Alone, Book 3: The Journey (7 page)

     When he finally laid down to rest, he placed the piece of tarp next to him. The wind was blowing the rain south, over the cab and toward his vehicle. Therefore very little rain was coming through his peephole. Just an occasional splattered drop or two.

     He knew, though, that the wind could change direction. If he woke up later with water in his face, he’d merely wad up the piece of tarp and stuff it into the hole.

     For now, though, he was exhausted.

     It was light enough now to take off the night vision goggles.

     Laying on the bunk, peering out into the morning, he had a clear view of his Explorer and everything to the south of it.

     He kept it firmly in his sights until he slowly drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 12

     Dave awoke with a start. The rain had stopped, and a small robin stood perched on the bottom of his peephole, peering in at him.

     Mooching food, perhaps.

     Taken aback, but now used to conversing with dead men and animals, Dave managed to utter, “Well hello, little fella.”

     Perhaps finding conversation between species more weird than Dave did, the bird flew away. Dave peered out at the now unobstructed view of his Explorer and saw nothing amiss.

     From the position of the sharp angle of the shadows on the east side of his vehicle, he instinctively knew it was early afternoon. He guessed perhaps two o’clock or so.

     He looked at his wrist, but his watch wasn’t there.

     For a brief moment he panicked. Then he opened the curtain to expose the truck’s cab, and saw the watch sitting on the driver’s console.

     He didn’t realize how tired he was when he crawled into the truck that morning. He didn’t even remember taking it off.

     Once his eyes focused, he looked at the watch’s face. It was 2:35.

     He had several more hours before sunset.

     He drifted back to sleep.

     The next time Dave awoke, it was to voices.

     Two men, approaching from the north, were arguing loudly as they walked past the truck.

     Dave didn’t hear them until they were adjacent to the truck. The thick Fiberglas body of the cab was designed to cut road noise so sleepy drivers could get their rest.

     He couldn’t understand their words, but could sense their anger.

     He looked out his peephole as they passed him by.

     Dave picked up his handgun and continued to watch the men as they walked the length of the trailer toward his Explorer.

     They were obviously nomads, based on their dress. Each of them reminded him of the homeless men who used to hang out on street corners, carrying signs and begging for change.

     They carried identical backpacks, which struck Dave as odd. The backpacks seemed stuffed to capacity. He guessed they were stuffed with provisions the pair had taken from the back of trucks they’d found abandoned on the highway.

     Perhaps that was why the backpacks were identical. Perhaps they came from the same box in the trailer of a Walmart truck.

     He was still dressed, minus his shoes and socks, but was ready to leap from the truck to confront the pair of men at the first sign they were interested in his vehicle or what was in it.

     But he needn’t have worried. They continued to walk south, past the end of the trailer and past the Explorer, without even giving it a second glance.

     Dave relaxed for a moment and lay back, staring at the drab grey ceiling of the sleeper cab.

     He noticed for the first time a centerfold model, taken from the middle of a men’s magazine, taped to the ceiling directly above the driver’s pillows.

     Miss March, 2009.

     Someone to fantasize about, he supposed, as the driver tried to sleep.

     Or perhaps looking at a beautiful woman first thing in the morning helped the driver start his day on the right track.

     Dave studied the woman. Leggy and blond, with all the features Dave had always found attractive. She was a looker. But she, in Dave’s opinion, had nothing on Sarah.

     By now Dave was wide awake. The adrenaline that pumped through his veins when he awoke to voices took care of that.

     He looked outside again.

     The two men were merely a couple of spots on the horizon now, and were no longer a concern.

     Dave wondered why they’d passed by his SUV, and several other vehicles, without breaking into any of them.

     He wondered if there were now bands of nomads inhabiting the nation’s interstates, who lived not off the land, but off of the cargo from the countless trucks now abandoned every few hundred yards.

     That would make sense. Why hunt game when one could break into the back of a fully loaded Sam’s Club truck, and rifle through fifty three feet of canned and dry goods, bottled water, and a variety of other merchandize?

     Like matching backpacks, perhaps.

     On the face of it, it sure was a better option than breaking into peoples’ houses and risk getting shot.

     And it explained why they passed by his SUV, and the other abandoned cars. They didn’t need to break into somebody’s Chevy in hopes of finding a bottle of water when that Coca-Cola truck half a mile ahead had thousands of them.

     This revelation, as Dave saw it, was a good thing. In a way.

     It meant that his Explorer, parked in the daytime along with all the other abandoned vehicles, was less likely to be broken into. He was less likely to lose the food and water he was planning to drop every fifty miles for his survival caches.

     But it was also bad news.

     It meant that there were likely a lot of others out there who lived on the highway.

     Others who might be camping or walking along close enough to hear the engine of his Explorer. Who might even see Dave park it just before sunrise one morning, and who might decide they wanted it enough to take it by force.

     It was a worrisome prospect.

     And Dave would have to be more careful.

     Such nomads, if they existed in large numbers, had to sleep somewhere. Logic would dictate they’d choose the same accommodations that Dave did: the sleeper cabs of abandoned trucks.

     That meant that Dave might climb into the cab of a truck some morning to find someone already inside.

     And that almost certainly wouldn’t end well.

Chapter 13

     Dave peeked through his peephole once again to check the angle of the sun’s shadows. The Explorer cast a very long shadow now, but it was thinning. Dave guessed late afternoon, perhaps 5:30 or so.

     He picked up his wristwatch, one of the three identical watches he’d stored in a dresser drawer. He’d chosen the old fashioned windup kind. The ones that didn’t need batteries.

     The watch’s face said 5:21.

     Dave had prided himself on his ability to tell time by looking at the position of the sun, and the angles of the shadows, since his Boy Scout days. He’d taught himself how to do it on scout outings and camporees. Then he’d taught others.

     When he was a Marine rifleman, he’d taught others while in the field. He used to bet with the men in his platoon. Their sergeant would gather their watches after morning chow, and at some point in the day would challenge each of them to guess the correct time.

     It cost twenty dollars for each man to buy into the bet. Winner take all.

     After awhile, the others lost interest. Dave almost always won. He was simply better at the game. He’d had many more years of practice.

     It was as good a thing as any to bet on for bored Marines looking for some way to pass the time.

     But that was then. This was now. The long shadows the sun cast meant that Dave only had another hour or so of light. He looked up at the top of the sleeper and the two opaque windows above.

     He’d forgotten to bring a flashlight from the Explorer, relying the night before strictly on his night vision goggles.

     The dim sleeper wasn’t designed to get a lot of natural light. That would have defeated the purpose for drivers who sometimes needed to sleep during the day.

     He moved from the sleeper compartment to the driver’s seat. There was much more light there, and as long as he remembered to use the tractor’s mirrors, he could see anyone coming with plenty of time to hide again.

     He put his backpack in his lap and rifled through it. He removed two granola bars and a foil pack containing two strawberry Pop-Tarts, and placed them on the driver’s console.

     Next came two cans of Ravioli.

     When they bought the Ravioli a year before, they opted for the cans with factory sealed tops. The ones with the pull tabs had a shorter shelf-life.

     And they were more expensive. For every ten cans they could buy of the pull-tops, they could buy twelve of the regular cans.

     And in the turmoil of the world they eventually expected to live in, a few extra cans of food could quite literally mean the difference between life and death.

     From his keychain, he took off a P-38 can opener. It was one of several he’d saved from his days in the Corps.

     The P-38 folded in half and wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp. But it would open cans of Ravioli just as well as the electric can opener he once used on his kitchen counter.

     It just took a bit longer.

     Lastly, he took out the Rand McNally road atlas and his bottle of water.

     He ate and drank as he went through the atlas and found the page for central Texas.

     With his pen, he made a small check mark on I-35, mile marker 200.

     On the journey home it would be a reminder that he did indeed place a food cache at that site.

     If he didn’t make it, and his journal got lost along the way, perhaps the atlas would somehow survive. And if Sarah and the girls made it, and were working their way back home, Sarah would know what the checkmark meant.

     It meant that two hundred paces due east of the Mile Marker 200 sign, across the service road and over a barbed wire fence, lay life sustaining nutrition and water.

     He took a bite from a granola bar, picked up his journal, and started to write.

Chapter 14

Hi, Baby.

     As I start my new journal I sit in the cab of a Kenworth once driven by a man named Charles. I know that was his name because there are two name patches clipped to the visor of his truck. Looks like they’re brand new. Obviously he hadn’t had time to have them sewn on his uniforms yet.

     I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he probably never will.

     I’m south of Austin, and getting ready to start my second night on the road.

     It was a bit hairy getting out of San Antonio, but I managed to get out without getting carjacked or even shot at. I’m hoping the open road will be safer than the cities, but only time will tell.

     Sorry, I had to chuckle.

     “Open road…”

     The truth is, the highway is anything but open. It’s littered with all manner of vehicles, from highway patrol cars to passenger cars to big rigs. Hundreds and hundreds of big rigs.

     It’s like skiing down a slalom course. Only a little more dangerous. If you’re skiing and hit a flag, it doesn’t hurt much. Hitting the back of a parked semi at twenty five miles an hour might.