Dusty's Diary 4: One Frustrated Man's Apocalypse Story

by Bobby Adair

  As for trucks, I came across a good candidate in the fenced yard of a construction company named CoxCon not far from here. Like all the trucks in the yard, the keys were hanging on a board inside the foreman’s office. In fact, this particular truck was quite lovely. I think it probably belonged to old man CoxCon himself. You remember that corrupt school board cock jockey, Amanda Cox, the one whose brother-in-law built the stadium by the high school? That CoxCon. Seems fitting I should take that truck since it was my property tax dollars that partially bought it.

  Anway, it’s a big bastard of a truck, a four-wheel-drive dually, all jacked-up and stupid-looking, with a long bed and a double cab, big heavy-duty bumpers, and a bed liner. The truck was designed by Ford to do some real work, but this particular one—all tricked out in redneck pimp style—looks like it’s never hauled anything to a job site except Cox's fat ass, all comfy in climate-controlled, Corinthian leather.

  The truck has less than twenty thousand miles on it, so if I can get it started up, it should dependably run for all the miles I’m going to need it. That’s where I’m headed tonight when I go out. I’m taking my fully-charged car battery, and I'm going to put it in that truck. I know the truck won't start up. I'll clean out the fuel system first, get under the hood, disconnect the lines, and run some filtered diesel through. If I get it all put back together tonight, I'll try and crank it a few times.

  The trick will be to crank a bit, and then wait for two or three hours for any Shroomies who come searching for the source of the noise to have time to get bored and wander off again. What I’m saying is, it might take me three or four days, or maybe a week, before I crank the engine enough to make it run. That’s okay. I have time to do it right, and safe.

  And if Old Man CoxCon’s truck doesn’t work out, well, Houston is full of trucks. One of them will do the trick.

  January 31st

  It runs.

  And I did something halfway stupid—if you like, I can go on to rationalize how my rash choice reduces my overall risk considering I need to load the truck, but I won’t. That stuff crossed my mind, but I gotta be honest, that last time I fired up the engine, knowing the same seven or eight Shroomies were going to show up outside the fence in about ten minutes, and feeling the big diesel rumble and ping like those things do when they’re running normal, my fuck-it meter pegged at 100%.

  I’d cleaned out the fuel system and gas tank. I had four gallons of fresh filtered fuel onboard, and it was only a few miles to my house. You know where I’m going with this. I put the truck into gear, drove to the gate, and let myself out, careful to lock up behind. No point in letting the lazy Shroomies wander into the construction yard and tear shit up for no reason at all. That, and I’d been watching the locals come and go for several days, so I knew I had some time before the first of them showed up.

  Long story short, I drove to my neighborhood as fast as I could. I parked the truck by the curb down at the end of the block, jumped out, locked the door, and put a double-fast skiddadle on my ass. I was back in Bunker Stink watching the truck through one of my solar-powered neighborhood cams by the time a handful of Rollo’s clan sauntered over from the elementary school to investigate.

  That’s where my plan went to shit.

  Because wartheads are assholes for no reason at all, they recognized the truck as something that wasn't there the day before, and they put a beatin’ on it. They dented every piece of metal, especially the hood, which they had great fun jumping up and down on. They broke out all the windows and one of the headlights. By then, they got bored and went back to scratching their asses and scrounging for food.

  I did my best not to get pissed off about it.

  I mean, damn! That truck was a beautiful piece of machinery, right out of my naughtiest Tonka-truck wet dream. It was a big, black bastard, mean and tough, with every option included. It rode way up there above the traffic—even though there wasn’t any of that to deal with—and looked like it could run over anything. In Texas, it was functional luxury, perfect for taking out to the deer lease, or driving the wife downtown to the opera. Perfectly acceptable.

  I imagined the pretty blonde from the back of the queen of hearts card wearing one of those silky, flowy, slinky numbers the hot starlets wear to the Oscars every year. You know the ones, you stare at the TV when you see ‘em walk down the carpet because you just know a nipple is going to slip out, or that slit running so high up the side is going to give you a lucky glimpse of her ass.

  She’d be on my arm as the valet drove my big truck off to park it, and every man at the opera would be staring at me, jealous in every way.

  Oh, fantasies.

  I’ve never been to an opera. Double-E dragged me to a Broadway troupe doing Cats downtown one year. It cost me an arm, a leg, and a nut for those tickets. Before the show, we had to go to an expensive prime steakhouse downtown where she swooned over a crawdad-sized lobster, and I got gypped with a tiny ribeye that cost me a hundred and twenty bucks plus tip. I mean, goddamn, the baked potato cost me twenty-two bucks by itself.

  What the fucking hell?

  That still bugs me. But I’ll tell you what, if I had the chance to trade my left nut for that truck back in the day, I woulda done it.

  February 1st

  Vindictive bastards.

  I’m watching my vids of the afternoon, checking out my truck and I’ll be damned, Rollo’s whole clan came back. I don’t know why, but they hate that truck. They tore out all the leather and padding on the seats, beat up the sheet metal some more, and pretty much broke everything they could break. They even managed to pop the hood open, and they went after the engine, tearing out every wire and hose they could get a grip on.

  Bottom line, the truck won’t run anymore, not unless I fix it. And what good would that do? Rollo and his bunch of dipshit Shroomies will just tear it up again.

  Time to revise the plan.

  February 5th

  Okay, so it took three days, but like all good schemes, this one took some scavenging and some doing—well, a lot of doing—to put it all together.

  It’s morning now, real morning. I’m pulling a late one today, having just finished up the night’s work. I’m waiting for Rollo’s bunch to wrap up their morning necessaries and show up to harass my pickup. They've been losing interest a little more with each passing day, meaning fewer show up and they don't stay as long. So, it's a worry maybe they won't come around at all today, and I won't get to test my system.

  I know, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go get another truck. Well, I did. I’ve been back to the construction yard. After some trial and error, I found another that runs. It’s not like my black beauty 4x4 dream, no, this one is white, scraped all to hell from years on the job, and has over a hundred thousand miles on it. And you know what they say—at one hundred thousand miles a diesel is just getting broken in. Inside, it's nothing to brag about. It's caked with years of dirt, but the gauges all work and the windows aren't broken. A few are cracked, but they'll do.

  I’m going to bring it over and park it behind Black Beauty tomorrow if my experiment goes well today.

  I know, I know. I could leave the truck in the construction yard and haul my shit over there to load it, but the thing is, CoxCon lays to the west, which means I have to cross through the stadium clan’s territory to get there. Or, go around. Neither prospect appeals to me if I’m going to be hauling a squeaky-wheeled wagon teetering with my survival gear.

  I don't know how many trips I'd have to take before my truck was ready, but I know that every time I make that trip, I roll the dice with my life. I don't want to push my luck that hard.

  So, I’m waiting, I’m watching, and it looks like seven of Rollo’s peeps have eaten their morning rats, dropped their loads on the playground where my girls used to play with their little girly friends during recess, and they’re on their way to teach my pickup another lesson.

  I’m ready.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock.

&
nbsp; I have a freshly wired switch on my desk, waiting for me to flip it on. The switch is just my backup system, in case the primary fails. I want to find out if this is really going to work.

  Tense.

  The group of seven is making their way down to the end of the block, and rounding the corner to see the truck. A few are jogging ahead, anxious to get to the day’s work.

  Now the two are within forty feet, and the motion detector on one of my inflatables fires. A fan is blowing air into a big inflatable Santa Claus, and giant Santa is rising right out of the grass, taking shape in front of the Shroomies.

  They’re screaming and running.

  I’m laughing my ass off.

  Oh wait, that’s not the end of it.

  Rollo’s friends have ginned up their courage, and they've decided to flank giant Santa and come at the truck from behind.

  Too bad for them.

  They’re close to the next motion detector now, and—

  The snowman is inflating.

  Rollo’s wartheads are running like their asses are on fire.

  It’s just like at the Americana Scamarama. My inflatables aren’t nearly as big as those fiberglass holiday decorations standing outside the old show barn, but they’re doing the trick, and—

  Oh, shit!

  There’s a clinking tap coming from the metal hatch above me.

  I check the camera. It’s Amelia.

  What the fuck?

  February 5th, second entry

  “You’ve been busy.” Armed with the Colt I gave her, Amelia walked down the length of the bunker, past my bank of video monitors displaying views all over the neighborhood, including the frightened Shroomheads huddling near the elementary school. She seated herself at my table, in my place, of course.

  I thought about saying something, you know, letting her know that her side of the table was, well, the other one. But butterflies swarmed through my stomach and left me silent. I felt like I was on eggshells with her, worrying from one moment to the next that I’d say the wrong thing and chase her off into another forever.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re not going to shoot me?”

  She rolled her eyes. I guess some questions are too stupid to be answered with words.

  I shook my head and walked over to my cupboard. “You had breakfast?”

  "I ate." She had her x-ray eyes on, and they were looking me over. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I opened a cupboard and started fumbling through, pretending to look for something. I’d already eaten, too. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sarcasm ringing right through her words, “if you have another one of Punchy Bryan’s asphalt flavored protein bars—”

  I laughed.

  She did, too, and for a minute there, it felt like family.

  It reminded me of one of those Saturday mornings when all three of my girls were in a good mood on the same day—rare enough—and the eventual ex wasn't ragging me about some stupid shit in the checkbook, and I was flipping pancakes on the griddle with bacon swimming in a hot pool of grease in the iron skillet, and they were all giggling at the table, sharing secrets, and laughing about the apron I always wore when I cooked bacon, because, you know, that grease splatters up on your clothes, and you smell like bacon all day if you don't.

  I loved those mornings. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed like we only had two or three a year. The rest of the time, one of them would be off to an early soccer match or softball game, or sleeping late because they stayed out late at the movies, or one of them spent the night with a friend, or the eventual ex was making excuses to rush out of the house to get to a sale at the crap-mart, when she was just hustling out to get a handful of Mr. Glimmer Teeth's morning wood before he dragged his lazy ass out of bed.

  “Dusty?”

  “What?”

  "Sometimes, you slip off."

  “What do you mean?”

  “You daydream a lot.”

  I shook my head and pulled out a can of SPAM. “I could fry some up.”

  “Maybe for a special occasion.”

  “Christmas is a long way away,” I told her. “You don’t have a birthday soon, do you?”

  “I was thinking maybe on the day we leave.”

  That stopped me cold. “The day we leave?”

  “To drive that piece-of-shit truck to the coast to find a boat.”

  “We?”

  Her smile was a gift. “I’ll go with you.”

  “So it’s okay for me to say ‘we.’ Like we’re sticking together now?”

  “As long as it doesn’t turn pervy.”

  I raised my right hand. "Swear to God. We, like a family, we, a father-daughter thing."

  “Just don’t think you can boss me around. We’re equals, right? Are you good with that?”

  Nodding, I said, “We need to talk about this Shroomy thing. With your…” I had a hard time with the word, “friends I shot.”

  “We will.”

  “I was only trying to protect you.”

  Amelia simply said, "The world is complicated now. A lot more so than you think."

  “Will you promise not to shoot me for misunderstanding the complexities?”

  “I don’t plan to shoot you, Dusty. But I won’t make any promises.”

  I smiled. That was close enough.

  Dusty will return.

  Please report any corrections to http://www.bobbyadair.com/typos

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  Other Bobby Adair Books…

  Slow Burn Series (9 books, complete), a best-seller, with a NEW novella coming in Summer 2019!

  Click here to check out Slow Burn.

  Slow Burn is Bobby’s flagship post-apocalyptic zombie series, but so much more than a zombie book. Follow the adventures of Zed as he wakes up one morning to find that something’s a little different in the world. As the world is going to shit, Zed meets up with Murphy, and they try to navigate their new reality through a world of the “slow burns” before they are completely consumed by the virus. Great reviews, with over a million books sold, readers LOVE this one.

  Freedom’s Fire (series, others coming)

  Click here to check out Freedom’s Fire.

  Bobby’s first love is Sci-Fi, so this post-apocalyptic space story features an everyday guy-turned futuristic fighter who is on a mission to take down the Grays, an alien race that partnered with North Korea to rule the solar system. A space story with a touch of Bobby’s signature humor.

  The Last Survivors Series (6 books, complete), a best-seller

  Click here to check out The Last Survivors.

  A collaborative series with fellow zombie author T.W. Piperbrook, this series has a little more of a Sci-Fi feel, popular with folks who like Game of Thrones. It explores what happens 300 years in the future after the apocalypse, when man has rebuilt and gone back to an almost medieval society.

  Ebola K: A Terrorism Thriller (trilogy, complete), a best-seller

  Click here to check out Ebola K.

  A really great terrorism
thriller with awesome reviews. It focuses on the devastating Ebola outbreak and the possibility of weaponized Ebola by terrorist organizations and nationalized resources like blood with Ebola antibodies. A more in-depth and complex observation of the real world. This series follows an American college student teaching in Uganda as the country comes under attack from the deadly virus as he tries to make his way back to the safety of his family back in the United States.

  It’s also historically and medically accurate, so you’ll learn a little about the history of the disease as well…did you know that Ebola has been airborne in the US in the past? Or that it can survive in semen for 90 days or more after a person is declared “Ebola-free?” (This is Kat’s favorite!)

  Black Rust (series, others coming)

  Click here to check out Black Rust.

  A newer series from Bobby that also deals with a different post-apocalyptic reality. Christian Black is a bounty hunter charged with hunting down the infected…a “Regulator.” When caught in an unsanctioned kill, Christian sets about to clear his name. A fairly deep character, whose flaws are an important backstory to his adventurous life.

  Text copyright © 2019, Bobby L. Adair & Beezle Media, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.