G Hopf: Driver 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

A whistle from across the parking lot jolted in out of his preps. He looked in the direction and saw one of the prostitutes standing near the back door smoking a cigarette. He nodded and went back to prepping. When his firearms were ready, he put Tommy’s Hoback knife on his vest, and attached Tommy’s axe on his left hip. An idea popped in his head, he looked back at the prostitute and waved her over.

She stomped on her marijuana cigarette and rushed over to him. “Look at you cowboy, you look like you mean business,” she said. She cocked her hip out and gave him a seductive look. She wasn’t older than seventeen and was wearing hot pants and a crop top with no bra underneath. Her blonde colored hair with roots hung down to her shoulders and her bangs were cut horizontally across her brow line.

“I do,” he replied reaching inside his backpack and pulling out a wad of Republic dollars. He handed them to her and said, “I need you to sit here with this baby until I return.”

“Baby?” she asked shocked by the request.

“Yeah,” he said nodding towards the child.

She looked in the cab and said, “Oh my, there is a baby, he’s so cute, or is it a girl?”

“Don’t know, haven’t checked. Can you feed and change him or her while I’m gone too?”

“I don’t know much about babies,” she said reluctant to take the proposition.

“Say, did you get some new girls in here a few days ago?” he asked.

“Yeah, ladies from The Collective, real prissy types,” the girl said.

“Any of them named Portia, average height, dark hair, lean build?” he asked.

“Nope, I don’t know any Portia,” she said smacking on gum. “You know, I’m not sure about this babysitting thing.”

“I’ll double the cash when I get back and I’ll toss in a bonus for you.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“I’ll set you free, you and all the girls,” he said putting his rifle sling over his shoulder.

“Free?”

“Yeah.”

“How ya’ going to do that?” she asked.

He looked her deep into her eyes and said, “Because, I’m going to kill everyone responsible for this place.”

“Jacob, pull over,” Portia urged.

“No, we’re pushing all the way through,” Jacob replied. He was struggling to remain awake.

“Listen to me, you’re exhausted, I’m exhausted, let’s find a place to rest, just for a short bit, please,” she pleaded.

“I can’t, if we hadn’t stopped my team would be alive, Leigh would be alive,” Jacob said.

She put her hand on his and said, “That wasn’t your fault, that was Chef, he betrayed you and your friends.”

“How could he? After all those years together, he just turned us in. It all makes sense when I think about how he had been acting lately. For the past few days, every time we’d camp, we’d discover the Marshals are close behind. That bastard was giving them our coordinates.”

“It’s over now,” Portia said.

“And poor Leigh,” Jacob said fighting back tears.

“I didn’t know you two were together, I’m sorry,” she said.

“We weren’t, I mean we didn’t show the team our affection. I hid it for many years but had only recently opened up to her and now she’s gone.”

“Let’s pull over, please,” she again pleaded.

“Fine,” he said and immediately slowed and took the next dirt road off the old two lane highway. “We’ll park in that grove of trees,” he said pointing ahead some fifty feet.

“Perfect,” she said.

He pulled into the trees and turned the vehicle off. “We’re almost out of fuel.”

“We’ll take care of it later, let’s get some sleep,” she said, her eyes growing heavy.

“I’m really sorry about your husband,” he said.

“And I’m sorry about Leigh. Tell me more about Paradise.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How much further?”

“We’re almost in the Neutral Zone, then we go into Cartel country. If all goes smooth, we’ll be at the dock by tomorrow afternoon, so thirty some hours of driving.”

She yawned.

“You know something. We’re together because of pure fate. A simple call and now we’re sitting here,” he said looking over to see Portia was sleeping. He didn’t want to follow suit but it was becoming impossible. He removed his pistol and sat it on his lap. Leaning back he gazed south, closed his eyes and nodded off.

The drive through Cartel country wasn’t any more dangerous than anywhere else, it was a sparsely populated area due in part because of the Sonoran desert. After the war and the collapse of the grid, the once populated smaller cities emptied out, their population migrating northward towards what they hoped was abundant food and water. With no law and order, the Sinaloa Cartel moved in and quickly occupied, killing or enslaving those who remained. Conflict between the Republic and Cartel soon followed with both sides calling a truce and creating a barrier between their lands called the Neutral Zone. It was a band of land, twenty-miles wide that stretched along what had been the borders of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and parts of New Mexico. The Cartel attempted to push east into New Mexico but ran up against a sizable force from the newly formed New Texas.

New Texas was a force to reckon with, they kept to themselves, but anyone who wished to compromise their sovereignty were quickly dispatched. New Texas was huge, spanning the former states of Texas, most of New Mexico, Oklahoma, southern parts of Arkansas and western Louisiana with their capital in Baytown, a port city in east Texas.

During the height of Jacob’s tenure with Leviathan, he and his team had operated in the southern part of the Republic, Sinaloa Cartel territory, and New Texas; they avoided The Collective and never entered California, unless the job would pay heavily. The once populace state suffered dearly from the war with dozens of high yield nuclear warheads hitting cities all along the coast and inland. From San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and many of the military installations, the state had turned into one large wasteland west of the Sierra, Laguna and San Bernardino mountains. With civilization destroyed, roving tribes of Generates took control years back and had pushed east past the mountains, threatening the other nations.

The Generate problem was the real issue plaguing the land. However, like the leadership in The Collective, everyone was choosing to ignore it despite pleas from small towns and hamlets. Instead, the powers that be targeted a greater threat to their bottom line, Leviathan. With Leviathan in the cross hairs of every government, leader or warlord it put them all in a situation; stay and fight or leave. At the moment, Jacob was still on the path to leave but with his team now dead his decision wasn’t set in stone.

Kyle approached Conrad and stopped a foot from him.

Conrad barely gave him a glance before going back to whittling a chunk of wood. “You’re back. What’s your payment?”

“A group of slaves came in from The Collective, any of them named Portia?” Kyle asked.

Conrad peered over the reading glasses he’d gotten from Kyle before and asked, “Who wants to know?”

“I do,” Kyle said firmly.

Conrad looked at Kyle and saw he was holding a pistol in his right hand. “Don’t you look like Mr. Tough Guy? Um, any information will cost you.”

“How about your miserable life?” Kyle asked and put the pistol under Conrad’s chin. “Tell me if a woman by the name of Portia came here?”

“Listen, I don’t know shit, I just sit here and watch the parking lot,” Conrad begged dropping his knife and the carved piece of wood.