Post Apocalyptic Ponies: Revolutions Per Mile, Book 1 (6 page)

BOOK: Post Apocalyptic Ponies: Revolutions Per Mile, Book 1
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She left plenty of room for the police cars, but it didn't take
them long to get a horizon in front of us, even while kicking the
Mustang in the pants.

“Jake here is going to need to fuel up soon.”

Just like I said. Buckets.

When we came to the turn off for Greensburg, I knew I was wrong.
The police sped right by.

“Sorry, girl. Nice try.” She said it kind of snooty,
but I chalked it up to stress. Her hands were solid hooks from
gripping and managing the steering wheel. Any misstep at those speeds
and it's good night K-Bear.

I'd reminded myself of my dad. It surprised me he wasn't around to
criticize me. I guessed because I wasn't the one behind the wheel.

The final twenty miles went by in a blink. When we arrived at the
small town I thought for just a second that we'd taken a wrong turn
and found Greensburg again. Like the former, this town had cars
parked in every square inch of real estate. Unlike Kinsley they'd
left their main street open, which allowed us to punch through behind
the cop cars.

I'd run freight to Coldwater, but it was so far south it wasn't
one of my regular stops. I'd never been beyond it.

“The gates are a couple miles down the road.” She
sounded jittery, now that we were near the end. “I can't
believe I was right. The
one
time I needed to be wrong.”

I was totally at her mercy. Being a passenger never sat well with
me, which was why I reveled in being a driver...and basically made no
friends the past couple years. But now the responsibility sat heavily
on my conscience. Wasn't a good co-pilot supposed to offer
suggestions—better, and smarter routes—and stuff?

She turned roughly to the left on a short dirt track that led to a
nearby small stand of trees. “This is perfect. I didn't know it
would be this easy.”

“Easy? What are we doing? Why are we stopping?”

“It's time for you to earn your pay.” She laughed with
a touch of sarcasm.

She exited her door, then went to the back and lifted the trunk.
Not knowing what else to do, I followed. I admit I was curious what
she had back there, so this was the perfect excuse to be nosy.

She stood there smiling at me.

“Are you ready to see how we do things up north?”

“Oh, God yes!” That's what I was thinking. But I
couldn't sound like a child.

With a passable shrug and a look of indifference I tossed out,
“Sure.”

I
thought there'd be a gate


That
is not what I was expecting.” I hated to
sound like an amateur, but I had to face facts. Ponies don't normally
travel with guns. It's part of the reason they call us ponies: it's
perfectly safe. Having guns in the car would more likely result in us
shooting ourselves.

My dad, bless his heart, was screaming at me how wrong I was. I
won't share his words. You can imagine what a protective father might
say about the need for guns in the hands of vulnerable young women in
the middle of nowhere. I wasn't yet willing to admit he was close to
right.

Anyway, Jo pulled up a hidden handle in her cargo space and the
whole thing lifted. All the crap she'd kept on top—all the
misplaced and mismatched junk—was a diversion for what she kept
underneath. I don't even know what to call it. It looked like some
kind of spaceman's gun.

Jo only knew me for a few hours, but dammit if she didn't already
subscribe to my newsletter.

“You're wondering what this thing is, aren't you?” She
practically danced in place in anticipation. “This is a Barrett
Model 82A1 50-cal.” She looked at me with a huge grin, then
looked at her gun like it was her baby.

My face must haven't conveyed the proper level of awe.

“Nothing?” The smile faded. “You don't find this
the least bit cool?”

Out here there isn't much to do with a person's time. I fill it by
driving and when I'm not driving I'm wrenching on my car so I can
drive it again, faster. Sometimes, I sleep. Thats. About. It. The
thing I saw under her gaze might have well have been alien for all I
cared.

That's not what I told her.

“Yeah, it's really cool.” Then, to distract her. “Are
we going to shoot the cops?”

“What? No. Why would I shoot cops?” She smiled with
the “you're a silly little girl” smile, then got to work
yanking the gun out of the car. She wasn't a large or strong-looking
girl, but we all need decent upper body strength to handle the wheel
at high speeds. It had some heft to it, and she grunted until it was
firmly in her hands.

She looked like a miniature Amazon warrior princess holding that
gun. It was damn near as tall as her. I had to give it to her, she
was rockin' it.

“The first thing I'm going to teach you about the interstate
is to trust no one. I don't trust those cops. This,” she nodded
to her heavy-barrel friend, “is how I learn who's up to no good
out here. Come on.”

She put the gun on her shoulder and pointed inside her trunk. “Can
you grab a couple of those mags?”

I stood with a blank look.

“Those box-like thingies. They have the ammo in them. Ten
rounds each.” She chuckled. “Damn, we have to start in
first gear, I guess.”

After I grabbed both of them, we ran to the treeline. Beyond, we
could see for a clear mile to the south. The trunk line kept going
south, but the police had stopped at the intersection of another
dual-lane highway.

Jo set up her toy, and told me what I was looking at.

“That cross road is the southern limit of your precious
pastures.”

“I don't see a gate. I thought there'd be a gate.”

With a few grunts and curses she both continued placing her gun
and responding to my dumb questions. I sensed that she was prepared
for a slew of them.

“Nope, no gate on the high plains. Always a way to go around
them out here, huh? It just makes a convenient way to describe this
place.”

She settled in and began to look through the huge scope on top of
the huge tan gun. Without the scope I could still see both cop cars
sitting in the middle of the intersection. They appeared to be
waiting. I was looking into the proverbial middle of nowhere. I
couldn't see anything of interest in any direction but low, dry grass
and the odd clump of trees. Just us, our trees, and those two cars.

Minutes ticked by. I was once again struck by how quiet the world
had become. Not just because I'd gotten out of my car, but the world
in general. The beeps of technology had gone the way of the Old
World. No more television. No internet. No game systems.

I should clarify. They probably have most of that somewhere. Maybe
in Hays. They still have electricity. But I avoid all that junk. It
rots the brain.

“You did listen, K-Bear.”

“Yeah, dad. Sometimes you're right about something,” I
thought.

“Movement. What the hell?” She re-adjusted herself on
the ground. Her eye was glued to the end of the scope.

On the road coming up from the south I saw a huge truck. A big
rig. Out here, in well, nowhere, it looked out of place. It was
running totally alone. Something didn't add up.

“One fuel hauler, way out here? Alone and vulnerable?”

She pulled back to look at me. “How did the monkey's know it
would be here?”

I gave her my look of ignorance.

She winked at me, then peered back into the glass.

“The cops have stopped it. Hmm. You better hand me one of
those magazines, after all.”

I'd been holding them, so I dropped one down to her. She got to
work banging in into the frame of the gun, then she pulled back on a
handle, getting it loaded I assumed.

“They're just talking. Our two cruisers, and the fueler.
They're all standing around like it's a party, or something.”

She didn't say anything for a long time. I couldn't see much
detail from a quarter mile away. I saw two black blobs parked in
front of a larger blob. I could barely make out the men in the
middle.

“Oh shit!” She tensed up. “Oh shit.”

“What?” I still didn't see anything, but I heard the
pop of gunfire.

“They're shooting. What the? The tanker had guys hiding or
something. They're all over.”

“Are you going to shoot them?”

It was a strange question, I'd be happy shooting—or at least
seriously hurting—the crooked cops, but they were still
our
cops. Whoever was killing them would likely want to kill me.

“OK. This is it.” Jo spoke, but she wasn't talking to
me.

“Rook, I need you to do something for me. Don't ask any
questions, got it?”

“Why can't—”

“No questions! That's my rule. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“I need you take this gun and go put it back in my car.
Here, take these keys.” She tossed her keys to me.

I wanted to ask the question.

She smiled at me. Then answered what she knew was on the tip of my
tongue.

“I'm going to get us a cop car.”

Breathe,
K-Bear

I love the police. I always have. My dad instilled the proper
respect from a young age. He told me—many times—about
getting pulled over in his sports cars growing up and how he was
always
polite to the man or woman behind the badge. More than
a few times his goodwill and charm enabled him to get into
discussions with the officers about his cars, their cars, and a
shared passion for high performance driving. A few times he got out
of the tickets, but most times he took them with good cheer.

If I ever considered being inside a police car, it was because my
dad convinced me I would be hauled in for stealing candy at the
grocery store, or later, for smoking in the woods with the older
girls—and their boyfriends. Never in my dreams or imagination
did I consider going voluntarily into a police car in an effort to
steal it.

And then, in the nowhere region of Kansas, with no one else to
witness it, my new friend ran across an open field toward two police
cars
in the middle of a gun fight
!

I intended to put the gun away, but first I laid down so I could
watch to see if her hopeless ploy had any chance of success. The
officers were nowhere near their cars. As best I could tell, when the
shooting started the cops ran for a big pile of dirt on one side of
the street and the foreigners ran back to their big rig for cover.

I reoriented the scope and tried to find Jo. Once I found her I
watched her approach the intersection.

“My God, she might do it.”

The police had been sloppy, or overconfident. They left their
doors open as if they were coming right back. Did they trust the
other men? Were they in cahoots and had a falling out? The scope put
me in the action, but I had no context.

Jo never stopped running. She crossed the field in a couple
minutes, ran up the small embankment—slipping once—and
then in full view of everyone jumped into the open door of the
nearest car and slammed it shut.

The gunfight stopped, as if all the men agreed what they'd just
witnessed constituted a different, and greater, threat.

“K-Bear, what have you gotten yourself into here?”

I glanced upward to see my father haloed by the afternoon sun, as
he stood next to me.

“You think I intended for all this to happen, Dad? One
second I'm minding my own business, next I'm hauling some kind of
canon while my friend rips off the police.” My hackles were in
full fury. “So how's your day going?”

He was gone. I didn't think he was in the mood to argue.

I turned back and Jo's cruiser was reversing on the highway, back
toward my position. She turned the wheel, slammed the brakes, then
spun the car around so it faced me. She let the tires rip as she sped
my way.

To my great shock, she honked as she drove on by.

I nearly wet my pants, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I picked up
the big gun and ran. It was about ten times heavier than I expected
it to be, so it took me ten minutes to walk the thirty yards back to
Jo's car. Seriously, it felt like it.

During my struggle I heard the roar of the other Mustang
interceptor. They even threw on the sirens, though surely they knew
there was no one to hear them.

I stood frozen in the woods as the sirens got closer. I wasn't
exactly waving a flag but it wouldn't take much for them to see a
lime green car sitting inside a tiny copse of trees.

Closer. The motor churned as the transmission clicked through the
gears. By the time they passed they were flying in hot pursuit. If
they saw me standing there holding a huge rifle, they let it go.

I didn't bother putting the gun back into its hidey hole. I made a
best effort to push it into the hold, then I shut the lift-gate. I
jumped in the driver's seat. I pushed the start button and felt the
guttural rumble of the fastest car I'd ever been in. I felt it in my
chest. In my thighs. I felt the energy in my feet.

“Breathe, K-Bear.”

“Shut it. I know!”

I belted in, thinking for the first time since I became a driver
that I might finally need it. With deliberate care I turned around on
the gravel parking area. When the car reached the edge of the
pavement I looked back down toward the fuel truck. They, too, had
turned around and headed to the south—away from the action.

I turned right, toward it.

You
always did what you wanted

I'd imagined I'd cry if I ever got to drive such a car. I was
right: I started to cry. I can't explain the feeling of being behind
the wheel of a powerful beast like that Mustang. It had a roar that
screamed “freedom!” and I seriously thought about turning
down any of the side roads and just forgetting what was up the
blacktop in front of me.

I was hesitant on the gears, as if sticking them too hard was
going to damage the fragile thing. I knew it was ridiculous, but I
couldn't help feel I was riding in the most precious piece of
pre-apocalypse technology on the road. A known falsehood, since two
newer and faster Mustangs plied the asphalt in front of me.

BOOK: Post Apocalyptic Ponies: Revolutions Per Mile, Book 1
12.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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