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Anarchy had improved the gas station, Jules thought.
It couldn’t have been a pretty thing when it had gas to sell and a fully functioning network of supply and demand to sustain its business. Its canopy would have been painted in some garish corporate colour- lime green or neon orange- and it would have been covered in signs and prices, the price of gas, the newest lotto draw, the newest sweet drink. There would have been signs all up the highway telling the drivers where to turn; there would have been a great grey parking lot for them to rest and have a smoke. Jules remembered gas stations like that, vaguely.
The signs on the highway were gone. The parking lot was cracked and buckled from twenty or thirty winters’ worth of frost, and weeds and shrubs grew in the cracks. The rusted canopy and all the gas pumps beneath it were painted in wide scribbles of brown and grey and forest green, and festooned with dead cedar branches to match. There were no signs in the windows of the squat little building, because it no longer had windows- someone had fortified it with pallets and sheet metal, and then covered the entire thing in even more branches for good measure. It looked like a tiny elf-fortress in the middle of a tiny forest- but then, everything looks tiny from up in the cab of a big rig.
Only a warm yellow light glowing from between two slats said open for business.
“A beer for me, a beer for you, and some food for the road,” Rosey was reciting as he pulled off his jacket.
“No beer for me, thanks” Jules replied absently, watching the light. She’d been driving; now her arms were crossed and her feet up on the dashboard. Eight hours was a long time.
“Whew, that’s good!” She turned around to look at him and found him grinning ear to ear, giving her a hopeful look with those big blue eyes of his. “Since we’re driving, and I don’t think they have any, anyway.”
He’d been joking. Obviously. She huffed and shook her head, which was enough acknowledgement to satisfy him; still grinning, he returned his attention to the pockets of his sweater, while she let hers drift again.
How could he be so chipper? Of course, he'd spent the last eight hours napping and changing tapes and darning his socks. The next driving shift would be his- she would make dumb jokes at him after that, and see how he liked it.
Damn it, he'd probably still like it.
The low, uneven rumble of a diesel generator drifted into the cab when Rosey opened the door and hopped down. The early autumn air was perfectly still. It smelled of unburnt fuel and dry pine.
“Be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
He shut the door and trotted off across the cracked asphalt. She watched him all the way there, watched as he knocked on the door and waited for about five seconds until it opened a crack. The figure on the other side was silhouetted by the light behind. All Jules could see of him was a hand, and as she watched, the hand made a familiar gesture. Rosey half-unzipped his sweater, shrugged off the right sleeve and rolled up the sleeve of the tee-shirt beneath.
The figure beyond the door inspected the Couriers’ Guild tattoo on her partner’s right shoulder and found it authentic. He opened the door; Rosey zipped his sweater back up and entered.
The door closed.
Jules sat back and waited.
Five minutes passed. He was chatting, haggling, taking his time like always. She had a few more minutes before he’d come out to consult with her about the prices and selection, and nothing to do until then but enjoy the stillness.
Ten minutes later, half dozing, she was awoken by a muffled exclamation.
It sent her heart up into her throat. She jerked upright, fully aware and alert in an instant, and hopped over into the passenger seat to crank down the window. The passenger seat was closer to the building- and the sound had definitely come from the building.
“What?” she called back, staring wide-eyed at the glow from between the slats.
“Courier!” the same voice replied- male, unfamiliar, yelling now. “Listen up now, because I’m only going to give you one chance!”
—
As Rosey stepped over the threshold and into the store’s interior, he started to zip his sweater back up, and then thought better of it. The small space was stuffy with the trapped heat of the sun and the two- now three- human bodies within, and a haze of smoke and dust hung in the air, lit by the glow of a bare incandescent bulb on the ceiling.
The man who'd opened the door for him shut it again and squeezed past him to a chair in the corner. To call it a corner was a bit of an overstatement - the little foyer was no more than three feet deep and ten feet wide, and the doorman's Adirondack chair took up one entire end of it. It was too big for the room and too big for the mousey little man who now sat in it. Rosey nodded to the doorman and stepped up to the counter.
"Welcome," said the man on the other side. He made an amusing contrast to the doorman- so big he blocked almost the entire window, and built like a barrel. From under his heavy brow, dark eyes regarded Rosey dispassionately.
Backwards, Rosey thought. The big guy ought to be the doorman, and the little guy ought to be the shopkeeper.
"Thanks, buddy. What have you got?"
The shopkeeper's brows rose up at the sound of the unfamiliar accent, and he thought for a moment before coming to a decision. "French, are ya?"
"Yep. Eric LaRose, Montréal- at your service."
There was no harm in giving his name and home terminal; they were painted on the driver's side door of his rig, public knowledge for any who cared to look. Sometimes it worked as a gesture of trust, but if the big guy was swayed by it, he didn't show it. "I got everything you want, Frenchy. What do you have for me?"
Rosey patted his pocket, making the coins inside jingle. "I have silver-"
"No coin. Coin's no good here," the shopkeeper interrupted, raising one meaty hand.
"No problem." He hadn't really expected anything different. Coins were verging on worthless even in the cities now- out here in the boonies, the chances of anyone wanting to exchange them were slim to none. Still, it had been worth a try. "What is good here, then?"
"Goods," the shopkeeper replied, cracking a smile, "or fuel for the genny."
"Ah, yes. Fuel."
"You must have plenty in that big pretty tractor of yours."
"Enough to trade," Rosey agreed, with a nod for good measure, and the big guy straightened up and nodded back. An agreement had been reached. "I'm looking for food, smokes, clean water if you have it."
"I have it."
He turned around. For a second Rosey caught a glimpse of the dusty room behind him, filled with freestanding shelves and racks. Many of them were empty; a few were piled high with boxes, jars and cans.
The little doorman cleared his throat, and Rosey turned to look at him. "Enough to trade, eh?"
"That's right."
"And your partner’s out there looking after it? Awfully trusting of you. Aren't you worried he'll just drive away with it? Tell the bosses that you were eaten by a bear, and take all your pay for himself?"
Rosey laughed. "You don't know half as much about couriers as you think you do."
"Oh, no?"
"No. Couriers don't do that."
"I've met some who've done it."
"Then you've met bandits, buddy, not couriers. Trust me on that."
The doorman gave a thoughtful little nod and sat back in his oversized chair, and the shopkeeper returned to the window with his arms full. Carefully, he set the load down on the counter and spread it out, indicating each item one by one.
"These are my best cigarettes, and I have six more boxes in the back. This is salt beef- salt fish- you won't find either one cheaper within two hundred miles of here. Strawberry preserves- and I don't want to sell 'em, because they're special, but if you want 'em I'm sure we can make a deal. Aged cheese- you wouldn't happen to have any goods to trade with, would ya, besides your fuel?"
Rosey had been following along, leaning down to get a better look at the stuff, and the question caught him off guard. "Well– no, not really."
"Not even in your trailer? I have better stuff than this, but the price'll be higher."
"You want me to lose my job?" He chuckled. "No, I can't trade my cargo away. Sorry.”
“Suit yourself. Now, this cheese…”
It happened too fast to fathom. One hand lifted up the block of cheese for inspection, and the other arm shot out and hooked the back of his neck. He recoiled, reflexively and too late to keep from being dragged half-over the counter in one violent jerk. Pain lanced down his spine and up into his skull; for a second the force and shock of it left him paralyzed.
“Empty his pockets!” he heard the shopkeeper bark from somewhere above him. The doorman’s muttered reply was unintelligible. Assuming it had been an affirmative, he kicked out behind him, only half expecting his legs to work.
They worked. One heel struck home. He was dragged forward further until his toes no longer touched the floor, and the arm around his neck tightened until his vision went grey and all sound turned to static.
The two bandits exchanged more words; he understood none of them. Distantly he felt the doorman taking off his sweater and turning out his pockets (nothing to find there but more worthless currency and the old Swiss army knife which would hold value to no one but its owner), and tried to think around the rapidly rising panic. The last breath he’d managed to take hadn’t been a full one, and it was turning to fire in his lungs.
An eternity later, the strangling arm released its grip and shoved him back over the counter. His legs were jelly; he stumbled, fell hard against the opposite wall and slid to the floor, gasping.
When he opened his eyes the doorman was crouched next to him, grinning, holding a five-inch hunting knife and waggling it at his neck.
“Your partner. Is he armed?”
It was hard to dispel panic once it had gotten a foothold. You couldn’t rush it- but there weren’t many better options. Rosey held up one shaky hand- a second, please- and tried to get his breathing under control.
“Yes or no?” The grin had dropped. “Nod or shake if you can’t speak.”
No- that would be worse. Between coughs he whispered, "Yes." It was the truth.
“With what? C’mon.”
He took a deep breath and winced. “Shotgun.”
That was a lie. All Jules had was the shitty little Guild-issued handgun in the glove box, and one single bullet out of the six that were a courier’s standard monthly allotment. He could have sprung for more, but that would have required sacrificing other luxuries that had, at the time, seemed more valuable. That didn’t matter anymore; what mattered was that a little extra firepower, even if it was imaginary, might make these two wannabe bandits think twice about killing him now and trying to take the rig by force.
The doorman bared his teeth and jabbed the knife forward, stopping just short of breaking skin. “Courier with a shotgun? I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me.” Please. “It’s… my gun.”
"Anything else?"
"No."
The knife withdrew a little, just a couple millimetres. “Just a shotgun. That’s fine,” the doorman said, as though trying to reassure himself.
“Damn right it is,” the shopkeeper replied. His bulk disappeared from the counter window and emerged into the foyer through a previously hidden door. “He could have a bazooka in there and it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“It won’t work,” Rosey tried, following the shopkeeper with his eyes as the big man stepped over the doorman, over him, and stopped next to the boarded-up window. He was opening it. “She’ll… cut her losses and go-”
The doorman cut him off with a yip of laughter. “Nice try, Frenchy. I heard this from an expert, you know: couriers don’t do that.”
You really did, Rosey thought. Câlisse.
“COURIER!” the shopkeeper bellowed through the slats of the open window.
Six seconds of silence answered him, followed by Jules’ voice. “What?”
“Courier!” he repeated, with less volume and more force. “Listen up now, because I’m only going to give you one chance! We have your partner, and we’d like to make a trade: his life for your truck and cargo!”
—
Deep down, Jules had been expecting those exact words when she’d first heard the shout through the glass, but hearing them was still a nasty shock. She covered her mouth with her hands and cursed; then, anger not quite expended, she leaned over and punched the side of the driver’s seat three times.
She’d been sleeping. Goddamn it all, she’d been sleeping, or else she would have noticed that he’d been too long in there and… done what? Honked the horn? Left the rig unattended to go in and tell him to hurry up?
Shit, anything would have been better than getting caught unawares like this. “I- we have no cargo! The trailer is empty!”
“I know you have cargo,” the voice from the window replied, “and I know you won’t leave. Throw your gun out of the window now.”
Shit!
Of course, of course they’d gotten him talking and of course he’d told them everything they wanted to know. It wouldn’t have taken any effort at all-
Her heart jumped again. “Show me he’s okay first! Show me he’s alive or you get nothing!”
At first there was no reply. She gripped the edge of the window and watched as a shadow moved behind the slats, briefly blocking the light. There was no longer anything even slightly charming about the tiny fortress in front of her. What was taking them so long?
The door opened wide.
She pressed herself back against the seat and centered the door in the side mirror. Rosey emerged first, staggering, held up by a hand gripping his upper arm and a knife against his throat. The owner of the hand and the knife was just behind; a great big ox of a man, probably 6’5” to Rosey’s 5’10” and certainly a hundred pounds heavier. That was all she needed to know about him; as for her partner-
No blood on him, that she could see, but a funny high colour in his cheeks, and pain in his face and posture. His hair was in disarray, his sweater missing entirely.
"Rosey!" she called out. "Are you all right?"
He started to nod, grimaced and froze halfway through. His neck, she thought.
"Fine," he replied in a hoarse voice that was just a little too sharp. He squinted, peering through the window, looking for her face; not finding it, he smiled anyway, in case she could see him.
Not fine, she corrected him silently, feeling a rush of mingled annoyance and affection. Not fine, but alive.
"Satisfied?" the big man yelled. "Now let's have the shotgun!"
Shotgun? That had to be Rosey's doing. Trying to intimidate them? It hadn't worked, and now she was in the awkward position of having to produce a shotgun out of thin air- or call her partner a liar, while he had a knife against his neck. And either way it wouldn’t do any good, wouldn’t change the outcome one bit. This little standoff was heading towards only one possible resolution unless she did something, anything to divert it.
Time. She needed time. "Why are you doing this? Well, maybe it's none of my business, but it seems like a bad plan to me. The Guild have been your best customers- why make them your enemy?"
"Best customers!" the big man echoed, with a burst of bitter laughter that couldn’t possibly be a lie. "Try only customers, and not good enough! We'll freeze this winter if things keep going the way they're going. We're cashing in."
Not the worst-case scenario, then, but far from the best. The bandits were low on resources, low on hope- but they still held the only advantage that mattered.
She had to get outside.
Think, stupid!
"Listen, what, what if I were to open the trailer up for you and let you take what you like? You don't want the rig anyway. It'll paint a mile-wide target on your ass. We'll just take it off your hands, leave you the goods, and call it fair and square."
He seemed to actually consider it for a second. Jules could almost hear the wheels turning. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and prayed; when she opened them again, the big guy hadn't moved, but he was smiling. It wasn't a pretty sight.
"What have you got in there?"
—
It’s a good bluff, Rosey thought, but still a bluff.
Couriers carried everything, of course. Private trade from small dwellers and homesteaders, meat and plants and animal products from the fortified farms, supplies and raw materials for the factories, fuel from the legendary refineries; every sort of product you could possibly imagine passed through the Guild terminals on its way across the continent. It was a safe bet that at any given time, any Guild-marked rig you might see was carrying something valuable and useful. A safe bet- but he, Jules, the doorman and the shopkeeper had all lost anyway.
She knew as well as he did that there was nothing in the trailer but barrels of chemicals: caustic soda, bound for a soap factory in Old Vermont. The irony was pretty funny. It was the most valuable cargo they’d carried in months, it was utterly useless to anyone but its buyer, it was probably going to get them killed.
He thought that last part only academically. Oh, the chances were high, all right- might as well be realistic about that- but Jules certainly had a plan that went beyond just buying them a few extra seconds of life. He only had an inkling of it; he was trying to hurry that particular logic train along as quickly as possible. The longer he stood still, the more painful it got to stand at all, and whatever it was that Jules was planning, he had to be able to help if she needed it.
“What have you got in there?” the shopkeeper demanded.
I wish I knew, Rosey thought, and smiled- then his smile faded, and he added as a prayer: careful, careful, don’t oversell it!
“Sugar, yeast, barley and wheat.” There had been a bit of a waver in her voice before, when she’d been forced onto the back foot. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but no, she definitely sounded more confident now. “Brewer’s materials. There’s a spare barrel of fuel, you can have that too.”
The shopkeeper shifted behind him; the blade of the knife twitched. “All right. Throw out the shotgun, then come out and open the trailer.”
She was silent for a moment, and in that moment the shopkeeper let go of Rosey’s arm and grabbed a handful of his hair instead, pulling back just enough to make him tense against the movement. Finally Jules’ hands appeared in the window- open, palm out- followed by her face, eyes wide, mouth set in a hard line. “No, I’m coming out,” she said slowly, “unarmed. I’m leaving the shotgun in the cab.”
All at once Rosey understood everything. He wanted to cheer, yell something like thattagirl, you goddamn genius!, but the hand in his hair yanked back and down, and he cried out instead.
“No you're not!” yelled the shopkeeper at the same time, but it was too late. The door was open. She was coming out.
—
If she’d been even one step back in her plan, that cry of pain and shock might have made Jules retreat. As it was, the door was open and she was halfway out of the cab, one foot hovering above the step, and it still almost made her reconsider.
It twisted her stomach into a knot, but she set her foot down anyway.
From across the parking lot, she locked eyes with the enemy. He was angry, glaring daggers at her from under those big Neanderthal eyebrows, but there was nothing he could say. She’d kept her word. She’d left her jacket in the cab, and now, clad only in a black wifebeater and tattered sweatpants, she was clearly not carrying the shotgun he was worried about. There would be nowhere to hide it.
She looked to Rosey, and the knot twisted a little tighter. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were shut tight, his teeth bared and body turned awkwardly against the force of the hand still pulling him back.
Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry-
He understands, she told herself, because she had to believe it. This whole insane plan depended on it. Getting out of the cab, giving up her only advantage- the threat that she could simply drive away if pushed far enough- it was insane. It was also the only way she could possibly get close enough to use the handgun tucked into her waistband.
She held up the keys and jingled them beckoningly, walking alongside the trailer. “Come on, then, I’ll open it up for you.”
The big guy ceased glaring for long enough to look over his shoulder and give the door a kick. “Jack,” he said, and a second man- Jack, presumably- poked his head out from inside the fortress. “The gun’s in the cab. Go find it.”
Jules swallowed hard.
Jack set off towards the cab at a light, confident jog, and she tracked him in her peripheral vision. It was to be a matter of seconds, then, and the goddamn Neanderthal was moving at a glacial shuffle.
She watched him carefully.
There- he must have relaxed his grip a bit. Rosey opened his eyes and caught her gaze.
His lips moved.
Now!
He dropped. She drew.
—
The pressure let up for just a second.
He noticed it because he could notice nothing else. The twin forces pulling him down and pushing him forward had pushed away all other awareness. All he could feel was the blade against his skin and the lava in his nerves, spreading outward from his spine; all he could do was move forward, one blind step at a time, and focus on keeping his legs under him. He was one lapse of concentration away from collapse.
Jules was beside the trailer. He could hear her jingling the keys in that hurry-up gesture of hers, and he knew why. The doorman- Jack- was headed for the cab, and when he got there it wouldn’t take him long to see that there was no shotgun and sound the alarm.
Maybe the shopkeeper was busy trying to watch in two directions at once. Maybe his hands had just gotten tired. Either way, the knife wavered, the pull relaxed just enough, and Rosey felt adrenaline rush through him like lightning. He opened his eyes.
She was looking right at him.
Now! he mouthed.
Her hand dropped to her side, and he dropped to the ground, tearing himself free from the shopkeeper’s grip and scrambling forward, momentarily on all fours. The point of the knife split his skin as he fell; he didn’t notice. He was running for the rig, running across the parking lot with a voice in his head screaming Take the shot, Jules, take it!
He looked up and saw her, as if from across an impossible distance- frozen, gun leveled just above his head.
Something grabbed him from behind.
—
They were too far away. Jules knew that even before she drew, but she had no choice: she followed through anyway
Everything happened very quickly after that.
Rosey ran, staying low. The big man stayed low behind him, and the knife was still in his hand. Too far, too far- they were one target, she couldn't do it, she was no sharpshooter.
The bastard closed the distance in three steps, and the hand with the knife shot out. Rosey stopped in his tracks, falling back to one knee with a yelp, one hand outstretched instinctively towards her, and the big man straightened up to put his full weight into dragging him back.
Two targets.
She fired.
No sharpshooter, but she got the job done. The enemy fell back with a hole in his chest and a stupid look on his face, as though he hadn't really expected her to do it. Before he'd even hit the ground she was running, almost dropping the gun in her haste.
"Rosey! Hey-"
He was off-balance, still reaching for her. She actually saw the wild energy of the adrenaline rush fade from his eyes, before dropping to her knees next to him and pulling him against her with her free arm.
It was a good thing that she still held the gun, because the handful of seconds that had passed since Now! had been just long enough for Jack to jump down from the cab and come running. She heard his footsteps and turned, and he froze with the gun pointing at his face, gaping at the fallen body of the shopkeeper.
"Y-you bitch!" he gasped.
"Because I finished the fight that he started?" Jules snapped back without thinking- the words formed as she spoke them. "Get back in the building unless you want to join him!"
The gun followed him as he retreated, backwards, towards the door. “He would have let you go,” he added dully, a statement so stupid that it didn’t even merit acknowledgement.
“Rosey, say something,” she whispered, suddenly aware that her left hand- the one against his back- was wet with blood. It was trickling over her fingers, hot and fresh.
“Ow,” came the muffled reply from somewhere around her shoulder.
“We’re getting out of here. Can you stand?”
“Yeah.”
The door shut behind Jack, and Jules felt a moment of regret. If they could only stay here, rest on solid ground, take some of those supplies; they surely had a right to them now. She would have taken it all, and to hell with Jack and his chances of surviving the winter, if she’d only had one more bullet- but she didn’t.
So they were getting out of there.
Jules stood up and Rosey followed, slowly, trembling all over now. “Ow,” he said again, and gave a breathless little laugh.
“Shush. Come on, we have to hurry.”
“My head- is still attached? Is it still there?” He laughed again as he began to walk stiffly, zombie-like, towards the cab. Jules hovered after him, wanting to help but afraid to touch him; pain radiated off him in waves, centred around his rigid neck and shoulders, and blood dripped from his chin and soaked into the back of his shirt, and he was still walking. If she interfered…
“Your head is fine. Shush.”
“N-not ripped off? Good…”
She opened the door for him and climbed in first. He settled into the passenger seat and sagged like a puppet with its strings cut. “Don’t move,” she ordered, and rushed through the sleeper in search of supplies.
“It w-was a good shot,” he murmured while she was pushing over a pile of clothes to get at the first-aid box beneath.
“Will you shut up? You’re in shock, or something.” She regretted it as soon as she said it- because of the harshness of it, and the fact that she didn’t really want him to stop talking at all. The cut on his back had her scared; the fact that there was nothing she could do if it wasn’t just a flesh wound had her terrified, and the fact that she could have stopped it from happening if she’d been just a little quicker and a little more confident had her very, very angry at herself. “Just breathe, don’t talk,” she added, more gently.
“Okay,” he agreed, and she listened intently to his short, sharp breaths as she opened the box. Rubbing alcohol, rolls of bandages, and… duct tape?
Yeah, this would work.
—
She had him lean forward against her shoulder, and from that position she cut away the bloody remains of his formerly white t-shirt and washed the blood from around the wound. That was the first time he’d felt it at all. Before then he’d been confused as to what she was doing, but when the alcohol-burn stabbed its way into his skin, he understood.
“Just lucky he didn’t really know what the fuck he was doing,” she remarked. “If he’d really wanted to kill you… but he still managed to hook you good. Nicked two ribs. It’s messy.”
He heard the rip of duct tape being unrolled, and smiled unseen- she was patching him like he was a torn sleeping-bag or a broken window.
Smiling hurt, but he couldn’t help himself; anyway, everything hurt.
He was soaked in sweat by the time she was done. It dripped down his spine and into his eyes, stinging the cut on his chin. She laid him back against the seat, and a few seconds later he felt the rumble of the big engine starting up.
Sorry. It was supposed to be my turn.
"To Vermont?" she asked.
"Mm-hm."
Movement. They pulled out, and Rosey opened one eye just far enough to catch a glimpse of the doorman in the side mirror. He had emerged from the building at the sound of the rig starting up, and now he was standing over the fallen body of the shopkeeper, silently watching them leave, his face too small to read.