Polaris Union

I walked Wolf through the cold air. Whenever my thoughts grew heavy and my pace slowed, he would stop a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠few steps ahead, turn back, and wait for me to catch up.

Mike came up beside me in the middle of it.

"Hey, Chan."

"Yeah, Mike."

"Hmm... are you worried about outfits besides ours getting too big?"

"I am. We've been doing just fine among ourselves. I keep wondering if we even need to go that far."

"That's not it."

Mike cleared his throat and went on.

"I don't know how this'll sound, but every obstacle we've hit so far has been sized to match us. That's why we've been so busy staying ahead of the real dangers."

His words only pulled my thoughts deeper. He didn't stop.

"What's coming isn't the Road Warriors. It could be a state government. Hell, it could be the feds. You know as well as I do that logistics matter as much as resources. If truckers are going to have a center of gravity to rally around — and that center is you, Chan — that's going to mean a hell of a lot to our families."

I said nothing.

"The people gathered here stay as Polar Bear's inner circle, the core. The transport union, you staff with the right people and let it run. Bill's already doing a fine job of it. You don't have to think of everything as one lump."

"Understood. If we're doing this, we'll do it right."

"Good. That's the way to think about it."

Once I'd settled my thoughts, I called the core people back to the trailer the next day. There was far too much work in founding a transport union to leave it all on Big Bill's shoulders.

Mike seemed to read my mind, because he spoke first.

"We've been calling ourselves something different every time, haven't we? Polar Bear Brothers, Polar Bear's Pack... might be a good moment to settle on one name."

Frank jumped in, already lit up.

"That's right. Let's give it a name worthy of Polar Bear's reputation."

Mike's voice stayed serious.

"This isn't going to end as a truckers' transport union. Whether we want it or not, this name is going to represent our families and everyone in the camp. And another thing."

He let the silence sit a beat.

"It isn't going to be a union that just picks up jobs and hauls freight."

Giving ourselves a name, I realized, was one of the rites by which we would define what we meant to be.

Frank's voice climbed as he pressed on.

"All right, let's hear some ideas. I'll go first! We're going to be doing escort work too, so how about Polar Bear Convoy? PBC for short. Clean and sharp, right?"

I waved it off.

"Convoy feels too boxed in to hauling. And putting my nickname out front is a little... much."

Gunner backed me up.

"This whole thing started with Operation Crossroads. How about the Crossroads Coalition?"

Tank, who had been listening in silence, spat it out in one breath.

"If Polar Bear's not in it, it doesn't mean a damn thing."

"Tank's right!"

Frank snapped his fingers as if something had just landed.

"If putting Polar Bear in the name feels off, what about a word that calls it up? Polaris, say. The North Star."

Polaris. A bear out of the north, and a star that showed the way. The double meaning sat well with everyone.

"Oh, Polaris. That's a hell of a name," Dave said.

"Not bad," Gunner agreed.

Bill asked the next question.

"So what do we hang after Polaris? Alliance, Logistics, Guild, Association... plenty of options."

"Alliance sounds like too grand a pact," Mike said.

"Logistics just sounds like a company name. Not a fan," Frank said.

"Guild feels too old-world, and Association's too long," Dave added.

I turned a few combinations over in my head, then looked around at all of them.

"Then... how about Union?"

"Union? Polaris Union..."

Dave rolled it around his mouth a few times and nodded.

"Hey. That sits right on the tongue. Polaris Union."

Tank spoke at unusual length.

"Hmm. Sounds a bit like a labor union, but that's not a bad thing. We were all working men who lived on the road."

Mike laid a deeper weight on the word.

"Union... During the Civil War, that was the name the North fought under. Fits Polaris. Polaris Union."

Union had been the name of those who stood against fracture to hold a nation together. For us, it could mean something else entirely — standing against a different kind of fracture, for individual survival, for solidarity, for mutual aid. Mike put that meaning into words.

"In a world like this, I can't think of a better name to bind us together on the inside and show who we are against the people trying to tear everything apart."

Every gaze came back to me. I met their eyes one by one, and I made it official.

In a world freezing over, it would be a guiding star for those who had lost the road — and for us, a promise that would not break before any threat.

I looked at Bill and went on.

"Bill, I want you on the practical work of standing the union up. Anything you need, you say so."

"Might as well keep the man already doing it on the job. Haha."

I turned to Frank beside him.

"Frank, help Bill with the paperwork and with talking to the other truckers."

Frank grinned.

"Don't worry, boss. This isn't Frank opening a corner store. I'm going to put a real operation together."

A few more days passed. Then one afternoon, Cody came running at me with his laptop, his face lit up.

"Boss, you need to see this."

The screen he held out was the front page of the Tahoe and Nevada regional subreddits.

Pinned at the very top, a thread with Polar Bear and Road Warriors in the title had exploded into a popular topic, the view count and comment count both through the roof.

"The story of us tearing the Road Warriors apart has gone completely wide."

Cody scrolled as he talked.

"At first it was just 'I heard' rumors. Then a few days ago the Nevada National Guard rolled out to restore the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠roads in the combat zone, and photos of the battlefield leaked. Once those hit Reddit, it went nuclear."

The leaked photographs were grim. Dozens of vehicles burned or crushed past recognition, and recovered Road Warrior bodies lining the shoulder of the highway as far as the frame could hold.

Reddit was boiling over.

Cody scrolled further and showed me another hot thread. This one had Bill's name in it.

"Hmm. Big Bill really is moving fast."

Cody closed the laptop and looked at me, all the excitement gone serious.

"Boss, we should make a symbol for Polaris Union while we're at it. People need to see who we are, no question."

"Haha. You already have something in mind?"

At that, Cody pulled a sketchbook from his bag and opened a page. The design on it was better than I expected.

A great star — Polaris, the North Star — blazed at the center of a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠black circle that stood for the dark. Inside the star, seven points and lines traced the Big Dipper, and from its end unfurled the shape of Ursa Major, the Great Bear.

"That's genuinely good, Cody."

I meant it.

"So how do you want to use it?"

"A flag would be best, but we don't have the materials or the gear for that right now. Simplest way is I cut a stencil and spray the mark onto the hood or the door of every vehicle with lacquer."

"Do it. It'd be good to have a mark that's ours."

I nodded. I had already been thinking we needed a symbol — something to give us a common face, and to put a sense of belonging in everyone's hands.

"All right. Start with every vehicle and trailer in our camp."

"Yes, boss."

Cody flipped to another page on the laptop.

"And at Uncle Bill's request, I stood up an official Polaris Union subreddit."

He brought up a page named r/Polaris_Union. The banner was a photograph of my Kenworth W990 with the plates blurred out, and the polar bear license plate sitting sharp in the frame.

"It'd help if you left a mark on there yourself, boss. For the members' morale."

I took the laptop he held out and sat with it a moment. A lot of truckers would be watching this screen. I wrote something short — a few words for people who lived on the road.

After that, our little camp ran livelier than it ever had.

Frank's salmon business was still climbing, and Dave had gone well past the Andersons — he was on brotherly terms with the marketplace vendors now, calling them family.

Mike, Jed, and Gears treated Gunner's F-550, Tank's Peterbilt, and my truck like works in progress, tearing into them and hardening them as if they were building pieces of themselves.

Then one afternoon, Bill found me with his face flushed and bright.

We sat down together in my dry van trailer and took the first progress report of the Polaris Union.

"Good news, all of you."

Bill didn't even try to hide the excitement.

"All thirty-three truckers who said they wanted in have completed their membership. All that's left is an official founding ceremony so everyone can put faces to names. And we're already getting inquiries from truckers in Utah, Idaho, and Oregon."

Surprise and pleasure crossed every face in the trailer. Bill caught his breath, then brought out the part that mattered more.

"And I went into Carson City myself yesterday and pulled in a very big job. If the boss takes it, I'd like to use the start of that job as the moment we hold the Union's official founding."

Frank's eyes lit at the words big job.

"Big Bill, what's the job?"

Bill glanced around, then dropped his voice.

"Nevada state government work. Same as last time — moving Hawthorne's military assets to Carson City."

"Again?"

"But this time... the volume we have to move is a hundred and ten containers. Plus eighteen tankers."