by Jim Rudnick
Bixby, however, proved to be a problem as he would not let Javor nor anyone else help to get him up on top of the truck.
Sue watched the dog whine and twist out of their grasp and said, “Hey, let me, but first, Javor, you get in the truck and then go forward to that hole by the front car.”
He complied with the request quickly. Moments later as he sat in the tank and looked out of the hole, he saw Sue with the scruff of Bixby’s neck in her two hands, dragging the dog toward the hole.
“Call him, Javor,” she said, and he did that too as he dropped to half-lie over the hole and held out his arms.
Hearing his name, but not seeing Javor, Bixby scrambled up on the side of the car, then inched forward to stand on the buckled hood, and looked up at his master. Whining, the dog got closer and then slowly stepped up onto the crease of the truck tank. Bixby half-jumped, half leapt, into Javor’s arms.
Grabbing the dog, he smiled, hoisted him within, and said. “Thanks, Sue, I owe you one.”
Everyone got inside and Bruce pulled a large lantern out of his pack. Closing the door above, he hung the lantern on the stairs high enough to provide light for all. Each moved to take up some private space within the tank. Javor noted that Bixby wouldn’t move much away from the hole in the bottom of the tank, so he camped out there, lying out on one of those car seats that was close to the hole.
Bruce climbed the ladder, opened up the door, looked out, whistled, and came back down in a hurry.
As he did, the tank began to ring from hail pelting it as the storm front reached the interstate. The hail made the tank ring loud and like a bell. The wind too was something else to reckon with. It began to pound on their ears, as it made little pieces of the vehicles around them fly away, banging into the cars and the truck tank with loud echoes and ricocheting metallic sounds.
“Big front, and yes, I saw lightning too,” he added, which was verified by the flash of light that bounced off the concrete below the truck and flashed up inside the holes there.
They got comfortable. Javor dug into his pack, took out Bixby’s kibble, fed the dog, and poured out fresh water for him. As Bixby ate, Javor had a couple of his jerky bars and figured that was his late lunch or early dinner for today. Sue had joined him up front on the other car seat, and they both grinned at each other as they ate.
Farther back, Wayne was sitting on a wooden box that had probably been earmarked as firewood but hadn’t been used. Rick was farther back, lying right on the tank with his head on his backpack, and was almost snoring in minutes. Bruce sat behind the ladder area, and he’d found a pile of some kind of papers, perhaps again for the fire, but he’d wadded them up and lay on them as the tank was hard to lie on. Jimmy had simply taken the easy way and lay down on the cold metal curved floor of the tank, and he was snoring already.
They all kept pretty still, as the lightning flashes were still silent yet showed up via the holes in the tank. They all sat and waited as the storm grew louder and louder and the winds picked up to what sounded like hurricane speed.
A huge flash of light coming inside meant that a lightning bolt had hit close. The air around them inside the truck tank seemed to ionize and get sharp smelling with ozone. As the winds that followed surged, they heard a piece of one of the cars torn off by the strong winds smash into the truck tank before whirling off the interstate. And the winds grew louder and the lightning lit up the interior of the truck tank more often. The center of the storm was upon them.
Another flash of light hit something close, and the truck tank suddenly lurched to one side, falling a couple of feet off one of those cars it had sat on before, and jammed up now against the guardrail.
When the next large lightning bolt hit the truck directly, it ionized the air a split-second before the bolt hit, and while Javor’s brain told him it was going to happen, even so, his whole world went black…
CHAPTER SIX
The truck was dark as the winds howled and the rains were driving down onto the interstate.
The truck had fallen but hadn’t rolled as much as it fell and twisted even more so to one side. The manhole cover that was propped up halfway open was suddenly gone too, and while it was black out that hole, one could see the lightning often as it continued to pound the truck tank and the interstate too.
Sue came to first and began to call out names in the dark as the lightning had burned out the lantern.
That woke Javor, and his right knee was flexed up tightly, cramped up against his hamstring. The bolt that had hit them had been the culprit, and his alien tissue had reacted badly. He flexed the knee out straight, slowly, a little more extension each time, until the pain subsided, and he tapped his vest belts to find his flashlight and clicked it on.
Bruce was at the far end, and he waved at them as he slowly groaned and rolled off his paper bed. He looked to his left and said, “Jimmy?” and then he yelled it again as he scrambled to get to the man.
Jimmy had been lying on the bare metal floor of the truck tank, and with those millions of volts coursing through same, he had not survived the bolt. Bruce hovered above him trying to do CPR.
Rick too had been on the metal floor, and Wayne was above him doing compressions by the time that Sue and Javor crawled back to help.
One look at both Jimmy and Rick and they both knew it was a lost cause.
Sue held out a hand to stop them, and they did that begrudgingly.
“They were lying right on the metal tank floor … still, it should have been okay—this truck was built to take direct lightning hits,” she said, and the words were like darts as she spit them out.
Jimmy and Rick. Gone.
Javor turned with a start to look for Bixby, and as he aimed his flashlight back toward the front of the truck, the dog sat up on the shard of carpet that it’d been lying on. “He’s safe,” Javor said to himself. The carpet must have had some kind of backing of rubber.
“We’ll have to ride out the rest of the storm, but I’d say we all need to get off the floor of this truck,” Sue said, and she went up front to drag her car seat back toward the surviving group members.
Javor nodded, did the same, and ensured that Bixby sat beside him on the car bench seat too.
Bruce and Wayne did likewise and also used the rest of the pile of wood pieces to stay above the floor of the tank.
And the rains now came in full force.
The round manhole entrance to the tank on the roof was like an open pipe of water as it poured in by the gallons to run toward the rear of the tank, and it began to fill up that area. As the tank was now slanted toward the back of the truck, where Javor, Sue, and Bixby were near the now half-sealed hole on the bottom of the tank, it was not a cause for much concern as yet. Bruce and Wayne slowly moved toward the front too and passed the ladder area, ensuring they remained off direct content with the floor.
It was five hours, by Javor’s count, that the storm raged outside. He massaged his knee as it reacted badly to the change in atmospheric pressure that came with a storm. The alien tissue seemed to have a slow burning sensation, and he rubbed it over and over.
Five hours of sitting here with the bodies.
Five hours of the driving rain and the lightning bolts slowly moving away as the front moved on.
Five hours that they sat wet, sad, and yet somehow still glad to be alive.
He threw Sue a half-smile once, and she returned it with a tilt of her head.
Five hours was a long time to grieve, he thought, but he hadn’t even known the two men long.
He was snoozing when Bixby licked his forehead, and he slowly came to and saw that the rain had stopped, the winds had died down, and a bit of sunshine could be seen outside.
He looked at Sue and pointed to Bixby and she nodded.
Moving slowly, dragging his gear and shotgun behind him, he slowly shepherded Bixby toward the hole in the front of the truck tank and was pleased to see that it was no longer over the hood of the car. He dropped the dog down th
e couple of feet to the concrete itself. He dropped down too, and they both moved by going on all fours below the cab of the truck to get back out into the center of the roadway.
He stood and then as Sue and the other two joined him, they stared at the pile of vehicles in front of them.
A lightning bolt had hit one of the cars near the end of the pileup and had moved it and some of the closer cars over what looked like four feet at least. The big bang that they’d heard, no doubt.
Another bolt had smashed into the bumper area of one of the cars, and the bumper itself had been launched over, embedded into the very front of the truck tank, and wrapped around the guardrail.
Sue looked at that closely. She grabbed it and tried to rock it, and it wouldn’t budge. She nodded.
“Our lightning-bolt-proof truck was beaten by this simple bumper. The bolt that hit the bumper moved it to link the truck tank to the guardrail, making the tank not a Faraday cage to protect the cargo—us—but a direct link to the ground. All guardrails are grounded on all highways to protect them—so we were beaten by a bumper—and Jimmy and Rick paid for that dearly,” she said.
She shook her head. “We’ll leave them there—maybe we’ll collect their personal effects, but they’ll stay in that tank. As a note to anyone else that the tank is not to be trusted in a nor’wester. Wayne, please go back and get their effects—arms too, please, as we can’t have them fall into zombie hands,” she said as she quietly leaned on the guardrail.
Ahead of them, the storm still raged, but it was moving along like a clipper, and there were big round clouds and some sunshine occasionally here. As Javor looked ahead, he could see the next on-ramp as it climbed up to the interstate, and it was only a few miles ahead.
“We’d maybe get off the highway say at the next ramp and make camp down on the ground—that sound okay?” he asked.
Sue nodded. She was obviously not able to lead at this point, so once Wayne got back, they divided up the dead men’s arms, goods, and personal effects.
Javor said, “I’ll take point with Bixby, then Sue, Wayne, and Bruce who’ll run the rear.” Without even looking at Sue for agreement, he strode off with the next on-ramp the now smaller group’s destination…
#####
Finn got the fresh milk out of the cooler, and placed it just so on the refreshment counter, and smiled at their luck. Not only had he been able to score the milk, but there was also a small carafe of fresh cream too.
It’s the little things that we can get from the Farmer’s guild, he thought, that made life worth living again.
At least it made the coffee taste so much better, he thought as he added a healthy dollop of cream to his coffee and went to join the other members of the Circle at the weekly meeting.
Vera, head of the Circle, was still sipping her coffee and smiling.
Good sign, Finn thought.
Maeve interrupted, of course, to get things started. “The fact that this Javor—the spaceman—is on his way, but we’ve not heard a thing? Seems like my own program, denied by this Circle for budgetary reasons, to populate the hinterland with more ham radio groups could have really helped out, now couldn’t it?” she said primly.
Finn nodded—and then realizing he was the only one doing so, he shook his head instead.
No one seemed to notice, however, as Vera put down her coffee mug. “Thank the guild for the cream—milk too, please Finn,” she said as she turned to face Maeve across the table.
“It was simple credits, Maeve, that put an end to your program. But yes, it would have helped to have gotten some kind of updates daily or even every other day from Sue and cadre. That said, their first stop will be at the Adair power station, and we can let them know to have Sue contact us then. Will that do?”
Maeve nodded and said, “Course, there’s those dozens of miles across the Badlands to Lindos—then again up here to Arlington—that my program would have helped too,” she said, and while no one at the table disagreed, her tone was almost a whine.
“We’ll look at it next year, I promise,” Vera said, and she clicked on her new tablet.
The Circle’s tablet recovery mission down in Crandon had been a partial success, and the resulting find of two whole containers of new tablets had been eagerly taken up by the whole Regime. Techies were still working on the re-birth of the batteries, but some of the early ones had made it through to the Circle, and in front of each of them was a brand new tablet. All had been using them now for a couple of days, and it really did help to be wired in the Regime network at the same time. Saving and printing was easier. Messaging was quicker and discussions could go on between anyone who wanted to chat or conference too.
“Okay, we know more about this—what’d you call him, Maeve? A spaceman? Haven’t heard that used in decades, but yes, this man who came down on the … the Drake, I believe. We know a lot more—most importantly, that he has no real factual evidence that the Boathi are after him—or not. Nor, if the Drake will ever fly again. I’d like our own tech teams to look into that so we’d have a bunch of real testing queries for him when he arrives. That, and yes, I’d like our own techs to both visit and inspect the craft too, but that’s in the future.”
“And if the Boathi do show up? Before whomever might be on rescue duty for the Empire, I mean?” Gemma asked, and that sent the discussion off on a new tangent.
“Would they even know that this ship is in need of a rescue?” Nixon asked.
“Would have to—the spaceman said that the ship’s AI took over and jumped them twenty lights, and so it would have sent that back via Ansible—wouldn’t it?” Harper asked, as she sipped her tea.
Vera nodded. “Like some of you, I too think that the Empire knows—and will be searching. Hard to say how much the Boathi will do too to find the , which would be good to know too. There are so many questions we don’t have the answers for as yet—but as soon as this Javor gets here, we can ask and hopefully get real answers!”
Finn sipped his coffee and cream one more time and then cleared his throat. “Could I ask one thing? Is there any way that this spaceman—Javor, I mean—could be trouble for us? Didn’t he say that one could just live in his ship and live well? Why then would he have left it is what I mean?”
That took them off on another tangent, and the talk centered around why sitting alone in a ship could ever be what one could call a good existence. No one thought that he’d been honest about that—but the fact that the ship had AI that was leading edge was something else to ponder.
“Our own AI is, what, eight years out of date?,” Reid said, “and if we can get access to the AI on that ship and use it to add to our own—think of what that could mean to us all. AI that works better than all the issues we face. Not just to secure a home or building but to actively go out and mow down our enemies—that’s something I’d like to see,” he said forcefully.
That did get a nod or two.
Vera responded, “Reid, just because the dumb zombies try to eat us while their smarter cousins try to defeat us—it’s not our place to ensure that they all die. They are the results of the Boathi virus bombs—so it’s not them that we should hate, now is it?” she said, and her voice was polite but still meant to spell out her own point of view.
Reid shook his head. “My enemy is anyone who tries to kill me. End of story. So yes, they’ve all got to die. As do the sects we have met and been ambushed by, like various tribes and even some of the forest cliques too. We are the only humans still left on Bones—Ceti4, to be more precise. So we need to take back our world, I believe. Don’t you all?” he finished off, and that got some more nods too.
Harper spoke up. “Yes, anyone that attacks me gets what they deserve. But say we could use the spaceman’s AI to help us make an antidote for the zombies—dumb or smart. We could change them back to being human say—is that not a better answer than killing them all?”
More nods. A grunt too from Vera.
“Absolutely—but until we know more�
�this is just talk. Intel is what we need, and that’s for sure,” she said as she made some notes on her tablet and then went on to the next item on the Circle Agenda.
#####
“It’s called Walkerville for a reason,” Bruce said as he caught up with the group who’d stopped near the off-ramp to the right with the sign pointing to the town that lay to the north.
He smiled as the group stopped there and took a breather. It’d been a dogged four miles since they’d left the truck tank and their dead. No one had talked, and while they’d made great time, what lay behind them weighed heavily on their collective minds.
Sue looked down the ramp, then crossed the highway to look north, and after a few seconds turned to them all.
“I think we can use a break, so let’s do this. Let’s get off the interstate and into Walkerville. Let’s see if we can find a spot to take an afternoon off—wash, relax, and just let the past twenty-four hours drift away. Tomorrow, we’ll be back right up here and on our way—that suit you all?” she asked, and all of them nodded.
“Uh … you do remember that Walkerville is called that because there’s nothing there to enjoy, right, Sue, ‘cause everyone walked away?” Bruce said with a raised eyebrow.
“Other than the old destroyed Ceti4 army barracks, this place is dead, right?”
“Old wives’ tales,” she answered. “Besides, that’s what we want, right? A quiet empty place to take a breather, so let’s go.” Hoisting up her backpack, she took point and led the way down the off-ramp.
