James Rawles - Founders

Terry opted to be tail gunner, sitting on top of the backpacks just behind the cab, but forward of the gas cans. She bundled herself up with both her unrolled sleeping bag and Ken’s sleeping bag. She wore gloves, a muffler, and a pile cap to keep her head warm. She sat facing rearward, with her CAR-15 in her lap.

Ken, meanwhile, sat in the seat directly behind Cliff. Remembering how all the windows of their Mustang and Bronco had been shot out, Ken ordered, “At the first sign of trouble, you hit all four buttons to roll the windows down. We don’t want them getting shot out, and besides, the way this HK ejects brass, it’s a window smasher.”

“You got it!” Cliff replied.

On the seat next to him, Cliff carried a folding-stock Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle with a thirty-round magazine. Two spare-loaded twenty-round magazines were placed within reach in the center console, along with Cliff’s ancient Webley revolver. Beside it were four full-moon clips of .45 ACP ammunition. Seeing this, Ken surmised that Cliff’s revolver had been converted to .45 ACP.

Ken positioned his HK butt down on the floor between his legs, and both his pack and web gear were next to him on the seat. He debated removing his M1911 pistol from its holster, but then, remembering an account that he’d read of the FBI’s 1986 Miami shootout, he decided that the pistol might get misplaced if they came to a sudden stop.

Cliff started the engine and shouted, “Y’all ready?”

Ken and Terry both shouted back, “Yes!”

Cliff turned on the headlights, and they started down Henry Road toward the freeway. Cliff popped a cassette tape into the pickup’s tape and CD player. The voice of Hank Williams Jr. came from the speakers, singing “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Ken laughed uproariously. The situation seemed so surreal.

After Cliff turned west on State Highway 26, the sky behind them was starting to lighten. Cliff set the pickup’s cruise control to fifty miles per hour. He said forthrightly, “I’m keeping it under fifty-two, for fuel economy. I read somewhere that’s the magic number.” The sensation of speed was overwhelming to both Ken and Terry. They had spent so many months on foot that fifty miles per hour seemed alarmingly fast. Ken laughed and exclaimed, “Woo-hoo! I feel like we’re in the Millennium Falcon , and you just shouted ‘Punch it, Chewie!’”

Recognizing the reference to the movie Star Wars , Cliff retorted, “Well, we both got red hair, so doesn’t that make us both Wookies?”

Ken laughed again and yelled, “Wookie suiters of the world, unite!”

The landscape of Wyoming raced by as the daylight grew. At Torrington, they turned south onto Highway 85. At this junction and south of it, they saw dozens of burned-out hulks of cars on the shoulder. As they approached the cars, Cliff slowed to twenty miles an hour and sounded serious for the first time. “I gotta watch for any scrap metal in the road. There was a looter roadblock here last year. It cost us five men’s lives to clean those looters out.”

Beyond the destroyed cars, Cliff sped up and again set the cruise control to fifty. Terry tapped on the back window and grinned at Ken. She gave an exaggerated thumbs-up.

Ken sat in silence, listening to “Tennessee Stud,” “The Coalition to Ban Coalitions,” and other songs that were unfamiliar to him. The tape began playing “A Country Boy Can Survive” for the second time. Looking in the center console box and in the glove box, Ken searched for other tapes or CDs, but he found none. He realized that not only was the audio system set to repeat, but also that Cliff had only one cassette tape in the vehicle. Ken shook his head and grinned. Cliff was a bona fide character.

They hadn’t seen a vehicle heading in either direction all morning. The barren plains of eastern Wyoming were now in full daylight. The engine was running smoothly.

Ken said, “Say, Cliff, you never mentioned your family name.”

Cliff answered ambiguously, “That’s right.”

“Well, I noticed the mailbox there was marked ‘Larson.’ So is that your name?”

Cliff answered with a laugh, “Well, it might be.”

Ken laughed and shook his head. “Oh well… How about them Cubs ?”

“I’m a Red Sox fan, personally, but I don’t think there’s going to be a baseball season next summer. Folks are using their baseball bats for other purposes these days.”

Cliff seemed distracted, and didn’t continue. He slowed and turned west onto County Road 218.

Cliff was looking anxious and he regularly scanned the sides of the road and his rearview mirrors. Finally, Cliff explained, “This route that we’re taking will bypass Cheyenne.” Then he gestured over his left shoulder, and said, “You do not want to go through Cheyenne. Last I heard, that city was in the hands of the bad guys, and they will eat you for breakfast.” After loudly drawing a breath, he added, “Literally.”

Cliff took several more turns on small roads, some of them gravel, for the next hour. Several times, Cliff stopped and consulted his maps to be certain of his route. They finally got back on the Interstate just east of Laramie. “From what I’ve heard, it should be smooth sailing from here on,” he reassured Ken.

They stayed on I-80, heading west, transiting the Rockies. In places the mountains loomed above them. There were a couple of places where rocks had rolled into the road, and there was one small slide two miles west of Green River that partially blocked the right lane. Otherwise, the highway was in remarkably good condition, considering that it had gone through two winters without any maintenance.

They pulled off the road just past Green River to check on Terry. Cliff left the engine running. Ken handed everyone strips of jerky and bottles of water. Terry had rosy cheeks, but seemed exuberant. “Why did we get off the highway onto all those small roads back there?” she asked.

“Just a shortcut,” Ken told her, not wanting to darken her mood. “Don’t sweat it. Say, do you want to switch places?”

She shook her head and said, “Nah. I want to do the whole width of Wyoming out in the open, soaking it all in. I’m in a big, happy dream right now.”

They continued their descent from the western slope of the Rockies. The air was now comfortably warm. Other than abandoned cars on the shoulder that had run out of fuel in the midst of the Crunch and a few tumbleweeds, the Interstate was clear of any obstructions. But they could see the recent ruins of some ranch houses near the freeway. With most of these, there was little more than a stone chimney and a blackened patch of earth left as a silent testament to the chaos that had reigned over the past year and a half.

As they crossed the Utah state line, Ken did some math in his head. In just over eight hours, they had covered more distance than they could have traveled by foot in more than two months.

Late in the day, they reached the junction of Interstate 80 and Interstate 84. In the distance, they could see the odd blue color of Echo Reservoir to the south.

“Well, here you are,” Cliff announced.

He slowly brought the pickup to a stop in the right lane of the freeway, not bothering to pull onto the shoulder. They had still not seen another vehicle in motion all day long. Cliff turned off the engine.

Ken and Terry thanked Cliff repeatedly. After pulling out their packs, they helped him refill the pickup’s main fuel tank, emptying six of the 5-gallon cans. Ken dug into his backpack and pulled out a brown twenty-round box of Federal 5.56mm ball ammunition and handed it to Cliff, saying, “This is just a token for all the gas that you burned today. Thanks.”