We may have been out in the middle of nowhere, at least as I defined it, but PowerDown had left its skid mark across the face of the landscape here. Once this highway had probably handled 30 cars an hour at its busiest. We had not seen any today. None. Zero. It was rather freaky. None of us liked it, but that was why we were out here. To find problems and solve them before the rest of the horde had too.
This highway had its share of abandoned vehicles. Far less than what we had seen before. Yet enough that someone would eventually make some money working salvage here. Hell, at the rate America had gone through its vehicles during PowerDown Detroit might actually make a comeback building replacements. That thought was quickly followed by "Nah. They had already proved they could fuck up a wet dream."
Instead of dwelling on it I told Loco and Ricky. "Y'all know the drill. Loco take the road. I'll take the left side of the road." I didn't bother finishing who had the right side. Ricky knew. We didn't push out someone at point. Instead we rode abrest of each other. Loco was our car guy. That was why he had the center of the road. His job today was find us something that would run.
We had made it to about 3 miles from here when the Tundra died. It wasn't the trucks fault. Ricky had taken a pot hole that had turned out to be deeper than it looked, busted a tie rod, and driven the truck at an angle into a telephone pole. We weren't moving that fast which was a good thing. Since the airbags no longer worked it was even better that we had belted in. Well, it was a Walkaway truck anyways so no big deal. At least that was what I thought at the time. "How hard can it be to find a vehicle? I mean it rained vehicles along this road for awhile." The only reason we had stopped here was to eat something and reinflate my tires.
We should have been further ahead. The problem was we were having to stop and clear the road. When we couldn't do that we had to find away around the obstacle and then mark that we had been there. A couple times we had been visited by crows who sat on the telephone wires and watched us. Loco had asked me "Those Freyas birds?"
I replied "You know anyone else who does that shit?"
He didn't answer. I didn't care. I suppose I should have made it into a "teachable" moment. Maybe even answered civilly. I didn't because it was a stupid fucking question.
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