“Sure, and a couple of aspirin if you have ’em,” Jared said, running his hands through his disheveled hair and squeezing his head as if that would make the pain disappear. My hair hurts, he thought.
Dwight set about making a third pot of coffee while Jared sat at the island, feeling sorry for the state of his head after all the drinking the evening before. Dwight’s home had been essentially off the grid before the event, and he had ensured his solar and electrical components were designed to withstand any sort of power-overloading event, such as a solar flare or an EMP strike. For the most part, his system had remained intact with only minor damage, which he was able to repair within the first couple of weeks of the event.
Dwight finished preparing the pot of coffee and set a cup in front of Jared. “Barry tells me you lost a good friend recently.”
Jared looked up from the steaming cup. “He was more than that.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. When my wife passed, I sat in this house, barely eating or drinking for a solid week. Then I realized I had to help myself nowadays. No counselors to help talk you off the ledge or help you understand why something happened. Seems like you’re doing pretty good, keeping busy, trying to stay alive and all.” Dwight nodded at his own statement, then sipped the coffee.
Jared didn’t feel like talking this morning, much less talking about his feelings or Bart. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Jared knew they would leave out the side door, and he wouldn’t be able to help himself from stealing a glance at the grisly scene from the night before. The difference from last night would be the scene was no longer cloaked in darkness and would be on full display in broad daylight.
Dwight sensed Jared’s mood and changed the subject. “Barry had a good idea about using a Tesla battery; only thing is they weigh over a thousand pounds. My advice is to get as close to your little place in the hills and try to find a Tesla over there so you don’t have to lug the thing as far.”
Jared looked up at Barry. “Don’t they build ’em somewhere in Fremont?”
Barry nodded over the cup of coffee. “The old Toyota factory. It’s right off the 880 highway.”
“NUMMI,” Dwight interjected.
Jared didn’t understand. “NUMMI?”
“Yeah, it was called NUMMI. It was owned jointly by General Motors and Toyota—New United Motor Manufacturing Inc—I think that’s what it was called, but everyone just called it NUMMI. Closed down around 2010, and Tesla reopened it a while back and used it to push out those cars of theirs.”
“Anyone know how to get to the battery or remove it?” Jared asked.
Dwight shook his head. “All I know is you’re going to need tools—jack stands and a couple of jacks at the very least. Now if you find a Tesla closer to your place, it would be a shorter haul up to the house, but you’re going to spend a lot of time out in the open, wrenching on the car, trying to get the battery free, and, well, with things the way they are, I wouldn’t suggest spending too much time in the open. NUMMI probably has car batteries lying around that haven’t been installed. Easier in one sense, harder in another.”
Jared thought about this for a moment. “What about stripping the car, leaving the wheels on, and pulling it with the horses?”
Dwight shrugged. “Could work. Guess all you’d have to do is tear the car apart. You’re not worried about losing screws or how you’re going to get it back together, so, yeah, that’s another approach. Either way, you’re going to want the battery off the ground on a trailer of some kind. Dragging it isn’t an option. If it were gonna be dragged fifty feet maybe, but not miles. You’d destroy the thing before you got it home.”
Jared was about to sip the coffee when a loud pounding erupted from the side door, causing him to nearly spill the hot beverage. Dwight leapt to his feet and raced to the door as Jared was recovering. Dwight flung the door open, and John stepped inside.
“What a mess out there,” was all John said as he leaned the rifle against the island and grabbed a seat next to Jared, who was still gathering himself.
“I didn’t know you were outside. Almost gave me a heart attack,” Jared breathed.
John clapped him on the back. “You ready to do some walking today?”
“Not really.”
An hour later, all four men were dressed and outfitted in their gear. All four were armed, and John had gone over some basic rules about moving in a group so Dwight would be an asset and not a liability to their mission. Before they donned their packs, Dwight brought out four additional bottles of bourbon identical to the one they’d demolished the evening before. Each man stowed a bottle gingerly in his pack, wrapped in an article of clothing, striving to protect the precious fluid in the event a pack was dropped or jarred.
John also had Dwight show him his ammunition cache. Dwight had thousands of rounds in 9-millimeter and 5.56 ammo, which the men loaded magazines with before dumping as much into their packs as was reasonable considering the walk that lay ahead of them. The group took turns digging a large hole behind the house, where John had the men deposit all the cans of ammunition. If they were ever back through this area and needed ammunition, they now had a cache to draw from.
More importantly, anyone looting the property would not have access to the ammunition that could be used against others in the future. John’s stance on the ammunition was if he couldn’t have it, no one else could. He’d been shot at and seen too many people unable to protect themselves being victimized by others who
