Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

Each team would take half of the trucks, three men per vehicle: one driver, one sleeping, and one riding shotgun- literally. Each truck had one person awake at all times, besides the driver, with a loaded firearm to discourage hijackers.

Within a month, the scouts had located and preserved enough gasoline and diesel to last Rejas for at least six years with a minimum of rationing.

So every few weeks one of two groups of twenty-four men armed with rifles, fuel pumps, radiation detectors and gas masks, went to nearby towns and returned with enough gasoline to fill the empty tanks at any of the twelve gas stations around town.

As expected, they did occasionally run into minor trouble. One of the first teams ventured too close to the suburbs of Houston during a bad storm and was scared silly when the winds blowing across the remains caused their PRDs to glow. Discretion being the better part of valor, they immediately donned their masks and turned tail.

On another occasion, a team ran into a small band of armed marauders that tried to hijack the convoy. Unfortunately for the would-be hijackers, the truck ran into them , and the team never looked back.

It began to look as if we might actually make it. Just like a mythical Phoenix rising from the ashes of its destruction, Rejas too began to gather its strength.

Two years later, life had settled into a kind of routine. Amber, Ken, Cindy, Debra, Megan, Zach, and I had turned Amber’s little goat ranch into more of a fortress by hiding caches of supplies and weapons in various places around the property. We were actually beginning to adapt to our new lifestyle, and I sometimes wondered how I had ever coped with the frantic pace of pre-D life.

“Debra? We’re heading into town. Anything in particular I should look for?”

She came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a shabby dishtowel before draping it over her shoulder. “See if you can find a hydrometer. Cindy says she thinks a couple of the car batteries are going bad.” She paused, thinking a second. “Oh, and see if Sarah has any more cans of that condensed milk that she found. Maybe we can make some ice cream and get a little relief from this heat.”

I gaped for a moment. “Is the freezer working?”

“Yep. Cindy hooked the invertor into the circuit so we’d have enough power to run a couple of appliances. I thought we could celebrate with some ice cream.”

“Sounds amazing. I think I’m drooling a little.” I tried to remember what else we needed for homemade ice cream. “What about rock salt?”

“I’ll break up a piece of the salt lick.”

“All right. The kids’ll be tickled. Hell, I’m tickled.” I kissed her and started to pull away, but she grabbed my shirt and extended the kiss for several seconds longer.

“Come on, Dad!” Zach shouted impatiently from outside. “Let’s go already!”

I scowled as Debra giggled at me.

“How about we pick this back up later?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

I grinned. “Sounds like a date.”

“Daaaaddd!”

“How old are you, Zachary?” I yelled.

He hesitated. “Ten.”

“If you ever want to make it to eleven, you’d better quit yelling at your dad when he’s trying to smooch your mom!”

“Ewww!”

“Go on.” Debra pushed me back and turned me toward the open door. “I’ll see you when you get back.” As I stepped away, she popped me with the damp dishtowel.

“Hey!” I jumped and grabbed my hindquarters, rubbing briskly to take the sting out.

I turned to find her already turning away. “Hurry back,” she shot over her shoulder, “and I’ll be happy to take a look at that injury for you.”

I smiled at the implied promise and walked out the door.

Five minutes later, I had the cart hitched to the back of the motorcycle. I tossed a few bundles of trade goods in it, and Zach clambered aboard to sit in on top of them. Megan climbed on the motorcycle seat behind me and, as we pulled slowly down the street, she yelled in my ear, “You think she knows what we’re up to?”

I twitched my shoulder in a lazy shrug. “She probably knows something’s up, but there’s no way she could know exactly what.”

“Um, have you met Mom?”

“Yeah,” I conceded. “You’ve got a point.” But there was nothing I could do about what she might or might not know, so I didn’t worry too much about it.

Twenty minutes later, we were winding our way through the foot traffic at the edge of the market square. I parked the motorbike in front of an abandoned convenience store and killed the engine. Slinging one of the trade bundles over my shoulder, I tossed the second to Megan, took Zachary’s hand, and the three of us waded into the crowd.

The market had started as a simple enough thing. With little to no electricity to run internal lighting or air conditioning, shopkeepers had taken to setting tables outside their doors. The practice had grown, spawning more tables and stalls, quickly spilling out into the streets until the town council simply barricaded off a four-block area of town and allowed it to grow into what everyone now referred to as the market .

We wandered through the makeshift stalls, looking at some items, avoiding others, winding our way through the buzzing and shouting of the ever-present dickering. At the outskirts, we saw the normal handcrafted items: candles, soaps, woodcarvings, pottery. As we burrowed deeper into the crowd, we also came across plenty of scavenged goods such as canned foods, car parts, and some small electronics like CD players or flashlights still in the original plastic. We had found that many of the less complex, basic electronics that hadn’t been plugged in or connected to batteries on D-day still worked, and those still in the original packaging were almost guaranteed to work. The more intricate items that depended on delicate circuitry had a lesser chance of working. And of course, all of them still required some sort of power source.

But here in the market, that too was available. Generator kits were prevalent, based on everything from bicycle generators, to automobile parts and current inverters. They were fairly common at the moment, but I feared the day would soon come when we would no longer be able to find the parts necessary to make them. Windmill and waterwheel kits to turn the generators were also a valued commodity and, when I heard some of the haggling being done for them, I was thankful we already had ours.

I saw my goal ahead and shouldered my way through the crowd to Wayne Kelley’s booth. Wayne had been Rejas High School’s chemistry teacher, and had put his education to good use. He had everything from fuel preservatives to perfumes available at his booth. If you wanted something that required a knowledge of practical chemistry, Wayne was your man.

“Hey Wayne, how’s business?”

“Leeland!” He smiled. “Business is good. You here to make it better?”

“I hope so.” I gestured. “Hand Mr. Kelley that bundle, would you, Megan?”

She hefted the bundle off her shoulder and slung it to an empty spot on his table. Wayne untied the knot and unrolled half a dozen uncured goatskins. He thumbed through them, checking the thickness and quality of the skin. “Still no kids?”