Chapter 2 Static on the Air #3
“Probably.”
“Then do it. Rosa, take him. Get the pump live.”
She stared at him.
“And you?”
“I’ll misunderstand them.”
Rosa stepped closer, lowering her voice.
“There are too many angles.”
“I know.”
“You get pinned in here, I’m not dragging you out while he fixes a generator.”
“You won’t need to.”
“That sounded like confidence, but I’ve heard men confuse confidence with a suicide note.”
Dane met her eyes. There was fear in hers, and anger, and beneath both a demand that he not become another man she had to leave behind.
“I’m not dying at a weigh station in Nebraska,” he said.
“People rarely pick the decor.”
The loudspeaker popped again.
“Last warning. We are authorized to collect medical cargo under road emergency claim.”
Nell shouted something from inside Tomber that did not carry clearly but sounded impolite.
Dane looked at Rosa.
“Go.”
For a heartbeat she did not move. Then she grabbed Otto by the sleeve and shoved him toward the back door.
“Generator,” she said.
“Yes. Excellent. Wonderful. I love urgent infrastructure.”
They slipped out through the rear.
Dane moved to the front entrance, staying low beneath the window line.
He opened the door and stepped out with the shotgun held loosely, not aimed.
The air outside had sharpened. Rainwater dripped steadily from the tin awning over the pumps.
The infected drawn by the rifle shot were still distant but closing, their scattered moans drifting over the concrete.
The lead pickup stopped twenty yards away. Three men climbed out. One had a rifle. One had a pump shotgun. The third wore a tan coat and carried no visible weapon, which meant he either had one hidden or believed the others were enough.
The man in the tan coat smiled.
“Afternoon.”
Dane said, “Station’s closed.”
“World’s closed. We improvise.”
The man was younger than Dane expected, maybe thirty, with neat hair and an accountant’s face made strange by a bruise darkening one cheek. A white slash had been sewn onto his coat sleeve.
“My name is Silas Pike. I represent the Milemen’s Platte Corridor office.”
“You printed business cards yet?”
“We had some. Morale initiative.”
Dane did not smile.
Silas’s eyes moved over him, the shotgun, the truck, the cab where Nell’s face had disappeared from the windshield.
“You came out of Sallow Creek.”
“Lots of roads do.”
“A doctor there stole medical property from our recovery team.”
“Sounds careless.”
“It does. Especially because that property is dangerous in untrained hands.”
Behind the office, the generator coughed once.
Every Mileman heard it.
Dane stepped forward half a pace.
Silas looked back at him.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t want to do any of this. That stopped being useful three weeks ago.”
The generator coughed again, then caught with a rough, chugging rumble. The pump display under the awning blinked. Dead gray numbers flashed to life.
The man with the rifle shifted.
Silas raised one hand slightly, stopping him.
“You’re a driver,” Silas said. “That makes you practical. Practical men don’t die for causes they heard about an hour ago.”
Dane could hear fuel beginning to move, the pump motor whining as Rosa or Otto worked the hose. He needed time. Not much. More than Silas intended to give.
“What do practical men die for?” Dane asked.
“Usually? Pride, women, bad debts, and refusing to hear a generous offer.”
“That the offer?”
Silas’s smile thinned.
“You give us the girl and the cooler. We give you fuel, food, a Milemen pass west to the Colorado line, and the chance to stop pretending you are equipped to cross the country with strangers.”
Dane let his gaze drift toward the infected beyond the lot. Closer now. A dozen, maybe more.
“You always talk this much?”
“I try not to shoot useful people.”
“Doctor Quist useful?”
Something flickered in Silas’s face.
“Quist made his choice.”
“He said no.”
“Yes,” Silas said, and the courtesy drained from his voice. “People confuse that with virtue now.”
From Tomber’s side, fuel clattered into the tank. Too loud. Too slow.
Nell appeared suddenly in the windshield, not hiding this time.
She looked at Silas through the cracked glass with an expression Dane had seen only once before, years ago, on a steer that had escaped the slaughter chute and stood trembling in the road while men approached with ropes. Terrified, yes. But understanding.
Silas saw her and sighed almost kindly.
“There you are.”
Dane raised the shotgun.
Silas stopped sighing.
The infected reached the first pickup from behind.
The rifleman heard them too late. A woman in a torn nightgown seized his shoulder and sank her teeth into the side of his neck.
He screamed, firing wildly into the sky.
The sound broke everything open. The second Mileman swung his shotgun toward the infected.
Silas dove behind the truck’s hood. Dane fired once at the pickup’s front tire, shredding rubber, then turned and ran for Tomber.
Rosa was at the pump, one hand on the hose, the other holding the rifle awkwardly under her arm. Otto knelt beside the pump housing with a panel open and wires in his hands, shouting something Dane could not hear over gunfire and engine noise.
“Enough!” Dane yelled.
Rosa ripped the hose free, spilling diesel across the concrete.
Otto sprang up, slipped, caught himself, and ran with the horrified dignity of a man whose legs had filed an official complaint.
Behind them, the Milemen fired at the infected, at Dane, at everything the sudden chaos had made uncertain.
A bullet hit the pump canopy with a metallic shriek.
Another punched through Tomber’s cargo box.
Nell shoved the passenger door open from inside.
Dane shouted, “Stay in!”
“I unlocked it!”
“That’s not staying in!”