of diesel fuel.
Jacob glanced back at the others, who still waited near the flatbed. Miriam had dropped her hand from the pistol at her side.
“Let’s pump our fuel and get out of here,” Jacob said, “before our buddies at the Department of Agriculture wake up and notice we’re missing.”
Mo backed his tanker up to the front of a metal tank plug flush with the ground. Jacob unlocked the cap, and he and Stephen Paul helped the truck driver get it open and unspool the hose on his tanker. A moment later and it was slurping thousands of dollars of diesel fuel out of the ground and into the truck.
The pump on the truck changed its tone and Mo reached over without looking and shut it off. A frown crossed his face when he looked at the gauge. “That’s only eight thousand. Where’s the rest?”
Jacob put a look of dismay on his face. “Really? Dammit, I thought it was a ten-thousand-gallon tank.”
He felt uncomfortable at the lie, but he couldn’t let Mo think they could tap into unlimited diesel fuel.
“Might be,” Mo said, “but it ain’t got ten thousand in it, that’s for damn sure, because we only loaded eight. Got another tank we could tap?”
“Not here, I don’t,” Jacob said. “And what I’ve got at the house wouldn’t make any difference anyway. A hundred gallons, tops.” He turned to Stephen Paul. “How about you?”
“Same.”
“I figure it will be close enough,” Jacob said. “I’ve got about twenty thousand bucks—not counting your fee, I mean—to pay this guy off if he balks.”
Mo turned back to his hose and pulled it out of the underground tank, and Stephen Paul and David gave Jacob a side look. Eight thousand gallons was nothing compared to the rest of the fuel on this site, hidden in huge tanks around back, covered with brush, dirt, and a rusting heap of junker cars without tires. Father’s legacy. Always prepping for the end of the world.
Yay, Dad, you were right! Millions of people are going to die!
Jacob imagined Abraham Christianson up in heaven, nodding with grim satisfaction as civilization swirled around the drain and his children and grandchildren clawed to survive the coming apocalypse.
No, that was superstitious nonsense. A rough patch. A failed harvest—no matter how widespread—didn’t mean the end. The volcano had quieted down—well, mostly—and next year would be warmer, the business of agriculture more certain.
Meanwhile, a millstone of trouble around Jacob’s neck. Worries about food, fuel, power. The coldest winter in generations on its way, and propane supplies drying up. Guns and security.
Then there was the medical situation. Wait until the antibiotics ran out. Then they’d know what it meant to return to the nineteenth century. It wasn’t an adventure; it was a row of gravestones with children’s names. The only thing that terrified him more was the religious implication of a collapse: plagues, famine, warfare. And that the Lord had chosen him to keep all these people alive.
“Miriam, have you got your sat phone?” Jacob asked.
She had been walking around the back of the truck, peering underneath the tanker, kicking at the tires, as if checking the general road worthiness of Mo’s vehicle. Jacob guessed it had more todo with the natural suspicions of former law enforcement and less to do with mechanical concerns.
She straightened and patted her jacket pocket. “Yep.”
“I’ll only call if something changes. Otherwise, follow us.”
“Where are we going?” Mo asked.
“Not far from here. But we can’t get there directly. So pay attention.”
“And so the faithful, goodhearted people of Blister Creek, Utah, drove into the desert with their precious cargo,” David said, “never suspecting they were driving into a trap.”
Stephen Paul snorted from behind the wheel, and Jacob looked up from the map he had laid across the dashboard and was studying with a penlight. “Does this black market guy have you
Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson