And eventually they got the same idea.
Bryan heard a loud pop at the back of the trailer and saw a dusty cloud of air coming from the driver’s side tire set.
“Damn it!”
Then a similar puff of air came from the rear passenger side as another tire exploded.
Bryan had an idea. It was risky. But if he didn’t do something they’d blow all his tires and he’d coast to a stop. They’d pass him by and rake the cab of his truck with gunfire. He’d be a sitting duck.
He slowed. Just as they wanted. Just as they suspected.
And just as he suspected, they came around him.
Bryan had a height advantage over his attackers.
He could see up ahead, where the divided highway curved slightly to the right.
He could see that the guardrail had been damaged from a previous accident, and hadn’t been repaired.
And he could see that there was a severe drop on the other side of the guardrail.
He was still doing about fifty when the Explorer was about even with the center of his trailer.
It was now or never.
Bryan turned hard to his left and headed straight for the damaged rail. Then he turned hard back to his right to veer away from it.
The heavy trailer screamed as it rocked, first one way, then the other. He heard another of the tires blow.
And just as he planned, the trailer whipped over into the left hand lane and collided with his attackers’ vehicle, forcing the driver to momentarily lose control.
Bryan didn’t see what happened next. He was too busy keeping his own vehicle from losing control.
And it was a shame he couldn’t see. Had he been able to, he’d have seen the look of sheer terror on the faces of the driver, as well as the shooter, as their vehicle shot over the beat up steel railing and became airborne.
The Explorer came down hard on its rear wheels after sixty yards or so, tipped to its left and rolled another three hundred yards to the bottom of the mountain.
Both men were ejected and died instantly.
The threat was over. But Bryan didn’t know that.
A smart man would have kept moving once he saw that the pursuers were no longer behind him.
A smart man wouldn’t have stopped and applied his brakes.
Or gotten out of the truck.
Bryan had never been accused of being smart.
He emerged from his cab, no longer afraid, but plenty pissed off.
AR-15 in hand, he walked to the drop-off where the Explorer had become airborne and looked into the valley below.
Steam was coming from the smashed radiator. But the vehicle wasn’t burning.
He could plainly see two bodies. One looked badly crumpled and he was sure it was lifeless.
The other he wasn’t sure about. The driver was lying on his side about seventy yards away.
There might be some survivors in the vehicle as well.
As he weighed his options, the vehicle suddenly exploded.
That made his thinking process easier. There definitely weren’t any survivors in the Explorer.
He could go check the two men and check to see if they were alive. If for no other reason to ask them why in hell they’d been trying to kill him.
But then again, he owed them nothing. He could spend a lot of time and effort crawling down the side of the mountain, just to learn they were deader than hell. And all he’d have done is delay his arrival back at the mine.
And delay his own medical treatment, for the side of his face was still bleeding from the shattered window.
He turned to look at the highway behind him. It was also possible there were more of them, who just hadn’t caught up with their compadres. He might be down in the valley checking the bodies, just to come under fire a second time from up above.
He looked down into the valley. There weren’t many places to hide. The trees were sparse and the Explorer was now burning.
No, going down wasn’t an option.
But Bryan was still pissed off beyond belief. He wanted to go down and kick his attackers in the head, and call them every name in the book. It wouldn’t have mattered much whether they were alive or dead.
It would have made him feel better.
He did the next best thing.
One shot apiece. Through the chest.
If they weren’t dead before, they were now.
He walked away and climbed back into his rig, then headed for home.
Along the way he tried to convince himself it was for their own good. That had they been suffering as they died, he’d just put them out of their misery.
But he couldn’t fool himself. He didn’t shoot them for humanitarian reasons.
He shot them out of revenge, pure and simple. For they’d tried to kill him first.
And it felt good to win.
-38-
A few miles closer to the compound, Bryan rounded a mountain and Sami’s worried voice came over the radio.
“Bryan, this is Sami. Can you read me?”
“Yes. Yes, you’re breaking up, but I can read you.”
“Bryan, we got some static over the radio several minutes ago, but couldn’t make out a voice. We’ve been trying to raise you ever since. Was that you?”
“Yes. I was under fire from a couple of goons in an Explorer. But I ran them off the side of the mountain.”
He didn’t mention the kill shots.
“Oh, no. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m a little cut up from broken glass but that’s about it.”
“What can we do to help?”
“I’m leaking fuel. I think I can make it back, but I don’t want to bring the rig in while it’s pouring diesel. Is one of the other guys available to take the trailer off my hands?”
“Brad’s still east of Kerrville, as far as we know. We’ve been trying to raise him too and haven’t had any luck. Rusty’s dropping his load right now. Where do you want him to meet you?”
“Just have him head west on I-10 and keep me advised of his location. I’ll stop and drop when he gets close.”
“What’s your present location?”
Bryan scanned the highway in front of him before responding a few seconds later.
“Mile marker four three six.”
“You copy, Rusty?”
“Rusty copies. I’m at the door and ready to leave now.”
Sami checked her monitors and said, “Rachel, it’s clear. Open it up.”
Rachel opened the huge overhead door and Rusty crept out, saluting her as he went.
“Thanks, doll. See you in a bit.”
“Drive careful.”
“I will. I promise.”
Bryan and Rusty called out their respective mile marker signs until they drew close.
Bryan said, “Rusty, take the exit at marker four four nine and whip a u-turn. I’ll pull over just east of there.”
“Ten four.”
By the time Rusty pulled his tractor past his friend, Bryan had stopped the big rig in the slow lane of the highway and was in the process of lowering its legs.
The diesel fuel was still flowing onto the highway, although it had slowed a bit.
Once free of the trailer Bryan climbed back on board and pulled his tractor another hundred yards, then pulled onto the shoulder and abandoned it.
While Rusty backed into the trailer and began his hookup process, Bryan took a wrench and began removing the batteries.
The batteries were now worth more than the wounded truck.
He took the first one off and started the second when Rusty pulled alongside him and applied his brakes.
A few moments later his friend said, “You’re covered in blood, Bryan. Get in the cab and I’ll finish up.”
But Bryan was filled with adrenaline and anger. And he wasn’t one to leave a job – any job – half done.
“I got it. Grab my rifle out of the cab, will ya?”
Rusty did just that, and laid it
across the passenger seat of his tractor.
He grabbed the first battery and hefted it over to his tool compartment, then went back for the next one.
Five minutes later they were back on the road, headed for home.
Bryan wondered why the men in the Explorer wanted him dead. Perhaps they had already scouted out the trailer he hooked onto and wanted it for their very own.
That didn’t make any sense to him, though. As far as he knew, they had the only fair sized herd of cattle in the area, since most of them perished in the freeze.
Perhaps there was another group of preppers who, like themselves, had found safe haven in another of the abandoned mines in the area.
If that was the case, their group was now two men lighter than they used to be.
He finally resolved himself to never knowing exactly why they wanted him dead.
It was a stark reminder that the new world was unfriendly and downright deadly. And now, even ten years after Saris, they still couldn’t afford to let their guard down for a minute.
-39-
It was a harrowing adventure and one Bryan never wanted to do again.
After he returned to the mine he was met by Debbie, who offered to clean and dress the wounds on his face.
“You’re damn lucky to be alive,” she told him. “If they’d hit you, way out there in the middle of nowhere, you probably would have died, they’d have taken your truck, and we wouldn’t have any clue whatever happened to you.”
“Nope. I ain’t buying it.”
It was Rusty, walking up behind them and inserting himself into the conversation.
Bryan looked in his direction and asked, “You ain’t buying what, smart aleck?”
“You wouldn’t have died out there. They say only the good die young. And if there’s any truth to that, then you, my friend, will certainly live forever.”
“As much as I hate to agree with you on anything, Rusty, I hope you’re right.”
“So, any idea why they were chasing you and shooting at you?”
“Not a clue.”
“What’s in the trailer?”
“Cattle feed. A boatload of it.”
Rusty was perplexed.
“That don’t seem like something anybody would shoot you over.”
“That was my thinking exactly.”
Debbie said, “Sit still, dummy. I’m trying to pick glass out of your cheek.”
“Sorry.”
Rusty got a look from Debbie that said, “Go away.”
He skulked away.
But he didn’t leave the mine. By now his curiosity was going all out. He grabbed a flashlight and headed for the trailer he’d just dropped in the back of the mine.
The flashlight gave him an advantage Bryan hadn’t had. Rusty was able to squeeze his way through the two tight rows of pallets, all the way to the front of the truck.
And there he saw the reason Bryan had come very close to being murdered.
“Control, this is Rusty,” he said over the radio.
“Go ahead, Rusty.”
It was Sami.
“Hey, is Frank still on duty?”
“No. He’s been off for awhile. He’s just been hanging around here getting in our way. Do you have a stick so you can take him outside and play fetch or something?”
“I’ll do you one better. Send him out here to Bay 22. The trailer Bryan just grabbed has something he’s gonna have to see to believe.”
Frank Woodard didn’t feel up to walking the entire length of the tunnel just to see what Rusty was jabbering about. But Sami was right. He’d been off duty for quite some time and had been hanging around the control center bugging the girls and driving them nuts.
He’d worn out his welcome.
Ten minutes later he was in the mine, in the back of the trailer.
Frank laughed out loud. And it felt good. He sorely needed some levity in his life.
He called Bryan on the radio.
“Looks like you hit the gold mine, young fella.”
In the very front of the trailer, too dark for Bryan to see during his initial inspection, were two pallets which had been emptied of feed sacks. The sacks that were originally on those pallets had been distributed evenly atop the other pallets in the trailer.
Several cardboard boxes of varying sizes were put on the empty wooden pallets to replace the feed.
Frank knew immediately what Bryan had stumbled across. On each of the cardboard boxes was written, in black marker, its contents.
The one on top read, “Seconal, Valium, Ativan.”
The one beneath it read, “Librium, Xanax, Valium.”
“It’s a drug dealer’s stash,” Frank explained.
He opened up the top box and whistled as he appeared inside. It was chock full of bottles of prescription medicines. Not the kind of bottles an average Joe would tote home from a pharmacy containing a few prescribed pills.
No, these were the big bottles. The ones shipped to the pharmacies from the manufacturers for dispensing.
Many of them contained a thousand capsules or tablets. Others contained five hundred.
He picked up one bottle of tiny pills which said it contained five thousand tablets.
“They must have robbed all the pharmacies in the area,” Frank said. “Or maybe a pharmacological distribution center.”
Rusty asked, “But why? Is there still a market for prescription drugs, given the state of the world it’s in now?”
“Oh, yeah,” Frank said. “A big one. Especially given the state of the world we’re in. The survivors have been through an awful lot. Many of them are having trouble coping with the loved ones they’ve lost. Or ashamed of the things they’ve had to do to survive and overcome with guilt.
“Traditionally, the weaker of society, the ones who can’t cope without the aid of a crutch, turn to illegal drugs. The drugs give them a way to escape the harsh realities of their lives, at least temporarily.
“The trouble is, these days marijuana and crack and methamphetamines are hard to come by. The growers and cooks have largely gone out of business or are dead. The distribution systems have broken down,
“These are still out there, and still available, if one can find them. And if they can afford to pay for them.
“These are the street drugs of the new world. And typically, the dealers will only accept gold, silver or weapons as payment.”
“But why here? I mean, why hide them here, in a trailer full of cattle feed?”
“Well, they had to hide them somewhere, to protect them from their own customers. Or maybe there were rival dealers in the area who wanted them. If you think about it, it’s a great hiding place. I mean, it was on a highway out in the middle of nowhere. They probably came out every few days and took what they needed to fill their orders. Then they padlocked it and placed a new seal on it when they left.
“There aren’t a lot of nomads that break into unmarked trailers. Most of them look for the Walmart or grocery store trailers because that’s where the food is. An unmarked trailer could contain anything and everything. But it’s usually not edible.
“And in the odd chance that a nomad did break into the trailer to see what was in it, he wouldn’t have gone this far into it. He’d have seen the pallets of cattle feed and moved on.”
“So in a way, they were hiding their drugs in plain sight.”
“Right. But they probably kept a close eye on it. They probably had a lookout in the woods with a pair of binoculars watching it night and day. My guess is that he saw Bryan hooking up to the trailer and called for backup. Then they chased Bryan down the highway with the intent of shooting him and taking their trailer back. It was a major flaw in their planning.”
“How so?”
“They foresaw the possibility that someone might go into the trailer and made plans to guard against it. But they never foresaw the possibility someone would just happen along and take the whole trailer.”
“So what are we gonna do with all
this stuff?”
“I’m going to send Debbie and David over. They’re our medical experts. I’ll have them take out any medications they think we can use to treat our own folks and to secure them in a safe place.
“After they pull out what they need, take the rest out to the back of the wheat field. Dig a big hole and dump the rest of the pills into it. Bury them, then park the tractor over the top of it. Bring me the key and we’ll keep it at the control center until the medication breaks down and deteriorates. Just to make sure our own people don’t get the urge to grab some for their own use.”
-40-
Frank didn’t know Rusty well. If he had, he’d have done things differently for sure.
Rusty was a good guy. He was liked by everyone.
And although he was almost thirty years younger than Frank, he was considered one of the old timers. An old timer in that he was one of the original occupiers of the mine.
As such, Frank had no reason to question Rusty’s integrity.
Rusty Warner had been a friend of Bryan’s since grade school. His was a tragic life, in that both his parents were killed in an automobile crash on Rusty’s ninth birthday.
Bryan stood at Rusty’s side at the funeral and grieved with him. He was all Rusty had, for Rusty had been an only child.
“Don’t worry,” Bryan had told his friend. “I’ll talk to my folks. You can come and live with us.”
And Bryan meant it, too. But a nine year old boy isn’t wise to the ways of the world, and things aren’t as simple as they seem.
A distant aunt came out of nowhere and professed her love for Rusty. She petitioned the court for sole custody and the court, since there were no other living relatives, granted her wish.
Aunt Amy moved into Rusty’s parents’ house, which had been paid off by his parents’ life insurance policy and therefore technically belonged to him.
But Rusty was a minor and therefore couldn’t handle his own legal affairs.
No problem, Aunt Amy said. She’d be happy to manage his affairs for him until he was legally able to do so.
Since he hadn’t moved away after his parents’ deaths, he continued to go to school with Bryan. They remained the very best of friends, even though Bryan drove Rusty crazy by apologizing a thousand times.
A New Start: Final Dawn: Book 9 (Volume 9) Page 13
