“You and a surprisingly large percentage of the population. Even during this last year with fuel prices climbing steeply, with the way our society functions a lot of people have to travel for work or to visit distant relatives or for countless other reasons. Access to relatively cheap, plentiful fuel has made us a mobile people, and now that the fuel’s gone the nation’s going to boil like a kicked anthill as all those stranded people scatter in every direction trying to get home. And they’re not going to have an easy time of it since everywhere they go will be as bad as where they left.”
Trev always liked discussing current events and possible future dangers with his cousin, but now didn’t really feel like the time. “Speaking of not having an easy time of it, I’ve got a long walk ahead of me and you’ve got a ton of fuel in a tank in the shed. Can you come pick me up?”
“Sure, let me gas up the truck and I’ll call you when I’m on the way. You’re still on the highway, right?”
“Right,” Trev said, thinking of his wild urge to ride the steep slope off the road. He must’ve been half crazy.
“Okay, I’ll see you soon.” Lewis abruptly hung up, and Trev put the seat back to rest until his cousin showed up. It had been a mostly sleepless night, and combined with the morning’s excitement he was surprisingly tired. It felt good to just shut his eyes.
When his cousin’s ringtone sounded Trev was almost annoyed, even though it signaled help he desperately needed. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket. “Hey. On your way?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. “Um, actually… I’m having a bit of trouble with the gas.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Trev said in disbelief. Lewis, who thought of everything, caught as off-guard as Trev had been by all this? “I thought you had a 50 gallon tank that you kept full.”
“I’ve got my tank, sure, but the last time I refilled it was a year ago and I just topped off what was already in there, going back over two years.” Lewis made an annoyed sound. “It’s not that the tank’s even empty: I’ve still got over 30 gallons in there, give or take. It’s just I haven’t had to use any of it for months and, well, it’s old gas.”
Trev did his best to control his rising dismay. “But you had fuel stabilizer in there, right?”
“Duh.” His cousin sounded equal parts sheepish and impatient. “That only does so much though. I didn’t even realize there was a problem with the gas until I filled the truck and tried to start the engine, and let me just say it wasn’t a pretty sound. I might be able to get away with using gas this old for chainsaws and other small tools, maybe even ATVs that have more leeway with that sort of thing, but I wouldn’t want to try it in any more vehicles.”
Trev stared at his windshield. “I’ve got most of my most important stuff I’ve been gathering for years with me, not to mention I spent the rest of my money, emptied my bank account, and maxed out my credit card buying a ton of food at a store before starting down. My car’s filled with things we could really use.”
Lewis was one of the most pragmatic people Trev knew, not one to just walk away from useful supplies. “Well I guess I could take my wagon cart and make a trip of it,” he said slowly. “But that would be a lot of effort and we probably still wouldn’t be able to take everything. It would also take me a few days to get up there and I’d have to leave the shelter unguarded just when people might be most tempted to ransack it. Is it really enough to be worth it?”
Trev thought of all the stuff in his car, over five thousand dollars worth of incredibly useful and important items. Then he estimated how much he and his cousin would eat on as many round trips as it took to bring everything, even if for later trips he’d be able to bring his own wagon cart. He thought they’d still definitely be able to ferry down way more than they’d use, a net gain.
Then again, compared to the stores of food they had piled in the shelter what he had in his car was just a bonus, not to mention that at any point while he was away somebody could come and loot his car and make any further trips a waste. Lewis was right that it was better not to risk themselves any more than necessary when it came to the difficulty of travel and possible attack. Besides, if he had to he could just pack down his most valuable stuff like his guns and a decent a mount of ammo and still be fairly well off with what he had down in the shelter.
“I guess it’s better not to travel in an emergency situation if you can avoid it,” he admitted reluctantly. “Especially not if somebody stole our place out from under us while you were out bringing down my junk.” He sighed. “I just hope whoever finds this stuff sitting on the side of the road gets good use out of it.”
There was a bit of an uncomfortable silence before his cousin finally spoke. “Um, I hate to point out the glaringly obvious but why don’t you just cache everything? You’ve got a shovel and some tarps, don’t you?”
Trev slapped himself on the forehead. “Right, I really should’ve thought of that.” But then his mounting excitement faded. “It would still be sitting right here, though. We’d have all the same problems getting to it that you just brought up.”
“I’m sure you’d rather have the option of solving those problems later than losing your stuff entirely,” Lewis replied. “I mean if worse came to worst you could always let people in Aspen Hill know it’s there, that way if anyone wants to make the trip to go after it at least it’ll be a neighbor benefitting rather than some random looter.”
He supposed that made sense. “Okay I’d better get to work. See you in a few days.”
“For 50 miles with a full pack?” his cousin said lightly. “I expect to see you here tomorrow before noon.”
Trev grimaced at his phone after his cousin hung up. He seriously hoped that was a joke, since to go the distance in that time he’d pretty much have to walk nonstop. That would be brutal even without lugging as much as half again his weight in a backpack.
Time to worry about that later, though. He spent a few minutes digging out his spare tarps and the folding camping shovel from his backpack. All bought at Lewis’s suggestion, since he wouldn’t have even thought of them. Then he set them on top of a pair of buckets and made the first trip down the steep slope to the copse of trees he’d spied earlier. He might not be able to hide his car behind them but he should be able to find a great spot for a cache.
There was one, near the middle of the copse in an ideally sized clearing with trees blocking the view of the outside world in every direction. His first task was to dig down as deep as he planned the hole to be and then wait a bit in order to make sure no groundwater seeped out: caching all his expensive, important stuff in what basically amounted to a well was about the best way he could think of to destroy it.
The water table around here was incredibly low, usually hundreds of feet deep, and it didn’t rain too often, but with something this important it was better to be safe than sorry. After he’d dug down about three feet and waited a few minutes, making a trip to the car for another load, he felt the bottom of the hole and satisfied himself that it was bone dry and should stay that way.
He still dug the remainder of the hole with a channel at the bottom, which he filled with most of the smaller and medium sized rocks he dug up to make a drain. The drain was an idea he came up with on the spot, and between it and the tarp he hoped everything would stay dry.
It was hard to guess exactly how big the hole needed to be to fit all the stuff he planned to leave behind, so he went the extra mile and made the hole bigger than he thought he strictly had to. The small shovel wasn’t his ideal tool and he spent most of the roughly two hours he spent digging cursing at it, and at the frequent rocks he encountered in this stony soil. At least he had plenty of experience digging, most recently while helping Lewis bury their shelter with the aid of a backhoe and their back muscles, so the job was familiar enough.