by D Krauss
In time, gasoline, more than noise, killed driving. Oh, there was still plenty of it, millions of gallons lying around unattended in gas stations and storage tanks and tanker trucks and even unused cars. Supply wasn’t the problem. How to get the supply was.
At first, he went to the neighborhood gas station. That was okay as long as the power was on, but, when that died, so did the pumps. Eh, just siphon what you need out of the storage tanks, John old boy. Pop open the lid, drop a hose down there, and start the flow.
Yeah.
It just wasn’t that easy. There was some kind of baffle system down there designed, he suspected, to prevent the casual Thomas or Richard or his buddy Harold coming along and helping themselves. Getting a hose past that was quite the chore. Then he discovered an interesting law of physics, the one that governed an attempt to start a vacuum in a hose about thirty feet long. All he got for his trouble was a lungful of vapor and a very pleasant drunk feeling. No doubt, there was some kind of backup system used to get the gas flowing when the station lost power, but he had no idea what it was and, frankly, didn’t need to. He went to Plan B...
Siphoning gas from neighborhood cars. It was about the easiest way to fill up without power and pretty convenient, too. He never had to leave the neighborhood. But, it wasn’t too long before he was looking two or three blocks away. Besides, he got tired of getting a faceful of gas each time he emptied a tank.
Things became more complicated when he got the Magnums running. Trying to find diesel was a bigger problem than gas. He started siphoning from 18-wheelers, which quickly became a royal pain. He had to find the 18-wheeler to begin with, which meant searching the highways, burning up his gasoline and exposing himself to the newly awakened and very active Bundys. The Magnums used a lot of fuel and there was just no way he could keep running around looking for big trucks.
A large supply of diesel and gas right at the house, where he could access it night or day, hide it, protect it, now wouldn’t that be sweet? Ding! Light bulb. Why not park a gas truck next door? Better, yet, why not two trucks, one gas and the other diesel, side by side? Brilliant!
There is idea, but then, there is execution. He knew where to go – the gas and oil storage center off Backlick Road in Newington, very close to where he’d taken, er, bought, the Magnums. He’d seen fuel tankers going in and out of there day and night for years. He still had the tractor-trailer from hauling in the backhoe, so he revved it up and bad clutched his way there, only smashing up one car in the process.
He pulled around the big gas storage tanks sitting beside 95 and, yes indeed, there they all were, dozens and dozens of tankers marked “Exxon” and “Sheetz” and “Mobil,” you name it, lined up next to some big pumping station. Ecstasy. He picked out one likely looking tanker, backed the truck up to it, got out, and made his first discovery – the trailer hitch wasn’t compatible. No problem, just go get another tractor.
Yeah.
He found the tractors, all right; about fifty of them parked in another lot across the street, but, of course, no keys. An hour of searching through some offices nearby finally located them. Cool, they were labeled and he found the right one and jumped right in and turned the key and... nothing. Most of the batteries in the tractors were dead.
He must have tried twenty trucks before he found one that would start. Feeling quite a bit put out, John, finally, maneuvered the truck into position and, an hour or so after that, figured out how to connect the two. Perfect, great, wonderful, in business, all the gas he needed. That is, until he looked up and saw, clearly labeled on the side of the tanker, “Fuel Oil.”
He cursed for at least twenty minutes. No exaggeration.
He then made another discovery, how hard it was to de-couple a fuel tanker when you had no idea how you coupled it to begin with. After about another hour and a lot more cursing, he got the two apart. So, now he’s smarter, go read the damn tanker to see what it contains before you back the truck up to it, moron. He then made several more discoveries about tanker construction. Previously he thought, like every Joe Schmoe thought, a tanker was just a big empty shell filled with Mobile Techroline or Tiger Whatever sloshing around inside. Oh, no. No no no no. That would be too easy.
Turns out tankers were compartmentalized, and each compartment could have something completely different in it, gas in one, diesel in another, kerosene in another. Now how the hell was he going to know what was in each compartment? All of it smelled like gasoline, regardless of the color or consistency. He was getting a headache from smelling the fumes and his fingers were shredded from removing the compartment caps. And, it was getting dark. What to do?
What you always do when you’re up against it, you go long.
He selected a tanker clearly marked “Diesel Fuel” and backed the truck up to it, slamming them together. Screw it. He was so mad he hoped the damn thing blew up. He battered his way out of the terminal and out to the house, messing up just about every turn, hitting more parked cars and median strips than a replay of “World’s Most Violent Police Chases.” He pulled up to the end of Hawthorne Court, which was a funny looped street below the house, hidden by the ridgeline, and dropped the tanker. He whipped around the return loop and hammered his way back to the depot, hooked up the first tanker that read “Gasoline,” wrecked his way back home, and dropped it behind the other one.
He drove the tractor to the last house on the street, turned it off, and walked away. Sonofabitch.
So, after a struggle of epic, Cecil B. DeMille proportions, he had supply and convenience. And it was all probably for nothing.
Viability. You can have all the gas in the world, but when it goes flat, it’s just smelly water. As the Path and Magnums got harder to start, it dawned on him what was going on and that’s when he’d raided Home Depot and all the auto shops for ten miles around and scooped up all the fuel stabilizer he could find and poured it into the tankers. No idea if it worked. Either reversed the deterioration, froze it in place, postponed the inevitable, or did absolutely nothing. Who knew? Bill didn’t. The libraries warned about the problem, but didn’t offer a solution other than what he’d already done.
If he could just tap MPD’s supply...
So far, things still ran. The Magnums started. So did the Path. He sprayed WD40 in the carburetors of both and changed the Path’s plugs frequently. But, face it, one day, crank and nothing. He’d worry about that then.
Because, face it, well before the gas crapped out, the Path, itself, would crap out. Vehicle maintenance. He hadn’t tuned up the truck in about two years. Changing plugs and oil and draining and refilling the radiator was not tuning and the Path had definitely lost power. It was getting harder and harder to brake, too, and it tended to stall when idling. So, shut up, tune it.
Yeah.
Since about 1982, it took an engineering degree to do that. All those damned computers inside the engine had to be tweaked. He didn’t know how. No one at the Gate did, either, at least, no one was saying. CDC finds out you’ve got those kinds of skills and, next thing you know, shanghaied to Atlanta. So, one day, the engine will die.
More likely he’d kill the Path by doing something stupid, break an axle or flip it. The roads weren’t picnics, so debris-strewn that his main worry was a blowout, not a shootout. There wasn’t a Gate trip where he didn’t change at least one tire, and he was worried about his tire supplies.
He had a few pre-mounted spares sitting next door but, at this rate, he’d be through them quick. Like gas, supply wasn’t the issue, even for weird-sized tires like his – mounting them was. Without power, how do you get them on the tire rim? Sheer brute strength, he supposed and he further supposed he should go mount about fifty of them before he was too much older and deeper in debt.
“You load 16 tons,” he growled in his best Ernie Ford and giggled. Yeah, he should, but wasn’t feeling much like it, which meant, Grim Laws of Irony invoked, he’d blow his last tire in Raider territory, moments before the engine crapped out.
Double whammy.
“Get a horse,” he told himself. Then he need only worry about oats.
He sat down in Daria’s old chair and mused. A horse. John supposed it was inevitable, but he wasn’t ready to face that yet, to abandon the sheer joy of driving, or, at least, the promise of it. As long as that remained, they hadn’t really lost. Had they?
On the morning he turned sixteen, there he was, in line to get his learner’s permit and had Mom out on the road about two hours later, screaming in terror while he careened around curves and spun around on many a shoulder. He chuckled. Sorry, Mom.
The very night of the very day he got his actual license, as Mom pulled up from work and got out, he got in and drove off. John smiled, lolling his head back. That first solo drive. Just like his first kiss (Linda Atkinson, summer of ’67, Alabama), scary, daring, thrilling. In and out of big empty parking lots, cruising down the two-lane farm roads of a dark South Jersey, the jury-rigged FM tuner lying on the passenger floor bringing in MMR at glass shattering decibels, ending up next to the Pemberton field at midnight, sitting on the bleachers, pitch black with a million diamond-lit stars spiraling up and out of sight. Completely alone.
Completely free.
All those other drives. Don and Drew and Karen and Irene and Tom and him, don’t forget Carol and Kim and, of course, Theresa, 2-300 miles a night, going from Presidential Lakes to Groveton and out to Carteret then Seaside then back to Mt. Holly before Theresa’s dad found out, then back to PL.
Later, Theresa and him and Forrest and Jenny, out to New York City or Trenton, and back to Willingboro. Then, just Theresa and him. Illinois, Texas, Florida, across Tennessee in the dead of winter and up the ice-shrouded Shenandoah Valley, all their belongings tied to the top of a 1967 Dodge Coronet, two years in the USAF and going home for the first time since he joined, dazzled by the Blue Ridge, vowing right then and there they’d live in the Valley one day.
Finding out Tom died of stomach cancer three months before, Forrest had disappeared, Mom’s new husband didn’t want him around, Theresa’s family wanted his money, so they stopped going back home because it wasn’t really home anymore, the frozen mountains of Virginia more inviting.
Got close, got to here, a 50-minute drive away from those mountains. Made plans that involved one house payment at a time, one move at a time, one job at a time, clear their way out, from northern Virginia frenzy to placid cabin near Lexington or Radford, all the battles fought, all the wars won, nothing more to prove, those distant blue mountains now, finally, theirs.
Close. Just not close enough. He hung his head, staring at the floor. He would, as he had done every night for the past two or three years, stand by Theresa’s grave and apologize. “My fault,” he whispered, “all my fault.”
15
Time to go.
The sun threw red light across the office, sure sign it was kissing the horizon. John dashed into the third-floor landing, closed off from the offices by a heavy door, and shut off the generator while covering his mouth with a hand. Yeah, like that would save him. He had a hose venting fumes out of the window but it was still dangerous.
He went back inside and locked the cabinets and doors and made sure the battery-powered lamps were off. Silly. Any random Vandal could open the cabinets with a paper clip, and anything he accidentally left on could be recharged the next day. He should just leave everything on all night. Might give some Vandal a moment’s pause before burning the place down, or might even spur them on, thinking John was still there. Coming back to ashes might be reason enough to quit. He chuckled. You think a Vandal would do him a favor?
He went back to the desk and pulled a copy of the Daily off the printer and slid it into the carousel. Getting a little harder to do that so maybe he should clean out the last few months’ worth, maybe stick them on the Anderson desk. Just as likely to be read there as here. He’d already put the Observation into his notebook and slid that into the desk. Tomorrow, he’d review it, paying particular attention to the very detailed report he wrote about Mrs. Alexandria. Maybe he’d pick up something.
Doubt it.
All right, reports done, cabinets locked, lights off (maybe), a heart yearning for home. Weapons check time. He reached to his right inner back and pulled the pistol out smoothly. Ruger Speed Six .357 Magnum, bought at a Texas yard sale in 1977. It was a cop’s gun, six-shooter with a 4” barrel that had worn down where it rubbed against the holster the million or so times it was drawn before being sold. All the times he’d drawn it since had just smoothed the wear to a fine silver. He could blue it, but, no, it gave the pistol character. John held it to the failing light. Great weapon. The only modification he’d ever made was a set of Pacmayr grips. The trigger was still light and smooth. He’d never had to grind the sear or set the spring.
He brought it up and acquired the far wall. Iron sights, no mods, didn’t need it, because there was something about the pistol that put him right on target whenever he swiveled up. It was the balance, the weight, something, if you needed a scientific explanation, but John knew it was the soul. Every weapon had one, and every weapon sought its soul mate, like lovers searching the ether. He and the Magnum were one, just like he and Theresa. Very Zen.
He rolled the trigger about halfway, feeling the easy movement and watching the cylinder advance. Perfect. It was his primary weapon and together, they were deadly. He was a crack shot out to around twenty yards, which, for a combat pistol, was downright miraculous. Quite proud of that.
He eased the hammer down and popped the cylinder. Yeah, yeah, he was fully loaded, hadn’t shot anything today, but you always check. The Silvertips gleamed back at him. Full Magnum 138-grain hotloads, soft tipped, so effective he only needed one. Usually. He closed the cylinder and holstered, setting the butt against his right kidney where he could reach it. John had orangutan arms and the standard hip holster gave him problems.
Small of the back was just the right draw distance, something he’d shown range instructors a thousand times or so, whenever they berated him about his rig. Sweep. Pull. Roll, hold, sight and squeeze, two rounds, center mass, seven yards, .5 seconds. Re-holster. They just looked at him and never said another word.
He felt for the quick-release carriers on his belt and thumbed the snaps, dropping one, then the other, of the speed loaders into his hand, putting them back and testing a few more times. Eighteen shots available. If he ever had to use all eighteen, then he was in big trouble, the kind calling for a big gun.
Which, today, was the mini-14. It was either that or the Mossberg pump and he switched them out randomly, as the mood took him. He was more partial to the 14, so it made the trip a little more often, slung around his back. Not that it was any more effective that the .12, just a bit lighter and carried a lot more rounds, sixty altogether, two thirty-shot clips, one loaded, one in his pocket. For the .12, he carried five pumpkin balls loaded and about twenty loose ones in the backpack. Significantly fewer rounds but, hey, you really didn’t need that many when just one will split a man in half. He used the .357 for quick-reaction shots and only went to the heavies when he saw something in the distance. Or if he was in such deep doo-doo he needed the firepower. Shotgun, 14, at that point, it didn’t matter.
He was a damn good shot with either, very fast acquiring targets and stitching them – .223, slugs, didn’t matter. He could hit pretty accurately up to fifty yards with the .14. No brag, just fact. Fortunately, he didn’t have to do a lot of long-range sniping because most encounters were surprises and usually just a few yards apart.
His last long-range fight was about a year ago, some guy he saw crouched on top of a car pile-up on the shoulder of 395, aiming a rifle up to where John would have crested the hill if he had actually been on 395 at the time. One of the benefits of paralleling on Van Dorn.
John had dropped the Zap and climbed the berm and braced the .14 across the top of a Cadillac. One shot, blew the guy right off the cars. John worked his way to him but the man was dead, shot
through the back. Pretty good, pretty good. He felt no qualms. It was an ambush and John was pretty sure Mom’s son John was the object. Why was immaterial. Damn Bundys.
Lots of times, John didn’t take either long gun, relying just on the pistol. The long guns were a real pain on the Zap, even though he’d jury-rigged a pretty good sling system that kept them up and to his left side, out of the way of the backpack and the bike frame, while still allowing a quick draw. They were heavy, though, and they still made MPD skittish. Well, gonna have to deal, because, after Cassell, John’d be carrying the heavies for quite a while.
He pulled out the night-vision goggles, strapped them on and flipped the switch. Yep, batteries still good. The world lit up in green, somewhat tiresome on a two-hour ride home and he had green spots before his eyes for about an hour after, but it was the only way to go. You saw everything long before it saw you.
Wheeled panther, that’s what he was, silent, unnoticed. Not a bad analogy. There’d been several instances when he’d ridden up on a group of idiots, probably Raiders, without being detected. Stopped, unslung the rifle, watched for a bit, then either waited them out or went around, unseen. The panther fades away, dangerous, and you got lucky. Or he got lucky.
John grinned and turned off the goggles and propped them on his head. He checked the tanto, strapped the handle to his upper inside arm for a one-motion draw and cut. The Japanese made blades to go along with their blade philosophy – penetrate and then slice out – and John’s tanto could cut through iron. He practiced with it quite a bit, a miniature samurai sword, and he was confident he could do some real damage but face it, the tanto was last resort. If reduced to drawing it for his life, then he’d lost and was simply taking as many with him as he could.
