As I was loading the tires into the pickup bed, I noted to myself that we would need some way to pressurize them. I just turned to poke my head back into the store and tell Billy when I saw movement across the street out of the corner of my eye. I immediately dropped to a crouch behind the bed of the truck and started cursing at myself for leaving the rifle against the window inside of the shop. I pulled the Glock from my waistband (a weapon I was totally unfamiliar with and had yet to fire) and crept around the side of the bed to look across the street. There was nothing. I must have sat there for a good five minutes, barely willing to breathe and looking for any hint of movement whatsoever. Presently, my knees started to ache horribly, and I was just beginning to consider relaxing when Billy’s voice issued from directly behind me, unexpected.
“What’re you doing, there, Whitey?”
I jumped in place. My outraged knees collapsed as a final “screw you” to my unreasonable demands and I plopped down directly on my tailbone.
“See something out there?” he asked. He had his shotgun up to his shoulder and was scanning all around.
“I can’t be sure. I thought I saw some movement, but it was just peripheral. I might just be jumpy. Seeing a completely deserted city takes getting used to.”
“I get yah,” he said, offering his hand. I took it, and he levered me up to a standing position. He pulled rather effortlessly, I thought, and my feet may have left the ground a little at the top of the motion.
“Strong for an old man,” I mentioned.
He chuckled modestly. “Yeah, training for general strength is a thing you do at my age if you want to be able to wipe your own ass past a certain point. A thing you do at any age, really.”
“Why do I get the impression that you’ve been practicing for everything to fall apart?”
“Oh, well…” he muttered, going back to the shopping cart inside, “I don’t know that I was practicing for all of this, but I’ve always been a bit of what you might call ‘a prepper.’ It was one of the things I always focused on in my tribal council days…when I still had a tribe. Self-reliance in all things. Being in a position where you don’t have to rely on anyone else makes you stronger. From the perspective of our tribe, that meant achieving self-reliance in our sovereignty from the U.S. government. That was where all the gaming came from—we wanted a genuine and powerful mode of income on whatever scraps of land we had left that didn’t rely on the sufferance of outside forces or governing bodies. Gaming casinos were an outstanding way to realize that dream—a self-contained, little ecosystem of revenue generation that relied very little on outside sources or suppliers. No manufacturing, no supply chains to consider. It was beautiful.”
I noted that Billy spoke with genuine pride when he discussed these concepts. I wasn’t sure how high up he was in his tribal government, but it was fairly obvious that he had some significant skin in the game.
“Anyway,” he continued as he reached out to toss various odds and ends into the cart, “as I continued to push these values in council, I became more interested in ways that I could pursue self-reliance in my own personal life. Because of that, I picked up a thing or two that ended up being useful when the world went to hell.”
“Seems I have some catching up to do.”
“No worries,” he said, offering a light slap to the shoulder. “I have one or two things I can share.”
We went through the store getting more items that made sense. Some of it was picked over but not as bad as I had feared it might be. Common sense stuff like roadside emergency kits were completely pillaged; there wasn’t a flare to be found anywhere in the shop. Other things like tools and replacement parts could be found if they were items not commonly replaced. I probably could have turned that whole place upside down looking for replacement belts for our vehicles and never found a thing, but items like alternators and torque wrenches were still available.
We threw a few more tools into the cart (more wrenches, pliers, channel locks, vice grips and the like as well as a replacement battery each for the trucks. Billy finally found an emergency air compressor in the back of the shop that could be plugged into a cigarette lighter port, and we finished out the plunder with as many tire patch kits as we could find. Things like batteries, flashlights, and so on were simply no go.
Satisfied that we had established a successful balance in need versus capacity, we gave each other a nod and rolled the cart toward the front door of the shop. I picked up the M4, slung it over my shoulder (Billy hadn’t laid his shotgun aside at any point since we’d been in there; he literally slept with its sling over him), and exited out the glass double door.
Directly across from the front entrance was the Dodge truck, backed in with the gate about five feet from the door. To the left of the truck was the van, also backed in. To the right of the truck were two men of entirely questionable nature. They looked rough and ragged, but then we all looked rough and ragged after the fall, so I wasn’t exactly holding that against them. What I didn’t like, what set me on edge immediately, was that they had positioned themselves such that the sun was to their backs and in our faces and they were spread out far enough that they made two discrete targets about thirty degrees apart. Their demeanor suggested a friendly conversation, but everything about their placement screamed ambush.
Billy must have seen it immediately and processed it much faster than I did. When I stepped outside, he had already moved out to the left and positioned the truck bed between himself and our two new visitors. He had his shotgun held loosely in his hand and resting lightly over his left forearm. It looked comfortable, but it would take an idiot to miss the fact that he could have it up and ready in an instant.
For my part, I froze for a beat, grunted, and swiveled my rifle up under my arm and aimed it at their general direction. If they had actually had a firearm ready to go, there would have been ample time to kill me several times over. Thankfully, they had a plan slightly more complicated than simply shooting us full of holes. The one on the right was armed, as far as I could see, with a pistol jammed into his waistband like some sort of gangster. They both raised empty hands when my barrel came up.
“Whoa, whoa, stranger! No harm meant. We’re just passing through, is all,” said the one on the right. I didn’t like his look, and his voice settled the deal for me. He had a weasly, greasy look with an unctuous, assuming little voice that set my teeth to grinding the minute words came out of his mouth. His friend was harder to get a read on; he just stood there silently.
I swiveled my eyes over to Billy, who was in my peripheral view and who, to my shock and horror, put his back to the whole thing and began to focus his attention in the opposite direction. I wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing, but I didn’t want to do so out in the open in front of Weasel and Mum.
“Passing through,” I repeated. “Fair enough. What can we do for you?”
Weasel put on what I supposed he thought was his most winning smile; it was grotesque and unnatural. Mum divided his attention between me and Billy, who had seemed to lose interest in the whole thing. “Nice of you to ask, there, friend. Quite nice. Larry and I couldn’t help but notice that you and your partner had these two outstanding fucking rides here. You look like fellas who have straightened your shit right out. We were thinking maybe you’d be interested in joining forces or maybe just trading?”
Weasel and Larry, then. Fine.
“Joining forces, huh? Just what kind of force are we talking about?”
“Oh, it’s just me and Larry here. Not much of a force, really, but four is better than two, after all, wouldn’t you say?” He chuckled at this, seemingly pleased with his ability to do simple math. He and Larry were both stealing glances over at Billy now, who continued to look down the street in the direction opposite of where I would really have rather he devoted his time, shotgun now in low ready with butt in shoulder and muzzle down.