John Barnes - Directive 51

They headed north, away from the Tres Piedras country, keep moving, one foot in front of the other, just cover ground.

285 was an asphalt incision bisecting the magnificent emptiness of the San Luis Valley, shadowed by the immense Sangre de Cristos, winding over a series of rises, visible all the way to the horizon in each direction. The sky’s vivid unmarked blue might have gone on forever.

They walked for hours as the sun went down, and it seemed only time passed; the road was the road, with nothing on it, and that was all.

In the high mountain valleys in the fall, even if the day is warm and summery, the temperature falls well below freezing at night. Jason figured they had to keep moving until they found somewhere warm to sleep, and so far nothing had presented itself; exhausted as he was, he thought he could probably walk all night by the dim starlight, but he was worried about Beth, who might stumble and fall on her broken wrist.

At first he wasn’t sure what the black silhouette against the dim gray glow of the distant mountains was. Closer, and they saw a faint rectangle of red light going ceaselessly on and off. They were almost on it when he realized it was a huge car, one of those monsters his father called “full-sized,” so old it had to be a just-gasoline model; they hadn’t made anything that big in ten years at least. A single red LED slowly flashing on and off had illuminated the back window, creating the red rectangle, dim as the starlight. Wow, it is dark out here.

They had been approaching from upwind, and in the darkness the car was just a silhouette, so he was almost on top of it by the time he smelled the stinking, spoiled tires. The car was stopped on top of the dimly glowing dashes of the centerline; Jason peered inside. The man lay with his seat tilted far back and his head lolling to the side of the headrest, lighted by the slow-blinking red glow from the dash. Jason tapped, knocked, yelled—no response. Finally, he tried the door.

It was unlocked. The dome light came on, and by its light Jason saw the man was dead, his hands still clutching at his chest. The blinking light’s label was ONSTAR ALERTED. Probably the car had pulled itself over—there was a reason they called that a “dead man circuit”—and been calling for help all this time.

Gently, Jason lifted the corpse and reached under the Western State sweatshirt. He found external pacemaker pads on the sternum and behind the left scapula, both thoroughly crusted with nanoswarm. Oh, buddy, I hope those aren’t the ones that I was spreading. I didn’t want to kill anyone anyway, and you’re so about to save our asses.

He dragged the corpse out of the car and over to the side of the road. Now I know why they call it dead weight. But we can’t bury—

“Oh, Jason, come look!”

In the back seat, Beth had found a case of Mountain Dew, a couple of sweaters, and a heavy winter coat, along with a ditty bag of medicines and a gym bag containing a sweat suit. When Jason popped the trunk, they found a bonanza—it looked like the old man had gone to a Wal-Mart to load up on cheap groceries. The bagged frozen vegetables were squishy but still cold, and they had helped to preserve the milk, bread, and lunchmeat—and to keep the beer and pop cold.

“Let’s try something,” Jason said. He turned the keys in the ignition and was rewarded with the creaky grind of the starter, and then the warm purr of the big engine. On the rims, they drove away, making a noise like the metal shop of the damned, putting about a mile between themselves and the body before Jason pulled far over into a slow-vehicle turnout.

“Almost a full tank of gas, too,” he said.

“But no tires, and it sounds like you’ve already wrecked the wheels.”

“Yeah, but now we’re far enough away from the body to not have to meet Mr. Bear or a pack of coyotes tonight. And we wanted the car, even though it’s never going to move again. This thing has a ‘keep-warm’ setting.”

“Keeping warm sounds real good. What’s it do?”

“My dad had one of these old gas-only cars when we lived in Vermont. Some of them for high altitude and cold climates could be set to idle from time to time just to keep the battery charged and the water in the radiator warm, for parking on the street when it was twenty below outside, with a detector for monoxide in case you mistakenly left it on in the garage. So we set it to keep warm, turn on the heater full blast, and every time the battery gets low or the radiator water cools off, it’ll idle a few minutes and warm us up. One long comfy warm night with food.”

“But… Jeez, Jason, aren’t we burning a lot of gasoline, polluting, you know, all that stuff?”

“One car would have a hell of a time polluting the San Luis Valley in one night. The gas is just going to turn into goop in a couple days anyway. And the car is going to die as the nanoswarm eat it, Beth, but for right now enough is working to keep us warm, and there’s more than we can possibly eat in the trunk. I vote we eat ourselves silly and sleep till the sun wakes us up.”

She shrugged. “Well, the way you say, it makes sense and all. I just feel all weird and stuff about sitting burning gasoline and going nowhere in the last running Cadillac. Feels like something my dad would’ve done.”

Beth was vegan, and Jason had always felt a little guilty that he wasn’t, and, of course, both of them were philosophically opposed to plaztatic food, but lunchmeat sandwiches with salsa from a jar, Doritos, Pringles, irradiated chili in a plastic tub, and partly melted ice cream—all washed down with milk, Orange Fanta, and Budweiser—made the most wonderful dinner date they’d ever had, with the big heater keeping the old Cadillac toasty and the brilliant stars shining in through the dark windshield.

Beth switched on the radio; the scan button ran through four hundred channels without finding a signal, but “it’s probably not seeing a working cell tower anywhere, and that cliff behind us is probably blocking the satellites. So—” She leaned forward, peering at the old-fashioned physical buttons by the light of the screen. “Hey, this thing is so old it still has FM and AM besides cell.” She flipped the toggle; there was nothing on FM, but on AM the voice leaped out at them: “—think officially at the moment we are a 130,000-watt station but it might be more if Ernie can find a way. The reason we’re doing this, of course, is that nearly every other station is off the air, but we have working generators, we’ve been able to keep one studio and our transmitter running, and we have a functioning fiber line to Washington; we just have to hope enough of you out there have radios that can pull in our signal.

“Once again, anyone with working recording and broadcasting or net-connected equipment is requested to record this broadcast and pass it on in any form possible, to as many people as you can reach with it; the Acting President has authorized compensation for your time and trouble.

“For those of you who just found this station, you’re listening to Radio KP-1, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, broadcasting at 1020 on the AM band, which is actually KDKA’s transmission facility linked by a fiber-optic line to WQED-TV’s broadcast studio, using partly hand-built tube electronics from Westinghouse Labs. Mark this spot on your dial as we think we’re likely to remain on the air permanently, thanks to technical support from Westinghouse and PPG.

“In a moment, Radio KP-1 will be carrying a live broadcast from Washington of a speech by Acting President Peter Shaunsen, who will be addressing the nation to explain current plans for dealing with the Daybreak emergency. While we are waiting, here are some other announcements that the Department of Homeland—one moment please—yes, the President’s speech is about to begin, so we now take you to the Oval Office, where the President’s speech will be reported by Chris Manckiewicz of The 24/7 News Network.”