The Loneliest Road
Not long after, Gunner's F-550 rolled through the camp gate, a minivan close on its bumper.
Colonel Gibson's family had arrived. Mike and I went out to meet them as if we'd timed it that way.
The middle-aged woman who stepped down from the van was fighting to keep her composure, grief and fear pressed tight beneath a dignity she refused to surrender. Behind her, a teenage boy and a teenage girl climbed out with their hands locked together, their eyes wide with a fear they couldn't hide.
"You're Polar Bear, aren't you? I'm Elizabeth. Colonel Gibson's wife."
"I've heard. Thank you for making the trip. It couldn't have been easy."
"And this is my son, Ben, and my daughter, Emily."
I gave the children a slight nod, then cut to the point.
"We'll have time to talk later. Right now, we need to move."
I glanced at Mike. A female soldier from the Division, waiting off to the side, stepped forward and saluted.
"Sergeant Sarah Connor. Ma'am."
Elizabeth's expression shifted at the name.
"Your name is...?"
"That's my real name, yes."
An unfortunate coincidence — she shared it with John Connor's mother from The Terminator. Mike filled the silence.
"Sergeant Connor is a former Marine MP. One of the best people we've got."
After Mike's brief introduction, I turned back to Elizabeth.
"Ma'am, before tonight is over we'll cover at least two hundred miles. Three hundred if we can. Sergeant Connor will handle the driving and the radio."
It wasn't special treatment. I just didn't want a last-minute addition dragging down the speed of the column.
She shook her head with a firmness I hadn't expected.
"No. I'm all right for now. I'll drive myself. I'll feel better that way. If I get tired, I'll say so."
That was the end of the introductions. Sergeant Connor climbed into the minivan's passenger seat, and the last column of the Polaris Union finally began to roll.
The Humvees and trucks of the Division headquarters platoon, already staged on the road in front of the camp, came alive with a heavy chorus of engines and pulled out one after another.
Under Mike's command, Delta Echelon slipped onto US Route 50, the road running east as far as the eye could see.
Beneath a gray sky, the column cut across the endless desert, a line of steel punching through the Nevada sand. Mrs. Gibson's minivan fell in toward the rear, and my Kenworth took its place at the very end of the formation. In the rearview, the heavy silhouette of a Stryker armored vehicle held the tail. A new journey was beginning.
As the last of Delta Echelon started east, I found myself thinking about the nine Division members we'd left behind in Fallon. They had stayed of their own will, waiting for their families — but the isolation of an emptied camp, once the entire column had pulled out, would sit heavy on anyone.
I picked up the radio and called Mike.
I acknowledged and set the handset down. The Secure Board was a private forum Cody had built under Polaris's name — a locked subreddit that only authenticated members of the Union and the Division could reach. From here on, every scrap of information about our route and the threats we couldn't see would live there. It was for the nine we'd left behind, and for anyone who might fall out of the column.
Gunner sat in the passenger seat of the rolling Kenworth W990. Carlos had taken Gunner's F-550. The western sky had begun to bleed red.
The last lights of the city faded in the rearview, and the true face of Nevada's Route 50 started to show itself. Outside the window, endless sagebrush and dried salt flats ran all the way to the horizon. Strange rock formations rose at intervals, so alien in shape they could have belonged to another planet.
On a desolate stretch of asphalt where, in ordinary times, you could drive for hours without seeing another vehicle, dozens of trucks now filled the road under the Polaris banner. The long column beneath that gray sky felt like a vast lifeline drawn across a lonely land.
We'd been running about two hours and were passing Middlegate when Mike's voice came over the net from the head of Delta Echelon.
Darkness settled in, and the great steel column pressed east in silence, using nothing but the red taillights of the vehicle ahead as a waypoint. A sudden unease made me turn to Gunner.
"Gunner. Check that meter for me."
"This thing? Don't even know how to read it. Number says... 0.27."
"Microsieverts."
I picked up the radio and called Jed. I couldn't put a question like that on an open channel — not one that would rattle the whole column.
That was when it happened. An encrypted transmission spilled from the National Guard common-channel radio mounted beside me.
Gunner and I looked at each other at the same instant.
"Boss!"
"Linebacker?"
"The Guard's putting up a southern defensive line. Gold Rush is probably their word for refugees. Means they're shutting out anyone without authorization."
"So it's started. They're locking down the south."
With that, southern Nevada was becoming truly abandoned country. Silence held for a moment. Then Gunner looked at me.
"Boss, do we really need to move this fast? The Nevada Guard's responding pretty quick, and we're five hundred miles from all that."
Hands on the wheel, staring straight down the road, I thought back to the truck stop in Mountain Home — the first time I'd met him.
"Gunner. When you first ran into me, I was alone, right?"
"Yeah."
"I was probably one of the first people to get out of Canada. I was on the road before the ash even reached the continent."
He didn't answer.
"Back then, most people were thinking, Let's just get through this winter, or Let's prep a little more before we leave."
I glanced at the long column stretching out ahead of my truck and went on.
"Dave, Frank, Mike — the Nisku crew — they left only two or three days after I did. The day after they barely made it across, the Canada–US border shut completely."
Still nothing from him.
Gunner didn't ask anything more. He just nodded.
"I get it. Tahoe and Carson City grew on me. Guess I started hoping we'd settle there without even noticing."
He looked out at the darkness for a moment, then asked,
"So how much farther east are we going?"
"At least until we've crossed Utah completely and made it over the Rockies in Colorado. We don't stop before that."
The column ran the night without rest along Route 50, driving hard for Austin. Then a transmission came in from Matthews, far ahead with Alpha Echelon.
From Ely, it was only about sixty miles to the Nevada state line. But given how spent the column would be after an all-night forced march, I judged we had to rest there for a day. No argument.
We kept running the night, and as we closed on Austin, a report came in from Delta Echelon's lead Humvee.
The column ahead started moving again, and our Delta Echelon came to a stop.
I climbed down from the truck and looked over the long line of vehicles. People were getting out of Mrs. Gibson's minivan just ahead, working the stiffness out of hours behind the wheel. I walked over.
"You holding up, ma'am?"
"Yes. I'm all right. But... I think it's time I handed over the wheel. I don't want to hold anyone else up."
Sergeant Connor, standing beside her, met my eyes.
"Don't worry, sir. I'll take care of them."
She gave me a slight nod, then led Elizabeth and Emily toward Trailer ABL, which had been converted for personal use. The restroom, most likely.
Out on the road, the truckers' backs, caught in the glow of dozens of red taillights, seemed to blur into one another.
After the short halt we climbed back into the truck. This time Gunner took the wheel.
We ran the night for another two hours and more. As we neared Eureka, Mike came up on the Delta channel.
One by one the vehicles reported back — all clear. We didn't ease off. We kept running the night, chasing the column ahead.
Not long after, the call we'd been waiting for came in from Matthews.
We ran another three full hours after that. Finally, as the lights of Ely began to show, a report came in from the lead Humvee element.
Soon the road looked as if it had been taken over by our red taillights, and I could finally let out a breath.
We had arrived in Ely, where we would spend our last night in Nevada.
And then, out of habit, I glanced down at the radiation meter without thinking.
Invisible death, sharp and clear on the LCD.
We had driven ourselves through the night, covering nearly three hundred miles in a desperate run — and the reading had only climbed. Worse, the fours sat there side by side. In my language, four is the number of death.