Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

“Get you four to Kansas City? Hundred bucks up front for each of you. We eat when I say we eat. We stop when I say we stop. And if any of you try anything, my little assistant here will help you to change your mind.”

He pulled back his Windbreaker to show a large handgun in an underarm holster.

It really was too big a gun for so small a man.

“We’re not going to give you any problems,” Niko said, in a placating tone.

“But we don’t have four hundred dollars, either,” Jake said.

“No? Aw, too bad.”

“We can give you one—”

Jake interrupted, finishing Niko’s sentence. “Twenty-five. We can give you one twenty-five total.”

Jake must have assumed that Niko wasn’t the most shrewd negotiator. He was probably correct. Niko was too honest for a guy like Rocco.

“One twenty-five for four kids?!” the trucker whined. “Come on!”

“No problem,” Jake said. “Someone else will take us. Kansas City’s not even that close to where we want to go.”

Jake turned and walked back toward the restaurant. We followed him like lesser dogs in his wolf pack.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Rocco Caputto said. “You have any gas credits?”

“Probably,” Jake bluffed. “We haven’t used any this week. Have you guys?” He turned and we all shook our heads.

“One twenty-five and all your gas credits and let’s go,” Rocco said.

“But can we all fit?” I asked. I don’t know, from the movies it seemed like there would be one driver seat and maybe you could fit two people next to him in the front. I didn’t want to ride for four hours in the back with whatever it was he was trucking.

“Can you fit?!” He laughed. “Evidently you’ve never ridden in a Freightliner Century Class! I have bunk beds in the back! Can you fit.”

It was true. The cabin of his truck had a driver seat and a passenger seat, then behind it was a little sleeper area, with a bed and a pull-down bunk over it.

“Look here,” he said, pointing out the features. “Here’s where I keep my clothes and I put little baggies in this cubby here to line my trash can. I got a cooler I keep my food in and an alarm clock and I even got a little bureau here. Only don’t go looking in my drawers. Especially not you, miss.”

“Believe me, I won’t go looking in your drawers,” Astrid said.

I muffled a laugh.

She winked at me.

I had to hand it to Rocco Caputo. His truck cabin was clean. Really organized and tidy.

“Don’t you guys go making a mess. For one twenty-five, you better leave the place exactly how you found it.”

He got into the front seat and started making preparations to go.

“Let’s pull down the bunk and, Astrid, you can get some rest,” Niko suggested.

That was a good idea. She looked worn-out. The blue circles under her eyes seemed more pronounced than usual.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“One of you can sit up with me,” said Rocco. “And the other two can sit on the bottom bunk.”

I volunteered to go up front. No way did I want to be sitting on a bed with Jake.

The truck roared down the highway.

I settled into the passenger seat. It was really comfortable—upholstered in a soft tan material. Very cushy. There was a risk I’d fall asleep.

“Ride to KC’ll take about eleven hours,” Rocco said to me. “Stop to refuel and I’m up to Chi-town.”

“What are you hauling?” I asked, making conversation.

“Canned goods. Vegetables and whatnot,” he answered. “Since the wave, food goes east. No food comes west, that’s for sure. I run supplies, mail, people, anything and everything.”

“What’s it like back there?”

He drove in silence for a while, then he said, “It’s jacked up. It’s jacked up big-time, Sam.”

We’d given him fake names. Niko’s idea. I was Sam. Astrid was Anne. Niko had given the strangely unfitting name of Phillip and Jake was Buddy, which fit perfectly.

Did Niko secretly want to be a Phillip ? Did he want to trade his serious, all-business demeanor to be someone who wore plaid pants and ate pâté and, I don’t know, lettered in badminton?

I think in the time that I’d known Niko he had made maybe four jokes. None of them funny. A Phillip he was not.

“I lost my ma,” Rocco told me. “Flushing. She was about eighty though, so, I don’t know…”

This awkward admission made me feel for the guy.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. Maybe I’d have to revise my opinion of him.

He relaxed back in his seat and checked the side mirrors.

We were going seventy-five, easy.

“I do a lot of people-movin’ is what I do. Lot of people want to get out of the East Coast and get west. Anywhere. Any town with electricity and running water. People have given up on finding their people. Given up on their houses—half the houses are molded up or got sewage in the basement. People just want out. Refugees are everywhere and all of ’em trying to get somewhere else.”

I hadn’t given much thought to what life would be like in Pennsylvania. Maybe Niko’s uncle wouldn’t want us, after all. Maybe the old farm was already overrun with refugees.

Rocco interrupted my train of thought: “You know what I get paid in sometimes?”

“What?” I asked him.

“Tail,” he boasted.

It took me a second to realize what he meant.

“Yup. Girls and women in all sizes and shapes. People gotta get where they need to be.”

No. It was not possible to like Rocco Caputo.

After an hour, I traded with Jake.

Niko was leaning back against the wall of the cabin, half asleep. Astrid was asleep on the top bunk, her back turned outward.

“Want to lie foot to head?” I asked Niko. “Maybe we could get some sleep.”

It was a little weird to lie in the narrow bunk with Niko. And a little gross to lie in that bed at all, when I thought of what the trucker had done there with the poor refugee women, but I was tired.

Up front, Jake and Rocco got along perfectly well, which didn’t surprise me at all.

Before I fell asleep, I heard Jake ask Rocco about the drifts.

“I tell you what that’s about. It’s the cleanup. You got FEMA and whoever in there, cleaning up the blast zone and they’re sweeping up clouds of dirt and everyone’s in a tizzy. I been all over the area and I ain’t seen nothin’,” Rocco said. “Here’s what I think—those refugee camps are big money, BIG money for the people running them. They don’t want people to go home. Think about it!”

“What about the Army, though? I mean, they all wear those protective suits. We even bartered for one for our friend”—a tiny beat here while Jake remembered Niko’s fake name—“Phillip. You saw it.”

“You got taken, my friend,” the trucker laughed. “Those outfits are PR, nothing more. Take a look at ’em. They’re paper-thin. All for show.”

“Really?” Jake said.

I didn’t believe that. Why would the Army go to that expense?

“I guess we got ripped off,” Jake said.

“Happens to the best of us,” Rocco conceded.

“Hey, I been wondering, why do they call it Kansas City if it’s in Missouri?” Jake asked.

“Now, there’s a good question,” Rocco said. “Midwest. It’s all a bunch of retards.”

Yeah, they got along just fine.

We’re in our room. The kids are playing rock chuck, a game Freddy invented using some small rocks and bits of gravel the kids picked up in the courtyard.

Rock Chuck involves setting up obstacles on the floor and then throwing the rocks to knock down the obstacles. Sort of like a pathetic DIY Angry Birds, which I used to play when I was their age.