“I wonder what this is?” Karin said.
The truck and the trailer were both filled with furniture, bedding, boxes, barrels, and crates.
“Looks like someone is trying to move all their belongings,” Jake replied as he stopped the car and put it in park. “My guess is they were trying to turn around and got hung up with the trailer. I’ll see if I can help.”
Getting out of the car, Jake started toward the pickup truck. That was when someone stepped around the front of the truck. The man was wearing black pants, a black T-shirt, and a black headband. He also had a holstered pistol strapped to his belt. That didn’t concern Jake—many had taken to wearing pistols since the total collapse of the republic. Jake was also carrying a pistol, but it was under the flap of his shirt and so not immediately visible.
“Can I help you?” Jake asked.
“Oh, yeah, you can help me,” the man replied.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, it’s like this. You see this truck? It don’t have enough gas in it to even get me back to Ozark. But seein’ as you was drivin’ your car, it looks to me like you do have gas. So what I’m goin’ to do is, I’m gonna give you a can and a rubber hose.” He put his hand on his pistol and patted it a couple of times. “And what you are going to do for me is siphon out all the gas that’s in your tank and fill this can.”
Jake pulled his pistol and pointed at the man. “No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Whoa, I didn’t know you were carrying,” the man said, holding both hands up, palms facing Jake.
“Apparently not. Now, I’m going to ask you real nice to get that truck off the road and out of my way,” Jake said.
To Jake’s surprise, the man dropped his hands and chuckled. “You don’t seem to understand what’s at stake here,” he said. “I don’t know if that pretty little woman back there is your girlfriend or your wife, but if you don’t do what I told you to do, my friend is going to put a bullet through her head.
Jake turned back toward his car and saw that Karin was now out on the road, standing just in front of a man who was holding a pistol to her head. This man, like the one who had confronted Jake, was wearing black pants, a black T-shirt, and a black headband.
“Better do what my friend says, mister, unless you want to see this woman’s brains on the highway.”
“You would shoot an innocent woman over a can of gasoline?” Jake asked.
“Oh, yeah, you can count on it,” the man replied.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” Karin said. “He must have been lying in the ditch alongside the road. I didn’t see him come up.”
“Let her go,” Jake said, pointing his pistol at the man who was holding his gun to Karin’s head.
“Ha! Is that pistol supposed to scare me?” the man replied. “You’re a good sixty feet away from me—I’m only about six inches away from your woman. You really think you are good enough to shoot me, without hitting her?”
“How about those Kentucky Wildcats?” Jake asked.
“Say what?” the man with the gun replied.
“I like the cheerleaders,” Jake said.
“Man, are you crazy or what? Can’t you see I’ve got your woman here? Now are you going to fill that gas can or . . .”
At first Karin was confused by Jake’s comment; then she smiled as she knew exactly what he meant. Suddenly Karin did a backflip, vaulting completely over the head of the man who was holding a gun on her.
“What the . . . ?”
That was as far as the gunman got because as he turned toward Karin, Jake took his shot. Blood and brain matter spewed out from the entry wound in the temple.
Because Jake had turned to take his shot, his back was now to the man standing in front of the pickup truck.
“You son of a bitch!” the man yelled.
Jake whirled back on the would-be gasoline thief, shooting him between the eyes even as the man was bringing his own pistol up.
“Are you all right?” Jake called back to Karin.
“Yes,” Karin replied. She looked down at the man who had been holding his gun on her; then she walked up to Jake. “It took me a second to figure out what you were saying.”
“You figured it out quickly enough. You did well.”
“Were they soldiers, do you think?” Karin asked.
“There are no soldiers anymore,” Jake answered.
Karin knew that Jake did not want to think that he had shot two men who may have, just recently, served in the same army with him, so she didn’t press the issue any further.
“I’ll get the truck out of the way,” Jake said. Climbing in behind the wheel, he turned on the key and saw that the gas gauge didn’t even come up to the E mark.
“I hope there’s enough fuel to get it off the road,” he said. He hit the starter and the engine kicked over. He drove it off the road and down into the ditch. Then, exiting the truck, he climbed back up to the road.
“What are we going to do with them?” Karin asked.
“What do you want to do with them?”
“I don’t know. Somehow it doesn’t feel right to just leave them both lying in the middle of the road.”
“All right. I’ll get them out of the road,” Jake promised.
Grabbing one of them by his feet, Jake dragged him down into the ditch and left him by the truck. Then he returned and did the same thing to the other man. He started to go through their pockets to see if they had any identification, but stopped short because he realized that he didn’t want to know who they were.
Returning to his car, he slid in behind the steering wheel and glanced over at Karin. She looked a bit queasy so she reached over to put his hand on hers.
“You did well,” he said again.
“Jake, has it come to this?” Karin asked. “Is it going to be dog-eat-dog?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Jake said. “But dogs run in packs. And we have our pack now.”
Karin smiled, wanly. “Phoenix,” she said.
“Phoenix,” Jake repeated.
Three miles farther on Jake and Karin saw two people lying alongside the road. Jake slowed down enough to get a good look at them. It was an old man and a woman.
“Jake, stop.” Karin said. “I have to check on them.”
Jake stopped and Karin, getting out of the car, hurried over to the couple. She squatted down and felt for a pulse in each of them. “The woman is dead, but the man is alive,” she said.
Both the man and the woman had been shot.
“Sir, what happened?” Jake asked.
“The sons of bitches took my truck,” the old man said, straining to talk. “They took my truck and trailer. Had all our belongin’s on it.”
Jake looked at Karin and she shook her head, to tell him that the man didn’t have long left.
“They shot Suzie,” the man said. “Then they shot me. Dressed like pirates they were, all in black. The sons of bitches.” He coughed a couple of times, then took one last rattling breath.
Karin tried his pulse again.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Those murdering bastards,” Jake said. “If I was feeling any twinge of regret before, I don’t now.”
“What are we going to do with them?” Karin asked. “We can’t just leave them here like we did the other two. After what the other two did, they can lie out on the road until the buzzards pick them clean as far as I’m concerned. But these folks are innocent. They didn’t do anything to bring this on.”
“I’ve got an entrenching tool in the car,” Jake said. “We sure can’t give them anything like a proper burial, but you’re right. We don’t need to leave them out here, exposed to the elements.”
Forty-five minutes later Jake and Karin stood over a fresh mound. Jake buried them both in the same grave. It kept him from having to dig two graves, but he was fairly certain they would have wanted to be buried together anyway. Before he buried them, he took the old man’s billfold. It had pictures, a driver’s license, but no money. But
