in the Bible about Armageddon.
He seemed to remember something about the day when God would call the righteous home. Take them into heaven.
And the rest, the sinners, the less deserving?
Well, they’d be left behind, to suffer an unimaginable fate.
An unimaginable fate that was never specifically spelled out.
Perhaps a solar storm that would send the unholy back to the Stone Age?
“I’ve got to stop doing this,” Dave muttered aloud to himself.
“I’ve got to stop thinking so much.”
Sarah used to tell him the same thing when she wanted to give him a hard time.
Dave always had a bad habit of jumping to conclusions.
“Stop thinking so much,” she’d tell him with a smile.
“Stick to things you’re good at. Save the thinking for people who are better at it. People who have had more practice.”
Dave hoped his sweet Sarah was still alive. He quite literally couldn’t imagine going on without her.
Didn’t want to.
But he would. If he had to.
He finally shook himself out of his funk.
It was fully daylight now, and he hadn’t been paying attention to the area around the big rig.
If someone had been walking down Highway 281, they’d have been able to spot him with no trouble. Might have asked where he came from. What he was doing there. Whether he planned to take things from the back of the trailer that they had, perhaps, already claimed as their own.
Or perhaps they’d have shot him dead, as he’d asked God to have them do.
He looked around and saw nobody.
And he realized how exhausted he was. This thinking thing, he decided, really wore him out.
He crawled through to the sleeper cab, closing the curtain behind him, and collapsed on the bunk.
He was asleep within seconds.
Chapter 23
Dave awoke with a start around three in the afternoon, but didn’t have a clue why.
He shook his head to knock out some of the cobwebs.
He peered out the hole he’d made in the back of the sleeper cab at his Explorer.
There was no one near it, and it didn’t appear to be broken into.
Dave liked that the driver of this truck had been bobtailing at the time the EMPs hit the earth. He’d been driving only the tractor when the world went dark, probably on his way to pick up his next load.
It was nice for Dave because he didn’t have to look over a long trailer to keep an eye on his SUV. Plus, he was closer to the vehicle and more likely to wake up if someone broke a window to get into it.
But he wasn’t sure why he woke up, exactly.
He couldn’t remember hearing a noise. He was comfortable, wasn’t too hot or too cold.
And he didn’t need to go to the bathroom.
He didn’t have a bad dream. Or, if he did, he couldn’t remember it.
He weighed his options.
He could forget it, chalk it off as nothing, roll over and go back to sleep.
He could get up, peek through the curtain and out the windshield of the truck, to see if there was anything north of it he needed to know about.
He could get up and go to the bathroom, even though he didn’t really need to. And while he was up he could eat some Vienna sausages and a couple of energy bars. So he wouldn’t wake up again hungry later on.
Then his mind wandered a bit, as he wondered whether energy bars would keep him awake.
They didn’t contain caffeine, at least as far as he knew.
Or any other sleep inhibitors that would keep him from nodding off after he’d eaten and done his business.
But common sense would dictate that anything which professed to give him additional energy would also make him more alert.
He seemed to remember something about the day when God would call the righteous home. Take them into heaven.
And the rest, the sinners, the less deserving?
Well, they’d be left behind, to suffer an unimaginable fate.
An unimaginable fate that was never specifically spelled out.
Perhaps a solar storm that would send the unholy back to the Stone Age?
“I’ve got to stop doing this,” Dave muttered aloud to himself.
“I’ve got to stop thinking so much.”
Sarah used to tell him the same thing when she wanted to give him a hard time.
Dave always had a bad habit of jumping to conclusions.
“Stop thinking so much,” she’d tell him with a smile.
“Stick to things you’re good at. Save the thinking for people who are better at it. People who have had more practice.”
Dave hoped his sweet Sarah was still alive. He quite literally couldn’t imagine going on without her.
Didn’t want to.
But he would. If he had to.
He finally shook himself out of his funk.
It was fully daylight now, and he hadn’t been paying attention to the area around the big rig.
If someone had been walking down Highway 281, they’d have been able to spot him with no trouble. Might have asked where he came from. What he was doing there. Whether he planned to take things from the back of the trailer that they had, perhaps, already claimed as their own.
Or perhaps they’d have shot him dead, as he’d asked God to have them do.
He looked around and saw nobody.
And he realized how exhausted he was. This thinking thing, he decided, really wore him out.
He crawled through to the sleeper cab, closing the curtain behind him, and collapsed on the bunk.
He was asleep within seconds.
Chapter 23
Dave awoke with a start around three in the afternoon, but didn’t have a clue why.
He shook his head to knock out some of the cobwebs.
He peered out the hole he’d made in the back of the sleeper cab at his Explorer.
There was no one near it, and it didn’t appear to be broken into.
Dave liked that the driver of this truck had been bobtailing at the time the EMPs hit the earth. He’d been driving only the tractor when the world went dark, probably on his way to pick up his next load.
It was nice for Dave because he didn’t have to look over a long trailer to keep an eye on his SUV. Plus, he was closer to the vehicle and more likely to wake up if someone broke a window to get into it.
But he wasn’t sure why he woke up, exactly.
He couldn’t remember hearing a noise. He was comfortable, wasn’t too hot or too cold.
And he didn’t need to go to the bathroom.
He didn’t have a bad dream. Or, if he did, he couldn’t remember it.
He weighed his options.
He could forget it, chalk it off as nothing, roll over and go back to sleep.
He could get up, peek through the curtain and out the windshield of the truck, to see if there was anything north of it he needed to know about.
He could get up and go to the bathroom, even though he didn’t really need to. And while he was up he could eat some Vienna sausages and a couple of energy bars. So he wouldn’t wake up again hungry later on.
Then his mind wandered a bit, as he wondered whether energy bars would keep him awake.
They didn’t contain caffeine, at least as far as he knew.
Or any other sleep inhibitors that would keep him from nodding off after he’d eaten and done his business.
But common sense would dictate that anything which professed to give him additional energy would also make him more alert.
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