Chapter 3 The Grain Town #2
“We need to look at the front end of my truck.”
Elias looked past them toward Tomber through the grimy bay window.
“That refrigerated box?”
“Yes.”
“That thing sounds like a washing machine full of bolts.”
“You diagnose by ear?”
“I diagnose by insult. More accurate.”
Despite the situation, Otto looked delighted.
“I like him.”
Elias looked at Otto.
“I don’t know you well enough to care.”
“I rescind my affection.”
A pickup engine growled outside.
Dane moved to the window.
The first Milemen truck rolled slowly past the café and onto the road leading toward the grain elevator. The second stopped on Main Street, blocking the far end of the lot. Men climbed out, not hurried. One carried binoculars. Another pointed toward Tomber.
Rosa whispered, “They found us.”
“They followed a giant truck into a town with one main street,” Elias said. “That ain’t detective work.”
Dane looked at him.
“Back exit?”
“Through the big bay, around the elevator, service lane to the county road.”
“Doors powered?”
“When power works.”
“Does power work?”
Elias smiled without humor.
“What do you think?”
Otto raised his hand again.
“I can make electricity happen in a limited, anxious capacity.”
Elias stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
“It means show me the generator before the gentlemen outside convert us into a cautionary tale.”
The old man hesitated, looking from Otto to Nell, then to Dane’s revolver and Rosa’s shotgun. Whatever calculation he made, it ended with a sigh.
“Generator’s in the back room. Fuel line clogs. Starter sticks. Everything sticks. World stuck too, I guess.”
“Take him,” Dane said to Elias.
Elias did not move.
“This is still my shop.”
“Then save it.”
That reached him. The old man grunted and jerked his head toward Otto.
“Come on, radio boy.”
“How did you know I was radio?”
“You got soft hands and talk too much. Had to be radio or county government.”
Otto followed him, wounded.
Dane turned to Rosa.
“Get Nell under the service pit.”
Nell said, “No.”
Dane looked at her.
“We are not doing this every time.”
“Yes, we are, if every time you decide I belong in a hole.”
Rosa stepped between them before Dane could answer.
“The service pit has concrete sides. It is cover. Cover is not punishment.”
“It feels like punishment.”
“Most things that keep you alive do.”
Nell looked at Rosa with betrayal, which Rosa absorbed with visible difficulty. Then the girl climbed down into the inspection pit beneath the empty lift, cooler first, moving carefully on the metal steps. When she reached the bottom, only the top of her head showed.
“I can still hear you,” she said.
“Good,” Dane replied. “Then listen.”
Outside, a voice called from the lot.
“People in the shop. Nobody needs to be heroic.”
Dane recognized Silas Pike from the weigh station even through the wall: mild voice, reasonable cadence, poison wrapped in cotton. Rosa recognized it too. Her face went still.
Silas continued, “We only want what was taken from medical recovery jurisdiction. The driver is not our concern unless he chooses to become one. The girl will be transported safely.”
From the service pit, Nell shouted, “I’m not cargo, you road-tax creep!”
A brief silence followed.
Otto’s voice drifted faintly from the back.
“Was that Nell? Excellent projection.”
Dane almost smiled. Almost.
Silas spoke again, less warmly.
“You’re frightened. That’s understandable. People have lied to you.”
Rosa muttered, “He is very good at sounding like he regrets what he’s about to do.”
“Most men practice on themselves first,” Dane said.
He moved to Tomber, opened the hood, and looked down at the damage.
The grille reinforcement had saved the radiator by inches, but the passenger-side steering linkage had taken a hit.
Bent, not snapped. The tire was wearing wrong already, rubbed shiny along one edge.
A truck could drive like that until it could not, and then it would fail all at once.
Elias returned with Otto at his heels and a scowl deep enough to be hereditary.
“Generator’ll run if we slap it awake. Your truck’s got a bent tie rod.”
Dane said, “Can you straighten it?”
“Can I? Yes. Can I while idiots with rifles are standing in my lot? That depends how many idiots Rosa there can discourage.”
Rosa blinked.
“You know me?”
Elias squinted.
“You’re Venn’s girl. Ambulance kid. Changed a tire out there in the rain six years ago and told me my coffee tasted like boiled roofing tar.”
Rosa stared at him, caught off guard by a piece of the old world walking into the room and naming her.
“It did.”
“Still does, when I can make it.”
Silas called, “Last chance to talk before this becomes regrettable.”
Dane raised his voice.
“You got a supervisor?”
Silas answered after a pause.
“You’re speaking to the corridor officer in charge.”
“I asked if you had a supervisor.”
Another pause, colder.
“Mister, you are not in a position to be rude.”
“I’m in a garage. That’s close enough.”
Rosa gave him a look that might have been admiration if they had lived in a kinder century.
Dane looked at Elias.
“Fix the rod. Otto, power.”
Otto swallowed.
“Power. Yes. I love making myself useful while diplomacy collapses.”
Elias tossed Dane a wrench.
“If they breach, don’t shoot my compressor.”
“I’ll prioritize.”
The next ten minutes stretched thin enough to cut with.
Elias worked under Tomber’s front end with a torch and a chain come-along hooked to an anchor point in the floor, muttering insults at the bent steel, the truck, the Milemen, the dead, and once at God with the familiarity of an old customer dissatisfied with service.
Dane helped where he could, though every crouch sent pain through his knee.
Otto coaxed the generator into a rattling, uneven roar that brought overhead lights flickering to life one row at a time.
Rosa moved between windows with the lever-action, never staying long enough to give the men outside a clean shot.
Nell remained in the pit until silence became too much for her.
“Dane.”
He was bracing the come-along while Elias heated the rod.
“What?”
“If they get in, do I run or hide?”
Rosa answered before he could.
“You run if someone tells you a path is clear. You hide if no one does.”
Nell looked up from the pit.
“What if all of you are dead?”
The wrench slipped in Dane’s grip.
No one answered fast enough.
Nell’s voice hardened.
“What if all of you are dead?”
Dane looked down at her. Her face was pale under garage dust and skylight gloom, but her eyes were steady. She deserved an answer that was not comfort shaped like a lie.
“Then you take the cooler,” he said, “you get to the truck if it moves, and if it doesn’t, you find another vehicle. You don’t stay to be brave over our bodies.”
Rosa turned sharply.
“Dane.”
“No,” Nell said. “I asked.”
Elias’s torch hissed.
Dane continued, “You head west. You trust maps more than people until people earn it. You don’t tell anyone what you are unless Rosa says different.”
“And if Rosa’s dead too?”
Rosa’s face tightened.
Dane held Nell’s gaze.
“Then you decide. That’s the part nobody gets to take from you.”
Nell absorbed that with a stillness that hurt to watch. Then she nodded once and ducked lower into the pit.
Outside, glass shattered.
Rosa fired through the broken side window almost immediately. A man cried out. Another shouted, and bullets snapped against the metal siding, punching bright holes through the garage wall. Otto hit the floor with both hands over his head. Elias did not even turn off the torch.
“Rosa!” Dane shouted.
“Side alley,” she called back. “Two moving around.”
Silas’s voice, amplified now by anger rather than a loudspeaker, came from outside.
“You are making a bad situation worse!”
Dane dragged himself to the workbench and grabbed two red road flares from a box Elias had opened earlier. He struck one. It hissed alive, brilliant and smoking, painting the garage in pulsing red.
“What are you doing?” Rosa demanded.
“Misunderstanding.”
He shoved the side door open and threw the flare low across the gravel toward the alley.
The closest infected in the street turned toward it immediately.
Then another. Then the cluster at the café, drawn by light and movement and the angry chemical hiss.
The flare skittered beneath one of the Milemen pickups.
The men outside shouted.
Dane lit the second flare and threw it through the broken window in the opposite direction, toward the grain elevator loading chute. Red smoke curled into the open air. Shadows along Main Street shifted, then began moving faster.
Otto, still on the floor, lifted his head.
“That is either brilliant or deeply rude.”
“Both,” Rosa said, firing again.
Elias shut off the torch.
“Pull!”
Dane returned to the come-along and hauled. Metal groaned. The rod shifted by a small, stubborn fraction. Elias slid in with a hammer and struck it three times, each blow ringing through the shop like a church bell made of iron.
“Again!”
Dane pulled until his bad knee trembled.
More gunfire outside. Not aimed at the garage now. The Milemen were shooting at the infected drawn in by the flares. Silas yelled orders, his calm voice finally cracking under the weight of too many moving parts.
The overhead lights flickered.
Otto scrambled to his feet.
“Generator did not enjoy that.”
“Then apologize later,” Dane said.
Elias checked the alignment by eye, then spat to one side.
“It’ll drive.”
“For how long?”
“How long you got?”
“Two thousand miles.”
Elias looked at him as if he had announced plans to row to the moon.
“Then no.”
Rosa ducked as a bullet snapped through the office glass.
“We need the door open now.”
Otto ran to the bay controls and slapped the button. The motor hummed. The big rear bay door shuddered, lifted six inches, and stopped.
“No,” Otto said. “No, no, that is not the narrative shape we need.”
Elias grabbed a chain hanging beside the door.
“Manual assist. Pull, radio boy.”