Bill
There were no survivors. Not at that scene, at least. Once I had run every fact through my head one more time, my pulse began, little by little, to find its proper rhythm.
I drew one last deep drag, flicked the butt to the ground without a thought, and crushed it under my heel. The red ember died a hollow death.
Watching it go, I thought: this is the rule of the new world. And I was ready to live by it.
I took the wheel again. Whatever tide had torn through me had receded, leaving my heart as still as an empty tidal flat.
Next stop was Boise, the capital of Idaho — the third rendezvous I had set with Dave.
I pulled the truck back onto the highway. The regular radio stations had become nothing more than a gallery of despair and terror. I reached out and powered on the CB.
Channel 19.
Whether you ran Canada or the States, Channel 19 was the unwritten law among truckers who crossed borders for a living — the common channel. On it, everything a man needed to survive the road went back and forth in the raw: smokey reports, road conditions, where to find a decent meal. In this world, that amateur band had become a more trustworthy source than any news broadcast.
I rolled the squelch knob to cut the static and cranked the antenna sensitivity to max. Sure enough, grim news came crackling through the speaker.
I had been rolling for a good while when a voice punched through the speaker, urgent and raw.
Road Warriors?
An armed outfit — biker gang, militia, nobody could say. The CB was already building their reputation in real time.
His transmission ended, and for a moment the channel went dead. Then another trucker's calm voice broke the silence.
I turned the CB down. The information pouring out of that speaker was drawing new danger zones across the map in my head.
Every rest stop on the road was a potential trap now. Safety was something you bought with money, and solitude had become a necessary survival strategy.
I carved the truckers' warning into my memory, rolled past every isolated rest area, and pointed the nose toward the Flying J truck stop near Twin Falls.
The enormous lot sat right off Interstate 84, and dozens of trucks were already packed in tight. There was a comfort in that crowding. But I couldn't shake the other feeling either — that somewhere in all those eyes, a wolf's might be watching.
I parked along the edge of the lot and filled my stomach with a tasteless dinner in the diner. Afterward, standing under a scalding stream in the shower room, I ran through the day behind me and the road still ahead, sorting it all one more time.
In a world where a single drop of water was about to become precious, I realized all over again what a luxury this hot shower was — bought for a handful of dollars.
I put the long day to bed and turned in.
The next morning.
I started the same routine as always — except it wasn't the same anymore. This was no longer exercise for the sake of health. It was a ritual: inspecting my body, the last weapon I had, and keeping it in fighting condition for a crisis that could break at any moment.
I had finished the morning workout and was wrapping up breakfast in the truck-stop restaurant when a curse exploded from one side of the room — Goddammit! — followed by the crash of a shattering plate.
"The fuck did you just say, you son of a bitch!"
A chair slammed over backward and a hard-faced man surged to his feet. Something flashed in his hand. A balisong.
The air in the diner froze.
"Hey, easy, friend. It was just a joke."
The big trucker sharing the table stood and reached out to calm him — and that was the moment.
"Back off!"
The man with the knife slashed his arm in a vicious arc. A wet, whispering shhk — and the blade opened a long cut across the trucker's palm.
"Gah—!"
The trucker's scream of pain turned the diner into chaos in a heartbeat.
It snagged my attention, but I had no interest in getting involved. In a mess like this, the smart play was to vanish quietly. I drained the last of my coffee and started for the door.
The man with the knife stepped into my path. His eyes were burning on adrenaline. I spoke low and even.
"Clear me a path and I'll walk through quiet."
"Don't you try me, yellow monkey!"
"Look, I'll apologize and be on my way."
"Shut up. You monkey bastard."
The racial slur came with a flourish of the blade, slashing left and right through the air. All swagger. All show.
In that instant, memories of crossing back and forth between life and death moved my body on instinct. I stepped in a half-pace, twisted my torso, and drove inside his guard, snatching his wrist. Then I folded it outward and drove hard into the back of his hand.
I knew the geometry. A man holding a knife out in front of him, slashing, cannot keep a true grip on the handle.
A wet, twisting crunch —
The scream tore out of him in the same breath the knife left his fingers. I kicked it under the counter before it stopped sliding.
The whole thing took less than a second.
I still had his wrist. With both hands I grabbed the sleeves of his hoodie and yanked them straight forward, then crossed the stretched cuffs and bound them in a flash. His arms were pinned in front of him, ridiculous — trussed up like a man in a straitjacket. I kicked him in the back of the knee.
Thud.
He dropped, collapsing to the floor on his knees, and the other truckers, finally catching up, piled on and pinned him for good.
The diner was a wreck of broken china, blood, and the sound of people breathing hard.
Then every eye in the room swung to the injured trucker, and a man who looked like a partner shouted at him.
"Bill! Bill, you okay?"
The truckers around them closed in at once. Blood was pouring from his palm, soaking the floor in a spreading red.
"That's deep — he needs a hospital!"
Bill clutched the bleeding hand, pain and despair fighting for his face, and shouted back.
"No! Damn it, hospital my ass — I walk into an ER right now that's three, four hours minimum. This load is emergency medicine for the university hospital in Salt Lake City. It has to be there by this afternoon!"
"Man, how the hell are you gonna hold a wheel for five-plus hours with that hand?"
His partner tried to stop him. Bill howled like a man being torn in half.
He was still shouting through the pain.
I watched it for a moment, then walked over. As a trucker I understood his situation down to the bone, and a sense of brotherhood lifted its head in my chest — the instinct that would not let me turn my back on a wounded comrade.
I stepped up to them.
"Mind if I take a look?"
Every gaze in reach swung toward me, puzzled. But the man named Bill, bleeding out and grabbing at straws, held his hand out to me anyway.
I picked up a fresh bottle of water from the next table, cracked the cap, and poured it in a hard stream over the wound, washing away blood and debris so I could see what I was dealing with.
It was deep. I checked the cut, then held up my own hand as a model.
"Here. Copy the shape of my hand."
"Y-yeah."
"From your index finger to your pinky, one at a time — touch each one to your thumb, then open. Squeeze and release."
Bill moved his fingers the way I told him, riding out the pain. The motion was ugly, but he completed every one.
I pinched the tip of each finger in turn.
"Got feeling? Can you feel that?"
"Y-yeah! I feel it."
"How about here?"
"Yeah. There too."
I finished checking sensation in every finger and kept going.
"Nerves and tendons look intact, luckily. If we close it, you'll be able to use the hand — at least for now."
The words were barely out of my mouth before a trucker at my shoulder jumped in.
"See, Bill? You need a hospital. Come on, let's go."
Bill would not budge.
"No! Wrap it in a bandage and I'm rolling."
I looked at that face — stubbornness and duty twisted together — and the next sentence came out of me before I knew I was going to say it.
"I can do a simple suture job."
Every sound in the diner died. Every eye in the room locked on me. I could not have told you why I had said it. Only that it had felt like the thing that had to be said.
"You serious?"
Hope lit in Bill's eyes.
"I'll do anything if I can just hold the wheel. Please. I'm begging you."
I nodded, pulled a clean handkerchief from my pocket, and pressed it into his hand.
"Clamp down on the wound with this and keep it higher than your heart. I have to run to my truck. I need supplies."
That was when a man who looked like the truck-stop manager, who had been watching the whole thing from the side, stepped in.
"Hey — take this cart. Your truck's a long walk from here."
He pointed at a small electric cart the staff used. I climbed on, and he drove.
At my truck I opened the driver's door, pulled the medic bag I kept stowed under the sleeper, and got back on the cart.
By the time we rolled back into the diner, the crowd of onlookers had grown considerably. Truckers watched me with a mix of curiosity and distrust, as if some rare sideshow had pulled into the lot.
I pointed at a table off to one side.
"Could you clear this table for me?"