"What are we going to do now?" Quinn asked as she looked around the group, they were all bleary eyed but the announcement of more trucks had shocked them out of their slumber. "We can't go anywhere without the cars; we're hundreds of miles from home and we won't survive on foot." She sighed as she leaned back against the trunk of a tree.
"We're just going to have to wait it out; we can't just go down there and take them. That would be suicide." Jane said.
"Not necessarily," Daria said as she stood and turned toward the motel. The rest of the group looked at her with bemusement.
"We could go down, take a look at what we're up against." Daria turned back to face her friends, "These guys seem brutal, but they're unorganized. If we could get close enough to see what they are doing, we could at least see if there is any possibility of us getting the cars back."
"It's worth a try; we can't just sit around doing nothing." Nick said.
The others hesitantly agreed and they slowly made their way across the ridge to the hotel.
Daria had been right, the men were unorganized, however since the extra two trucks had arrived they had appointed a guard. A man was now stationed along side the trucks. The man was skinny, too skinny to be a soldier. As Quinn remarked on the man's physique Trent scoffed. "You don't have to be brawny when you have a gun."
As far as they could tell, the trucks had been mostly empty, except the driver and two men with guns; they guessed there were maybe ten soldiers in total. As they sat in the long reeds on top of the hill, a plan was formulated.
I still can't believe we went through with it. It was crazy, something that happened only in action movies. We had gone over the details at least half a dozen times until we were sure we knew exactly what to do. We were going to split into two groups; one group was going to create a diversion and get the attention of the guard without drawing the attention of the rebel group, while the other group got the cars. It seemed straight forward, but it was risky as hell, there were so many things that could have gone wrong, especially when Trent decided to play Macgyver and change the plan.
Trent, Jesse, Daria and I were in charge of creating the diversion. We got lucky when the man who was supposed to be standing guard unwittingly stumbled upon our merry little group and we were ready for him. As were hid in the shadows, the man approached and as he unzipped his fly on his trousers, Trent circled round and pressed the muzzle of the gun between the man's shoulder blades.
"Don't move," He spoke in a low, calm tone.
Quinn, Daria and Jesse stared in shock, mouths agape at Trent's bold decision. The man whimpered, but remained still except for his quivering hands, his fingers still holding his zipper.
"Please don't shoot me," he pleaded in a high pitched whimper.
"Don't talk," Trent turned to Jesse and motioned to the ground on his left, "Get his gun. Daria empty his pockets."
"Please, don't kill me. I have a family." The man sobbed. Daria began to pull items out of the man's pockets; a pen knife, a wallet, a stick of gum and an old battered photo of a young woman and a small child. She showed the photo to Trent.
"Then why aren't you with them?" Trent asked.
"They have them. They came in the middle of the night, ripped us from our beds and locked us up in an old abandoned warehouse with hundreds of other families like us." The man let out a throaty groan. "They picked a few of us out and told us we had to help them."
"Who's they, what do you have to help them with?" Trent asked.
"I… I'm not sure. These guys are a bunch of blood thirsty, trigger happy guns for hire. I have to help them collect others like me, like you; people that survived the blasts. They're doing it so there's no one left to oppose them. We're making our way across the state. I swear I'm not like the other guys in there, they're blackmailing me. They said if I didn't help them they'd kill my wife and child," the man stifled a sob, "I had no choice, you have to believe me." He said tears were now rolling down his cheeks.
Trent glanced uneasily at the other three who stood beside them, their expressions mirrored his.
"What's going on? Why are they doing this?" Daria asked.
The man turned to address her and Trent forced the gun deeper into his back, "Eyes to the front." He commanded.
"I… I don't know," he stuttered, "As far as I can tell the government has been over thrown. While in containment we got word that the capital cities were attacked, all of them. Washington was nuked, completely wiped off the face of the earth along with most of our political leaders."
"Then who's in charge?" Quinn asked timidly.
The man scoffed, "That's the worst part of it; I have no idea. There are rumors but nothing solid, the most popular one is that a bunch of right-winged extremists have taken command." He paused and drew a deep breath, "What are you going to do to me?"
"If your quiet and do what we say, nothing." Trent said unsteadily, his bravado waning.
"When's the next changeover of guards?" Daria asked.
"There's at least another hour left on my shift, but they check every half an hour to make sure I'm still out there."
"Give me your hat and jacket." Trent said.
"What?" The man asked.
"Give me your hat and your jacket," Trent repeated, "Now."
As the man undressed, Daria turned to Trent. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
"I have a plan." He said. "Jesse, you take over here. I'll be back in a minute." He said as he handed the gun to Jesse and took the man's clothes.
Under the guise of the captured guard, Trent hesitantly slid out from the comforting darkness of the woods into the dull yellow light of the parking lot and made his way to the truck that had held Jane. He returned a few minutes later with a long piece of rope.
"Tie him to a tree, make sure it's a few hundred feet away, and Jesse gag him so he won't cry out once you walk away." He said as he handed the rope to Jesse.
Daria, Quinn and Trent watched as Jesse frog marched the man further into the woods. Daria turned to Trent.
"What the hell are you playing at?" she asked exasperatedly.
"I don't trust him, and we can't shoot him; the other guys would hear the gun and would be out here in no time. We'd be dead. Besides, we have to make sure the guard won't see the others when they get the cars, it's bad enough he's seen our faces." He replied. "Listen I have an idea, we have another fifteen minutes or so before we're supposed to drive out of here. What if we put our friends out of action? So there was no chance of them chasing us."
"I thought that's what the plan was; that you and Jesse were going to try to tamper with the engines."Quinn said.
"I was thinking something a little grander than that." He said with a chilling smirk. "You two go meet up with the others at the cars. Wait for my signal and start the engines, me and Jess will do the rest; just be ready to go when we get there."
The look on Trent's face, and the tone of his voice scared me. I'd never seen him act this way before and by the look on Daria's face she hadn't either. There was no way we were able to talk him out of whatever he was planning, so we unwillingly made our way back to Jane and the boys and told them there was a change in plans.
With the guard out of the way, we were at least able to get into the cars and hope to God they would start when we needed them to. The minutes crawled by while we waited, we saw glimpses of the boys as they crept around the trucks, but in the murky darkness it was impossible to see what they were doing. The tension in the air mounted and the boys began to grow restless; I'm not sure if it was out of anticipation or because they weren't part of the special ops mission Trent and Jesse had given themselves.
Trent and Jesse had found more ropes in the back of one of the trucks and had soaked them in fuel and fed them into the gas tanks, using them as wicks. They had left enough rope to give themselves enough time to get to the cars and escape. I can remember the golden spark and rush of flames that erupted from the side of two of the trucks. Trent and Jesse ran toward the two cars; their limbs flailing. Only the Tank started. A moment of dread surged through me as I watched Jane and Daria make a frantic dash for the Tank. They dived into the side door, just as Trent and Jesse reached us. With a screech of tires the van sped out of the parking lot and down the road.
Those poor men didn't stand a chance; the car engines had alerted them, but by the time they had made it out of the motel, the wicks had burned up and the flames had reached the gas tanks. The explosion was enormous; a large fireball erupted into the dark sky. It was beautiful in a horrifyingly sick way. Even as we sped down the road, the hot fumy air seeped into the van and stayed with us until dawn.