Day 5
3: Drive
I'm a city boy, I guess. John's made light of this in the past, claimed I wouldn't survive a moment in the desert. He's probably right, but for now we've got a van full of gas and supplies that Jamie managed to sneak along with the keys to aforementioned van. When the time comes to survive on what we can scrounge, that's when John's in charge. Much as his leadership had given way to mine, now the person in charge of us all was Jamie. John had outdoors experience, true, but at the moment we all knew he was too distracted by looking after Dana. I'd never been outside Carson. Jamie had at least traveled, even if she wasn't too up on local geography. Looking out the window and seeing little but mountains and sand, it was clear there wasn't a whole lot of geography to learn up on.
Jamie may have been driving, but I was the one with the map. It wasn't telling me much - the van itself was of prewar manufacture, apparently having been very well maintained since then. Hell, as far back as the plague was, it'd probably been replaced part-by-part. The map dated back to the van's creation, and so wasn't much help.
"Anyone here know if Wells is still around?" I asked, picking a city that looked close. John shrugged and clearly didn't know. Jamie was wracking her brain, trying to think if her family had ever mentioned such a city. The map said it hadn't been that big a town back then, so if it was around today it was likely to be little more than an outpost. If we were lucky, it'd be a gas station. The van had a full tank, but getting gas nowadays was a lot more difficult than it had been, and there was no telling how inefficient it was normally, let alone with the air conditioning on. We'd have gone without it, of course, but John seemed to think that the heat wouldn't be good for Dana and none of us knew enough about head injuries to argue.
"Which way?" Jamie said. So far we'd just been driving south, out of the town. We hadn't traveled too far but already the city - such as it was - was gone. Of the two main roads, Jamie had chosen the one which looked more important - "Paradise Highway", the sign had proclaimed it.
"Straight ahead" I replied; she'd chosen well, this road would take us to a real highway, and from there anywhere. I didn't voice the concern in the back of my head. Freeways weren't free anymore; Troopers liked to set up shop in old toll plazas - they hadn't even been free back then - and check everyone who went through. They could do this because there weren't a whole lot of people going anywhere anymore, and unless you had some sort of official business you weren't even allowed on the roads anyway. There were a lot of old highways, though, and not enough Troopers to man every single entrance.
The time passed; I spent it entering everything that had happened since our capture into my PDA. Jamie seemed content just to drive; while her family had traveled, she hadn't had the opportunity to drive any decent distance on her own and she seemed to be enjoying it. John was administering what little field medicine he remembered, which mostly consisted of trying to get Dana to drink water with very little success. Nobody said anything; everyone was in their own private world.
After entering everything my cramped hands would allow, I sat back and looked out the window, in the vain hope of spotting some wildlife. The sun was starting to grow low in the sky, and I glanced over at the fuel reading. Still plenty, and still I worried. It didn't help matters that I had, indeed, spotted something when I'd looked for desert life. There was a vulture in the air, circling somewhere distant. I couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for whatever was suffering out there in the desert, and I couldn't help but to hope that the next thing the vulture found wouldn't be me.
There were no lights but our own, out here. The sun had vanished below the mountains on the horizon, leaving shadows and dusk, and I was beginning to get a feel for how far the Troopers had taken us from civilization. Sure, Carson isn't exactly big time, but it's home and at night the whole thing's lit up. I found myself wondering why they'd taken us so far away, why they hadn't just shipped us down to Meadows where the Troopers make their headquarters and leave us to rot. I mean, I knew that we'd been put in an unofficial prison, that there was no official record of our kidnapping, if we vanished no criminal record would be attached, we'd just be dead in the desert. But still, they do that in Trooperville all the time anyway. The only reason, I suspected, was what Shaw had said. There was a grain of truth in it, as there are to all the best lies: He really did want to recruit me. If I had agreed, he'd have probably taken me to some other nearby city and had me read minds as a test, maybe put me under some other handler. He wouldn't have wanted me in a populated area, not even one as controlled as the Meadows - if I'd lied just to get out of jail, and it wouldn't be the first time I'd done that, I could run rampant in an area with people in it. Alone, I'm less dangerous.
Dangerous enough, though, as Shaw would discover when he came to in his cell. Then again, I'd only escaped the cell on my own, it'd been Jamie who delivered the necessary brute force to get Shaw out of the way. I smiled. It was nice to have friends.
It was night by the time we neared the highway, and there was indeed an open gas station along the way. I directed Jamie to stop in, even though our tank was nowhere near running low. She seemed amused at my paranoia regarding being stranded in the middle of nowhere, but stopping here wasn't just to fill up; it was also to get an idea of how four strangers appearing from the desert would be treated by the locals. Travel, as mentioned, wasn't a very common thing nowadays. If the person running this store were at all the suspicious type, we might raise concerns. I knew we'd raise more concerns the farther we'd gone and the more time we gave Shaw to wake up and get help, so best to find out what our reception would be like now. I still had the stunner, if worse came to worst.
Full Post...
"Even the ride was unnerving. The way they kept trying to avoid looking me in the eyes. Only one of them there would even meet my gaze. She was the one who tried to keep me calm, let me know this was for my own safety. There were people out there who didn't like people like me, it turns out. Made them fear for the future of their species, and when she said this she kinda glared at the other guards. Where we were going, I'd be protected"
I'm a city boy, I guess. John's made light of this in the past, claimed I wouldn't survive a moment in the desert. He's probably right, but for now we've got a van full of gas and supplies that Jamie managed to sneak along with the keys to aforementioned van. When the time comes to survive on what we can scrounge, that's when John's in charge. Much as his leadership had given way to mine, now the person in charge of us all was Jamie. John had outdoors experience, true, but at the moment we all knew he was too distracted by looking after Dana. I'd never been outside Carson. Jamie had at least traveled, even if she wasn't too up on local geography. Looking out the window and seeing little but mountains and sand, it was clear there wasn't a whole lot of geography to learn up on.
Jamie may have been driving, but I was the one with the map. It wasn't telling me much - the van itself was of prewar manufacture, apparently having been very well maintained since then. Hell, as far back as the plague was, it'd probably been replaced part-by-part. The map dated back to the van's creation, and so wasn't much help.
"Anyone here know if Wells is still around?" I asked, picking a city that looked close. John shrugged and clearly didn't know. Jamie was wracking her brain, trying to think if her family had ever mentioned such a city. The map said it hadn't been that big a town back then, so if it was around today it was likely to be little more than an outpost. If we were lucky, it'd be a gas station. The van had a full tank, but getting gas nowadays was a lot more difficult than it had been, and there was no telling how inefficient it was normally, let alone with the air conditioning on. We'd have gone without it, of course, but John seemed to think that the heat wouldn't be good for Dana and none of us knew enough about head injuries to argue.
"Which way?" Jamie said. So far we'd just been driving south, out of the town. We hadn't traveled too far but already the city - such as it was - was gone. Of the two main roads, Jamie had chosen the one which looked more important - "Paradise Highway", the sign had proclaimed it.
"Straight ahead" I replied; she'd chosen well, this road would take us to a real highway, and from there anywhere. I didn't voice the concern in the back of my head. Freeways weren't free anymore; Troopers liked to set up shop in old toll plazas - they hadn't even been free back then - and check everyone who went through. They could do this because there weren't a whole lot of people going anywhere anymore, and unless you had some sort of official business you weren't even allowed on the roads anyway. There were a lot of old highways, though, and not enough Troopers to man every single entrance.
The time passed; I spent it entering everything that had happened since our capture into my PDA. Jamie seemed content just to drive; while her family had traveled, she hadn't had the opportunity to drive any decent distance on her own and she seemed to be enjoying it. John was administering what little field medicine he remembered, which mostly consisted of trying to get Dana to drink water with very little success. Nobody said anything; everyone was in their own private world.
After entering everything my cramped hands would allow, I sat back and looked out the window, in the vain hope of spotting some wildlife. The sun was starting to grow low in the sky, and I glanced over at the fuel reading. Still plenty, and still I worried. It didn't help matters that I had, indeed, spotted something when I'd looked for desert life. There was a vulture in the air, circling somewhere distant. I couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for whatever was suffering out there in the desert, and I couldn't help but to hope that the next thing the vulture found wouldn't be me.
There were no lights but our own, out here. The sun had vanished below the mountains on the horizon, leaving shadows and dusk, and I was beginning to get a feel for how far the Troopers had taken us from civilization. Sure, Carson isn't exactly big time, but it's home and at night the whole thing's lit up. I found myself wondering why they'd taken us so far away, why they hadn't just shipped us down to Meadows where the Troopers make their headquarters and leave us to rot. I mean, I knew that we'd been put in an unofficial prison, that there was no official record of our kidnapping, if we vanished no criminal record would be attached, we'd just be dead in the desert. But still, they do that in Trooperville all the time anyway. The only reason, I suspected, was what Shaw had said. There was a grain of truth in it, as there are to all the best lies: He really did want to recruit me. If I had agreed, he'd have probably taken me to some other nearby city and had me read minds as a test, maybe put me under some other handler. He wouldn't have wanted me in a populated area, not even one as controlled as the Meadows - if I'd lied just to get out of jail, and it wouldn't be the first time I'd done that, I could run rampant in an area with people in it. Alone, I'm less dangerous.
Dangerous enough, though, as Shaw would discover when he came to in his cell. Then again, I'd only escaped the cell on my own, it'd been Jamie who delivered the necessary brute force to get Shaw out of the way. I smiled. It was nice to have friends.
It was night by the time we neared the highway, and there was indeed an open gas station along the way. I directed Jamie to stop in, even though our tank was nowhere near running low. She seemed amused at my paranoia regarding being stranded in the middle of nowhere, but stopping here wasn't just to fill up; it was also to get an idea of how four strangers appearing from the desert would be treated by the locals. Travel, as mentioned, wasn't a very common thing nowadays. If the person running this store were at all the suspicious type, we might raise concerns. I knew we'd raise more concerns the farther we'd gone and the more time we gave Shaw to wake up and get help, so best to find out what our reception would be like now. I still had the stunner, if worse came to worst.
Full Post...
posted by Roger Ostrander at 5:38 PM
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