American Apocalypse IV - Heartland Chapter 7

The roadblock was more than I expected it to be. I had pictured a couple of worn out police cruisers, a pickup or two sitting along side the road, and a couple of people wearing road crew glow in the dark vests over half assed uniforms, an a lot of attitude. The only thing I got right was the attitude and that wasn't even that bad.

There were two vehicles pulled over to the side. One was a truck with the bed full of boxes an a fair amount of watermelons. Little green ones.  The other was a passenger car that was beginning to rust out where a couple of bullet holes had punched through the drivers side passenger door sometime in the not so distant past. 

The truck was being unloaded by the owners who were white, skinny, and almost dressed like normal for a world that was gone. Almost being they were wearing sidearms, were skinny for Americans for that period, and they looked pissed.  The Polo shirt was one of the expensive ones and the pants were clean. I figured it was their go to the market clothes. They were stacking boxes from the bed on the road that a guard in uniform was poking half heartedly through. The watermelons were being stacked in two piles, one smaller than the other. My guess was they were going to be paying the toll with one of those stacks of melons.

The other vehicle belonged to a family, that term was used loosely these days, of Latinos. They were sitting on the grass to the side and looked very bored. My guess is this was nothing knew to them. They had three kids between the age of 9 to 11 running around chasing a gypsy mouth, yelling "Butterfly" and laughing like crazy. Their trunk was popped but it hadn't been emptied of the luggage, boxes, and a couple blanket rolls inside. Only Dad was armed that I could see. What was amazing to me was they had Texas tags on the car.

Thursday was signaled to pull in behind the two cars which he did. The dogs began barking and the officer waving us in didn't look particularly pleased to see them hanging over the bed drooling, growling, and barking at him. I reached back, banged on the cab back window with my knuckles, then leaned out my window and yelled "Shut Up!" All that did was turn the volume down a couple notches.

Thursday put it in park an asked me out of the corner of his mouth "Friends or foe?"

I opened the door. I was going to have to knock some dog heads together if they didn't shut up and told him "Don't know yet" as I dropped to the ground.