, too. I look at them with my finger to my lips, and we listen and scan our surroundings. But I don’t hear or see a thing, and the others don’t seem to, either. There’s not even any wind to rustle the leaves, like the eerie calm before a storm. I shake my head, cringing, and we move on.
After walking another quarter-hour, give or take, we’re finally close enough for me to see the Menchaca intersection with the binoculars, but there’s no gas station. What the—?
I motion for Milo, Danny, and Max to put their heads close to me. “Sorry, I screwed up,” I murmur. “The station I’m thinking of must be behind us a mile on South First. Too close to the camo guys to go there. Let’s hit the stations on Menchaca and get closer to home.”
We cut across a shopping-center parking lot where we’ve got the cover of two strips of looted shops, we come out on Menchaca, and we angle across it to a convenience store with gas pumps. We find the storage tanks behind the store, where the pavement butts up to a stretch of woods.
I motion to Milo to guard our backs while the rest of us open a tank of unleaded gas. The dipstick tells us the tank is half-full. Score! We insert the run of hose into the tank. Max gets to pumping while Danny and I fill every gas can and jug we’ve got, the three of us grinning.
We’re loading gas cans into wagons while Max extracts the hose and lets gas drain into the last open can. Then Milo cocks his rifle. Shit!
We freeze and jerk our faces toward Milo, where he’s aiming into the trees. A deer with a big rack of antlers takes off bounding through the woods.
“I can shoot it,” Milo mutters, still aiming.
“Don’t!” I say. “You’ll call attention to us.”
“I want some deer meat,” Milo argues, moving the rifle to follow the deer.
“Milo, you can’t!”
“Shouldn’t y’all be quiet?” Max asks, all nervous, biting at his lip.
Milo sighs and lowers his gun. I watch the deer bound out of sight, my stomach knotting up. A deer that big could feed the whole neighborhood for days.
“We need a sound suppressor for your gun,” I say, “then we could come get it another night. Let’s get this gas home.”
“Wait,” Danny says, and he steps over to pop open the store’s back door with the crowbar, as though he opens locked metal doors every day. He’s a muscly little sucker, but not much of a thinker.
I motion that Danny and I will go in and that Max and Milo should stand guard, one on each end of the store’s back side.
Crap, it’s dark in here, like a windowless storeroom. I almost light a match, but I think better of it, since we’ve been handling gas, and I pull out my flashlight. A jumble of half-crushed boxes and papers is strewn across the floor. We rifle through the boxes, but they’re empty. As my eyes adjust, I see shelves in the far corner—twelve-packs of Cokes that we’ve got no room for in the wagons. But I go to grab us each a Coke, and I half-trip on a box poking out from under the shelves. There’s something heavy in that box. I rip it open and shine the flashlight inside. Motor oil, a whole case of quart bottles. I don’t know if it’s the right weight of oil, but I’m taking it.
Danny grabs for the Cokes and comes away with two twelve-packs.
“There’s no room for that,” I say, but he rushes out the door with the Cokes while I snatch up the box of oil.
I fill my rucksack with bottles of motor oil, and Danny wedges the Cokes into the tool wagon. The clouds above are thinning out, and stars are throwing more light on the ground. The northern lights are still behind the clouds, but they’re turning the clouds green. We hurry to the other side of Menchaca, where there are more trees for cover, and we make our way toward home.
Up ahead, there’s an open parking lot for a church. I slow down, looking for a safe way to cross the lot, and someone shouts, “Woo-hoo!” I raise my gun, arms trembling. Sounded like it came from behind the church.
“Be quiet, idiot!” some man barks.
We duck and creep backward into the bushes, pulling our wagons under cover with us. My heart’s kicking me in the chest, and the other guys look like theirs are, too.
Feet are trampling through the gravelly church parking lot, and we’re not breathing. Max has his eyes closed, and his lips are moving, like he’s praying.
I lie flat on the ground so I can see beneath the branches in front of me. Three men on the move, loaded down with duffle bags. I hold up three fingers for my team to see. The men come out of the shadows, strapped with rifles, one carrying a pistol and darting his eyes around. They’re all wearing camo, and those rifles have sound suppressors on them. Christ! If they come this way, we’re toast.
The chubbiest man slides to a stop where the gravel driveway meets the street. “Man, who woulda thought a church would have so much food?” he says. The other two stop as well, and then the one with the pistol steps into the street, scanning it in both directions.
“They’ve got their Sunday brunches and Wednesday-night potlucks,” another guy with a deep voice says. “Didn’t you ever go to church?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Shut up, both of you,” says the guy with the pistol. He’s got dark, greasy-looking hair, best I can see. “You’re workin’ my last nerve.”
“Yes, sir,” says the deep-voiced one. “Been a long time since we got so much in one haul.”
“Look here what I got,” says the chubby guy, and he pulls a big cross from inside his camo jacket. Is that real gold? Stealing a cross from a church? That’s all kinds of wrong.
“Heathen.” The leader with the pistol grins. “Let’s get while the gettin’ is good.”
They trot away from us, heading south on Menchaca, and I release a breath, but quietly. They’re on their way to Dittmar, the same street we have to go down to get home. If they’re part of the camo guys we saw—And why wouldn’t they be?—then Dittmar would be their quickest way home. We may have to wait them out.
“I shot the preacher,” Chubby sings out, “but I didn’t shoot the deputy.”
The leader wheels around and points his pistol at Chubby’s head. “I told you to shut up!”
Chubby freezes and throws up his hands. “Okay. Sorry.”
The leader leans up in Chubby’s face. “Just nod. Don’t talk.” And Chubby nods. The leader motions for Chubby to go ahead and then falls in behind, with the pistol only inches from Chubby’s back.
That fucker’s threatening his own guy.
I slip ahead and watch with the binoculars. When the camo men disappear over a rise past Dittmar, I come back t
o the wagons.
I whisper, “Think they shot the preacher?”
“Should we go look?” Milo mutters.
“If they shot him,” I say, “they probably killed him. And if he’s alive, what would we do with a preacher who’s been shot?”
“Come on,” Milo says, and he slides out from under the bushes. That kid has a keen sense of justice, keener than mine.
“Okay, but Danny and Max, stay here. Don’t leave unless someone’s coming for you.”
“I wanna go with you,” Danny says.
“No, man. Help Max guard the wagons.”
Rifles up, Milo and I slip across the gravel lot, around to the back of the church. The door is wide open. Warily, I stick my head inside and almost choke on the stink of death. Oh fuck!
Milo shoots his flashlight beam into a hallway, and there’s a corpse on the ground with its head bashed in. I whirl away, gagging. Milo starts to step inside.
“Wait. No,” I sputter.
“I’m goin’ to look for the preacher.”
“That probably is the preacher. He’s got a suit on. Can’t see his collar, but he’s been dead for a while.”
Milo’s staring down at the corpse. “There’s worms on it.”
“Maggots, man.” I pull his arm, and we run.
I don’t know how long it takes a corpse to rot that far, but if the men in camo killed him, they didn’t do it tonight.
We finally get home in time to sleep a while before morning, not that I expect to sleep after that. We park the wagons full of gas in our garage. I bring a couple of Cokes inside for Alma, who meets me at the top of the stairs.
“You’ve been awake all night?” I ask while I hug her with relief.
“I half-slept until I heard you open the garage.”
“Aww, baby.” I search her face and try to pet the worry away. “Let’s get you to bed.” I’m waiting until morning to tell her about the looters in camo and the corpse. She needs to sleep.
“You brought me Cokes?” She grins a sleepy grin.
I just hope I don’t stink like a corpse.
If the Light Escapes: A Braving the Light Novel Page 8