Angels of Vengeance

cartoon puppy hat, Sofia decided.

‘Yeah, I get a lot of looks,’ Cindy admitted, as her breath jetted out in thick white clouds.

The contrast with the overly warm, almost cloying, greasy interior of the diner was stunning. Sub-zero wind chill knifed into Sofia with lethal intent. The hooded sweatshirt was in no way adequate against the elements, and she was soon shivering, then shuddering with deep body tremors.

‘I think maybe you’re taking the whole “travel light” thing a little too far,’ opined Cindy. ‘Get into the cab before you catch your death.’

She couldn’t answer because her teeth were chattering. The older woman hurried over to the cab of Mary Lou, the big blue truck, and Sofia climbed in as soon as it was unlocked.

‘There’s a blanket on the passenger seat,’ Cindy called up from outside. ‘Wrap yourself up, I’ll turn over the engine, get the heat going, and then we’ll see about finding you some warmer gear.’

Rooting around in the cab, Sofia pulled out a SpongeBob SquarePants comforter. She wrapped herself deep in the folds, catching the scent of fabric softener, laundry detergent and perhaps a hint of perfume. It took a minute for the vehicle’s heating system to dull the pain of the icy fangs gnawing away at her bones. Cindy was dressed warmly, but even so, Sofia couldn’t understand how she could bear to be outside for more than a minute at a time.

The trucker insisted on joining three other drivers, who were warming their hands around a burning oil barrel on the far side of the road. Perhaps they were the ones she meant to travel in convoy with when they departed. Like many of the truck drivers, their clothes looked like they’d been salvaged from quality camping stores some time ago, but a few years on the road had roughed them up some. Sofia wondered why they didn’t just replace the ageing jackets and winter gear.

The men appeared to be in good spirits, despite the weather. One was drinking a steaming beverage from a thermos flask. The other two were smoking, which explained why they’d had to remove themselves from the truck plaza. Even the diner had been aggressively plastered with no-smoking signs. Cindy pointed back towards her truck and Sofia nodded at the men as their gaze followed the gesture. They seemed harmless enough. Middle-aged, running to fat, probably family men.

She shut down that line of thought immediately, lest it lead her to dwell on her own family. There was nothing to be gained from that at the moment.

One of the male truckers disappeared, hurrying away into the darkness, before returning a minute later with a heavy, fleece-lined coat. Cindy appeared to thank him. They all checked their watches and said their goodbyes, before the thermos man tossed away the dregs of his drink, and without further ceremony they were on the move.

Cindy hurried over to her rig, taking care not to slip on the compacted ice.

‘Here you go, darlin’,’ she said, as she climbed back into the cabin. ‘I knew Dave had this old thing stashed away in his bunk. He’s been using it as a pillow, but it’s okay. He doesn’t have cooties. It’ll keep you a lot warmer than those thin scraps of cotton you’re wearing. At any rate, it’ll do until we can stop somewhere and kit you out properly.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sofia, feeling guilty at relying on the charity of people she was lying to.

For the Burton ski jacket, however, with its thick inner lining - real lamb’s wool, unless she was mistaken - the teenage runaway could only feel desperately thankful. As soon as she slipped her arms through the sleeves, she could tell that it would go a long way towards protecting her from the viciousness of the weather outside. Sofia wrapped the coat around herself and sank back into the soft, warm embrace of the bucket seat. With the heater blowing and Dave’s jacket, she hardly needed the SpongeBob blanket.

‘We’re going to rendezvous down 35 a-ways,’ Cindy informed her, ‘and push on down to Ottawa, Kansas. That’s the first town outside KC’s security zone, Emporia’s the next one. But they’re both close enough to the federal settlement that the scavengers haven’t really picked ‘em over. There’s still a fair chance of getting picked off by the Cavalry if they do. We can take a toilet break down at Emporia - which we’re gonna need after those Cokes, girl. See if we can get you a road pack there, too.’

She applied a little shoe leather to the pedals, crunched through a complicated ballet with the gears, and the mighty Kenworth lurched forward.

Sofia frowned. ‘But wouldn’t we be scavenging?’ she asked. ‘If there was a Cavalry patrol down there, why wouldn’t they arrest us, or even shoot us, for looting?’ The last thing she wanted was to fall back into the clutches of the authorities now that she was so close to escaping them.

Cindy smiled. ‘Well, legally, we would be scavenging, yes. And if the Cav swooped down in one of their helicopters, or rode by in a Hummer, and shot the hell out of us, legally - officially - we wouldn’t have a lot to complain about. But unofficially, the Cavalry is well aware that the trucking lines use the two towns as supply depots. They’re well beyond the city limits, and the Cav don’t much care. Anything that greases the axles, you know. Besides, we’re regulars. They come to us for news on the road, and it wouldn’t do to get on our bad side.’

The truckie didn’t seem too concerned at the prospect of helicopter gunships hammering down on them while they picked through a camping-goods store. She bounced in the seat as they pulled out of the Flying J Travel Plaza and turned westbound down Front Street, passing under Interstate 435.

‘Hauling road freight can be a dangerous business, Sofia,’ Cindy explained. ‘Seattle needs that freight hauled, especially with all the trouble they’ve been having on the railway lines. So any informal arrangements that smooth the process … well, the people in the field tend to look the other way. I suppose there’ll come a day when this is all less of a frontier …’ She waved at the darkness outside the truck windows as she spoke. ‘But for now, frontier rules apply.’

Sofia turned sideways in her seat, leaning against the padded headrest behind her. ‘And what are the frontier rules?’ she asked.

‘Whatever it takes, hon. Whatever it takes.’

‘I am familiar with that rule,’ said Sofia in a quiet voice.

The driver appeared to measure her up with a long, calculating look. Long enough that Sofia began to worry that Cindy wasn’t paying attention to the road. But she seemed to know where she was on the highway, even though it was covered in snow. Warehouses flanked both sides of Front Street, many of them still dark, deserted. Every so often, an island of lights would appear in the inky, snowy night where someone had established a business of one type or another in the ruins of the old civilisation.

‘Yes, I imagine you are familiar with it, Sofia,’ she replied, before turning away to check her rear-view mirrors. By leaning forward a few inches herself, Sofia was able to find the other trucks in a small convoy strung out behind them.

They passed - bounced perhaps was more accurate - across the Chouteau Trafficway intersection. Kansas City Power and Light maintained a large facility of spare parts at the north-west corner of the intersection. Rows of repair trucks idled in the yard, waiting for the stressed power grid to fail under the weight of the blizzard. Down the road, it was just possible to make out the grey skyline of Kansas City’s skyscrapers. Most of the roads had long been cleared of debris and wrecks.

Trains powered through the yards on the south side of Front Street bearing the logos of Kansas City Southern and Union Pacific. Sofia remembered how her father would take her down to the railroad tracks along the Missouri River, back when they’d first arrived here, to watch the trains rumble by. It bored her witless, but Papa seemed to find the sight reassuring. ‘They are stitching the wounds of this land together,’ he would say.

There was very little traffic on Front Street, mostly large trucks like Cindy’s, some of them pulling two trailer beds, reminding her of the massive articulated road trains she’d seen down in Australia. That’s what they called them - ‘road trains’. An evocative phrase, but accurate too. As best she could tell, none of the trucks in her convoy were pulling more than one trailer.

Her eyelids grew heavy and began to droop as Mary Lou ate up the miles. She had imagined Cindy would want to talk, but the trucker seemed content to concentrate on the drive, as if she understood that her passenger needed to rest. With a belly full of warm, heavy food, and snug in the fleecy cocoon of her new coat, Sofia wanted nothing more than to slip into a deep slumber. Yet she found it impossible to get any rest. Every time she closed her eyes, Cindy’s rig would slam into yet another pothole, bouncing her head against the side window. Pothole repair was near the bottom of the city’s list of priorities. The post-Wave firestorms may have spared KC, but at times it seemed as though it might just fall apart anyway.