As the reality of heading into the unknown settled over me, I started to think about what lay ahead. The first town I’d hit, meaning a town with people, would be Yachats. It was three hundred miles south. If I drove half the night and slept the other half, I’d arrive at dawn. But did Crater want me to go that far south? Or did he expect me to find whatever it was he wanted me to find before that?
My visa was only good for the Swan Peninsula so if I drove all the way to Yachats, the police there would arrest me. And there was also the possibility that the Fibs could pull me over anywhere along the line and that was definitely the worst-case scenario. Fibs were far more aggressive than local police. That’s why they were the law of the Territory.
I knew a little about Yachats from my study of the Territory. Before the Virus, it’d been a tourist town. In the summer, vacationers would walk its beaches, swim its slice of the cold Pacific, and hike its coastal forests. In the winter, they’d stay in Yachats’ mountain lodges, and ski and snowboard.
But now Yachats fended for itself. More so than most towns in the Territory. And because it was self-sufficient, it wasn’t very active on the Line. That was why I didn’t know much about the place. I did remember that it survived on fishing. Salmon, trout, and smelt. It traded some of its catch to other towns, but mostly traded within its own borders.
The miles passed and just when I thought I’d never see a truck or any other vehicle on the road, I saw red lights up ahead. Tail lights. I felt relief. I wasn’t alone.
As I approached the taillights, I saw that they belonged to a tank truck, which meant the truck was hauling either water or fuel. My guess was water. The aqueduct system had ended about a hundred miles back, so water headed farther south would have to be trucked. I rolled down my window to see if I could smell gas or diesel. I didn’t smell either and concluded the truck was hauling water. I passed it and watched its headlights fade in my rearview mirror as I left it behind.
A few miles later, I passed another truck. Again, a tank truck hauling water. Then I passed another and I began to wonder why I wasn’t passing trucks hauling other goods. I passed three more tank trucks and my thoughts jumped to Crater. Was this what he’d wanted me to see?
I started calculating. I wanted to figure out the frequency of trucks it’d take to haul water to Yachats and to the towns south of it. Florence, Dunes City, Reedsport, Winchester Bay, Lakeside, North Bend, Charleston, Bandon, Langlois and Port Orford. Water had to be trucked to these towns because they weren’t connected to Corolaqua’s aqueducts. I knew how much water Corolaqua pumped out and I remembered the rough estimates I’d come up with for each town’s population.
As I passed another tank truck, and then another, I started running some numbers: The amount of water each truck carried, the amount of water each town required, and the number and frequency of trucks I’d seen so far. I also took into consideration some of the other facts I remembered from my study of the Territory. Like how much water the farmers outside of North Bend used and how much water the tiny population of Langlois used for their apple orchards. I marshaled all the facts and began to calculate the frequency of tank trucks that I should expect to see on this road.
I passed two more tank trucks and, twenty miles later, I passed three more.
I continued to crunch the numbers, but halfway to Yachats, the long day spent repairing the pump caught up to me, so I pulled over and fell asleep.
Three hours later, I awoke to find one question dominating my thoughts. How far south did Crater want me to go? Dawn would be rising in about an hour and I’d be in Yachats in three. Had I already found what he wanted me to find? The trucks hauling water? I didn’t know, and there was only one way to find out, so I pulled back on the road and continued south.
I passed twenty-four more tank trucks before hitting the outskirts of Yachats. I didn’t pass any other kind of truck. I did pass single tank trucks headed in the other direction and from their speed and the way they swayed on the road, I could tell they were empty. They were headed north to reload.
Closing in on Yachats, I began to see signs of life. Close to the road, I saw crumbling motels with clotheslines and bicycles out front and vegetable gardens growing on the adjacent land. Then I saw old farmhouses, shacks, and ramshackle barns speckled across the countryside. Up in the rolling hills, I caught glimpses of dilapidated homes.
But something was odd. It didn’t hit me immediately, but took a good number of miles to make an impact. I should’ve been spotting signs of a fishing town. Boats, boat hitches, boat trailers, fishing equipment, bait farms, and fishing nets. But I didn’t see any of those things. Instead, I saw truck parts strewed in fields, yards, driveways, etc. Engine blocks, exhaust pipes, truck tires, and parts that I didn’t recognize because I didn’t know much about trucks.
Yachats was looking like a truck town. Could my study of the Territory have been that far off? Benny had confirmed that Yachats was an autonomous fishing town. Even though the town rarely used the Line, when it did, its communications verified that it was a fishing town.
I made it into Yachats proper, and its small downtown area. Here, I saw what I expected to see. Small shops that sold food and clothes and Remnants, and a few storefront repair and trade shops. But I also saw garages with repair bays and, inside those bays, I saw truck cabs with their hoods open and mechanics at work.
I passed a few people on the streets and they glanced at my van. I hoped to make it through Yachats before they called the police. I passed a two-story building, maintained better than the other buildings, and I had no doubt that this was the Town Hall. I debated whether to pull over, head inside, and ask when Yachats had become a truck town. At the same time, I knew that I had no real evidence to prove that Yachats had ever been anything other than a truck town. I thought I knew the Territory, but maybe I didn’t. I knew the ‘map’ of the Territory (and it was a poor map at that), but not the Territory itself.
Then I looked past the Town Hall, up into the hills, and I saw something that instantly changed everything I knew about the Territory. I was stunned. And I was sure that this was what Crater had wanted me to see.
Chapter Nine
I drove up into the hills, toward a huge swath of cleared land. But it wasn’t the cleared land that had shocked me. It was the massive storage tanks that covered that land. Five million gallon tanks, ten million gallon tanks, and twenty-five million gallon tanks. And I knew exactly what was in those tanks.
Water.
But why was it being stored here? And why didn’t anyone know about it?
I didn’t want to risk driving into the storage facility, which was teeming with trucks, so I headed up into the hills above it. I’d check it out from up there. I followed small winding roads up, passing a few old lodges and abandoned campgrounds. I took a few wrong turns, before I found myself on a road that ran above the storage area and parallel to it. It didn’t have a direct view of the clearing so I decided to pull over and hike into the woods below the road.
It didn’t take me long to find a good vantage point. I saw an orderly process unfolding below me. Single tank trucks pulled up to storage tanks and unloaded their water, while double and triple tank trucks pulled up and loaded up on water. Flagmen waved the trucks up and down the lanes and kept the whole process moving.
I was surprised to see double and triple tank trucks. On my way down, I hadn’t seen any. So it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they must all be heading south with their full loads. But why? The towns south of Yachats had plenty of water from the three desalination plants in the southern part of the Territory.
In addition to that anomaly, there was another. I was staring at way more water than Corolaqua was pumping out. The number of storage tanks meant that water was being trucked into Yachats from other desalination plants. And not just from the Willapa Bay plant up north, but also from those plants down south and that made no sense at all. Why would water be coming in from the south, then going back out to
the south?
I wanted some answers, but I couldn’t risk questioning a trucker. Truckers weren’t Fibs themselves, but they might as well have been. They were licensed by the Fibs, so they acted like another set of eyes and ears for them. If a trucker suspected that I was in Yachats without a visa, he’d report it to the Fibs and I’d be jailed as a deserter. That meant five years in the penitentiary in Devinbridge.
I drove back into town. I had decided that I’d question a shopkeeper. And if that shopkeeper asked me questions of his own, I’d tell him that I’d driven down from Clearview to meet with Yachats’ Councilmen about a water quality problem. My Corolaqua van would be proof that my story was true.
I parked on the main street, grabbed an empty bag from under my seat, and headed into a vegetable shop. The shopkeeper was short, thick, and grave looking. He eyed me suspiciously, which I’d expected since I was an outsider, but what I didn’t expect was the hostility he radiated.
I perused the bins of vegetables. Carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. The shopkeeper was going through a ledger, but kept glancing at me. I put some carrots in my bag and turned to him, ready to launch into small talk, but he beat me to it.
“Corolaqua?” he said. “What brings you to Yachats?” He’d already made note of my van and he wasn’t waiting to get right to the point. I realized that I’d picked the wrong shopkeeper, but it was too late to back out now.
“Came down to check on the water quality,” I said.
“Kind of dicey, driving through the wilderness,” he said. “Why didn’t you use the Line?”
“I have to take samples.”
“We couldn’t do that for you and truck ‘em up?”
This guy wasn’t going to let anything go.
“You need the right equipment,” I said, and brought the carrots to the counter, ready to get out.
“You could’ve sent the equipment down with a trucker.”
“Yeah, but you need to know how to use it or else we can’t trust the samples.”
He didn’t respond to that and his silence told me he wasn’t buying any of my story. He put the carrots on the scale, and I accepted that he was going to report me to the police as soon as I stepped out of his shop. Once that sunk in, I decided I might as well ask him a question and get something out of my foolish visit.
I was too wary to ask him directly about the water so I said, “When did Yachats go from a fishing town to a truck town?”
“Who told you we were a fishing town?”
“That’s what I’d always heard,” he said.
“Guess you always heard wrong.”
I handed him a few coins and he gave me change then looked back down at his ledger. He didn’t say another word.
I walked out without having learned anything new and now I had no choice but to leave town. My bet was the shopkeeper was already on the phone to the police. I got into my van, ready to flee, but found that I couldn’t do it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe the coward label from last night was still too vivid.
I wanted some answers so I decided to go to where the answers were.
I headed up to the storage facility.
I should’ve headed back to Clearview.
Chapter Ten
I entered the facility and followed the wide road that ran down the center. I remembered the layout from my perch in the hills so I knew where I wanted to go. A parking area in the southwest corner. There, I’d seen truckers park their trucks and head into a nearby building. That building was probably a place for them to stretch their legs. My plan was to try talk to a trucker there.
I turned onto a smaller lane and passed trucks loading up on water and flagmen guiding trucks through intersections. Some of the flagmen glanced at me, but none stopped me. That should’ve been enough to make me suspicious, but I chalked it up to my Corolaqua van. I told myself that a van from a water plant fit right in when I should’ve told myself this was way too easy.
I made it to the parking area and saw eight trucks parked side by side. Two had drivers sitting in their cabs. I parked near the building and decided that instead of going inside like I’d originally planned, it’d be safer to talk to one of these drivers. He might be more likely to talk without other drivers around. The closest of the two was in the sixth truck down.
I got out of my van and walked past the trucks’ snub-nosed hoods. I circled out a little so the driver in the sixth truck could see me approaching. I passed the alley between the third and fourth truck and thought I saw movement at the back end. I ignored it. A bad decision.
The driver in the sixth truck spotted me and he looked wary, but not hostile, so I continued forward and moved toward his cab. I hoped he’d roll down his window, but instead, he looked at his side view mirror. I glanced to the back of his truck to see what he was checking out, thinking it might just be a reflex on his part, but I’d never been more wrong. My luck had just run out. A brown uniform was moving toward me. A Fib.
I don’t why I did what I did next. I could’ve stayed put and let the Fib question me. I could’ve used my job at Corolaqua to explain why I was here. I was a water man checking out a water storage facility. My story would’ve eventually unraveled and I would’ve been jailed as a deserter, but staying put and telling that story would’ve been better than what I decided to do.
I ran.
I bolted out from between the trucks, raced toward my van, but it was already too late for that. Another Fib was blocking my way. I veered away from him and raced toward the storage tanks, picturing the facility as I remembered it from above. I sprinted east, toward the large refueling island at the edge of the woods. I’d use the tangle of trucks at the island as cover, then disappear into the thick forest behind the facility.
I didn’t look back, but I was sure the two Fibs were behind me.
A slow moving truck cut me off, so I hurled myself to the ground, rolled under its tank, caught a glimpse of the two Fibs behind me, then rolled out on the other side.
I scrambled back to my feet, raced around the storage tank in front of me, across a lane, around another tank, then alongside a moving truck. I passed a flagman, but he didn’t stop me, and I wondered if the flagmen had been alerted in advance. Had the Fibs been watching me since I’d entered town? But what were they doing in Yachats in the first place?
I made it to the refueling island where half a dozen trucks were filling up. I didn’t see any Fibs and I weighed whether to change my plans and double back to my van. I decided against it for fear of running right back into their hands, and I sprinted between the trucks and into the woods.
I ran up into the hills, crunching leaves and twigs underfoot, hoping that the Fibs weren’t following those sounds. As I raced deeper into the forest, the horrible truth set in. Even if I escaped the Fibs for now, they’d eventually catch up with me. In Yachats, in the wilderness, or in Clearview. But I kept going.
After about twenty minutes, I slowed down and looked back. I didn’t see anyone heading up the hill, but it was hard to know for sure because the forest was so dense. I continued forward and weighed my next move and as I did, I caught a glimpse of a lodge, about a quarter mile up the hillside. If the lodge was inhabitable, families might be living there, and if they were, one of them might have a car. That wasn’t guaranteed, as cars were a luxury, but this was a truck town, so people here might know how to keep cars running. My plan was simple. Hike to that lodge, steal a car, and head back to Clearview.
I moved cautiously through the forest, toward the lodge. Each time I heard a burst of rustling leaves, I stopped, glanced around for Fibs, but it was always just a squirrel or rabbit scurrying away. I started to think less about the Fibs and more about Crater. Had I seen what he’d wanted me to see or did he want me to go even farther south?
I made it to the back of the lodge and, from the safety of the woods, I started to check it out. The dark forest was now my ally. I saw laundry lines, weighed down by wet clothes, strung across the back lawn. Kids’ toys were
scattered about.
Families were living here.
The lodge itself was a three-story wooden building that, before the Virus, would’ve been called rustic. Now, it was dilapidated. As I moved around it, toward the front, the parking lot came into view and my simple plan crumbled.
I did see a couple of cars, but I also saw five SUVs. Fib SUVs. Brown with green stripes running down the sides. The green symbolized the Territory, that narrow stretch of land along the coast. I now realized that the two Fibs who’d hunted me down were part of a larger contingent. But why were they here? Had I driven right into some sort of crisis? And that thought made me angry. At Crater. He was the one who’d led me into this.
But then I saw something that made me forget all about my anger. Victor Crow stepped out of the lodge. What the hell was he doing here? He was the Territory’s top cop, the leader of the Fibs, and as I watched him and two other Fibs amble toward one of the SUVs, I reached one definitive conclusion. I’d stumbled into something way over my head.
Chapter Eleven
I had met Victor Crow five years ago. There’d been a rumor circulating around Clearview that the marauders were going to attack the Corolaqua plant and within days of the start of that rumor, Crow and three dozen Fibs swarmed into town to protect the plant. During the day, they dominated Clearview, and that didn’t stop at night. But at night, it was more personal. They stayed in people’s homes. Including the Levingworths’, which was where I met Crow.
Rick Levingworth was working on a software program and he needed help with it, so he asked to come over.
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