“Hey, shit, this one shot himself in the ass. He literally shot himself a new asshole, Jake.”
“You seem to be enjoying yourself, considering we just killed these men.”
He stopped probing around Larry and looked up at me. He then stood and walked over to me. His face was serious then, all joking gone.
“These dubious motherfuckers were set up to ambush us, Jake. They were going to kill you and me both for our trucks and whatever we had in them.”
I didn’t have any response for this, so he kept speaking.
“I can see your point of view; I’m not a total bastard. It’s just that I don’t really care. If you spend your time in this new world agonizing over everyone you have to kill when they force you to kill them, you’re just not going to last that long. For those people you meet that are worth preserving, you hold onto them and give all to keep them safe. And,” he turned and pointed at the dead, “for such as those, they’re worth less than your contempt. They’re not evil. They’re not big game or good sport. They’re an obstacle. They’re another challenge that the world throws at you; something you have to best. They aren’t worth any more consideration than that.”
He walked back over to Larry while I stood there trying to absorb what he had just told me. He picked up the pistol (another semi-automatic) and read the side. “Taurus,” he scoffed. “Fuuuuuck you,” he said and left it on the ground.
It turned out that Billy had a plan for the taper punch and drip pans. In modern cars, all entry points into the gas tank have anti-rollover valves to prevent fuel from pouring out everywhere in the event of a vehicle roll. These valves also have the unfortunate side effect of blocking siphon hoses. You can get around this by using a really thin, stiff tube cut at an angle; you have to twist it into the tank just so, and you can typically get past the valve.
Billy had neither the tube nor the patience for that, so he fell back to plan B; a method he said he read about in a book. Basically, we were going to get gas through the cunning means of punching holes in gas tanks and catching the spill in drip pans. We had a couple of pans, so as one filled up, we could swap in the empty and let it fill up while pouring the first pan into one of the gas cans.
Neither of us were excited about hanging around the area in which we had just engaged in a firefight, so we drove south towards the 215 and then swung out due East in search of cars with gas tanks we could access easily. We didn’t have to go very far to find likely vehicles, but we pushed out a few miles anyway just to put some distance between ourselves and Pep Boys. The closer we got to the 215 and the 15, the worse the pile up became and we eventually had to call off the advance. We got out of the trucks with tools and equipment in hand and made our way over to a red Toyota.
I handed my rifle over to Billy. “Here, take that. Keep an eye out.”
“You sure?” he asked as he reached out to take it. “It sucks to get a face full of gas if you’re not careful.”
I smiled and gave him a pointed look. “You see yourself getting under a Toyota any time soon, big guy?”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll keep an eye out.”
I could hardly fit under the car myself. I could see the tank, and I could even reach out and touch it, but I simply could not get far enough under to drive a hole with the punch. “Well… shucks,” I muttered and got back up.
“Okay,” Billy said. “Next one, then.”
“Nope.” I was walking back to the truck.
“Hey, where’re you going?”
“If we limit this to only the cars we can easily crawl under, we’ll be out here all week,” I called back as I rummaged around in the back of the crew cab. I finally found the jack and lever and brought it back over to the Toyota. After I had the car up on three wheels, I swung around to lie on my back.
“God damn it, we should have grabbed some jack stands. This isn’t safe, Jake.”
I looked over at the jack and struck it with the meat of my hand; two solid shots. “Seems okay. We’re probably not going to be written up by osha.”
“Wiseass…”
“Oh, yeah!” I said, sliding under. “There’s all kinds of room under here now!” I lined up the pan beneath the tank, set the punch directly over it, and gave it a whack with the mallet. The punch dimpled the tank and partially broke through, at which point fuel started dribbling out and ran all over my hands. “Gaaah, damn it,” I grunted and gave it another quick hit. Having punched through fully, I yanked it out, producing a dribble of a stream that pulsed at regular intervals.
“Huh,” I said.
“What’s up?” Billy asked from somewhere off to the right by my legs.
“Well, I could have sworn there was more in this tank from the sound it made when I started tapping it, but the gas is just dribbling out.”
“Oh, right. I’m an idiot. Hang on…”
I heard the sound of his boots rattling away as he ran back to the truck. A short time later, he ran back. I heard a metallic slam followed by a wrenching squeal. A few seconds later, the fuel stream started running fast and even into the pan.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“There was no way for air to get into the tank to replace the fuel coming out. We were fighting suction. I just busted open the gas cap and stuck a crowbar in there to wedge the valve open to let the air in. How’s it going?”
“Better slide that other pan in here…” was my answer.
We spent the rest of the afternoon going up and down the street punching tanks. The first few took some time, but after we got the hang of it, we fell into a sustainable rhythm. It wasn’t long before we had both the van and the truck topped off and all the spare gas cans filled.
“This is pretty good,” I said, lifting the last can into the truck. “This never would have occurred to me. I bet we could keep a vehicle moving for years doing this as long as we don’t run out of cities and no one else gets wise.”
“Three to six months,” Billy said.
“Huh?”
“This will work for about three to six months. After that, the gas will have gone to shit. It expires a lot faster than you’d think. You can maybe extend the life of regular gas out to two years if you load it with additives and store it in some high-quality stainless steel tanks, but we don’t have any of that. So: three to six months.”
“Well… shoot,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do about that?”
“Well, there’s always something you can do.” Billy leaned on the truck bed and wiped his forehead. “You just have to decide if the result is worth the effort. There’re more important things to deal with. Shelter, sustainable food, sustainable water. By the time you have all that figured out, all the gas will have gone bingo. The only viable option after that point will be diesel.”
“It lasts longer?”
“Oh, yeah,” Billy nodded. “Diesel is just a fantastic technology. The engines are really forgiving and run on just about anything, and diesel fuel will last a good ten years even if you don’t baby it. The only problem there is finding diesel vehicles, which were less popular for some damned unknown reason.”