The Survivalist (Solemn Duty)

by Arthur T. Bradley

  The back door to the building swung open, and an elderly man hobbled in wearing a mechanic’s uniform. While the embroidery on his shirt was fraying, there was no doubt as to his identity.

  Smitty.

  “What the hell?” he said, his eyes going first to Mason, then to Beebie, and finally to the giant wolfhound standing in front of what was left of his lunch. He hurried toward Bowie, shouting, “Shoo, you oversized raccoon!”

  The sound and volume of his gravelly voice startled Bowie, and instead of turning to fight, he skittered toward Mason with his tail tucked.

  Smitty snatched a wrench from his workbench and raised it overhead.

  “Why I aughta…”

  “It was just a sandwich,” Mason said, moving his hand to rest on his Supergrade.

  “Well, ’round here, lunch ain’t that easy to come by.” He pointed the wrench at Mason. “You owe me a sandwich, or somethin’ thereabouts.”

  Slipping off his backpack, Mason pulled out an MRE and tossed it over to him.

  “Surely that’ll cover it and then some.”

  Smitty set the wrench down and gave the MRE a good once over.

  “Lemon pepper tuna.” He smacked his lips as if tasting it through the package. “Don’t suppose you got any beef ravioli? The missus likes them raviolis.”

  Mason shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

  Smitty tipped his cooler upright and set the MRE inside. Why he was so determined to keep his lunch in the cooler was anyone’s guess.

  “I suppose you’re wantin’ me to fix that old truck.”

  Mason was surprised by the offer.

  “Are you still in business?”

  “Of course, I’m still in business. Didn’t you see the sign out front?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Been here forty-one years. Plan on bein’ here another forty one, Lord willin’.

  “That must make you Smitty,” said Beebie.

  The old man touched the side of his nose.

  “Oh, you’re a clever one.” He looked Beebie up and down. “I see Laroche’s growin’ ’em bigger by the day.”

  “What makes you think I work for that low life?” growled Beebie.

  Smitty pointed outside. “The truck. It’s one of his.”

  “How would you know that?” asked Mason.

  “You kiddin’? I keep it runnin’, just like I do nearly everythin’ else ’round here.”

  “For Laroche?”

  “Him and others.”

  “Small world,” mused Mason.

  “The world hasn’t changed sizes, just fewer of us livin’ in it, that’s all. So, what’s wrong with the truck, anyways?”

  “We’re not here for repairs,” Mason said, letting his eyes wander the shop. They settled on a cement trench in the floor, designed for a mechanic to stand in while changing a car’s oil. He motioned toward it. “Do you happen to have any old oil lying around?”

  “What, like waste oil?”

  Mason nodded.

  “I got a few drums out back, but I ain’t giving it away.”

  “Why not?” said Beebie. “It’s not good for anything.”

  “Because it’s mine, and I don’t have to. That’s why.”

  Beebie took a breath, and his chest swelled to twice its normal size.

  “If you’re tryin’ to scare me, don’t bother. I’m too valuable to Laroche to be killed by a couple of his know-nothin’ flunkies.”

  “See that’s just it,” Beebie said with a smile. “We don’t work for Laroche.”

  “How’s that possible? You’re drivin’ his truck.”

  “You’re getting there, old man. Put the pieces together.”

  Smitty’s eye’s narrowed. “You stole it from him. Jeezus, you two are even dumber’n you look. Laroche might be a frilly little fellow, but believe me, he knows how to hurt a man.”

  “What’s your relationship with him?” said Mason.

  “Relationship? What exactly are you suggestin’?” Before Mason could clarify, he said, “We don’t have no ‘relationship.’ We have an understandin’. He sends over what’s broken, and I fix it.” Smitty began to fidget with a wedding ring on one of his oil-stained fingers. “In exchange, he leaves me and mine alone.”

  “That means you know what he’s doing to the women around here.”

  Smitty looked away. “It ain’t none of my business. Like I said, he leaves me and the missus alone.”

  “Until he decides not to.”

  Smitty bit at his lower lip. “That day may not come.”

  “No, it might not.” Mason let the silence hang in the air between them.

  “Let’s say I were to give you the oil, what in tarnation would you do with it?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “What I’m askin’,” he said with a growl, “is would it help to stop what he’s doin’?”

  “It might.”

  “And he won’t find out I gave it to you?”

  “No matter how things turn out, we’ll forget where it came from.”

  Smitty thought for a long moment and then nodded.

  “Fine, pull the truck around back.” He pointed to Beebie. “You come with me.”

  “What for?”

  “What do you mean ‘what for’? That oil ain’t gonna load itself.”

  It took Mason just over an hour to find the right stretch of road. The divided highway cut through the northern tip of the Great Dismal Swamp, leaving a thick barrier of trees lining both sides of the road. Other than a small elevated platform used to route a series of pipes from one side of the thoroughfare to the other, it looked like any other stretch of asphalt.

  Mason stopped the pickup, climbed out, and walked around front. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the hood as he considered how it might be done.

  Beebie came to stand beside him.

  “I’m assuming you have some kind of devilish plan in mind.”

  Mason pointed to the road. “What do you see?”

  “An empty stretch of highway with trees on either side. It’s a tight fit, making it darn near impossible to turn a rig around, which I’m assuming is why you chose this spot.”

  “The trees are important, yes, but so are those.” He pointed to the pipes crossing over the highway.

  “Don’t see they do much good, unless you’re planning to make them into a sniper’s nest. You do that, though, and you’ll be killing folks that we’ve probably shared drinks with on more than one occasion.”

  “No killing. We’re after the truck, nothing more.”

  “Yeah, and what makes you think you can take a truck from a squad of armed men without anyone objecting? You’re good, Marshal, but you’re not that good.”

  Mason walked around to the bed of the truck. Bowie was leaning over so far that it was amazing he hadn’t fallen out.

  Mason dropped the tail gate. “Out you go, boy.”

  The wolfhound hopped down with an enthusiastic woof woof. As soon as he was clear of the truck, he began sniffing the road, trees, and pipes, in an effort to determine what made this place so special. As Bowie conducted a search the only way he knew how, Mason climbed into the bed, grabbed one of the three barrels of spent oil, and began working it toward the tailgate.

  “Beebie,” he said with a grunt, “a hand please.”

  Beebie clambered up beside him and helped wrestle the drum down to the asphalt.

  “What the hell are we going to do with all this oil?”

  “What do you think? We’re going to make a mess.”

  He tipped the barrel over, and thick black oil burped out onto the pavement. Rolling the drum from one side of the road to the other, Mason left a layer of shiny black slime covering the asphalt. When the barrel was empty, he moved the truck forward and repeated the process with the second barrel. By the time he had finished with the third and final barrel, a thirty-yard swath of highway looked like a lake of Death Wish espresso.

  “What next?” Beeb
ie said, walking along the shoulder to keep from soiling his boots.

  “We need to make it look like the driver lost control and spilled the barrels.”

  Mason slipped the transmission into neutral and began pushing the truck toward the median. Beebie stepped behind the passenger’s side door and helped guide the truck until it tipped nose down into the shallow gulley.

  Satisfied, Mason walked around and hopped up into the bed. Setting the faded tarp aside, he rolled Franky out onto the asphalt, the body hitting the ground with an indignant flump.

  Without being asked, Beebie dragged him out onto the road near the edge of the spill.

  “I take it this to be Franky’s final resting place?”

  “Normally, I’d show a little more reverence, but I’m giving him a chance to go out by putting a few points in the good column.”

  “Given what he was out doing, it’s not likely to make much difference to his salvation.”

  “Maybe not, but it serves our purpose as well.”

  Mason eyed the setup. Between the truck, the oil, and the body, the scene looked like it might have been the work of roadway bandits. Like every good trap, it would have the target looking one way, while the real threat was coming from another.

  Beebie moved to stand beside him.

  “It’ll slow them down, but it’s not going to get us that truck.”

  “Not by itself, no, but they’ll need to cross the oil slick one vehicle at a time. If the truck we’re after is the last vehicle as Laroche claims, it’ll be a sitting duck while it waits its turn.”

  “And how exactly are you planning to get to it without being drilled by the men standing overwatch? As soon as you step from the trees, they’ll light you up.”

  Mason pointed to the cluster of pipes running over the road.

  “Ever heard of the 82nd Airborne?”

  Beebie smiled. “You clever bastard. You positioned the slick such that the trucks will literally be sitting beneath you as they wait their turn to go across.”

  Mason snatched the tarp from the bed of the pickup and draped it across his shoulders to make his point.

  “I’ll hide up there and drop down onto the last truck once the others have gone across.”

  “All that’s well and good, but once they realize it’s been boarded, the security detail will come back across.”

  Mason leaned back inside the pickup and popped open the glove box. When he turned around, he was holding a flare.

  “Which is where this comes in.”

  “A flare?” Before Mason could explain, he said, “You’re going to light the oil on fire. Oh, I’m liking this more and more.”

  “Actually, you’re going to light it. By the time they figure out the trouble they’re in, I’ll have control of the rig.” He pointed to a small dirt road designed for emergency vehicles to cut through the median. “Once I make that turn, I’ll be out of sight, thanks to the trees.”

  “That’s a hell of a long way to go when being peppered by a fifty cal.”

  “Which is why I’ll keep the driver onboard.”

  “A human shield?”

  “More like insurance. The truck is just cargo to them, nothing personal. No one’s going to shoot up their own people for a few supplies.”

  “You hope.”

  “I hope,” he conceded. “Once I’m on the other side of the highway, I’ll drop him off, and you and Bowie can hop aboard. After that, it’s just us and the open highway.”

  Beebie pursed his lips, thinking. “Lots of things could go wrong. The truck might not stop under the pipes, the driver might put up a fight, or an armored vehicle might try to cross back through the curtain of flaming oil.”

  “True,” said Mason, “but it’s like I always say. When it comes to traps, perfect is the enemy of good enough.”

  Chapter 13

  It was nearly five in the evening by the time Tanner and Samantha got underway. With weapons loaded, spare ammunition in their pockets, and saddle bags carefully packed with jars of homemade napalm, they were better prepared for a fight than they had been in quite some time. That, however, wasn’t quite enough to completely quiet Samantha’s jitters.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking. Instead of killing so many things, maybe we should spend more time trying to help people.”

  “We are helping people.”

  “Yeah, by killing things.”

  “You’d rather we plant rose gardens?”

  “Sure. I love roses.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course, you do. Unfortunately the world doesn’t need more roses at the moment. It needs less bad guys.”

  His statement got her to thinking. “How many people do you think I’ve, you know, killed?”

  Tanner glanced back at her. “Does it matter?”

  She shrugged. “It seems like something a person should know.”

  “You’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. That’s what counts.”

  As if not hearing him, she said, “I think five for sure. One of the bandits who was zapping you on that highway, the guy I pushed from the airplane full of coffee, the guard at the nuclear plant who was holding you prisoner, and two of those men down in Fort Knox. That’s not counting monsters or zombies, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  She puckered her lips, thinking. “Do you think they have feelings?”

  “Who, the people you’ve killed?”

  “No, the monsters.”

  Tanner started to remind her that there were no such things as monsters, only people who had mutated, but given their current mission, it seemed a bit disingenuous.

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you ever feel guilty about killing them?”

  “Darlin’, if there’s one lesson in life I’ve learned it’s never to feel guilty about killing something that’s trying to eat me.”

  “That’s a very specific lesson.”

  “I try to be very specific when it comes to not being something’s dinner.”

  “Or lunch.”

  He nodded. “Or lunch.”

  They rode in silence for a short while with Samantha finally saying, “You know, with our experience, maybe we should start a monster-hunting business. I’m sure there are lots of people out there who need our help. What do you think?”

  “I think you’ve been watching too much Scooby Doo.”

  She smiled. “Can you believe Father Paul has every episode?”

  “A bonafide church miracle.”

  She paused. “Does that mean you think my idea is stupid?”

  While he didn’t at all like the suggestion of traveling the land, risking his and Samantha’s life for a bunch of strangers, Tanner was reluctant to disparage anything she offered up in earnest. Doing things like that tended to shut down dialogue, and he for one, cherished hearing what was going on in Samantha’s twisted little noggin.

  “Stupid ideas are usually the ones that change the world,” he said, taking the high road.

  “Really?”

  “Sure, people have good ideas all the time, but it’s only the hair-brained ones that actually make things different.”

  She patted him on the back. “Thanks, Tanner.”

  “Don’t mention it, darlin’.”

  Tanner nudged Major with his knees, and the horse picked up his pace. The ride wasn’t particularly long, but he noticed there was a quietness to the air, as if the world was holding its breath. And perhaps it was. When unnatural things occurred, the universe tended to try to set them right. In this case, it was relying on two unlikely individuals, not quite heroes, but definitely sitting on the right side of things this time around.

  They were approaching the turn off when Samantha said, “Assuming Purdy gives us a truckload of gold, do you think it’ll be enough to make Mother happy?”

  “It’ll have to be.”

  “You say that, but what if it’s not?”

  “Then we’ll take what’s ours.”

  “I hope we
don’t have to do that. Mother doesn’t seem like a bad person, and I’d hate for you to kill her.”

  “She’s already testing my patience by forcing us to go on this little honey run. I won’t do it again.” His tone was firm without being threatening.

  Samantha understood that Tanner was not a man to play games with. The problem was that not everyone knew that, at least not until it was too late.

  Hoping to keep things positive, she said, “How much could she buy with the gold, anyway?”

  “Exactly as much as someone wants to give her for it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Some things have real, undeniable value.” He drew his knife and held it up for her to see. “This knife for example. You and I would both agree that it’s valuable because it helps us to stay alive, right?”

  “Well sure, you can use it to clean a rabbit, cut branches for a shelter, or defend yourself.”

  “Exactly. Don’t ever be lured by the shine of trinkets that don’t help you survive. If you do, someone will be picking them off your body after you’re gone.”

  His words seemed like they were being given as heartfelt advice, and she accepted them as such.

  “Okay,” she said with a nod, “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Unlike the knife,” he continued, putting it away, “gold won’t help you to eat or build a shelter. It won’t even keep you warm when you’re cold. So, why’s it valuable at all?”

  She shrugged. “Because it’s pretty?”

  “True, but so are seashells and stained glass. Why weren’t those stored in Fort Knox?”

  “Because you can find those anywhere.”

  “That’s part of it, yes. Gold is certainly rare. But there’s more to it than that. Gold was originally taken as currency thousands of years ago because of its unique properties.”

  “Like what?”

  “It won’t rust for one. It also won’t melt unless you really want it to. Plus, it’s malleable, making it easy to shape into coins and jewelry.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It’s been viewed as treasure for so long that people don’t know how to think of it as anything but.”

  “Are you saying that gold has no real value?”

  “I’m saying that its value is determined solely by how badly people want it.”