Johnny Reb

"You know what I think about it," he said quietly. "It may be OK now, but it's just not going to last. The same kind of thugs that found the Schwarz's are going to get up around there sooner or later, and then what will those people do?"

"Dad, we're ten times closer to the gangs than Interlochen is."

"And," Mick replied immediately, "we're a thousand times smaller target, and we have an average of a dozen very well-armed men sleeping here every night who are usually about the best people you could ask for! And why can't you study -"

Mick stopped when he saw his daughter set her jaw and look out the window again. They had both heard this line too many times, hadn't they? Why can't you study what you want right here? He had rescued hundreds of books, lugging them everywhere on their journeys during the Troubles. Now they were a treasure trove of information, perhaps the largest private library remaining in the state. And absolutely irrelevant for Melanie's education. What she needed was to study with others of her own age. To meet people and talk with them about classes and take walks to parties at night. Like he had in the beautiful years before the murder of the world. She needed beautiful years of her own, end of the world or no goddamn end of the world. She didn't need to sit in her room and read books.

"I know you can't study the same way here," he admitted quietly. This was a first, and she looked at him sharply. "And I know you can take care of yourself very well. Against a drunken trucker or two. Or three! But not against what I'm afraid is coming up there. And I can't -"

I can't sleep at night without knowing every minute that you're safe. But he couldn't very well say that.

"I can't promise anything," he said at last, feeling the pressure of her gaze on him. "Maybe we can figure out something. OK? We'll talk about it." But he had also said that before, hadn't he? "Maybe we could move the Wolverine. I don't know."

But in fact they both did know that moving the Wolverine was not an option. It had to stay where the traffic was, and that meant staying on I-94. There wouldn't be much point in a truck stop where no trucks would ever go. And how could he raise the cash they wanted for four years of school without the Wolverine? Eighty ounces of gold per year! So far, in two years of trying, he had saved up enough for all of six months. Melanie knew that just as well as he did. But the only other possibility would be to sell the Wolverine itself, if a buyer could even be found. And then - how would he and Anne live? Or could its sale possibly bring enough to set them up with a livelihood somewhere in the Interlochen area, and pay for Melanie's school? It didn't seem very likely.

Mick left his daughter as he had found her, silently staring at the moonlit wilderness and wondering where in all the wide world she could find her own place, and her own life. He and Anne had fought their way through the end of the world, through famine, genocide, pestilence, and lawlessness. They had succeeded, and made a place where she could live and grow up. Now Mick greatly feared that all their work would be undone in the end by a ghost, by the final enemy of all parents in the ancient world. Only the few survivors of that lost world could remember the monster's name, and even then they would not speak the word aloud. It was "Tuition".

He closed her door quietly behind him, and continued down the darkened hall.

The trucker came bursting through the swinging door just as Mick was finishing getting the kitchen stove's morning fire started. "Mick," he said breathlessly, "you gotta see this. You remember Red? He's just pullin' in. You gotta see this."

They jogged together out to the edge of the parking lot, but when Mick saw what the commotion was about he just stopped and stared. The size of the load on Red's truck was absurd. Fifteen feet high if it was an inch, twice that in width, and a good yard longer than the bed of his enormous heavy duty lo-boy trailer. The load's width made it overhang the lo-boy bed hugely on each side, and it actually draped down somehow so that the big truck's tires were quite invisible.

More ridiculously yet, the load was actually tarped. It was covered with a crazy patchwork of canvases: green, brown, and black, and in all stages of disrepair. Red had apparently sown the tarps together by tying lengths of rope through the grommets at their various edges. It was amazing enough that he had even been able to find that many tarps, since nobody much used them anymore. Worse yet, how could one man alone drag such a Frankenstein's quilt over top of such a mountainous load? Big Red would be doing well to wrestle just one tarp into place, and there were at least half a dozen up there.

The great width of the load, while making it look ridiculous, was actually not such a big problem. There was hardly any traffic on the highways anymore, so you wouldn't have a lot of traffic backed up behind you. You certainly wouldn't need a little car with a flasher following along behind you to warn sleepy motorists that there was a Wide Load ahead. Instead, it was the load's great height that made it totally impossible. Any overpass in the country would clip three feet right off the top of it. There was no way Red should even have been able to get past the Baker Road interchange just a short ways west, at the site of the original Wolverine. Mick could not imagine him stopping at every overpass and inching his way overland with his enormous truck. Although it hadn't been too rainy lately. Could he do it without getting stuck? But a load that size would have to be made of lightweight aluminum for even his truck to be able to carry it at all. And what would be that size, and made of lightweight aluminum?

"Red," Mick held out his hands, begging. "What the hell are you hauling?" The others had come, gathering around him. They didn't want to come too much closer since Red did have something of a reputation as a maniac, but they weren't shy about venturing guesses about the nature of the ridiculous load.

"I'll tell you what that there is," Bobby shouted over the sound of Red's engine. "That there is Red's lunchbox! He finally got one the right size." Red was well known for overeating, which had become quite a trick in recent years. Yet, as he opened the door Mick thought it was clear that he had noticeably lost weight. Whatever nonsense he had gotten into, it didn't seem to be paying very well.

"Well damn if you didn't get something right for once in your life, Bobby," Red yelled from the cab as he shut down.

"This is damn right my lunchbox," he announced grandly, climbing down. "In fact, boys, this here is gonna be my meal ticket all over the country for the rest of my life. Somebody step up and buy my rig, boys, because..." As he spoke he stooped down to the edge of the tarp-quilt which was hanging, badly abraded, within an inch of the ground. He took a moment to tie one end of a coiled rope that he had carried from the cab to a free grommet. "your old pal Red..." Throwing the rest of the rope up and over the load, he jogged around to the other side of the truck. "...is going into a new line of work!" Grunting, he heaved down on the rope from the far side and the corner of the tarp lifted a yard or so off the ground.

"What the hell?" Mick said quietly. It took him a good couple of seconds to even understand what it was that his eyes were seeing, partially revealed by the ragged canvas. It was metal, and it was big metal. And definitely not lightweight aluminum.

Treads? Treads from something big, like some kind of large earth-mover or crane. Except that they were beat all to hell, and the load wasn't really shaped right to be anything with treads like that. It didn't seem to be the right shape to be a crane that had lost its derrick. Had Red salvaged some kind of big bulldozer that had lost its blade? Why would you want it then?

Red pulled down on the rope again, lifting the curtain further, finally raising it above the high edge - the very high edge - of the treads. The metal was a dark bluish-gray that made it look supernaturally tough, yet it looked beat up enough to be an old earth-mover. Although the surface wasn't dirty, exactly. It was more like discolored. Oh shit, was it scorched? And dented by - bullets? Large bullets? The metal was definitely not aluminum.