Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

pad and pen, Mizuno, and backpack full of snacks and drinks. “Let’s see … where would someone put heavy equipment around here?”

The answer, it soon developed, was “nowhere.” Sayler Beach was almost entirely residential. It didn’t have industry outside what people did at home for their Etsy pages. The only commercial interests were the store she worked in, the hippie farm (which only used smaller machines, nothing bigger than a pallet jack) and the auto repair place Wally Sandborn had run out of his backyard. Anything more involved, you went to the other side of the county or north up to Stinson Beach.

But there had to be something nearer than that she could use. Didn’t there?

For two-plus hours she walked up and down every street, drawing in houses and fences and looking for the largest piece of technology on wheels. The best she could do were a few midsize pickups and SUVs, and she wasn’t confident any of them would hold up to what she had planned. Now she kicked herself for setting fire to the delivery van – it wouldn’t have been great for the job, but it was better than anything else she was finding.

Footsore and sweating, she walked back home to her car, figuring on driving to some outlying areas. If push came to shove, she’d walk back to Tam Valley Junction the next day – it might exhaust her, but if she could find a tow truck or something it would be worth it.

Her first stop was the horse ranch up the coast. Surprisingly, the horses she’d let out of their barns were still hanging around rather than darting off to other pastures. It made sense, she supposed – they still had shelter and fodder here, so unless some big predator came around to menace them, why move? The biggest predator she’d seen was that Rottweiler mix, and if it tried to take on a horse it would be more likely to get its head kicked in than bring down its prey. Either way, maybe she could address “learn to ride” sooner rather than later.

But for the moment, she didn’t think tying four of them up to the semi to drag it off the road would really be viable. She needed to keep looking.

She was walking back up from the pastures to her Hyundai when she did a double-take. “What? Could that …?” Of course – it should’ve occurred to her before. Given all the hay and tack and things you had on a horse ranch, you needed something large to haul it all around in, and powerful enough to pull a trailer with a steed or two in it besides.

And here it was – a recent-model Dodge Ram 3500 Heavy Duty Crew Cab, complete with a grille guard that looked like you could knock the Amtrak Coast Starlight off the rails with it. It was a monster, easily the biggest pickup truck she’d ever seen outside of Oklahoma. Could it shove a toppled eighteen-wheeler around? She’d be surprised if it couldn’t. “Now watch, it’ll be locked, and the key is in the guy’s pants somewhere in the cremation pi – oh.”

Nope – the truck was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. Whoever had driven it last must have been too sick to remember them when they parked, or was just not in the habit of worrying about sneak thieves. She laughed at her own cynicism – to think that her sense of humor was actually darker than the end of the world!

The other shoe – well, a baby shoe – dropped when she hopped in the Ram and started it up. The gas gauge was just a few ticks above E. Well, that could be worse – a truck this size probably had a gas tank you could house a small family in. Being that close to empty in her Hyundai would mean you had to fill up now, but here she surely had a couple of gallons to work with, granted that those gallons would get used up faster in this beast than in her subcompact.

Still, there was no need to take risks. Kelly drove the Ram to the store, broke out the siphoning kit and a couple of big jugs and went to work on Ganj’s Ford F-150. It was a decent-sized vehicle – Ganj had often used it to pick up produce – but next to the Ram it almost looked tiny. Regardless, there would be plenty in its tank to swipe for the larger pickup.

There was – twelve gallons – which moved the needle on the Dodge’s gauge to halfway. It took almost two hours to siphon it from one truck and pour it into the other, and by the time she was done she felt sticky and achy. And a little woozy from all the gasoline fumes. She took a break, went into the store and pulled lunch from the shelves – a can of chili, another can of fruit cocktail and a warm bottle of Sprite. The pause did refresh, and she got back in the Ram and headed for the obstacle.

She got to the big rig, parked and had a look around. Immediately she saw an issue she hadn’t considered. The rig had been coming around a hill on its right, and the driver hadn’t pulled out of the turn. He must’ve driven right up the hill partway, then tipped sideways. As it twisted, the cab’s linkage ripped part of the trailer’s bottom away like peeling back the lid of a sardine can – not enough to break the connection, though, because the trailer also tipped. The result was that the rig was on its side, bent like a reversed checkmark, with the pointed bottom against the hill.

The problem was, from her direction, you couldn’t push the cab, and you couldn’t push the trailer in any direction except into the hill it