I pointed at the green and yellow bruises on my face. “Yeah, well, the government goons worked me over pretty damned good because I refused to murder an innocent woman.”
He glanced at me and then Cassandra. “What?”
“I was a CEA agent until a week ago. My boss ordered me to carry out the public execution of a woman accused of falsely informing on her neighbors to get more rations. That’s the shit we’re running from. Our lives are ruined because I didn’t murder someone. Pretty fucked up, huh?”
“That’s… That’s crazy.” He set the gas cans down and held up his hands when Cassandra menaced him with the gun. “I’m not gonna do anything. You can put that away, miss. There’s all sorts of rumors going around about that stuff, and we talk back at the station, but we thought it was all false.”
“No,” I said, relaxing slightly. “It’s all true. You may not see it so much out here, but the cities are on continual lockdown. The police and various federal agencies have the population so scared that they can’t even leave their homes. I’ve seen the bodies of several people just lying in the street, waiting to be collected by the garbage trucks. It’s real, man. We are in some serious shit here in America.”
He picked up the cans and began walking. “Where are y’all going?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
He nodded. “I understand. Probably better that way anyways.” He set the cans down. “Um, want me to fill your tank?”
“I’ll do it. Cassandra?”
“Yeah?”
“Cover him while my back’s turned.”
“I’m not gonna do anything, sir. I already told you that.”
“Well, we’re going to play it safe, for us.”
It took about three minutes for the truck’s tanks to accept all ten gallons of fuel. I hadn’t checked the gauges since we’d started driving this morning, but we’d been at less than a quarter of a tank yesterday. The ten gallons probably put us just over half a tank. We needed more.
“Hey, um, I’ve got a fuel siphoning kit,” the ranger offered as I was screwing the gas cap back on.
“What?”
“Why don’t I fill those two cans back up with gas from my truck? It sounded like you’ve got a lot of empty space in that tank.”
I accepted his help and he took a hose contraption with a hand-operated pump attached to it from the back of the SUV. “We have these in case motorists get stranded out here.”
As he pumped the fuel from his vehicle into the cans, I glanced up the road. “How often do you see cars out here?”
“You guys are the first today, but I was just getting set up when you showed up. I saw two cars yesterday in a seven-hour stint.”
We put the additional fuel into the truck’s gas tank, then he filled them up again with the pump before loading the two full cans into the back of the truck and securing them with a ratchet strap he pulled from the back of his SUV. “That’ll leave me with about two or three gallons in my tank to get back to the barn,” he said. “Should be plenty.”
He’d been so helpful that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t going to be driving back. We couldn’t risk it. “I need that siphoning kit too,” I stated.
“Uh… Yeah, sure. That makes sense. You guys might need to get fuel along the way.”
“What else do you have that would be helpful for a pair of people on the run from a tyrannical government—one of whom is pregnant?”
“She’s?”
“Yup,” I said.
“Um. I’ve got some bottled water and a few emergency rations that we keep stored in the back for stranded hikers.”
“Really? That’d be great. Thank you.”
As the park ranger leaned in, I stepped in close and wrapped an arm around his neck. I grabbed my fist with the other hand and squeezed, cutting off oxygen.
“What are you doing?” Cassandra screamed. “He was helping us.”
“I know. And I appreciate it. Just gonna put him to sleep.” I leaned down and said, “This is better than hitting you in the back of the head. They’ll do an examination and see that you were knocked unconscious. Nobody will blame you.”
I squeezed until his body went limp from the lack of oxygen and then I gently lowered him to the ground. “Get me those zipties.”
She fished them out from the truck and I secured his hands behind his back, cutting off the running end so he wouldn’t be able to grasp it to manipulate the longer piece. I wanted him trussed up for as long as possible.
“Okay, start taking everything you see in the back that might be useful,” I said. “I’m gonna put him in the back seat. Then I’ll help.”
It took us another five minutes or so to go through the vehicle and take the supplies that the ranger’s vehicle carried. Then I backed the truck off the road and put all the windows down. The last thing I did before leaving was open a bottle of water and put it into the center console with an old straw I found in the door. The ranger wouldn’t be able to get out of the car, but he could at least drink.
His buddies in the Forest Service would come looking for him in a couple of hours and find him here. No big deal, although now they knew we were headed east. The ranger could lie and say he never saw us, but we hadn’t been careful. Our DNA and fingerprints littered the crime scene. Nothing we could do about it except drive like a bat out of hell and take full advantage of those few hours that we’d have.
We were about a hundred miles from the Texas-Louisiana border. The sooner we could cross that state line, the better. I made a laundry list of things we needed to do in my mind as I drove. First amongst those would be finding an abandoned vehicle and stealing its license plates. Next was to get more food and toilet paper.
I laughed at that. Food and toilet paper had been hoarded during the COVID-19 outbreak when I was a kid. We’d actually ran out of TP because my dad couldn’t find any at any of the local stores, so we had to resort to old school methods. We ended up getting rid of a lot of old t-shirts that spring.
Ah…the good old days.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Cassandra’s fingers tapped the radio buttons once again as we coasted into Alexandria, Louisiana four hours later. We’d spent the time alternating between reveling in the sound of music on the radio after so long without anything and puckering our assholes as we drove by police officers on the side of the road. Being a fugitive isn’t fun and I don’t recommend it; zero stars.
We had over a quarter tank of gas, but I wanted to take advantage of the fact that we were in a larger town, maybe even a small city depending on your definition of such things. There would be plenty of cars that we could steal a can or two of gas from and maybe even grab that license plate that I mentioned earlier.
We drove around town for a little while until we found a shopping center filled with cars. The people seemed much freer to do as they pleased here than they had been in Austin. That just confirmed in my mind that we needed to stay away from the cities and stick to the smaller towns where the System didn’t have as firm of a grip on daily lives as it did in the densely populated areas.
It only took me a minute to find an empty parking space next to a car that seemed relatively benign, far enough away from the main doors, but not isolated in the middle of the parking lot where I’d draw attention to us. It was a giant boat of a vehicle, so I knew it would have a large gas tank, hopefully full of fuel so I only needed to do this once. I parked and hopped out of the truck, choosing to leave the motor running as I unhooked the ratchet straps holding the full gas cans in place. I filled my truck’s tank from those, setting each empty on the ground as I did so. I took a look around and verified with Cassandra that the coast was clear before opening the car’s fuel tank and inserting the siphon into it.
Ten minutes later, I’d filled the gas cans again and topped off the truck. I was securing them into the back when an older man shambled up to the car with a small grocery cart and opened the trunk Shit. Now I felt miserable for t
aking the old guy’s gas. He was probably on a fixed income too. I was one of those lowlife scumbags that my mother warned me about as a kid.
I nodded to him as I hopped down and got into the truck. I eased out of the parking space, careful to avoid accidentally bumping him as he stood there, and then drove down the aisle. We needed to get away before he got into his car and realized that somebody had stolen twenty gallons of gas.
“You took all of that old man’s gas,” Cassandra accused when we’d turned out of the parking lot back onto the street.
“I know,” I groaned. “I feel terrible. I had no idea it was an old person’s car.”
“Really? What kind of a person do you think drives those giant, gas-guzzling old cars?”
I shrugged. “Okay, hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that. I get it now.”
“We shouldn’t wait so long between needing to steal gas,” she stated. “That way we only take a little bit from each person. I mean, that guy is probably living month-to-month on his social security check and we just took like a hundred bucks worth of gas from him.”
I sighed. “Each time we stop and steal fuel, we increase our chances of getting caught. All it takes is one person seeing us being suspicious enough to call the cops and we’re done for.”
“I don’t care. It’s not right. We can’t keep leaving people high and dry like we did with the park ranger and that old man just now. We’re better than that.”
I gestured over my shoulder toward the truck’s back seat where we had a meager pile of supplies that we’d taken from the ranger’s truck that we hadn’t packed away into the go-bags yet. “Those four containers of emergency rations are about all we have, babe. After that, we’re out of food.”
“How much longer until we get to your parents’ house?”
I turned onto Louisiana Highway 28 and began accelerating. “I don’t know. Like eight or nine hours straight through, but I know you haven’t gone pee in four, so—”
“Yeah, I really need to go pee.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before we got on the highway?”
“This isn’t a highway,” she scoffed.
“It’s four lanes,” I said, pointing out the windshield. “With a center lane for turning.”
“I bet this thing narrows to two lanes a couple of miles down the road.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “Hey, look. That gas station looks sketchy enough to not have any connectivity to the grid. We should stop there.”
“I think that place looks like a hepatitis infection waiting to strike.”
“Well…” I couldn’t really disagree with her. The entire place seemed rundown and dirty. “Do you want me to keep going?”
“No,” she sighed. “I need to go.”
We pulled in and got out of the truck. “Keep your sunglasses on,” Cassandra reminded me.
The bells on the door jingled as we entered the gas station. It was hard to see inside with the glasses and my eyes being used to the sunshine outside, but I could make out a woman behind the counter sitting on a bar stool and two men seated at a table off to one side. A thick layer of smoke drifted lazily in the air, obscuring things further than my sunglasses alone.
The clerk didn’t even bother to turn her head away from the little television she watched. The two men glanced away from the one mounted high in the corner, but quickly returned to watching it. Those two were the current source of the smoke as it poured from their lit cigarettes in a large, overflowing ashtray in the center of the table. I followed their intent gazes up to the screen where a virtual horse race with really terrible 8-bit animation played out. Each of the men held pieces of paper and shouted at the television. It was some type of gambling or lottery, but I had no idea what game it was.
We made our way to the back of the store where there was a single restroom. Cassandra nudged the door with her foot and whined in protest before going in first. I could hear her gagging through the door for the entire time she was in there. The toilet flushed and then she was back at the door just seconds later.
“Push the door open. I’m not touching this thing, and I am not touching that sink. I’d get more germs on me trying to wash my hands than if I’d pooped and rubbed it into an open cut.”
“That bad, huh?”
She nodded. “That bad.”
“I’m gonna pee, then we can take off.” She mumbled something that I couldn’t understand, so I went into the bathroom.
The smell hit me before my eyes registered what I was seeing. The last time the place had been cleaned was probably back when LSU won the national championship in football nine years ago. It was completely disgusting and foul. Every surface looked as if it had been pissed, shit, or vomited on. There was currently droplets of pee on the seat and I wondered if that was from Cassandra squatting over the bowl or from a previous visitor and she simply didn’t disturb the mess. Scraps of discarded toilet paper littered the floor, sticking to my shoe as I moved into the space. How the hell this place passed any sort of state inspection was beyond me.
I did my business and decided to forgo the handwashing also. The sink was just as nasty as everything else. Cassandra was right outside the door, waiting. The look on her face told me everything I needed to know. She wanted out of there as soon as possible.
We grabbed a bottle of hand sanitizer and a single roll of toilet paper off the shelves and walked up to the register. The clerk didn’t even bother to give us fifty percent of her attention as she scanned the two items while still watching the soap opera on the small television. “Five twenty-eight,” she said.
I put a five and a one dollar bill on the counter. Her meaty hand slapped down onto them, dragging them toward her like lifting the bills was even too much of an effort for her. She opened the drawer and put the money away, then placed three quarters on the counter. “Change,” she mumbled, engrossed in the show.
I picked them up and grabbed the two items off the counter. “Thanks.”
Cassandra was already outside. She held her hands out as I walked up, so I set the toilet paper on the hood of my truck and opened the sanitizer, squirting a liberal amount into her palms and then some into mine. “That place was gross,” I stated.
She didn’t say anything, which was not a good sign. Normally, she would be all over how bad the restroom was. “You okay?”
Her hand went to her mouth and then she ran over to the grass alongside the parking lot. She pulled away her mask, then leaned over and vomited. “Shit,” I muttered, walking over quickly.
She dry-heaved, then vomited a little bit more. “Water.”
“Yeah. Hold on.” I jogged over to the truck and got a bottle of water from the back seat. By the time I got back to her, she was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Cassandra accepted the bottle of water and unscrewed the top, taking a swig. She rinsed her mouth out and spit it onto the grass before taking a long gulp.
“Take it easy,” I cautioned. “You can get sick again if you drink too much.”
“We are never stopping at a place like this again. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I looked over my shoulder at the convenience store, then back at her. “What happened?”
“I just started thinking about that bathroom,” she said. “I couldn’t help it.”
I started to say something about her pregnancy and weak stomach, but thought better of it. It would probably not be received well, even though I’d be trying to sympathize with her. I settled on nodding my head and rubbing a hand along her arm.
“Where are we headed next?”
“Well, we’ve got a full tank of gas—or almost full,” I responded. “Plus, the two gas cans are just about full as well. That should get us around five hundred miles. I know we’ll need to stop again to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll pee alongside the road.”
“Yeah, okay. So that much gas should get us all the way to Fayette, Alabama where my parents live. I’d estimate eight or ni
ne hours from now if we only stopped to use the restroom.”
“So, tomorrow then?” she asked.
“Yeah, probably. I could make it today, but that’s a lot of driving.”
“There’s no reason to push straight through. I can’t sit that long. We can go halfway and find somewhere to camp for the night.”
“Agreed. You, ah… You doing okay?
“Yeah. I’m starving now though. What do we have in the truck?”
“Not much.” I pointed at the store and grinned. “They had a little warmer with pizza and—”
“Don’t you even dare finish that sentence, Bodhi!”
“I know, babe. Sorry. Okay, let’s get back on the road. We can pull into a drive thru somewhere.”
“This sucks,” Cassandra admitted.
“I know. I’m sorry I got us in this situation.”
“It’s not your fault. You did the right thing. This is just… It’s all messed up right now.”
I frowned. “It’ll get worse as they tighten their grip.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. We need to get off the grid and stay off the grid.”
“My parents’ farm is about as far off the grid as you can get. At least we’ve got them to fall back on. They’re part of a whole network of local farmers that trade with each other for almost everything. They haven’t bothered to get registered as citizens because they don’t need anything from town. That sounds like a great place to stay low for a while to me.”
“Yeah…” She rubbed at her stomach. “But what about?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” I said. “There are a few doctors around, I’m sure some of them are making the rounds off the books.”
“This all just sucks,” she said again. “Why can’t things be the way they were?”
“It might,” I said. “But it’s going to take a lot of work and the people are going to have to stand up for what’s right.”
“That sounds pretty dangerous.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. There are peaceful ways to bring about change. They can’t stop everyone.”
“You sure about that?”
American Dreams | Book 1 | The Decline Page 21
