The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [129]
There's no telling how many vehicles went into making my freight truck. I lost count of the places where I found the little valves and bolts and brackets and gaskets. But the body belonged to a military Hummer and the engine to a second Hummer - a big eight-cylinder reconfigured to burn even our lousy homemade alcohol. No two tires have the same lineage. I can make most repairs using the tools on hand and the junkyard behind our last outbuilding. But one of these days, this truck is going to stop running. It'll probably happen at the bottom of a gully and miles from home, and the part I need won't be in my inventory, or more likely I'll hike all the way home and find ten replacements, every last one of them rusted and useless.
Water and time are two demons steadily erasing what remains from before. But that very bad day still sits somewhere in the future. Today we have a fleet of Jeeps and little trucks and tractors and powered carts, plus the one big Hummer. With Lola's help, I load the truck and both trailers, tying down the choicest parts of elk and whitetail and wild pigs, plus that one idiot black bear that decided to visit us last October, mauling our dogs when he wasn't making a mess of our smokehouse. Balancing the load is critical, and it takes a lot of pushing and dragging until everything is just right. Suddenly it's mid-morning. Lola thinks it's too late to go and wants me to delay, although she won't say it. I give her a kiss and she does nothing. I step away and she pulls me close and kisses me, lifting her face and whole body against me. I have to laugh. Then she slaps my face and storms away. I climb into the cab and take the usual deep breath, for luck. The engine catches on the first try, and I wave and she waves and smiles, and I roll across our yard and down onto the narrow, grass-choked road to town.
The dogs follow but not too far.
In good shoes and motivated, a fit person could run to Salvation in ninety minutes. Every road between home and the highway is my responsibility. Nobody else lives out here. Spring and summer, I use our biggest tractor to pull the mower, keeping the weeds and volunteer trees off the once-graveled roadbeds. I also blade over the ruts and any gullies made by cloudbursts and eventually I'm going to have to brace the bridge at the seven-mile mark.
The bridge creaks and moans but it holds as always. My roads end at the highway and sitting beside the intersection, happy in the sun, is a tiger - a great yellow and white and black beast staring at this noisy contraption and the stubborn, half-deaf man clinging to its steering wheel.
The local tigers are beauties. Their ancestors lived in a city zoo or maybe somebody's private collection and instead of being mercy-killed the big cats were set free. Siberian blood runs in this fellow. He is enormous and warm inside that rich winter coat. A fur like that would command a huge price in town. Or even better, it would be the perfect surprise for a woman whose biggest hope is for a sack of bug-free flour.
But this tiger proves to be a wise soul. Reading my mind, he vanishes into the grass before I can get hold of my favorite rifle, much less put the scope to my eye or push a big bullet into the chamber.
Oh, well.
Salvation stands along this highway and the adjacent ribbon of clear, drought-starved water. Turning left, I head downstream. Rectangular foundations show where homes once stood, pipe and wire scavenged long ago, the wood and gypsum burnt off by the spring fires. Side roads and driveways are nearly invisible under the pale dead weeds. A factory was only half-built when work stopped and, while the roof caved in years ago, the concrete walls and paved parking lot are putting on worthy battles against roots and the surge of the frosts. After that ruin comes the first tended fields. Families have claimed different patches of bottomland. People who might be four generations removed from farming have figured out how to plow and irrigate, how to fight off the weeds and pests, saving seed and canning their produce and