Twenty-Five to Life, page 6
Ranger cleared her throat. “Longish term, I’m headed to California. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the Pacific.”
“How long?”
“After the Chinese but before Texas. Maybe ten years ago.”
The US had signed over most of its middle to the People’s Republic in the ’70s, paying off years of accumulated debt and raising the funds needed for the tower projects. Many of the sixty-seven million native Chinese displaced by rising seas had ended up in America’s former heartland, along with most of the population of the Marshall Islands, Indonesia, and the Philippines. After the secession of Texas in 2088, the only remaining land link to the West Coast was the Oklahoma panhandle. “I hear the crossing is dangerous.”
“Getting through can be a little tricky.” Ranger rubbed the steering wheel with her thumbs. “I’m not going to Pennsylvania this trip, but I can get you up to Albany. We can spend the night near there and look for something in the morning. Got a gig coming up escorting some grays down to their summer hunting grounds in a week or so. Maybe you can hook up with them.”
“Sounds good.”
Ranger’s mouth twisted. “Hold off on that until you meet them. If you’re looking for peace and quiet, this group ain’t it. But they’re nice enough. Good people.” She rode out a sudden coughing fit. “Settle in and get some sleep. Bet you didn’t get much rest in that shit hole.”
Julie didn’t know if Ranger was talking about the jail or the squat, but either would have worked. She was tired, nearing exhaustion, and her arm hurt. Ranger started humming to herself, following the red line the navigation system had drawn on the holo map.
Julie closed her eyes and let the potholes rock her to sleep.
NINE
When Julie blinked awake, the van was coming to a stop among a loose circle of mismatched vehicles. “We’re in Massachusetts,” Ranger said. “The weather is about to do something weird, and it’s better to get off the road.”
The sky was overcast and the light had a gray tone that was unsettling. “Where are we?”
“Near Springfield. It’s a little after five.”
“Oh, jeez.” Julie fumbled for her seatbelt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep–”
“You were pretty out.” Ranger took the van out of gear and turned off the holo map floating above the dash. “Help me put the storm shutters down and I’ll forgive you.”
The van had five windows – windshield, passenger and driver’s side, and two small squares in the rear doors. Julie put on her mask, and Ranger showed her how to pull the metal shutters off the storage rack on top of the van and mount them on the tracks bordering each window.
“What’s it supposed to do?” Julie said.
“Hail, maybe. Sleet.” Ranger rested her hands on her hips and watched as Julie bolted the last shutter in place. “Could be nothing. Could be a calamity. Better to be safe.”
The heavy leather coat Julie had spotted on the back of Ranger’s seat was now draped over the woman’s shoulders, almost like armor. She was wearing boots, thick work pants, and a denim shirt. Around her waist was a utility belt. Carson S Riley might not have approved of Ranger’s fashion sense, but the ensemble made her look extremely competent.
“You hungry?” Ranger said.
“A little.”
Ranger held up a box of protein crackers. “Let’s go meet the neighbors.”
A campfire burned at the center of the circled vehicles, and people were clustered around it. Strings of fairy lights twinkled on and around the parked trucks and vans.
“Don’t tell anyone your real name and don’t ask for theirs,” Ranger said before they came within earshot of the group. “If anyone here is wired, their emplant might be listening and dime you out to the pigs.”
Julie stopped walking. “Who should I be?”
“Bad luck to pick your own road name,” Ranger considered. “It’s supposed to come up naturally.”
“I don’t believe in luck. How about Pilgrim or Wanderer? Or Scout?”
“Gods, no.” Ranger resumed her walk to the campfire. “Maybe just don’t talk.”
A woman with a zipper tattooed on the side of her head raised her hand as they approached. “Howzit?”
Ranger put her hands on her hips. “Fair. Figured we’d park early to avoid the storm.”
Zipper woman’s head dipped. “Got anything to share?”
“Box of crackers.”
“Welcome to the park. There’s soup.”
“Real soup?” Ranger said.
Zipper woman smiled. “It’s wet and there are edible things in it. I’m Zip.”
Ranger tossed the crackers on top of a pile of assorted food items. “Ranger.” She indicated Julie with her thumb. “This is Runner. We’re just out of Hartford. Everyone’s shots up to date?”
A chorus of nods and “yeahs” answered. The two people beside Zip scooted over to make room by the fire. Julie followed Ranger to the ground. She focused on the mug of soup someone handed her while Zip quizzed Ranger about the road to Hartford. The thin soup was mostly re-hydrated vegetables and soba. It benefited greatly from the handful of seasoned crackers she crumbled into it.
“Where you from, Runner?”
The man who asked the question was thin, maybe fifty years old, his rainbow-colored hair drawn up into a ponytail.
Julie cleared her throat. “Boston.” Close enough to true. “You?”
“Texas, originally.” He introduced the man beside him, a little younger with several facial piercings. “This is my husband, Crunch. I’m Alamo. We left when Texas went independent.”
Texas had gotten pretty crazy toward the end, nationalistic, macho, very bootstraps and traditional values. It could easily have made someone like Alamo uncomfortable.
Alamo introduced the rest of the folk around the fire. He was probably the oldest. Zip fell somewhere in the middle. The youngest were a set of three men, almost boys really, called Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
“They came on together.” Alamo leaned over as if to confide in Julie. “Seemed like we should recognize them as a set. I call ’em the ‘ducklings.’”
The three spoke English with a thick accent.
Easel and Squeak were a middle-aged married couple from Virginia. They traveled in a brutalist-looking pickup truck. Squeak had drawn kitchen duty, and the soup was his responsibility. Crunch contributed dessert: two boxes of slightly stale toaster pastries, warmed over the fire. After the dinner things were recycled or burned in the fire, Magnolia, an older woman on her own, shared a jug of wine.
Alamo was the easiest to talk to, but there was hardly a need to be choosy. They all had stories to share. Even the trio of boys talked guardedly about life on the other side of The Wall.
It was nearly nine when the rain started, sluggish and considerate of bodies and minds slowed by cheap merlot. Ranger pulled out her phone to check the weather. “Looks like the hail is canceled,” she said. “Just rain.”
Zip and her caravan were headed south in the morning, so Ranger and Julie offered goodnights and goodlucks and walked back to the van.
“Runner, huh?” Julie said as soon as she felt it was safe. The wine made her feel loose and comfortable. “A little obvious.”
Ranger yawned. “I’ve met a dozen Runners out here. You’ll have to pick a modifier if more than two of you are in a group, otherwise it’ll be fine. No one will question it.”
“Midnight Runner,” Julie offered. “Road Runner.”
“More like Carpet Runner or Table Runner.”
“I actually do like running,” Julie said. “For exercise.”
“Kismet.” Ranger unlocked the van. “You take the front seat. I’ll wake you up in about four hours, and we’ll switch.” She pulled a battered sleeping bag out of the back and tossed it on the front seat. “I think this still has some juice left. There’s a reader full of books in the glove box if you can’t sleep.”
“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”
“Paper is in there.” Ranger pointed to driver’s side door. “Bottom pocket. Don’t go crazy with it. The bushes over there to the left are probably safe. That’s where I’d go.”
Julie smiled.
“What?”
“I had fun tonight. With people. That’s not normal for me.”
“That’s just the wine talking.”
“It was great. It’s just like the documentary.”
Ranger’s forehead creased. “Yeah, well… It can be that way. Sometimes.”
TEN
The van rocked, and Julie took it as a signal to stretch and yawn herself awake. “Time to go?”
Ranger peered over the seat at her. “Was. Then it wasn’t. Zip’s guys have a mechanical problem we’re trying to suss out.”
“Can I help?”
“Know anything about antique cars?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re on the clean-up crew then. Coffee is on the fire. Breakfast is whatever you can find. Check in with Squeak for a to-do list.”
Julie lingered inside the sleeping bag for a couple of extra minutes. It smelled like it hadn’t been washed in a while, but it was warm and difficult to leave. The need to pee finally forced her outside, and, that taken care of, she walked to the fire and poured herself a mug of the murky coffee heating in a saucepan there. The first sip made her grimace.
“Filter the grounds through your teeth.” Squeak dropped the recycling bag he was carrying.
She tried it again. The second sip made her grimace, too.
“It takes some practice,” he said.
The coffee was hot and bitter and bold. Completely lacking in subtlety. Probably just what she needed to get her heart started and her brain running right. “Ranger said there was some kind of trouble.”
“Huey, Dewey, and Louie… the Spanish kids? Their car won’t start.” Squeak brushed his thinning hair back and wound it into a bun with one of the hair ties he wore on his wrist. “I don’t know how it’s stayed running this long. The thing’s almost as old as I am.”
“Can Zip fix it?”
“Zip? Nah. We’re just a pick-up group. Closest thing we have to a mechanic is Easel, and she doesn’t know anything about hydros.”
“Can we call someone?”
Squeak laughed, and Julie finally understood where he got his name. “Like who? It would cost more than the car’s worth to get someone out here, and there’s no telling how long that would take.” He poked the trash bag with the toe of his boot. “Nah. If we can’t get it started they’ll have to ditch it. We can’t park here for another night.”
“So–?” Julie started.
“Ranger and Zip say I can put you to work.” He pointed out the piled-up remainders of the prior evening’s potluck. “Salvage anything edible and/or appetizing and toss the rest in the bag. If you see anything you want to eat, grab it and call it breakfast.”
“What do I do with the rest?”
“Bring it over to Magnolia. She’s in charge of stores until we break up.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We were supposed to be on the road by now. Might want to ask her what she wants to do about lunch.”
Julie finished her coffee and turned her attention to the pile of boxes and containers. Most were empty and went straight in the bag. She grabbed a peanut butter-and-jelly bar out of a mostly empty box and washed it down with another cup of coffee. A few of the containers were sealed but past their expiration date. Julie decided to tote them over to Magnolia and let her provide the answers. She carried Squeak’s recycle bag back to his truck and lugged the salvage to the station wagon Magnolia traveled in. The older woman was repacking the small trailer she towed behind it. “Hey, Runner,” she said.
“Got some things for you,” Julie said. “Some of it’s expired.”
“That’s usually more of a suggestion than a hard stop,” Magnolia said, “but I’ll take a look at them.” She straightened and pressed the small of her back with both hands. “Any news about the ducklings’ ride?”
“I haven’t heard anything.” Julie piled the containers on the trailer’s surviving fender. “What happens if it won’t start?”
“Nothing good. We’re only together for another two hundred miles or so, and none of us are set up to take three extra riders.” She frowned through the transparency of her filtermask. “Everything those boys have is wrapped up in that car. Losing it would be a disaster.”
There were seven climate-refugee camps in the Arizona-New Mexico Buffer Zone, jointly funded by the governments of the Unites States, Mexico, and Independent Texas. Ref life was simple: no one got enough, everyone was mistreated equally, and the only sure way out was death.
“They’re brothers,” Magnolia said. “Their grandmother had a little money set by. She arranged for a smuggler to take them to Las Vegas, and they bought the car there. Got royally screwed on it you ask me.”
“Squeak said I should ask you about lunch.”
She shifted the box of leftovers Julie had carried over. “There ought to be enough here. We’ll have to clear out before six, though. I hope Zip realizes that.”
“What will happen if you don’t?”
“If no one is paying attention, nothing. More likely the drones will come chase us out. It’s private property. The malls are sort of grandfathered in with old laws, but we still can’t park at most of them for more than a day or two.”
“Can we put a message up on the volksnet? There has to be someone who can help.”
Magnolia frowned. “The boys were extremely lucky they found us. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about helping the wretched refuse as we are.”
“But… I…” Julie stopped, confused. Altruism was practically a volksgeist commandment.
Magnolia’s eyes widened. “You’ve seen that movie.” She smiled to herself. “I’ve watched it a couple of times just for the laughs.”
“I don’t get the joke,” Julie said.
“I mean, it’s better spin than the government-propo vids about us. Drug- and disease-ridden parades of the damned, freaks too stupid to get out of the rain. That documentary…” her lips curled, “the only people they talked to were the crazies, the zealots. No one elected them to tell our story.”
Julie frowned.
“Pop up, babe, I didn’t always live in a station wagon. I did my doctoral anthropology study on lumberjacks in the northeastern US and Canada. Wish like hell I could do it over knowing everything I know now. That film barely went ankle-deep into life out here.” She scrubbed at her forehead with her sleeve. “Living on the road isn’t for the weak. It’s exhausting, and kindness is rarely rewarded. The only reason I do it is because it’s a lesser hell than taking a cube.”
Magnolia returned to her packing and inventory, and Julie wandered back to sit in the van. She ran the Just Volks documentary back through her mind. The participants hadn’t seemed crazy, or at least no crazier than anyone else. What the fuck is the point of this if–?
Ranger broke into Julie’s downward spiral by rapping on the window. “I need your help.”
“With what?”
“We may have gotten real lucky on this whole breakdown thing.”
Julie helped Ranger unpack equipment from the back of the van. The volksnet, Ranger explained, was not a single network. Instead, each caravan, organized or ad hoc, carried its own copy. Anytime caravans met, or a new vehicle joined an existing group, all the phones and computers hosting a copy of the volksnet compared notes and updated themselves based on who was carrying the most recent version.
“It’s a security measure.” Ranger grunted, lifting a multi-limbed contraption out of the van. “It keeps the pigs from knowing too much about what we’re talking about. Juniper,” she slapped the side of the van, “just happens to have the freshest bread, and that bread just happens to have manuals and printer files from a hydro-car hobbyist up in Maine.”
Ranger and Julie carried the pile of gear to the middle of the circle of vehicles and watched as Alamo hooked it up to his generator.
“Two parts,” Ranger said. “It will take a few hours to powder enough feedstock, and a couple more to print, but I think we can get on the road by two or three o’clock.”
Alamo loaded the broken bits he’d removed from the boys’ car into the scanner and set to work. “I’ll do them in plastic first to check the fit.”
Julie looked dubiously at the battered 3-D printer she’d unknowingly been sleeping beside. “Does that thing even work?”
“Probably,” Ranger said. “What’s for lunch?”
ELEVEN
Julie waited until Ranger had thunked the navigation system into life and pulled back onto the road.
“Why aren’t we traveling with a caravan?” she said.
“We were literally with a caravan ten minutes ago.” Ranger pointed to the monitor linked to the backup camera. “Zoom in real quick and you might see their sweeper.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m a professional.” Ranger slowed the van through a moonscape of potholes. “When I was first out here I always ran with a caravan. Recently, though,” she smothered a cough, “recently I’d rather be alone. It just works out better. Don’t have to worry about finding someone headed my way.”
“What happens if you have mechanical trouble?”
“I fix it.” She patted the steering wheel. “I know every inch of her. There’s not a thing she could do that would surprise me.”
“Plus, there’s the volksnet.”
Ranger jabbed a thumb at her jacket. “That reminds me. Reach into the big pocket closest to you. Be careful, there might be a couple of sharps.”
Julie reached gingerly into the pocket Ranger indicated. “What am I looking for?”
“’Bout four inches wide, flat, smooth–”
“Got it.” Julie slid the object out of Ranger’s pocket. “It’s a phone.”
“Yours. Alamo gave it to me to give to you. His specialty. It’s all wiped and rigged. New battery. The pigs can’t find it, but the volksnet can.”
