The Blockade

by Darrell Maloney

  Frank and Eddie were asleep within minutes.

  Despite her concern, Josie soon followed.

  Frank was convinced that no one would approach them during their slumber.

  Part of it was because he was a man. And as a man he possessed a certain degree of cockiness that few women ever exhibit.

  And quite honestly, it was partly because of his track record.

  He was right about such things much more than he was wrong.

  But he was dead wrong on this one.

  As they slept deep into the night, a black pickup truck crept slowly up behind them.

  -29-

  Inside the truck were Johnny and Tina.

  They left Lubbock in a hurry. So much of a hurry, in fact, that they didn’t do their homework.

  They planned to head west, through Clovis, New Mexico. Then they’d make their way to Alamogordo, where Johnny had family.

  They only made it as far west as the Lubbock City Limit sign before coming face to face with a three foot high wall of snow.

  Their shiny black pickup truck had been manufactured eleven years before but was technically new because it had less than two hundred miles on it.

  And it was a name brand.

  Johnny had no doubt it would get them wherever they wanted to go.

  But as new as it was, as tough as it was, it wouldn’t bull its way through three feet of snow.

  “That’s okay,” Johnny decided. “I hate my family anyway. Let’s try south. Doesn’t your cousin still live in Big Spring?”

  “He used to. I haven’t seen or heard of him since the first freeze.”

  “You still remember where he lives?”

  “I can find it, yeah.

  “Let’s go there then. The longer we stay here the more chance they’ll find us.”

  The thing about Johnny Connolly was, although a shameless thief and drug dealer, he was a personable guy. It was said he could charm anybody out of anything. He seldom raised his voice, seldom got mad, and was one of those rare criminals who’d help out a friend in a bind.

  Of course, most of that “help” was a free hit of dope occasionally, which certainly did his friend no real good. But he made the effort nonetheless.

  Agreeable Johnny jumped at Tina’s suggestion they head south to Big Spring.

  Of course it helped that agreeable Johnny was scared out of his mind and wanted to get out of Lubbock as quickly as possible.

  And their options were limited.

  The road north to Plainview was cleared, thanks to Frank and his rickety wooden snow plow.

  The road southeast to Dallas was also clear, but that was the route the cartels used to distribute their poison. Johnny was pretty sure they’d put out a contract on him, so everyone driving to and from Dallas would be watching for the scruffy little guy with red hair and freckles.

  So Dallas was definitely out.

  If Tina wanted to try Big Spring, then Big Spring it was.

  They assumed that the highway department cleared the road, and that it went as far as they needed to go.

  They cruised along at twenty miles an hour, as fast as Johnny dared to drive on the icy road surface. He wasn’t the best driver, and slid into the snow bank on either side of the truck several times.

  Things were going well for the pair of miscreants and since Tina hadn’t had a hit in several hours she was alert and coherent.

  They were making plans for what they’d do once they found an empty house in Big Spring.

  “We can lay low for awhile and live off the money we have,” Johnny said. “The food we have back in the back will last us for six months or more. When we start to run low I’ll make a run back to Lubbock to that abandoned house where we stashed the rest of it.

  “As long as we’re not running dope, it should be easy to stay off the radar.”

  “But we don’t have enough to live on for the rest of our lives. What do we do when the food runs out and the money runs low?”

  “I don’t know, babe. Start trying to make contact with a different cartel, maybe. I’ve heard that they don’t like each other. Maybe a different cartel will give me some protection.”

  “And maybe not, Johnny. Maybe they’d sell you out.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, baby. That’s all I got.”

  “Maybe you can go straight. Get a regular job or something.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “Yeah, sure. Like’s that’s ever gonna happen.”

  “Hey, slow down. Your headlights are reflecting on something up there.”

  Even as she said the words Johnny’s foot was on the brake. He’d seen the same thing, at about the same time.

  Modern day vehicles are equipped with reflectors built into their tail lights.

  Even Hummers, as long as they don’t belong to the United States Army and are positioned in a war zone. There, reflectors might give away their position to those they don’t want to share it with.

  The idea is a simple one, but one that saves lives each and every day.

  When the vehicle’s lights are on, its tail lights will be visible up to two miles away.

  And when the lights are off, the reflectors, when caught in another vehicle’s headlights, are visible for half a mile or so.

  That’s important.

  Especially when a vehicle is parked or disabled on the shoulder of the road.

  It just wouldn’t do for a car traveling at highway speeds to slam into the back of another car just because they couldn’t see it in time.

  Now Johnny had a dilemma.

  There was a vehicle at a dead stop, half a mile in front of them.

  He couldn’t go around it, for there was only one clear lane of travel. There was a wall of snow just a few inches from each of his rear view mirrors.

  Johnny was a suspicious guy by nature, and the drugs he partook of occasionally made him paranoid. His first thought was that the cartel found out about his plans and blocked the road.

  His mind conjured up the scene from The Godfather, when a rival blocked the lane at a toll booth, forcing Sonny Corleone to stop. Then thugs with machine guns popped up in the toll booth and blew him away.

  But then he applied reason.

  The cartel couldn’t have known in advance of their plans. They didn’t even know their plans. They were making them up as they went.

  Johnny switched off his lights and crept slowly forward.

  -30-

  Inside the Hummer, Frank was sleeping fitfully. He was a tosser and a turner. And as comfortable as the driver’s seat was, it wasn’t made for all-night sleep sessions.

  Every time he tried to roll over he hit his hip on the steering wheel.

  It would have been better with a pillow for his head, but they’d neglected to bring any.

  He had Eddie hand him two MRE pouches from the cargo area, and they did a good job of elevating his head. But sleeping on a hard pillow isn’t conducive to good sleep. Especially when the hard pillow is made of cold plastic.

  For awhile he took off his heavy coat and rolled it into a sorta ball.

  A sorta ball is when you try to make a heavy jacket or other piece of clothing into a ball but it winds up looking like road kill instead; which is to say, not like a ball at all.

  Still, it was softer than the MREs and the jacket’s zipper managed to make its way into Frank’s nostril.

  Frank, having been in the Marines in his younger years and having traveled the world, spent his share of nights sleeping on airport and bus station floors and park benches. He even slept sitting up in a bathroom stall in Philadelphia International Airport once. It was the only place he knew he could spend the night sleeping without getting robbed.

  But even a seasoned traveler like Frank couldn’t sleep with a zipper stuffed up his nose.

  The cold was a factor too. Since they only had three jerry cans full of fuel, a paltry fifteen gallons, they needed to conserve it any way they could.

  One of the ways they
planned to conserve it was by limiting their engine run time as they slept. Left running constantly, the big machine’s heater would have kept them toasty and warm until daybreak. But it would also burn an awful lot of fuel unnecessarily.

  Their solution was to run the heater full bore for twenty minutes, until they had beads of sweat pouring down their cheeks. Then they’d go to sleep until one of them woke up a couple of hours later shivering. They’d restart the engine and repeat the process.

  The first night would be a rough one, they figured, as they got used to the process.

  They also reckoned that each night would get a bit easier.

  At least they hoped so.

  So Frank wasn’t exactly sleeping like a baby that night.

  Between the very irritating sensation of having a zipper in his nose and his legs telling him they were nearing popsicle mode, he was brought out of his slumber.

  He groggily looked over at Josie, and was happy to see she was sleeping peacefully.

  Josie had an advantage he only wished he had.

  As a young woman who’d done gymnastics and yoga and long-distance running for most of her life she was as flexible as a rubber band.

  As an old man who’d never played any sport other than high school football, he was as flexible as a stick pretzel.

  Which is to say not at all.

  Josie was curled up in a tight ball, her knees tucked into her waist-length coat with only her fur-lined boots sticking out.

  Her head was resting upon a bun she’d fashioned on the side of her head with her hair. The bun was tucked in the cup of her hand.

  It looked painfully uncomfortable to Frank, and in fact would have been had he tried it. But Josie was cozy as a kitten.

  He looked over his right shoulder to the second seat and saw a completely opposite way to slumber.

  Eddie was sprawled across the bench, face up, with his head hanging off the end. One foot was flat on the floor, the other was slung over the seat back. His hands were neatly folded upon his abdomen, as though he was lying in a casket on his way to meet his maker.

  It struck Frank as an impossible way to relax enough to get to sleep.

  But Eddie’s soft snoring was proof it didn’t bother him.

  He might be stiff as a board and sore as hell when the dawn came.

  But that was tomorrow’s problem. And it darned sure wouldn’t be aggravated by a lack of sleep.

  Frank shifted his body weight slightly to the left and caught a glimpse of something… he wasn’t sure exactly what… in his driver’s side mirror.

  He was instantly wide awake, bolt upright in his reclined seat, and trying to figure out exactly what it was he saw.

  He thought it was a distant light. But it was only there for a flash of a second before it disappeared.

  Sometimes, first thing in the morning, before we’ve had our first eight cups of coffee, we’ll see a flash of something out of the corner of our eye.

  We’re not sure whether it’s our still-sleepy head playing tricks on us, or that Bigfoot invaded our bedroom and was headed to the kitchen to cook himself an omelet.

  Sometimes we’ll brush it off.

  Sometimes we’ll grab our gun and combat-crawl through the house on a Bigfoot hunt.

  Sometimes we’ll just say to heck with it and go back to sleep.

  Which option we take usually depends on how sleepy we are.

  On this particular morning what Frank wanted to do was to plop his head back down and go back to sleep.

  But that wasn’t in Frank’s nature. His first inclination was always to expect the worst and hope for the best. It was his default position, and he was still alive after a lot of years. So he had to believe it worked well for him.

  He’d remembered to lock the doors, just before he kissed Josie goodnight. That didn’t ensure their safety if there was a bad guy with a gun outside.

  But it guaranteed it might slow him down just a bit.

  Frank eased his pistol from its holster and held it at the ready.

  He breathed slowly and steadily, and listened.

  And he heard the distinctive sound of the rear passenger door handle being slowly and deliberately lifted.

  -31-

  Johnny had turned off his lights and come to a full stop fifty yards behind the Hummer. He dared not go any closer until he thought things through.

  “Do you think it’s a trap?” Tina asked.

  He considered the query at length before responding.

  “No. I think they’d have opened fire by now.”

  “Any way to go around them?”

  He just turned and looked at her.

  “Oh. I guess that was a dumb question, huh?”

  “Ya think?”

  Grade school teachers prod their students to be more inquisitive by assuring them there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

  But even they’ll admit that some questions are less thought out than others.

  This was one of them.

  They had only a few inches between the mirrors on each side of their vehicle and the wall of snow. The same was true of the vehicle in front of them.

  Not only that, but from Johnny’s view he could see the entire driver’s side of the Hummer. And he could also see the blade of the snow plow protruding several inches farther than the front bumper.

  “We can’t pass him,” he said. “And even if we could there’s no plowed road in front of him. We’re following the damn snow plow.”

  “Do you think it broke down and they abandoned it?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. How the heck could I know?”

  He paused for a moment and continued in a gentler tone.

  “I doubt it. From the looks of the roadway it’s been scraped very recently. I think maybe he was just plowing his way along and maybe stopped to rest.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He paused to think again, knowing his decision could be a life or death one.

  “We can’t go back. We’d have to back up twenty or thirty miles, or however far we’ve gone. And then we’d still be stuck in Lubbock. I don’t want to just sit there and wait for them to come and kill me. And I don’t want them to kill you either. We’ve got to keep headed south.

  “We have no other choice.”

  He opened the door, cursing when the dome light came on and he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.

  He quickly stepped out into the weather and wasted no time closing the door. He thought the dome light would go out immediately when the door closed and cursed under his breath when it didn’t.

  “Damn modern cars. Lights on when you don’t want ‘em and off when you do.”

  He motioned for Tina to duck down into the seat so she couldn’t be seen from the Hummer. No sense advertising that there were two of them.

  She couldn’t see his gestures because the light inside the truck reflected her own image on the driver’s side window.

  Finally the light went out. She could see him cursing and knew he wasn’t happy. She thought he was angry with her and grew defensive. She almost opened the door again to let him have it.

  But he avoided World War III by stomping off toward the blacked-out Hummer.

  The windows were factory tint, which was mostly clear. Clear enough to peer into the vehicle in full daylight but not at night.

  Of course, Johnny didn’t know that.

  He walked to the passenger side rear window and peered in.

  He saw absolutely nothing.

  He very slowly lifted up the door handle.

  It was locked.

  He wanted to make his way to the front of the vehicle, to place a bare hand on the hood. He wanted to see if it was warm to the touch.

  He’d seen someone do that in a movie once, to see if the vehicle had been running recently.

  But he knew that if he went to the front of the vehicle he’d be within full view of anyone inside. He suspected it was much easier to see out the windshield than to see in, and
in that respect he was absolutely correct.

  It wouldn’t have worked anyway.

  Frank hadn’t run the engine in almost two hours. And it was frightfully cold outside.

  Johnny wasn’t the sharpest knife in the kitchen.

  He wasn’t even a butter knife.

  He squeezed his way up the driver’s side until he was standing at the front window and placed his hand on the door handle.

  He never tried it, though.

  He didn’t have to.

  He wanted to find out if the Hummer was occupied, but when the window suddenly rolled down he had his answer.

  It was hard to make out in the dark, but he got a glimpse of a smiling Frank Woodard and the barrel of a pistol aimed in his direction.

  Frank asked, “May I help you, sir?”

  Frank wasn’t just a former United States Marine. He was also a retired policeman.

  Many people in the same situation, late at night in the middle of nowhere and hearing someone trying to get into their car, might be afraid.

  They might freak out. Start shooting or yelling or screaming or God only knows what.

  Frank wasn’t like that.

  Frank didn’t easily freak out.

  Frank kept his cool.

  The smile when he rolled the window down was classic Frank.

  So was addressing the interloper as “sir.”

  For Frank was the consummate professional. He never got flustered and he never lost his sense of courtesy.

  Now the gun, that sent a totally different kind of message.

  The gun said, “Even though I’m a nice guy, don’t think you can take advantage of me. Because I can switch instantly from your very best friend to your very worst nightmare.

  “Mess with me and I’ll blow your fool head off.”

  -32-

  Johnny had his own pistol. It wasn’t in a holster, as most people wore theirs.

  It was tucked into his waistband, gangster style.

  If he’d been smarter, he’d have had it out and at the ready.

  In his waistband it was pretty much worthless.

  Johnny wasn’t well known for thinking on his feet.

  And in this particular instance he didn’t have a lot of time to consider his options.