Rupture
The moment we finished parking at the truck stop, my friends gathered around me. Dave had spotted the gas station sign, and he couldn't contain his fury — the veins stood out on his neck.
"Chan, did you see that?"
"The gas station?"
"Yeah. These people are complete, insane highway robbers. How is that even remotely okay?"
"Dave, the important thing is they still have fuel. And that's exactly why they still have it — because of prices like that."
Gunner cut in.
"This place has always been notorious for expensive gas. It's a long way from any city, so people used to fill up a little at a time, holding their noses. Looks like the chaos has gone straight to their wallets."
He looked around at all of us and went on.
"There's no telling whether the next station will even have fuel, so let's top off here even if we have to pay a premium."
Everyone confirmed it with a look of agreement, then turned to Frank.
"Frank, could you handle this for us?"
"Yes, yes — coming right up. I'll go check it out."
Frank had been dealing with me since the day I decided to buy a truck, and I'd given him such a hard time over the years that he could read my intentions in an instant. I'd also watched him, more than once, smoothly close out situations where both sides' interests were colliding.
At the same time, I was thinking that if someone had written a rule, you needed to understand their intent precisely before you decided whether to work that rule or break it.
While Frank headed for the pumps, the rest of us made for the truck stop diner. With Eleanor — Dave's mother — as well as Frank's wife Sarah and their teenage son Liam joining us, we had somehow become a bustling extended family.
The moment Eleanor saw me, she took my hands in hers as if I were her own son.
"Aigoo, Chan. I never even got to thank you for waiting for us."
"Don't mention it. I was just keeping a promise I made to Dave. Haha."
Sarah bowed her head, looking at me with an expression of solid trust, while Liam sat quietly, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and Wolf — curiosity and awe mixed in equal measure.
Wolf didn't growl at the attention from strangers. He flicked his tail and calmly licked the hand Eleanor offered him.
At that, Sarah laughed. "Oh my, I thought he was a wolf, but he's so gentle."
Seeing the diner still operating normally, it seemed America's logistics and social systems were, however barely, still functioning here.
Eleanor naturally ended up sharing a table with Frank's family, while my friends and I took seats of our own.
But when we picked up the menus, reality stared us in the face. New price stickers had been pasted over every item, and even a rough calculation put the increase at a solid thirty to forty percent.
Factoring in the tip, it was a fairly painful bill — but there was no other option.
We ordered Frank's meal as well, and while we made small talk, Frank returned from the gas station and took his seat.
"Frank, how did it go?"
"Hah. It's hilarious."
"What do you mean?"
"They don't even have a set price. For the markup, I mean."
"Huh?"
"They're pricing people by the look of them. I watched them haggle with another driver — they were asking nearly double."
"Hmm..."
I looked at Frank again and went on.
"If each of us tries to negotiate with that station owner separately, it'll take forever, and we'll get gouged for sure."
"..."
"Frank, I need you to take the lead. Negotiate for all five of our vehicles at once, plus twenty jerrycans and enough fuel to fill them."
Frank frowned for a moment, then nodded.
"Leaves a bad taste, but I'll give it a shot."
"And... I've got a fair amount of Canadian dollars, and I figure the rest of you do too. If we can pay the markup in those, that would be ideal."
Gunner chimed in.
"If the bargaining gets tough, I can throw in about fifty of my military MREs."
Mike and Dave each mentioned the Canadian dollars they were carrying and what they could put on the table. Frank thought for a moment, then raised a hand to stop us.
"No, wait. This isn't the time to be handing over supplies. Even if we have to pay a hundred percent premium, wouldn't it be better to dump all these Canadian dollars here — money that might be worthless soon anyway?"
Gunner agreed.
"Frank's right. The reason they want cash and goods separately is mostly so they can skip the taxes and pocket the extra. In that case, Canadian dollars are still cash — they should take them."
Then Dave clapped Frank on the shoulder.
"That's the spirit. Frank, go work your magic!"
After we finished eating, while Frank went to settle terms with the station owner, the rest of us headed for the truck stop store.
Thinking this might be our last shopping trip in the civilized world, we loaded the carts with everything we could get our hands on.
Fortunately, cards still worked at this store. We practically cleaned the place out — canned goods, batteries, medicine, whiskey, even board games for the kids. Anything that might be useful, we bought.
I swept up about fifty cartons of the remaining cigarettes, five bottles of Jack Daniel's, and a bottle each of Glenfiddich 15 Year and 18 Year single malt.
Whiskey I'd normally hesitate to even order by the glass. It'll come in handy someday.
When our group emerged from the store with carts piled high, Frank approached us with an inscrutable expression.
"How did it go?"
Dave asked impatiently. Frank tilted his head.
"I got them to take Canadian dollars for the markup, but..."
"But?"
"A hundred and fifty percent. So two and a half times the listed price."
At that, Dave broke into a bright grin.
"A hundred and fifty? Man, the Canadian dollar's tanked below 0.7. At that rate, it's practically free. You did great, Frank!"
The others all praised Frank's negotiating. A consensus had formed among us: fuel to keep the trucks moving and food to fill our stomachs were far more precious than money that could become scrap paper at any moment.
One by one, we pulled our vehicles up to the pumps.
Filling every tank and jerrycan took longer than expected. Transferring the twenty newly purchased jerrycans — four hundred liters of emergency fuel in all — into my trailer and securing them took a considerable amount of time and muscle.
By the time we'd finished resupplying, the sun was already sinking in the west. It was winter, and with the volcanic ash, even the hazy sun — barely visible enough to guess its position — was vanishing fast.
I checked the map and addressed everyone.
"We've spent too much time here. We're not staying the night. We push a little farther south. We'll wrap up the day at a truck stop near Burley, about ninety miles out."
Everyone agreed. We formed up into the convoy formation that had become fairly familiar by now and headed south along Idaho's desolate highway as dusk settled in.
Our supplies were more abundant, and our destination a little closer.
Our small fleet slipped once more across the darkened highway. I turned on the radio to break the silence.
As expected, the speakers carried follow-up coverage of the Alaskan volcanic eruption.
The anchor's voice continued.
Two weeks. That was the time we had left. Within that window, we had to somehow get out from the front lines of this winter that would never end. The darkness beyond the window felt deeper and colder than it ever had.
The truck stop in Burley, which we reached late at night, was a strange yet expected sight.
In front of the gas pumps stood a lonely sign.
NO FUEL
Next tanker expected in 3 days.
Seeing that, I let out a sigh of relief, realizing how wise it had been to push ourselves to fill up completely.
I fed Wolf, and the others returned to their own rigs to start personal maintenance.
A short while later, as if by unspoken agreement, everyone gathered again in my trailer.
"Man, Frank. Thanks to you today, we can actually sleep with our legs stretched out. Otherwise we'd have been stuck here waiting three days."
Frank shrugged at Dave's praise. In the warm atmosphere, Mike spoke up with a serious expression.
"I noticed today — when you all got out of your trucks, you left the radios behind. From now on, even when we split up for personal business, I'd like us to make it a rule to always take a radio."
Mike looked around at everyone, emphasizing the point.
"Emergencies don't only happen on the road, and cell phones aren't something we can trust anymore. These radios might be our only lifeline."
Everyone nodded at his proposal. After a brief discussion of tomorrow's destination, we returned to our respective quarters.
Once my friends had gone, I tossed Wolf a treat, sat on the sofa, and turned on the TV. An in-depth analysis program on the Alaskan volcano happened to be on.
"Doctor, after Lakagígar, now Alaska... a lot of viewers are thinking of the Yellowstone nightmare. If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted on top of all this, wouldn't that be the end of humanity?"
The anchor's face on screen was steeped in fear. But the expert panelist was surprisingly calm.
"Well... paradoxically, the Alaskan eruption may have actually reduced the risk at Yellowstone."
The anchor's expression brightened as he asked again.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. A massive pressure release at the western edge of the North American Plate — the Aleutian Trench — has temporarily stabilized magma pressure across the continent. In a sense, one of the dam's floodgates was opened in advance."
Just as the anchor exhaled in relief, the panelist continued.
"But the real danger lies elsewhere."
"Yes?"
"The pressure release has thrown the entire plate structure out of balance. In particular, the instability of the Circum-Pacific Belt — where the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate lock together — has become extremely high."
"..."
"This is... equivalent to placing a time bomb that could go off at any moment on the entire West Coast of the United States, especially California's San Andreas Fault. It means the threat is no longer volcanoes, but tectonic rupture — in other words, a massive earthquake — and that threat is higher than it has ever been."
Watching the broadcast, a chill ran through my entire body. It wasn't because our destination, California, now sat in the path of an earthquake.
More than the earthquake warning itself, it felt like a dissonance — something vast stirring awake in the deep.
The sky was already dead. And now the earth itself was preparing to scream.