Fuel (Best Laid Plans Book 1) (20 page)

“Yeah we'll see if we can find someone to take over for you, but your best bet is to ask Lewis on the way into town. Cya.”

Small chance he was going to take a stranger to the shelter to talk to Lewis about taking over for him. His cousin would kill him if he did. He'd just have to leave the northern border open for a bit, and if trouble came of it there was no one to blame but Turner for not setting up a better system to deal with people on patrol needing to head back to town for some reason. Well, Turner and Trev himself, since he could technically just send Mandy on while he continued his patrol. But uncomfortable as he was about letting her in at all the thought of letting her in unescorted was even worse.

He turned back to find the sunburned woman gnawing on the largest piece of jerky in the bag. “Do you need to rest? The town's about four miles away.”

“As long as I can eat on the way,” she replied. Trev nodded and started up the hill and she was quick to fall in behind him.

On the way back he was feeling too guilty about his borderline hypocrisy to talk much, but after Mandy had finished eating she was happy to fill the silence for the both of them by telling her story.

She'd been a dental hygienist in Spanish Fork before the attack, single and living in a one bedroom apartment with less than three days of food in her cupboards since she mostly ate out or ordered in. For the first few days after the attack she'd treated things as normal, going to work and eating at her usual restaurants. It wasn't until she saw her favorite places closing down because of lack of ingredients that she realized that food wasn't making its way into the city and she should probably start stocking up just in case.

It was almost too late when she went to the store, as she saw to her dismay that all the food aisles were empty and other items were quickly being snatched up as well. She'd even gone to the pet food aisle in desperation, only to find that it, too, was bare. It was pure good fortune that she found a small bag of cat food that had somehow gotten mixed with the kitty litter and escaped notice. The idea of eating pet food revolted her, but she'd purchased it all the same in case of a real emergency.

She'd started eating from it the next day, while at the same time going door to door around the apartment complex begging to purchase food. Some gave her a bit out of the goodness of their hearts, although nobody accepted any of her money, but she was still getting hungrier by the day and was almost out of cat food.

When the riots started a week after the attack Mandy started to get really scared and seriously considered leaving, but there was nowhere to go. A single man living a few apartments down offered to let her ride with him and some friends to Denver, where they'd heard FETF was setting up a relief station, but she'd assumed he was a creeper with bad intentions and had refused.

“I've spent the last five days wishing I'd accepted,” she admitted to Trev. “Now that I've seen really bad men I realize how harmless and generous my neighbor was.”

The night of the riots the disaster became personal for Mandy, when a group of hoodlums began looting her apartment complex. She'd woken up to screams, crashings, and the sound of gunshots, and had scrambled to hide in the foot space beneath her vanity, pulling the small stool in after her and stacking some dirty clothes on it until she was hidden.

She'd waited there for almost half an hour listening to awful noises all around her before she heard the sound of people breaking into her apartment. For the next fifteen minutes she listened as her stuff was thrown around in the living room and dishes in the kitchen were smashed as if for fun. Then the looters had found their way into her room and began tossing it down for anything worth looting.

Mandy had sat in petrified silence watching through a tiny opening between the clothes piled on her footstool and the corner of the foot space, barely daring to breathe as her bed was overturned and her closet ransacked. Her dresser drawers were emptied on the floor and her clothes tossed around as they searched for hidden valuables, and she'd been forced to listen to them making crude jokes as they pawed through her underwear. With each passing second she'd grown more and more certain that they'd eventually find her, and when they did she'd soon wish she were dead.

But the closest the looters came was searching the vanity directly above her and smashing its mirror. Then they all started shouting and left in a rush to go on to the next apartment.

Even after they were gone Mandy waited for more than an hour without hearing any noises anywhere in the rest of the complex, cramped in the tiny space sobbing her eyes out, before she finally found the courage to crawl out and look at her devastated home. The looters had stolen all her valuables and destroyed most of what they didn't take, shattering her last illusions of normalcy. She'd gone out into the complex to find other families gathered comforting each other through the tragedy, and even with others around her had never felt so alone.

Luckily a Hispanic family living one floor up kindly welcomed her into their home, although the next day FETF arrived to inform everyone in the apartment complex that they'd been assigned to a temporary evacuation shelter in the city of Price to the southeast. The coordinators gave the families enough food for a few days and showed them the route to take along Highway 6, then sent them on their way unescorted.

Along the way Mandy's group joined up with other evacuee groups heading in the same direction until there were hundreds of them strung along the highway in a line as far as the eye could see. Even though her group was among the first people who'd set out they did pass a few other groups, although far more often were passed themselves.

On the third day Mandy was dismayed when she recognized many of the men in a group that had just caught up to them as the same ones who'd ransacked her home. And true to their nature they'd immediately joined with other men of the same vile morals and seized control of the growing caravan, confiscating all food to “properly oversee its distribution”. From then on the distribution to anyone not in that group was halfhearted at best, with men offered little and women and children scarcely better treated. Only the most attractive women in the caravan ate as well as the looters, provided they gave the thieves-turned-despots a reason to be generous to them.

“It only got worse from there,” she admitted to Trev about an hour later as they climbed over the last low rise before town and came in sight of Aspen Hill's first houses still about a half hour away. “Eventually the hoodlums stopped trading and started taking, if you get my drift. That's when I decided it was time to leave, even if it meant setting off away from the highway on my own. I knew there had to be some towns around here, some way to get to Price.”

The description of what she'd gone through sickened Trev. “Did your group say anything about stopping at Aspen Hill or passing through the town?” he demanded. If so he could talk to Deputy Turner about doing something to stop what was happening.

She shook her head. “They're following 6 all the way there. I was traveling well off the road so I'd stay far away from them.” The blond woman gave the houses a longing look. “Oh look at this place. It's like the riots and all the violence up north completely passed it by. I wish I could stay here.”

Trev shifted uncomfortably. “If you were sent to Price you should keep on going there. Like I said, I'm happy to offer you a meal and a bed, maybe a bit of food to help you make it the rest of the way, but that's all I can do. The town decided together not to take in refugees.”

“But what if you took me in yourself?” she demanded. “If you've got food to spare you could feed me, and nobody would have a right to say you can't be generous with your own possessions.” She reached out and shyly took his hand. “That would be okay, wouldn't it? I promise I'd pull my own weight.”

Trev took his hand back, uncomfortably reminded of her initial offer. He wanted to help her, but at the same time she was a complete stranger. He was almost certain Lewis would refuse to take her into the shelter, and for that matter he wasn't sure he wanted the commitment of being completely responsible for her future wellbeing just an hour after meeting her.

Just like with the town's decision to refuse the refugees, if he took Mandy in he'd feel more and more pressure to take in anyone else who came by his patrol route. And he wasn't about to be a hypocrite who told other people not to take in refugees then did it himself. Besides, two people eating from his stores halved the amount of time he could live off them: careless generosity could clean him out pretty quickly.

And he needed that food. He was still worried he didn't have what it took to survive long term, and that food was the only buffer he had to figure things out. As terrible as it made him feel to send her on it was the best thing. “Sorry, I can't,” he said. “You need to go on to Price.”

Mandy frowned at him. “Well fine then. Thanks for a meal and a bed at least.” She didn't sound nearly as thankful as she had before.

They continued the rest of the way into town in silence. Trev followed the dirt, gravel, and then narrow paved streets towards Main Street, planning to follow it to town hall and talk to Turner or Anderson or whoever about his decision to take Mandy in. The situation was made more awkward by the fact that he couldn't take her to the shelter and she needed a place to stay.

But it turned out he didn't need to go that far. A crowd was gathered at Roadblock 1, and it looked as if a delegation to the refugees was just returning when he arrived.

Before he could seek out Anderson or Turner Matt caught sight of him and waved frantically. “Trev, I'm glad I found you!” his friend called, hurrying over. “Listen, I'm really worried about-” he cut off abruptly, looking over Trev's shoulder at Mandy. “Who's this?”

“This is Mandy,” Trev said, stepping to the side to introduce the refugee. “I found her heading our way on the north border.”

Matt gave him an irritated look. “Weren't you the one telling everyone that we can't survive if we welcome people in? You sure managed to convince everyone else!” Trev could only look helplessly at his friend, and after a few seconds of angry silence Matt glanced at Mandy and took in her pitiable state, then looked quickly away to give Trev a slightly more understanding look.

Trev took his friend by the arm and led him away a short distance. “Listen,” he whispered, “has anyone been out to the refugee camp to check things out? From what Mandy told me on the way here things were pretty bad in her group, and those people out there might be having the same problems.”

“That's what I needed to talk to you about,” Matt replied. “At least kind of. It
is
pretty bad out there, and the refugees want to camp closer to town to avoid more dangerous groups even though we're not letting anyone through the roadblock . . .” he said that last bit with another pointed look at Mandy. “But that's not the problem.”

His friend fell silent, looking worried. Trev waited for a few seconds and then lost patience. “What is it, then?”

“I went out with the delegation so I could look through the refugee camp,” Matt said heavily. “I was searching for news about my sister and her family. They were planning to stay put in Midvale, but with things so bad up north I was hoping they'd come south after all. But nobody has seen them or recognized their names, and from what I've heard from the refugees about their trip south I don't want my sister's family in that sort of danger. Terry's great, but I'd feel better if they had more people protecting them.”

“You've got that right,” Mandy said over Trev's shoulder. “If your sister's hot you should definitely be worried.”

Trev gave the sunburned woman an irritated look. Whatever she'd suffered that was a pretty callous thing to say. “I'm sure she's fine,” he quickly said.

But even as he said it he felt his own worries for April's family. Trev had heard all about the chaos in the valley from his friend after Matt had finally decided it was time to get out, and had heard more from his cousin about the dire situation in other cities. If Terry and April and their boys were still back in the middle of that they could have run into real trouble.

But as a friend he thought he should be the voice of hope. “If they just decided to stay put until things calmed down they might have avoided all the trouble,” he offered. “They could still be up in their house in Midvale. It was on the outskirts closer to the mountains, right?”

Matt shook his head, but not in answer to his question. “The refugees had plenty to say about what's going on up there. Looting, rioting, even gunfights in the street. Word is FETF has come in to restore order, but before they did anything else they sent off the refugees to their designated evacuation areas. After that nobody's quite sure what's happened up there, and with the internet and phones out there's no way of telling.”

“We could try Lewis's radio,” Trev offered. “There's got to be people up there exchanging news.”

To his surprise Matt shook his head firmly. “I need to go up there,” he said. “It's the best way to find out what's really going on, and if I can find my sister and her family I can help them get back down here safely.” He hesitated, then squared his shoulders and looked Trev square in the eye. “Will you come with me?”

The request hit him like a blow. That was a huge thing to ask, even for a friend. After all Trev had done to make sure he had a place to escape from the chaos, and especially after he'd left immediately after the attack just to avoid getting caught in it, going back up into the cities was the last thing he wanted. They could end up getting shot, or at the very least robbed and stranded with no food in a desperate situation.