Twenty-Five to Life, page 7
Julie woke the phone and read the message that appeared on the screen. “Says it’s updating.” She looked closer. “It’s today’s date. How–?”
“Juniper always has the most recent version of the volksnet.”
“I thought the only updates came from caravan-to-caravan sharing.”
“Juney and I are a little special.”
The van’s navigation system broke in with a soft chime. “Hey, sugar, the bridge we’re headed for was declared unsafe about thirty minutes ago.”
Ranger swore under her breath. “Find us a way around, baby girl.”
“Will do, darlin’,” the nav said.
Ranger worked her shoulders. “This drive is going to take a little longer than I thought.”
Thirty miles an hour was ten times the average human walking speed. More than twice the speed of a marathon runner.
But Julie felt like she was crawling. Ranger’s van had probably never been speedy, but it had long ago sacrificed whatever quickness it had to add-ons and age. The roadways didn’t help. Pitted, cracked, washed out completely in places… the locals gave up on maintenance as soon as it was politically expedient. What need for road repair if no one important traveled them?
It was nearly dark, and well into the third play-through of Malala: The Musical, when Ranger pointed at a glow on the horizon. “That’s Albany.”
They went north of the city. Ranger consulted her ancient phone and grunted. “Looks like Thacher will be safe tonight.”
“Who’s Thacher?” Julie said.
“State park. Cops flew over it last night, and they usually don’t do that twice in a row.”
There was no one else on the road. Ranger took a left turn without signaling or slowing down for the stop sign. Years of neglect had nearly reduced the roadway to gravel, and the van wallowed comfortably. A faded sign on the gate revealed the park’s full name: John Boyd Thacher State Park. Ranger showed Julie how to pop the gate and close it so it looked secure. A man in a poncho waved them down as they drove onto the site. Ranger slid down her window.
“No fires,” the man said, “and no fighting.”
“Trading OK?”
The man stepped closer to peer inside the van. “What do you have?”
“Knit goods, mostly. Sundries. I have a pair of purple-and-gray mittens that would probably fit you.”
“I got mittens. ’Sides, it’s a million degrees out here.” The man pointed. “Go up that way. You’ll see where everyone else is.”
“Who’s here?”
“Small caravan. Long-term group.” He waved them on. “Welcome to the park.”
Ranger put the van in gear and took it along a weaving, uphill road that looked like it might crumble under the tires at any minute.
“Who was that guy?” Julie said.
“Caretaker. Self-appointed. Keeps things up and probably lives in the visitors’ center when he’s not ducking the pigs. If it’s a good stay, we’re supposed to tip him on the way out.”
The hill flattened out into a plateau. Ranger pointed Juniper toward a motley collection of vehicles scattered at one end of the small parking lot. The largest was an old school bus, repainted in rainbow colors. If the park seemed less communal than the last site, it might have been the effect of the dead and charred trees that surrounded it.
“Is it safe?” Julie said.
“Safe enough. Honor among tramps and all that. No one wants the cops out here.” Ranger pulled into an empty space and killed the engine. “Let’s go meet the neighbors. Maybe don’t talk much unless I give you the go-ahead.” She took a deep breath of the moist air and spat. “Bad today.”
Julie fumbled the cheap print out of her pocket and tied it around her face. “I never see you wearing a mask.”
“Once upon a time, you’d never catch me without one. Now I’ll only wear one if I’m sick or there’s a new bug going ’round.”
“What about all the shit in the air?”
“When it’s only my life I’m risking,” she cleared her throat, “doesn’t seem as important.”
Julie followed Ranger to the center of the camping area. About a dozen people, most of them women, were sitting around a fire built inside a low iron ring.
“Caretaker said something about no fires,” Ranger said.
“This is the only one he authorized. Had to show him we had enough water on hand to put it out.” A tall man with curly hair gestured to an empty spot. “Sit down and take a load off. Welcome to the park.”
“Hope everyone’s had their shots.” Ranger hunkered down. Julie studied the ground carefully before joining her.
The tall man laughed at her. “Nothing big enough here to eat you. Call me Kinks.”
“Ranger. This is Runner. How long have you been traveling together?”
Ranger directed the question to the women in the group, but Kinks appeared to be the only one in a talking mood. The travelers were clean, well-fed, but none of the women met Ranger or Julie’s eyes.
“Few months,” Kinks said. “Found each other west of here and joined up for safety. We’re looking for somewhere to spend the winter. Spent the last one with my brother in LA, and I don’t want to do that again.”
“I know a couple of places you could hole up near West Virginia. I can send them to your nav unit.”
“Appreciate that. Which way you two headed?”
Ranger poked at the fire with a stick. “This way and that. We like to keep our options open.”
“Got anything to trade?”
“Good chance.”
“We have showers,” one of the other men in the circle said. “Hot as you like.”
Ranger pulled a foodbar out of her pocket. She unwrapped it and handed half to Julie. “I’m plenty clean, but I have some trade-ables that could make your bath time a little happier.”
Julie chewed on her half of the foodbar. It tasted vaguely like chocolate. “I’d love a shower.” She hadn’t had one since the day she’d left home and subsequent itchiness had her worried the bunk in the jail barracks or the squat had been infested.
“Bet you would.” Kinks shifted a burning log. “Just how dirty are you?”
Ranger put her hand on Julie’s ankle to get her attention and offered her a minute head shake. “She’s fresh enough for me. How was the Panhandle?”
“Not bad.” Kinks scratched his patchy beard. “We traveled at night, kept quiet. Missed a lot of the checkpoints that way. Stopped once to wait out a storm.”
“Big?”
“Lot of wind and rain. Could have been worse. Between the fence the Chinese built and the Texans’ shoot-on-sight policy we didn’t have many options.”
“Who’s running the checkpoints now?”
Kinks snorted. “Anyone with the means to put up a road block. Cops. Squatters. Raiders. Neighborhood watch. Kids with lemonade stands. They all have their hands out, and some of them ain’t too polite about asking.”
“But you got through.”
“Like I said, we avoided lot of them.” Kinks grinned at the man who’d talked about the showers. “Paid the tolls when we couldn’t.”
“Good for you.” Ranger smothered a yawn. “It’s been a long day. Think we’ll turn in early.”
“We’re leaving about nine. If you catch us, maybe we can make some deals.”
“Might do that.” Ranger stood and patted Julie’s cheek affectionately. “Let’s go, baby.”
Julie’s eyes widened, but she got up and followed Ranger back to the van “What’s going on?”
“Cock Blocking 101. I don’t think Kinks and I would stay chummy if we talked much more.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I know his type. He’s running a shower show out of that bus of his. You’d get your hot water, and he’d take stills and vid, and you’d be all over the x-feeds by morning.” She pulled the van door open.
“Do people still do that?”
“A lot of people get off on voyeurism. It’s a predation thing.”
“But in ThirdEye–”
“In ThirdEye you can do anything. Nothing is forbidden or taboo, and it’s all fake. Takes some of the fun out of it.” Ranger climbed into the front seat. “You can start in the back tonight. If a shower is worth it to you, talk to him in the morning.”
“Have you ever… you know?”
“There are always other options.” She considered. “Almost always.”
TWELVE
Ranger snored hard for four hours in the front seat and didn’t let up after they switched places. Julie resolved to get earplugs before too many more nights passed, but she slept, too, albeit fitfully. Ranger was already out of the car doing stretching exercises when Julie woke for the final time and clambered, blinking, out of the van.
“I made tea.” Ranger pointed to a table she’d unfolded from the side of the van. “I also rustled up a breakfast out of some of the stuff from your bag.”
“What time is it?”
“About seven. I figured you could eat and pee, walk back over to see if Kinks and his people have anything we want.”
Breakfast was another foodbar, fruit-flavored, and a small tub of bland protein pudding. Julie ate the spoon, too, which tasted like cinnamon, and folded the container flat.
“We’ll hit a recycler down the road and get rid of the trash.” Ranger pulled a patched backpack out of the van. “Don’t forget your mask.”
“You said it wasn’t important.”
“I said it wasn’t important to me,” she said. “You make the call, but no one is going to harass you for wanting to keep your lungs intact.”
Julie retrieved the malodorous mask and pulled it over her face. “What are you trading?”
“Stuff I’ve picked up. And I knit when I have time. And make soap.”
“Soap?”
She smiled. “You’d be surprised what you can get for soap out here.”
Julie closed the van door. “Why are we trading with Kinks if he’s a bad guy?”
“The realities of the situation. Everyone is someone’s bad guy, and if Kinks has something I need or want…” She shouldered the pack. “Plus, I doubt he’s awake, yet. This might be the only chance to talk to his ladies without him.”
Julie followed Ranger back to the fire pit. One of the women from the night before was heating a pot of water. Ranger waved. “We saw you last night, but we didn’t get your name.”
“Boo.”
She opened the backpack under the woman’s nose. “Know anyone who’d be interested?”
Boo reached inside the bag and pulled out a hand-cut bar of soap. “Lemon!”
“Lemongrass. But close enough,” Ranger said. “And mint. A few other things. All natural.”
The woman smiled. “Let me get some of the others.”
Boo steered clear of Kinks’ bus but soon had seven or eight women looking over Ranger’s wares. Ranger traded a half dozen bars of soap for two jugs of waste cooking oil, a couple of clean cheap-print masks, and a pair of gently used boots. She put the oil in her backpack and gave the masks and shoes to Julie to carry.
“You really from out west?” Ranger said.
Boo nodded. “Utah. Three of us left the towers in Salt Lake about six months ago. We picked up the others along the way.”
“When did you meet Kinks?”
She grimaced. “Right after Salt Lake. He convinced us we needed an escort through the Panhandle and then stuck around. Started supplying a few of us with drugs.”
“And showers,” Julie said.
Boo’s smile was thin. “Give it a couple weeks, kid. You’d be surprised at what you’re willing to do to get rid of the stink.”
“You need to ditch him,” Ranger said. “You’re already letting him speak for you, and it’s going to get worse. How much of the convoy does he own?”
“One car and the bus,” Boo said. “But–”
“Is he armed?”
“Nothing lethal.”
“Can you access the volksnet?”
“One of the girls has it on her phone.”
“Leave a message for me there once you’re clear.” Ranger reached into one of the many pockets of her coat. “Take this in case he has a problem with you leaving.”
Boo weighed the stunner Ranger had put in her hand. “I’ve never–”
“Safety off.” Ranger pointed at the switch. “Aim and shoot. Repeat until he stops trying to get up. Zap the other guys, too. You have fifteen shots. Then disable his vehicles. Grab the drugs, get your friends, and drive away. Stick together.”
Boo put the stunner in her jacket pocket.
“The next time I see you, I don’t want to see him.” Ranger closed her backpack. “It’s bad enough out here without feeding ourselves to the snakes.”
Julie hauled the boots and cooking oil back to the van, and let Ranger show her where to stow them. “You really don’t like him.”
Ranger put her keys in the ignition. “Freedom from people like Kinks is important.”
“You do that kind of thing a lot?”
“Not as much as I used to.” She opened a hatch in the console between the front seats and pulled out another stunner. She plugged it into a charging port. “There are three more in the back. I’ll charge one up for you. You know how to use it?”
Julie did. Most of her experience was simulated, but she’d put a lot of time in.
Ranger let several miles pass between them and Kinks’ caravan before waking her phone to access the volksnet. She kept one eye on the road as she scrolled through the posts. “Got it. Small caravan. Heading west. If we hustle we can catch up with them in an hour.”
“Why’s it so important to be in a group now?”
“Rough country ahead. I need to get to Buffalo to meet my clients, and I don’t want any more delays.”
Ranger found the group before it broke camp. She and Julie took the middle position, with a rickety RV running about a half mile back, a converted ambulance behind that, and two young guys in a modern compact taking the lead. Every so often Ranger used her phone to check in with the other drivers.
“The guys in front and back are keeping a lookout for pigs,” she said, glancing from the road to Julie. Without autodrive, she couldn’t afford to take her eyes away for long. “If they see any, we’ll get off the road for a couple of hours and keep you out of sight.”
Tramping wasn’t illegal, but the police assigned to the back roads got bored sometimes. Ranger shaded the dashboard clock with her hand so she could see the green numbers there. “We’ll probably drive for another three hours. Then we’ll park until nightfall. That will give me a chance to give you a driving lesson.” She rolled her head from side to side to stretch her neck.
Ranger’s smartphone squealed. She peered at the screen and dropped it in her lap. She gripped the steering wheel harder. “A couple of pigs coming up behind us.”
Julie had no idea why Ranger kept calling them pigs. Police drones looked like, well, like drones. She craned her neck to look out the back window. “What do we do?”
“We need to get off the road.”
The battered van shook and rattled when Ranger asked it for more speed, but with a lurch and a whine it agreed. The view outside the windows didn’t exactly become a blur, but it started going by at a better clip.
The phone squealed again.
“Can you get that?” Ranger said.
Julie snatched up the handheld and looked at the message flashing on the screen. “The RV driver says they got pulled over.”
“As long as they’re not carrying anything they’ll be alright. You’re the only contraband I’m worried about.” The road ahead ended in a rotary. “Pick an exit.”
Julie picked the second right, which took them onto what, ten or fifteen years ago, had been a major retail strip. Now the stores and chain restaurants along the roadway were shuttered.
“We couldn’t have planned this any better.” Ranger sped through a dead traffic light and took the next right into a parking lot. She steered toward the small cluster of vehicles already parked there and pulled into a spot. “Stay put for a couple of minutes. I’ll be right back.”
She exited, locking the doors behind her, and approached the people setting up camp. Julie watched for a few seconds then decided to be helpful by picking up the mess inside the van. Packages of wetnaps. Sample bottles of shampoo. A superhero figurine. A toothbrush still in the wrapper. Random condiments. A battered sheriff’s star. Another phone, this one missing its battery.
She stuffed most of it into the glove compartment, but hesitated on a picture, printed out old-style on stiff paper. It was Ranger, smiling and holding hands with another woman. Ranger’s hair had not changed, but she looked less worn, even happy. The other woman was pretty, almost tiny, with mechanized braces on her arms and legs. She was wearing a Faraday sleeve that looked just like the one Julie had on.
Ranger reappeared and flung open the passenger-side door. “We’re all set. These guys don’t care if we stay here tonight.”
Julie handed her the picture. Ranger spent a few silent seconds looking at the faces.
“Her name was Euchre. It’s a card game. I’ll show you sometime. She loved taking pictures. Had a whole book of them printed out like this.” Her voice sounded like someone had a fist around it.
“Did you break up?”
Ranger chewed on her bottom lip. “Died about two years ago. Suicide.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” Ranger lay the picture atop the junk in the glove compartment. “Let’s go introduce you to the neighbors.”
The members of the caravan were all senior citizens, refugees from Florida. They shared their dinner and kept Ranger and Julie up late with tales of the days before the Slide and the Emergency Powers Act. “I used to drive an hour and a half to get to work every day,” an old woman with pink hair – the others called her Cotton Candy – said. “Each way! Can you believe it?”
“I drove two hours.” A skinny man named Trainwreck shook his head in disgust. “Big house in the suburbs, and I commuted into the city every day. Everyone I know did!”
