Tuesday, April 20, 2010

American Apocalypse IV - Heartland - Chapter 1d

Working the cars wasn't our job. The horde had people whose job was to check vehicles for goodies. If they found anything they would leave it in piles on the road and when the trucks rolled past it would be picked up and picked over. At least that was the plan. Who the hell knew what reality was going to be. The problem we continuously bumped into was how labor intensive and time consuming everything was. I had learned that right away as soon as I had become homeless. The farm had emphasized it. Everything that had happened since was just reinforcement.Well, if it was true everywhere than unemployment was going to be a thing of the past.

I personally thought of car stripping as a shit job but some people loved it. They actually thought it was fun. My guess was that it attracted the same kind of people who thought going to the mall was fun back in the day. You want to smell something foul? Bust into a Lexus that has been sealed up tight for months with dead people in it. No thanks.  Usually they just busted the trunk open and left the passengers to grin at whoever passed by next. Popping the trunk still created quite a stink.  No clothes were salvagable that was for sure.  We passed on the deadmobiles like that. I was sure others wouldn't and hadn't. There were gold wedding rings and diamonds to be found. 

We were having problems finding a vehicle. Not because there wasn't plenty of them. The problem was finding one with a stick that we could roll and jump start. Nobody bought vehicles with stick shifts anymore. It helped narrow the search down. If it was an older truck we stopped and looked. Otherwise it was keep pedaling.  Me and Loco at just stopped to look at a Ford F-150 when Ricky said "Got company ahead."  We stopped looking and rolled up near Ricky to take a look. Yep. We had company.

9 comments:

  1. Man, have you mastered the art of leaving us gasping for more. Thank you.

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  2. Thank you nova,the writing has tightened up.It is a damn good story.

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  3. Nova,

    I can't tell you how happy I am to read your story again.

    So what's with these vehicles? I would have thought that they'd run out of gas and been abandoned. Were they shot up by raiders? That's the only reason I can think of people being dead inside them. Who would sit in a car until they starved to death? My memory might be failing me, but was there some catastrophic happening when the clan was hunkering down in the mine? A nuclear war? An old testament smiting? (This tale could take so many turns the possibilities are endless.)

    But whoever the 'company' turns out to be, they'd better be friendly, because Gardener is a force to be reckoned with, especially with his Freya+ skills.

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  4. Not all are filled with dead people. More so closer to the urban areas. I thought about it this morning. You would have had snow on the ground. Some would have died from carbon monoxide, some would suicide, some would be shot. Other cars would be empty because they took off on foot or were taken.

    What happened was the power grid went down hard and stayed down for awhile. With Just in Time and 2 days supply of food on hand in most cities...that got ugly. Especially in a country that had cut to the bone emergency services personnel and everything else needed to handle a catastrophic event.

    .............

    zapoteca! nice to see you back

    .......................

    I think writing is like working out..you got to do the reps. Plus, Y'all's comments do make a difference...

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  5. Injectors don't start up on roll, stick or no stick.

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  6. blue,

    I asked my wife this morning and she said "Yeah, you jump started my car that one time." I don't remember it but she said I used a pocket knife and rolled it down hill... It had fuel injection. I wish I remembered what I did.

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  7. Er, I've roll started injector cars with manual transmissions before, not sure what you mean blue.

    I did it with my little 2006 Kia Rio just last month.

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  8. Did some reading on roll starting fuel injected cars - if the pressure is all bled off it can take quite a bit of effort, but eventually you'll get it to work.

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  9. Hey FSHB!

    Yeah. All I probably did was poke at things with the pocketknife. We had a Saturn. What a total piece of crap.

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