Fuel (Best Laid Plans Book 1) (9 page)

He closed his eyes and opened them again. She'd called at least three times a day during the last week, usually in response to some news story she'd seen about violence erupting in a nearby city. “Nothing like that, Mom. I just wanted to call ahead and let you know I'm coming home.”

“Thank God,” she said. “What with Trev having left a week ago and still not here I've been extra worried about-”

“Hold on,” Matt interrupted. “Trev isn't there yet? He left the morning after the attack!”

“Oh I know, it's a terrible story. Apparently he ran out of gas less than a third of the way home and had to walk, but then he injured his leg and that slowed him way down. Last I heard from Lewis his phone had died but he was going to take it slow to avoid any more accidents. It's amazing how such a small thing can become so serious, isn't it?”

Matt was getting more and more experience with small things becoming serious. “Yeah. I hope he makes it safely. But anyway I just want to do a few things up here and then I'll be heading down. I'll let you know when I'm almost there.”

“Okay honey. I'll get your bedsheets cleaned and have a hot meal waiting for you.” His mom paused, then continued in a hushed voice. “I've had word from Mayor Anderson's office that our area's power plant is running critically low on fuel. Even with all the City Council announcements about cutting down to strictly necessary appliances and only using lights at night, and to add to that Officer Turner's warnings about fines for disobeying the new policies, people are still not reducing their consumption. I just wanted to let you know in case the house is dark when you arrive, so you won't be worried.”

That news did worry Matt, although not for the reasons she thought. It seemed like Aspen Hill wasn't immune to all this trouble either, which meant going home wouldn't be some magical cure to all his problems until the government solved this disaster. Intellectually he'd known the reality of things, but it was still a bit of a shock to hear.

“All right, Mom. I'll try to get some candles and flashlights for us.”

His mom's tone turned surprisingly stern. “Oh we're all right with that for a few weeks. You just worry about coming home, honey. I'll finally be able to get a decent night's sleep not having to worry about you up there where a riot might start any minute. Between fretting over you and April and the boys it's a wonder I'm not bald from stress.”

They said their goodbyes and Matt hung up, not liking the reminder about riots. He sort of wished he'd thought to bring the Glock Trev had given him. It had stayed in his room since he'd gotten it because it was prohibited on campus and Matt spent all his time there, but he had a feeling it might've been a good idea to bring it along.

Or was it? He didn't have a concealed carry permit like Trev or Lewis, and even if it was legal in Utah the sight of a gun being openly carried might spook people and end up causing more trouble than it prevented.

Besides, it was just a twenty minute walk to the store.

Chapter Five

Day Seven: Afternoon

Lewis had picked a small lot a mile or so northwest of town to build his shelter on.

Trev hadn't cared too much about the location when he'd agreed to help his cousin with the project, partly out of boredom and partly because he really had taken Lewis's warnings about preparedness to heart and the opportunity to earn himself a place to sleep in the apocalypse seemed like a good deal. Now, though, footsore and shoulders aching from lugging a cripplingly heavy pack for 50 miles, he blessed that one mile less he had to walk with every step down the dirt road leading to the pair of low hills the shelter was nestled between.

A hundred steps. That was it, after the hundred thousand or so he'd just walked getting here. He was almost home.

He saw a sudden movement on the nearer hill, which turned out to be Lewis rising from the concealed post they'd constructed up there to watch the approaches to the shelter. Trev had helped dig it when it all seemed like a game, imagining hordes of zombies converging on the position while he blew them away with his newly purchased Mini-14 and his trusty 1911.

Now, in the middle of a pretty grim situation, it didn't seem quite so lighthearted. Especially when he saw his cousin sling his prized HK G3 across his back as he started down the hill at a trot, waving excitedly.

Trev waved back just as excitedly, taking the opportunity to unbuckle his pack's belts and let it slip off his shoulders even though he wasn't quite to the finish line. With his phone dead and occupied with making it home he'd been pretty much cut off from everything for the last week, and as eager as he was to finally rest he was equally eager for news about what was going on out in the wider world. After all the planning and speculation he'd done with Lewis it seemed almost unfair that when it all finally went down he was trapped on the road missing everything.

His cousin threw his arms around him, not seeming to mind his sweaty back, although he did back up after a moment and wrinkle his nose. “Well, even if I hadn't seen you coming I would've smelled you before you got too much closer. You've definitely been on the road exercising hard for a week.”

“Nah, just a bit of light backpacking,” Trev replied as Lewis helpfully picked up his pack to carry the rest of the way.

His cousin grunted slightly. “Light? I can't believe you came 50 miles carrying this much weight! Are you crazy?”

Trev grimaced. So he had overpacked after all. “I even left 20 pounds or so of stuff wedged between a couple rocks after I'd gone a mile. I didn't want to leave anything important behind.”

“Like your brain?” Lewis hefted the pack. “No wonder you injured yourself and it's taken you this long!”

“Yeah, it's good to see you too.” Trev clapped his cousin on the shoulder, nearly overbalancing him. “Have you talked to my folks recently?”

“Yeah, they've been calling at least once a day asking if you'd made it yet, every single time making me promise I'd call as soon as you arrived. Checking in with them is probably one of the first things you should do.”

“Definitely. How about your family? You heard from them?”

His cousin nodded, smile fading to seriousness. “They're doing pretty good, all things considered, although more worried than they'll admit about being out of the country during all this. My dad tells me Russia has been demanding more concessions for the oil Norway exports in from them. It looks like the Gold Bloc is trying to grow their influence now that the U.S. is collapsing on both the fuel and economic fronts and they're the only game in town. The Scandinavian countries will suffer along with the rest of Europe during this mess, but all things considered my folks might actually be better of there than in Aspen Hill.”

“Except here you'd be able to help them with all your preparations,” Trev pointed out.

Lewis hesitated. “Well yeah, there is that. I was just trying to look on the bright side.” That sort of dampened the mood, and his cousin quickened his pace. “Let's get you settled in and you can wash up and change into clean clothes, then sleep if you want. I've installed a shower to go with the sink and toilet in the bathroom since you were here last.”

“All on solar power?” Trev asked incredulously.

His cousin shook his head. “The water's gravity fed from a tank I buried on the hillside above the shelter to keep it from freezing. It's not heated and we'll have to refill it by hand now that vehicles aren't working, but we may as well enjoy it while we have it. Luckily we've got the stream running out of Aspen Hill Canyon not too far away, and there's always the spring in town so drinking water won't be an issue. One of the reasons I'm glad I built the shelter here.”

“If you've got a water tank and functioning bathroom I guess that means you haven't stopped working on this thing the entire time?” Trev asked as they came around the hill. In a small depression between it and the second hill was a shed butted up against the nearer hillside to provide slight insulation, not far from the aforementioned buried water tank. But that smaller shed was just for storing tools and Lewis's gas tank and other outdoor things: most importantly, a stone's throw from it rose a rounded hump of earth that stretched 20 feet wide and 40 feet long.

That was their shelter, a corrugated steel half-pipe shed planted in a six foot deep hole, then reinforced and covered over with three feet of dirt for insulation. On the top of the mound an array of solar panels pointed towards the sun overhead, while on the sides of the mound it looked as if his cousin had made a garden with terraced rows of the sorts of hardy plants that could survive with little water.

At the front of the mound, pointed southward facing the smaller aboveground shed, a gently sloping ramp led down to the front doors, which were recessed behind a wooden entryway with a heavy metal-sheathed door to provide added insulation as well as security. By all appearances that was the only entrance, but Lewis had also created a bolt-hole in the back to a hatch covered over with a foot or so of dirt.

His cousin led the way inside, flipping on a switch to a string of low-power LEDs that did a pretty good job of lighting the wide open interior, which was partitioned with screens around the bathroom area on the side closest to the tank on the hill above and a sleeping area across from it. Farther back the shelter was mostly filled with storage, Trev's modest stacks of buckets, boxes, and cans alongside Lewis's far more impressive pile that rose over his head.

The ceiling was ten feet tall in the center, sloping down to about 5 feet before it steepened to form the walls. From the outside the space looked impressively large, but inside it was cavernous, even with all the storage it was filled with and the living and bathroom spaces partitioned off.

Trev paused in the entryway to look around. As always when he really stopped to look, he felt equal parts pride and disbelief that they'd created all this with their own two hands. Of course Lewis had done the lion's share of the work in planning, purchasing materials, and working on the finishing touches, but Trev still felt a fair bit of satisfaction.

Lewis tossed him a towel. “It's a weak water stream and you're not going to like the temperature, but that should encourage you to hurry up so we can catch up.”

Trev nodded and made his way over to his bunk in the living space, which was made of a board and mattress sitting on top of food buckets for a base. Beside it was a trunk where he'd stored a lot of things he'd need if he ended up living here long term like clothes and blankets, as well as the rest of his ammunition sitting on the bottom. Since he'd been forced to ditch half of what he'd had up in Orem he now had 900 rounds of .45 ACP and .223 each. That had seemed like a lot at the time, but now he wondered.

Sometime soon he wanted to check and make sure the ammo hadn't gotten damp, but for the moment he pulled out a pair of boxers from an unopened 12-pack as well as a T-shirt from an unopened 6-pack, both of which he'd bought extra of while clothes shopping and had tossed in there in a rare fit of inspiration. He also grabbed an old but clean pair of jeans.

For all of Lewis's warnings the shower was equal parts unpleasant and glorious, although Trev was quick to soap and rinse and get out of the cold stream before he started shivering uncontrollably. Once he dried off and got dressed he felt like a human being again. The outdoor carpet Lewis had used for the floor, which could be swept if necessary, felt a bit uneven and gritty under his feet as if it hadn't been swept any time recently. That or the fact that it was in a shed buried underground with a dirt ramp leading up to a dirt clearing made it hard to keep clean. He'd either have to start wearing socks or slippers indoors or get used to the feeling.

Lewis was in the small kitchen space at the back of the shelter, but since the solar panels were working just fine Trev made his way over to the electronics array near the desk that served as his cousin's “office” and plugged in his phone, then gave his parents a quick call to check in and briefly explain what had happened and his hike down.

He also got news from them about how they and his younger brother and sister were doing. They were worried about things but optimistic, with the food storage he and Lewis had pestered them into getting as a strong buffer against the winter. Before he could mention heading up to Michigan to meet up with them, or urge them to come down to Aspen Hill and stay in the shelter, his dad beat him to the punch by insisting Trev stay there until things settled down, if they ever did.

“We'll be fine,” he promised. “You just worry about yourself for now.” And with a few final goodbyes and well wishes they hung up.

Not long after that Lewis came back into the living area and offered him a bowl. It was just canned chili heated over a camp stove, but after a week of jerky and trail mix the hot meal could've easily counted as one of the better ones Trev had ever had. He gulped it down as quickly as he could without seriously burning his mouth, and as he did Lewis filled him in on what had been happening in the outside world.

The news wasn't good. Trev had been expecting to hear about riots and looting, but the sheer breadth of the chaos still left him stunned. Especially when Lewis mentioned that the turning cogs of the Federal government had essentially abandoned Washington D.C. to the rioters. The nation's Capitol was tearing itself apart in a wave of mindless destruction and unchecked fires while the President and his staff had fled to the all-but impregnable Presidential command bunker. Meanwhile congressmen, senators, and various Federal agencies had all either hunkered down in their buildings behind security cordons manned by guards with serious crowd control measures who used them on anyone who came close, returned home to their own states, or fled to prepared fallback locations to continue desperately trying to keep the nation running as order and authority disintegrated around them.

FETF was becoming more and more of a presence, the only way cities were getting any sort of relief in the form of food and other much needed supplies, and more importantly taking over a lot of the crowd control duties that city governments depleted of fuel and in disarray in the chaos simply couldn't handle themselves.

Surprisingly the Utah and Salt Lake valleys were among the few dense population clusters left in the nation that hadn't reported any major chaos, but from the sounds of it they weren't far off. Trev could hardly believe that he'd left things relatively normal, and then while hiking incommunicado through sparsely populated areas the nation had fallen apart without him seeing a single sign of it.

As they talked Lewis naturally gravitated over to the back of the shelter and his most recent preparations, like he tended to do during conversations, and Trev followed. It looked as if his cousin still had about the same number of buckets he'd had when Trev was last around, roughly enough food storage to live four years on, but he'd added other things too.

Trev noticed a dozen bags of protein powder slung across the stack, and mentally cursed himself for not thinking of that himself. He had plenty of rice and beans, and he'd heard they were a decent replacement, but in the absence of meat and dairy that powder could really do a lot.

That reminded him of something else he should've worried about. “Have you checked my food storage lately?” He now had about 18 months' worth for himself, since a good chunk of it had been up in Orem with him and was currently buried 50 miles away, but the food in here was all he had left and he couldn't afford to lose any of it.

Lewis nodded. “Of course. I checked everything just after the attack a week ago. Your stuff is in good shape, no humidity or anything. It's a shame about what you had in your car but you'll get by.”

“Better than the people who came into this with nothing, thanks to your constant nagging to get prepared.”

Trev had meant that as a joke, but it wasn't really a subject for levity and his cousin just gave him a sober look. “After the Middle East Crisis a year's worth of struggling to stay financially afloat as food got more and more pricey strangled most people. They were barely buying enough to get them by to the next paycheck with no extra to fall back on. And that compounded the problem since w
ith the decreased demand stores and restaurants brought in smaller shipments, meaning the cities had less food on hand.

“Pretty much the worst conditions for
the attacks and the fuel cutting off completely. For most people what they have is it. The rest is all gone and there won't be any more. Food prices skyrocketed within the first forty-eight hours, for those stores quick enough to react, and a lot of riots began at stores or around government structures when people discovered there was no food to be found and went to demand a solution.”