“Yeah. The most annoying things about the killer clowns chasing us is having to replace the broken windows. We’re going to have a really hard time getting decent rates on car insurance again when this is all over.” LeBron replied sarcastically. He was scratching himself vigorously. His exposed skin had provided sustenance to a swarm of ravenous mosquitoes thanks to the missing windows. He really hoped the virus that created the aforementioned killer clowns wasn’t transmittable by bug bites. He also wished he hadn’t thought about the possibility of catching it by bug bite. Now he was going to be paranoid.
“I know. The death is way worse. The window thing does suck though. Is there anything in the back we could use to seal off the windows?” Drew asked. He was picturing duct tape and ponchos.
There was indeed duct tape and ponchos available in the back of the big utility vehicle. There was also a bunch of other gear including a nice sized toolbox filled with random tools. Drew was looking at a giant pack of zip ties he’d found. He had an idea. He didn’t want to say it out loud because he was afraid it’d sound stupid if actually verbalized. Then he realized it was just his sister and brother standing there.
“What if we armor up the windows with stop signs? We could poke holes in the metal and then just tie wrap the signs over the windows. We could run the tie wrap around the window frame.” Drew was standing up showing them what he was thinking of. The more he showed them the more animated he got. He was thinking it might be a pretty good idea after all.
“How do we see?” Yue asked him.
“We could poke holes in the signs so we could see out of them. There’s metal shears and loppers in the back of the truck. There’s hammers and screwdrivers to make holes in the signs to thread the tie wraps through.” Drew said.
“Won’t the sharp metal inside the holes cut the tie wraps apart?” LeBron asked.
“I really don’t know dude. I haven’t ever tried to tie wrap a bunch of signs to a big truck to save myself from superhuman psychos before.” Drew said testily.
“We have plenty of duct tape. We could use that to dull the edges.” LeBron said thinking through the problems he was seeing in his head. He completely ignored Drew getting frustrated with him.
“What about the front windshield?” Yue asked.
“What about it?” Drew shot back. He really just wanted to get started on strapping signs over the currently broken windows. Leave it to Yue and LeBron to make everything extra complicated.
The conversation went around in circles for a few more minutes. It got heated a couple of times thanks to everyone being on edge and having basically zero sleep. They finally decided as a group that it was an idea worth pursuing. Which was a good thing since otherwise Drew would’ve just tried it himself. They told Bart the idea when Yue woke him up to change his bandages and he said it sounded good to him. He recommended they try to scrape up some chicken wire for the front windshield if they could find some. As far as the back window went, they had the fancy rear view cameras so covering it up was no big deal.
They agreed to stop when they saw signs along the way that they could use. Or if anything else looked like it might work, they’d stop for it. If they weren’t avoiding populated areas the ideal situation would’ve been to find a Home Depot or someplace similar. That’d obviously be a lot easier than trying to duct tape traffic signs to cover the missing windows. Ideal or not that was what they were planning to do. You have to do what you can with what you’ve got where you’re at.
They started the morning just a few miles from the toll road, but it was late afternoon by the time they rolled up to the on-ramp. The police SUV had received an apocalypse makeover. A pretty rough one. A bent stop sign was strapped to the back-passenger door. It was covered by a poncho duct taped over it. A deer crossing sign and another stop sign sealed off the back window. Those two had taken the rest of the duct tape and a lot of zip ties to get to stop flapping around when they started driving over twenty miles per hour.
They’d put a ton of work plus at least one fingernail into something they all knew wouldn’t last more than a few seconds if they were attacked. Duct tape and tie wraps wasn’t going to stop creatures that could pound huge dents into the solid metal sides of the truck they were in. It’d slow them down a lot more than glass would though. Hopefully giving them the edge that they may need to escape. Then they could spend the next day replacing ripped tie wraps and sign hunting.
The first test for their metalworking skills was running down the on-ramp straight at them. It was a guy dressed up in full on fireman regalia including the helmet with the shield covering his eyes. If he hadn’t been running faster than an Olympic track star they may have wondered if he was actually infected or not. As it was, they were feeling pretty good about shooting the guy.
Drew stopped the truck about thirty yards from the man. LeBron lined up a shot using the bottom of the window to help him steady his
