James Rawles - Liberators

Joshua continued, “As soon as I was finished I pulled the battery and put the phone under my tire so that when we roll I will be forever off the air.”

“I understand,” said Megan, and she looked at Malorie and said, “I’ll do the same to my phone; I’m sure that Sprint will understand. What about you, Mal?”

“I rooted my Android phone a few months ago with a tin foil hat ROM that allows me to kill the cellular board and verifiably turn on or turn off the Wi-Fi card, leaving the device completely passive in true ‘airplane mode.’ I have a ton of survival, first-aid, and wild foraging apps and military field manuals on there that don’t require a network connection. Personally, I think that with a twelve-volt DC charger that can be adapted to charge from a car battery if necessary, we’re better off having that information along with us.” Malorie may not have ever worked in the spook world, but she’d heard enough from her big sister to know that “one account, all of Google” was not your friend. Malorie put her phone back in her pocket and asked Joshua, “Do you have any GPS, Sirius, or XM installed on the Jeep?”

Joshua raised his eyebrows and said, “No, and I had a guy from my church go through and check to make sure that there were not any emitters on there. He works at the Agency, so he didn’t think that I was weird.”

Just then the boys came back in and sat down at the table for breakfast. After they had eaten and packed some coloring books and toys, Malorie shut off the gas and extinguished the pilot light on the stove, followed by turning off the well pump and draining the water in the line as best she could in a hurry. She knew that the bank or someone would eventually come for the house, but it was best not to make a bad situation worse due to neglect.

Joshua checked the weapons one last time and loaded them, with the adults holstering their pistols and positioning their long weapons next to them in the vehicle. Megan had remembered to grab some short bungee cords, which made it easy to secure the long weapons in such a manner that they could be easily presented. Megan let the boys run around to wear off some of their interminable energy before they were loaded up into the Jeep.

When you’re forced to summarize an experience, it’s typical to remember the first memory, the last memory, and likely any painful memories as well. The boys were distracted with getting to ride in a Jeep and unresponsive to Megan hugging them close to her for comfort. All she could think about was them. She thought of Jean toddling under the apple tree, and Leo carrying eggs in an old ice cream bucket up to the back porch grinning from ear to ear with pride. With one last look in the rearview mirror, Megan shed a tear as the Jeep rolled down the driveway, rendering two phones catastrophically destroyed. This would be a new life for all of them, in a world with nothing but the unknown ahead. Nostalgia and hesitation would likely be as deadly as the fires raging through Chicago or the strange, deadly new influenza strain in Charlotte. Joshua caught the gleam from the moisture in her eye in his rearview mirror and reached back to gently squeeze her calf between gear shifts.

As the sun started to paint the eastern sky orange they passed a gas station that had not been updated since the early seventies. Joshua was glad that he had wisely filled up with gas yesterday in Charles Town while the prices were still below seven dollars a gallon. There was a man sitting on a folding canvas camping chair in the back of a truck with a rusted cab; evidently the bed had rusted years before, as it had been replaced with a homemade welded frame and a deck made out of pressure-treated planks. He had a spray-painted plywood sign next to him that read:

There was a dog lying contentedly in the shade of the truck, and two much younger men with shotguns were also visible. Malorie noted that the power was still on, because through the garage door window you could see the red Coca-Cola illuminated sign from the vending machine, although the rest of the building was dark.

Malorie, like Joshua and Megan, had been operating on very little sleep and by this time was feeling punchy. She mused out loud, “You know, when you think about it, actually four dollars seems pretty cheap.”

“Four dollars for what?” Joshua was not in any form to try to read her mind.

“Four dollars a gallon for gasoline, I mean before this ‘Crunch’ happened. People used to complain about the price of gas being high, but if you think about it we’ve traveled for miles already expending fuel that’s almost priceless now. Think about it: If we were walking, then how far would we have gotten today? Maybe twenty miles if we were really moving, but not likely—not with two small kids in tow. So at four dollars a gallon for the five of us to be traveling down the road at thirty-five miles an hour seems like a bargain. Heck, forty-four dollars a gallon would seem like a bargain to me if I was one of those people stranded on the 495 D.C. Beltway right now.”

“I can only imagine… that must be a massacre right about now,” Megan groaned.

They slowly made progress down Route 3, keeping their eyes out for potentially adverse situations. Any lead time to spot a roadside ambush with roadblocks using trees or vehicles, malicious actors feigning a breakdown or injury, or really anything could spell disaster for them.

Joshua made eye contact with Megan in the rearview mirror and asked, “How are the boys doing?”

“Pretty tired, a lot of thumb sucking and not much movement. I would like to try to get them to pee when you find a good place to stop.”

“Roger that.”

Malorie said, “I can spell you and drive for a while if you like, Joshua.”

“That may work out great; let’s see about it when we stop.”

As they clicked off the miles in a westerly direction, they noticed that people were generally moving about. It was uncommon to see a whole lot of work vehicles like landscaper trucks or plumbers’ vans out on the roads. Most of the traffic consisted of overloaded cars. Joshua spotted one SUV with a clearly visible propane tank inside the enclosed cab, a disaster waiting to happen. Each small town was conducting itself differently in how it processed traffic. Some towns had a definite roadblock with either local law enforcement or sheriff’s deputies stopping each vehicle asking questions about where they were coming from, their reason for travel, and their destination; and some towns were still oblivious to the enormous implications of the Crunch. Joshua usually did the talking when they were stopped at a checkpoint and had his badge at the ready—which usually took the anxiety level down for the law enforcement officer standing behind the B pillar.

Malorie was very cautious as she got the Jeep out on the highway. She kept her speed around fifty-five miles per hour on I-79 South. The afternoon sun was picking up all the hints of autumn as the light shone through the deciduous trees shedding their leaves for winter. Malorie said, “At our rate of speed, we should be in Charleston in forty-five minutes.”

“Gotcha, I see our approximate location on our map. Wow, that’s a lot of red brake lights up ahead, and I also see police lights past that—proceed with caution.”

“Yeah, I am going to stay in the right lane with at least a car length in front of me so that I can jump out if need be,” Malorie responded. “Last thing I want to do is be trapped in traffic and make us easy pickings for criminals looking to become Mad Max road looters.”

Megan was looking around in all directions, then said with a puzzled voice, “You know, I hadn’t thought of it until now, but I haven’t seen a lot of semi-trucks with trailers; instead they’re all disconnected, standing on the road shoulder. It seems like everyone is running bobtail. I wonder why?”