The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home

Chapter 6 - Okie

“How're we doing for gas?”

Hughes didn't answer. I leaned over.

“Looks like you've got less than a quarter of a tank left.”

He still said nothing. I was beginning to think this guy was a bit more sinister than his surfer-dude demeanour had led me to believe.

“Think we'll be able to get through on a quarter tank?”

Still nothing.

I stuck out my index finger. The nail was coloured navy-blue from where I'd drawn on it in class the day before yesterday, and poked him in the upper arm.

“You alive, Hughes? You feeling like... cocktail wieners?”

A muscle in his neck twitched.

“Kid,” he said, “I'm being paid to do a job, and I'm gonna do that job. There's no need for you to keep on asking me all these dumb questions.”

“Seriously though. Quarter of a tank. Scranton on the horizon. You've got to be thinking...”

He clicked his tongue and pointed his index finger out through the front window as if it were a gun. There was a place on the highway where the fencing was broken, and a huge hand-painted sign read: GAS STOP. $300 TO FILL UP YOUR CAR. TRUCKS BY ARANGMENT.

(No kidding, whoever wrote this couldn't spell arrangement.)

“Have some faith, kid.”

This spot was not pleasant, I have to say. A quarter-mile drive down a dirt track carved out through the forest, to a shack where a woman in a plaid shirt and long hair tied back in a straggly ponytail was sitting with a loaded shotgun as we approached. Next to her fuel tanker. I say 'her' fuel tanker. It had a BP logo on the side, but I'm guessing they weren't going to be coming to get it back from her, wherever she'd taken it from. She'd rigged up some kind of siphoning equipment from a port on the side of the tanker – a bunch of metal pipes, with some rubber nozzles on the end to jam into your car. The ground stank of gas where people had obviously turned one of the nozzles on too early or guessed wrong about how much fuel their car could take.

“No smoking, huh?” I said to Scraggly Woman.

She stared at me.

“No jokes either, huh?”

She spat a thick string of something I didn't even want to think about out onto the gas-stained ground.

I pulled out my cellphone and waggled it at her.

“Got anywhere I can charge this up?”

She blinked slowly. I swear to God this woman's nervous system was running like 50% slower than everyone else's in the world.

“Hundred dollars for 20 minutes on the generator.”

“A hundred for.... you gotta be kidding.”

That slow lizard blink again.

I looked behind me. Hughes was wrestling with the levers and dials on the tanker. Mom was banging on the inside of the veterinary truck. Twenty minutes was better than nothing. I'd taken all the cash in mom's purse and dad's wallet before we left. I had about $400 with me all told. And it wasn't like we were going to come to anything more fun than this.

“Fine.”

“Power outlet's over in the shack by the generator.”