by Bruno Miller
Vince had done a good job of clearing a path through the remains of the hardware store and to the outdoor lumber yard, but there was a lot of small debris left on the ground. The last thing Mary wanted was for Nugget to get hurt wandering around in the rubble.
Mary, Reese, and Fred picked their way down the roughly cleared path to the rear of the property. Mary glanced back at the truck to see Nugget. She had her front paws up on the dashboard as she watched them leave. The little dog would get to help out soon enough when they went to Mary’s. Buster had risen to the occasion by tracking the kidnappers; it was Nugget’s turn to help out next.
Building the sections of gate to keep the animals restricted to the motel courtyard was the easy part. The hard part would be rounding them up, but that was where Nugget came in. The chickens posed the biggest problem, and after all that had happened, they were bound to be a little skittish. Of course, none of this would matter if there were no animals.
The thought had crossed her mind many times over the past week. What if they were all dead? It was possible. She thought about the air quality and the lack of food and possibly water. It had been so hot and dry since the EMPs that there was a very real possibility the animals had become dehydrated. Luckily, she had filled the large water trough early in the morning last Sunday, before everything happened. But she still worried if it was enough.
As they wandered around the outdoor supply yard and gathered materials, she tried not to think about the animals too much. Honestly, she was afraid to get her hopes up about what they might find at her house. Was her house even still standing?
She thought back to the out-of-control inferno that had engulfed what had once been a quaint little neighborhood. She and Vince nearly ended up trapped. How far would the fire spread if left unchecked by the fire department? The wheat had been cut on the property adjacent to hers, but a grass fire was still possible. She tried to prepare herself for the worst-case scenario, but deep down, she wasn’t willing to accept the possibility of a total loss.
They picked their way around the lumber yard and managed to gather a post-driver, a roll of galvanized wire fence, and enough metal fence posts to make do for now. There would be time to perfect the setup later. Right now, she was anxious to gather the animals. Once they were settled, she could come back and pick up more supplies. They still needed a watering and feeding trough along with the surplus bags of feed she kept locked up in the shed out back.
She originally kept the feed in the store, but it attracted too many mice, especially during the winter months. It never seemed to bother her husband when he ran things, but seeing the dead mice in the traps disgusted her. So one of the first things she did when she took over was move all the animal feed outdoors. She had a weather-tight shed built just for that purpose. And now, thanks to that decision, all the feed had survived the fire and would keep the animals fed for quite some time.
With the back of the truck loaded, they drove back to the motel and started working on the enclosure. Having finished sleeping in after his midnight to 6:00 a.m. watch, Bill gave them a hand unloading the truck.
The motel building formed an almost complete enclosure on its own, creating an open courtyard at the center. The area was rectangular in shape and had two points of access from outside. Overall, it was probably close to one hundred feet in length by at least fifty feet wide. This would be a much smaller space than the animals were used to, but they would have to make do for their own good.
One of the access points was a covered passageway next to the motel office. A break in the building ran all the way through to the yard, separating the first guest room from the office, dining room, and kitchen via a ten-foot-wide walkway. There was another similar spot at the other end of the building. The two access points were connected by an S-shaped path of stepping stones through the otherwise grass-covered yard. Within each one of these covered walkways was an ice machine and a couple of vending machines.
Rather than move them out of the way, Bill had the idea to use them as part of the barrier, so they lined them up as best as they could to block off half of the access points. As they moved the empty vending machines, Mary stared through the glass and thought about how they had all pretty much lived off the contents for the first three days. It seemed like such a long time ago, and when she thought about how little time had actually passed, it seemed impossible. She hoped they would never have to eat like that again.
The soda machines were a different story. They were heavy and still full, but only because they couldn’t find the key anywhere and nobody wanted to break into them. Plus, now they had plenty of fresh water. The thought of drinking a hot soda was less than appealing. They’d open them up at some point, but for now, it was low on the list of things to do.
With the vending machines and ice machines moved to the back of each access point and along the edge of the concrete walkway, they now had to close the remaining gap with fencing. The dirt was hard and dry from the baking sun, and it took Fred and Bill’s combined efforts to drive the posts into the ground. While they took turns using the post-driver, Mary and Reese measured and cut sections of fence off the roll with a pair of bolt-cutters from Vince’s garage.
They closed off the farthest access from the office first, without using any type of gate. Mary figured it was far enough away from any of the rooms they were living in and wasn’t worth the risk. She reasoned with the others that building a gate on that side would be a waste of time right now and would only serve as a possible escape point for the animals.
Her real reason, however, was rooted in fear—fear that someone could sneak in from that side of the building in the middle of the night and steal the animals. If the looters found out they had livestock, there would be even more reason to attack them. Not that the looters seemed to need any more motivation, but why make it easy? These animals would be the most valuable things they had, and protecting them might mean the difference between life and death for her and the others.
She hated to think about things in absolutes, but these were the days of ultimatums. There was no such thing as trying anymore. There was success or there was failure. Their lives now did not forgive foolish mistakes, and just about every decision they made would determine their fate as a team, like it or not.
Mary still missed her husband, but part of her was glad he wasn’t around to see the world this way.
Chapter Nineteen
When Vince finally reached the Chevy dealership, he spotted John’s old Bronco right away since the boxy pale-blue shape of the classic SUV stood out among the rows of sleek, shiny vehicles. Vince pulled the loader up next to John’s truck and shut it down. It felt good to get out of the stuffy cabin, and he stretched as he exited.
The loader’s ventilation system wasn’t working, and even though he had intermittently held the cab door open with his foot during the trip, it did little to cool him down. They had barely started today, and his back was already soaking wet with sweat from being trapped against the black vinyl seat.
From his spot in the loader, he could see above the rows of new cars and had a commanding view of the property. The showroom was destroyed, as he expected, but the workshop in the back of the property was a separate building and surprisingly still intact. Vince wondered if it was powered by a subpanel and had therefore been saved when the circuits overloaded and tripped at the main building.
He held his hand up to his forehead to block the glare from the sun as he looked around, but he couldn’t locate his son or John. Where were they? He really wished they had waited for him instead of rushing ahead on their own. John and Cy were both capable; that wasn’t his concern. He just didn’t like not knowing what was going on. Vince was about to call out to them but decided against it so as to avoid drawing attention to himself, although he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he had come in quietly on the big yellow loader.
Just as he was about to genuinely start worrying, Cy popped out from around the corner of the workshop and
waved him over. The car lot was several acres in size, so Vince decided to drive the loader over to the building rather than walk. When he arrived at the outbuilding, he found John and Cy along the side. They were looking over a car carrier. It was the kind meant to be pulled by a semi truck, and it was what Vince had hoped to find here. Just the sight of the large trailer gave him hope that their plan might actually work.
He joined them on the ground as they inspected the trailer. Vince had limited knowledge of these large multicar transport systems. He owned a single-car flat-bed trailer that they used sparingly at his shop, but most of the time, they relied on an outside towing company to handle broken-down vehicles and their towing needs. Insurance for the garage was cheaper without offering a towing service, and it was a way to avoid any liability issues.
The trailer was fairly new, and Vince had seen ones like it loaded and unloaded more than a few times. Not having a semi to tow the trailer the way it was made to be towed meant they would also lose some of the functionality of the hauler, along with half its capacity. They would still be able to carry five or six vehicles at a time, depending on their size, but not being able to use the trailer’s hydraulic system to raise and lower levels would limit them.
Vince did his best to share what he knew about the process with Cy and John, but the bigger problem was how they were going to tow this thing once it was loaded. The loader had a flat back and no hitch of any kind. Even if it had a hitch, it wouldn’t have mated with the car carrier, which was set up for a tradition fifth wheel-style coupling on a semi truck. Vince knew the answer to the problem but desperately wanted to figure out another way, though there wasn’t any choice in the matter.
They were going to have to lift the tongue of the trailer with the loader bucket and tow it backward. They could use the heavy-duty tow chains Vince brought along as a safety precaution to make sure the trailer didn’t slide off the bucket. It wouldn’t be easy, but he couldn’t think of any other realistic way to accomplish the task. It was already going to take a lot of time and effort to get the cars and trucks loaded.
John and Cy agreed with his idea, and they set about hooking the loader bucket to the front of the trailer before they started loading vehicles. It would be easier to test it out with an unloaded trailer. Plus, with the trailer hooked up, Vince could move it around the car lot to make loading the cars easier.
Getting the vehicles onto the trailer would present its own unique set of challenges. With the dealership showroom destroyed, the chance of finding keys to the cars was slim to none. Vince had a couple of tricks up his sleeve to put the vehicles into neutral so they could load them, but the cars would all be locked.
These were all modern vehicles and didn’t have post-style locks, so the old slim jim method wouldn’t work on them. He had planned for this, though, and as much as he hated to use it, he brought along an emergency glass hammer from the garage, and it was made specifically for breaking windows. The hammer would make a mess, so they’d have to be careful to avoid cutting themselves on thousands of tiny glass shards, but it was the quickest way to gain access.
Once he had access to the interior, he could shift the cars into neutral, but they would still have to deal with the steering. Without the key, they would be limited by how much they could actually steer the car—another good reason to bring the trailer. If they turned the wheel too far in either direction, the steering would lock and the car would have to be dragged into position before being loaded onto the trailer.
Nothing about this process would be easy, and it would take them the better part of the day and into the night, if they dared work that long. The return of the looters was never far from his mind.
John told Vince that he had tested the radio when he and Cy first arrived at the dealership, and it worked. It wasn’t completely clear, but it was better than no communication at all. This gave Vince a little peace of mind, and if something came up and the others needed him, John, and Cy, they could at least get in touch. With the roads between the dealership and the motel cleared, they could all jump in John’s Bronco and be back to the others within minutes.
Vince approached the front of the trailer and lined the bucket up with the center of the coupler as best as he could. Once he was in position, he slowly raised the bucket until he saw the trailer’s landing gear lift from the blacktop. He was glad to see the loader handle the weight with ease. He’d had his doubts about the loader’s ability, but so far so good. Of course, the trailer was empty; add a few SUVs and half-ton pickups and it might be a different story.
They wouldn’t use the chains to tie it all together just yet because Vince thought they might need the loader to help line the cars up. They would chain them all together for the trip back. If the trailer slipped off the bucket while loaded down with vehicles, the weight would most likely bend the landing gear, and they might not be able to lift it back up if it was lying flat on the ground.
With the trailer tongue supported by the loader bucket, John and Cy cranked up the trailer’s landing gear the rest of the way to provide extra clearance. Once they were clear, Vince began to back up slowly. The trailer slid out of the bucket with a terrible metallic scraping noise, and Vince thought he was going to lose it for a second.
He stomped on the brakes while tilting the bucket back as far as it would go. Luckily, the king pin caught on a piece of steel he had welded onto the forks for extra strength the other day. He let out a deep sigh of relief and started backing up again. This time, everything stayed put and the trailer began rolling forward. This might actually work.
Chapter Twenty
John and Cy walked alongside the trailer as Vince pulled it across the car lot. He headed for a row of SUVs and trucks near the front of the dealership, bypassing the smaller sedans; he was interested in the heavier vehicles right now. There was no telling how much they’d accomplish today, but he was determined to at least replace the current roadblock with a new system.
The lot comprised many tightly parked rows of cars, and unfortunately, he had to go straight through the middle of them to move the trailer to the front near the road. Vince sat sideways in the seat, doing his best to keep one eye on the trailer and the other on the back end of the loader, which was now technically the front. It was a lot like backing up a trailer. Add in the articulated steering and there were moments when he honestly didn’t know which way to turn the wheel in order to force the unwieldy rig to comply.
He eventually started to get the hang of it and figure out how to move the trailer to where he wanted it to go. He picked up speed a little in an effort to move things along, but he cut his turn around a row of cars too sharply. John threw his hands up to warn him, but it was too late: the trailer clipped the last sedan in the row and dragged it along for a couple of feet before it fell away.
Vince shrugged at the mistake, but the trailer seemed unaffected by the collision, so he continued toward his destination. Careful to give the trailer a larger radius on the next turn, Vince pulled in behind the first row of vehicles.
John had a winch on the front of his Bronco, and the plan all along had been to winch the cars onto the trailer from the front. So before Vince stopped, he cut the wheel hard to the left, brought the loader into the beginning of a turn, and drove for a few more yards before stopping. With the loader angled to the side of the trailer tongue, there was now room for the Bronco to line up head-on with the front of the car carrier. They could run the winch cable over the top of the trailer and pull the cars straight up the ramp one by one, toward the Bronco and the front of the trailer.
Vince shut the loader off and joined Cy on the ground as John pulled his truck around and lined it up.
“Well, time to get to work, I guess.” Cy looked at the nearest row of vehicles.
“Let’s start with these.” Vince walked toward a line of Chevy Suburbans. He approached the first one and set his tool bag down before he peered into the window. Vince scoffed as he glanced at the spec sheet in the window.
“What?” Cy asked.
“Over seventy-two thousand dollars.” Vince shook his head. He never could wrap his head around the price they charged for new vehicles or how people could justify spending that kind of money on something to get you from point A to point B. Now the sticker seemed even more ridiculous than ever. He was basically looking at a seventy-thousand-dollar paperweight—or, in their case, roadblock.
“Yeah, well I hear they’re giving them away today while supplies last,” Cy joked.
Vince couldn’t help but smile as he rooted through his bag for the glass hammer. He was about to pull back the hammer and take a swing when John came around the back of the truck.
“Whoa, hold it, hold it,” John yelled.
“I’ve got to get inside. It has to be in neutral before we can move it,” Vince explained.
“I’ve got a better way.” John held up a bag of his own. He set it down and pulled out two small airbags and a long stick with a hook at one end. “Watch this.” John approached the driver’s door and went to work.
The two small airbags were about the size of a person’s hand, and they each had a clear tube attached to them with a ball-style hand pump. John took one of the uninflated bags and slid it between the door and the frame of the truck, forcing it under the weather stripping. Once it was in place, he gave the pump a couple of squeezes, and the bag forced the door about half an inch off the body as it swelled full of air. He repeated the process using the other bag at the top of the door, this time with the same result. Using the stick with a hook on it, he passed it into the small opening the bags had created and used the hooked end to activate the door handle. The door popped open and the bags fell to the ground.
“There you go.” John stepped back. “All yours.”
“Wow, that was easy,” Cy said.
Vince was impressed with John’s system. “That’s a lot better than my way.”
