“We’re in a hurry, guy,” he yelled out the open passenger window. “Sorry.’
“Hold on!” the man yelled back. “My daughter is—”
Ed gave the engine more gas and we shot down the driveway, into the street. The pickup lurched forward as the man ran toward us, yelling. The engine nearly died and then snarled to life again. The angry man got within twenty yards of us before Ed finally pulled away.
Soon we emerged from the neighborhood and turned west onto the main road. Heads turned, people pointed, and a group of three men began walking toward us. With six of us in the truck bed, and three up front, it was obvious we didn’t have room for anyone else, but that didn’t stop the men from approaching. Ed accelerated away from them, but it wasn’t like he could fly down the road, not with all the stalled cars in the way.
“Hey,” said Bart, sitting across from me. “Maybe we should make our weapons visible to discourage idiots from approaching us.”
I nodded and pulled the Sig from the waistband of my jeans. Nick and Aaron saw the point and followed suit.
Sure enough, when Ed slowed to negotiate a glut of stalled traffic, another group of men approached us. Each one was dressed in camouflage and carried a rifle.
“Where y’all headed?” asked the shortest guy, who was walking ahead of the rest and the apparent leader.
“Nowhere,” shouted Bart.
“Maybe you could take us along,” yelled another of the men, this one much taller and broader across the shoulders. “We’re looking for someone to tell us what the hell is going on. Like the police or the Army.”
Ed couldn’t get through the intersection without driving onto the sidewalk. But the curb was tall, and as he eased over it, the group of men gained on us. The engine idled and choked so roughly I nearly fell over.
“We haven’t seen any cops or military,” barked Nick. “I bet they mobilized south of here, where the city is burning.”
“Then take us there,” said the short guy. “We want answers. Otherwise shit is about to get real.”
“Shit already is real,” said Bart. “Now just go on with your business.”
“Our business is to make sure this is still the United States of America. Be a patriot, mister.”
Ed was over the sidewalk now. The men began to fall behind us as the pickup accelerated through the intersection.
“It’s in your best interest to help us, jackwagon,” said the short guy.
Bart’s response was to raise his weapon higher, a clear message to back off. When he did, the short guy shouldered his rifle but didn’t quite point it at us.
“You want to see who’s a better shot, asshole?” he screamed.
“Move this fucking truck!” yelled Bart.
The pickup lurched forward. The short guy in camouflage raised his weapon higher, as if he might fire, but one of his buddies reached over and pushed the barrel downward. After an exchange of words, the two of them turned away and went back to patrolling their claimed corner.
Ed learned from that experience to approach intersections with more speed. It was a hell of a ride with nothing to hold onto but the side of the truck and each other. We agreed to be vigilant about watching for interested parties and made it to the Dallas North Tollway with no more trouble.
The tollway is a major arterial that connects Dallas with its northern suburbs, and by then it was conveying a massive number of refugees from points south of us. Many of them walked in the median, but plenty were on the road surface as well, threaded between stalled cars, looting them for food and valuables. We kept our weapons visible to discourage anyone from approaching the truck. In the direction of the airport, smoke in varying shades of white and gray and black boiled into the sky, where it was eventually absorbed by a dark cloud deck that seemed to promise rain.
None of us had anticipated quite so many pedestrians on the highway, so we decided to exit at Eldorado Parkway. Here we found more strip malls, grocery stores, and gas stations on corners.
When we crossed a short bridge, Bart thumbed southward and said, “That’s Lakewood Village. Big houses on the shoreline of Lewisville Lake. Would be a good place to ride this out, I think. It’s isolated and protected by water on three sides.”
“A Walmart warehouse would also be a good place to ride this out,” I suggested.
Soon we reached a second bridge, a long stretch of road over gray, choppy water. I realized Bart had a point: If you posted sentries at both bridges, you might protect the area from refugees and looters. How strange it was to think of the world in wartime terms when only days before I had been playing golf and making out with strippers. It had never occurred to me how fragile our society was, how civility and order barely covered our animal instincts. God had forced us to look at ourselves, and the reaction had been desperate and feral. We would either starve to death or kill each other and then starve to death. Except for the chosen few. Except for me.
Eventually we turned onto a ribbon of blacktop so narrow that trees stretched over us like a canopy. As we sped down the road, I imagined it was 1944 and we were in a Jeep, sneaking behind enemy lines. The sky was dark and seemed close enough to touch. The trees were so dense I expected, at any moment, a squad of Nazi soldiers to burst onto the road. Each one of us gripped his weapon a little tighter and opened his eyes a little wider, as if it were obvious something terrible was about to happen.
Finally, we reached the end of the pavement. Ahead stood a metal gate, beyond which the road became dirt. Off to the right stretched a long gravel driveway where a two-story house loomed, bluish gray, surrounded by trees. The garage was open and a red pickup was parked inside.
“Stop!” a voice yelled. “This is private property! Identify yourselves or I will take you down.”
“Mack,” said Nick loudly. “It’s me. I brought some friends. We need your help.”
“Nick,” Mack said, as if in confirmation. “I can’t believe you came all the way out here. What’s your business?”
“We know where there’s a lot of food and we need your help to get it. We’re going to put together an assault and we want you to come along.”
Finally, a figure emerged from the trees, a short, heavily-bearded man dressed in a flannel shirt and ratty jeans and a camouflage trucker hat. His rifle was shouldered but he didn’t point it at us.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re talking about the Walmart DC.”
NINETEEN
When Mack invited us into his house, my first notion was to walk straight for the kitchen and find something to eat. I wasn’t exactly starving, but my hunger was magnified by the knowledge that I was unable to satisfy it.
Mack didn’t seem to care, though. We gathered in his living room, where he revealed how he’d known our plan before we explained it.
“The idea of taking refuge in a Walmart distribution center sometimes comes up in the prepper forums. Most of the sheeple don’t even know it’s there. And it’s stocked with enough food to feed a lot of people for a long time.”
“That’s our thought as well,” said Jimmy. “We’re hoping we can enlist your help.”
“So tell me your plan.”
“If we approached with enough firepower,” I said, “we should be able to overcome whoever might be there already.”
“Maybe so,” said Mack. “You should assume Walmart built contingency plans for an event like this. They would expect to be a target. There could be men with rifles. There might be families. You’ll need to develop strategy and a tactical plan and treat this like the hostile invasion it is.”