The alarm went off at five am on the morning when I was set to depart. I groaned and pushed Vicki aside. She’d sneaked into my room last night to see me off, and it wasn’t something I was going to be forgetting anytime soon.

  We weren’t too worried about getting her pregnant. I couldn’t marry Vicki, but the community needed kids, so even if I had a few bastards I didn’t need to worry about them getting taken care of.

  She sat up and looked at me as I got dressed.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said.

  “I’ll be back,” I reminded her.

  “In six months.” She sighed. “I might have moved on to another boy by then.”

  “Yeah, well, tough shit,” I muttered as I pulled my shirt on. “It’s not like we were ever exclusive to begin with.”

  She looked at me, probably wondering if I knew about the times she’d cheated on me. I’d never cheated on her, but then again I was sort of engaged, so yeah.

  She started getting dressed just as I finished and went downstairs for breakfast. Ma was already frying the eggs. “You know I don’t approve of Vicki,” she said as I cut off a slice of bread.

  “Who asked you anyway?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I miss the days when you were my sweet little boy.”

  “Yeah. Well, tough shit,” I muttered, and I went outside to pump the water. I came back inside with a five gallon bucket just as Vicki was sneaking out the side door. She looked at me with a sad smile and then took off at a jog to get back home.

  Mom had mixed a bit of switchel for breakfast, and together with the toast and eggs it was enough to get me going. The old timers complained that there was no coffee to drink these days, just moonshine and switchel, but whatever. It’s just the way things are.

  I made my way to the old gas station. The tanks there were long empty, of course, except for the one that we filled up each year with biodiesel. About a third of our harvest was in that tank.

  It was the only reason that the caravan stopped at the Bends to begin with. The old refinery was only spun up once a year, but it’s literally the reason that everyone knew the name Ashford Bends.

  Without us, trade would probably continue. Probably.

  I waited in the old gas station, bullshitting with the oldtimers who knew how to run the pumps.

  Around noon, the caravan came cruising in on the old cracked highway. They drove at a steady forty miles per hour to avoid putting too much pressure on the old trucks. It’s not like there was that much of a rush anyway, this caravan made one circuit going from Texas to Kansas and then up to Minnesota and back again per year.

  That was it. They said that in the old days, caravans like this were running on the highways night and days.

  But there were cities to feed in those days. Now, most places are self-sufficient, and the scale of trade is a decimal of what it used to be.

  The truckers got out of their rigs and began going through the process of refueling their tanks. I stood nearby until my grandfather showed up. One of the truckers saw him and went over to begin the negotiations, and I went over to listen. Grandfather spotted me and waved me over.

  “Niel, this is Glen, my grandson. He’s the one I asked to come with for a ride-along,” Grandfather said.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Right. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Glen,” Neil said. He was a middle aged man with a bit of muscle and a bit of a pot-belly. He ate well, I could tell, which said something about his prosperity these days. “Now get your ass over to the red one and help with the unloading.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, noting that he had his own pistol on his hip.

  I went over to the red truck and took my place in the line in back as we began unloading the goods that had been ordered for our little community in exchange for our fuel. Cloth mostly. We were self-sufficient in terms of food, but we didn’t grow cotton, and the factories which made high-quality cloth weren’t nearby.

  I worked up a good sweat helping the men carrying the goods out into the old parking lot while the guards with rifles stood nearby, watching the locals with the same suspicious glares that our own guards were giving them.

  At about four o’clock, the work was done, and Niel came to find me. “You’re going to be riding in that rig with Miguel,” he said. “Any questions?”

  “No sir,” I said, and I went over to the rusted old blue truck. Miguel showed up a few minutes later and unlocked the door. He was expecting me and told me to get my ass up into the cab with him, and then a few minutes later we were under way.

  Miguel had some Latin blood in him, I think. If he was cursed, I couldn’t see the signs on his exposed skin, but that doesn’t mean shit. Regardless, I thought as we drove away, the rules of the road were different from the rules of Ashford Bends, so I figured it would take me some time to figure out the pecking order.

  But I was pretty sure I was already right about one thing. I was close to the bottom of it.

  #

  Each night, the caravan would stop and circle the trucks. We would make camp in the space in the middle, while the armed guards who had spent the day sleeping in the backs of the cabs would sit up on the tops of the trailers and watch out into the prairie.

  There were about fifty men in the caravan, including the ten guards. Three of them were mechanics, most of them were drivers or just general laborers. There wasn’t a clear divide that I could tell between those with a curse and those without it like there was in the bends, but I didn’t go picking at the scab either to figure out if they were considered serfs out here or if they were equals.

  Most of the towns we passed through were empty, or filled with mutants who would come out and look at us longingly. We never stopped for them.

  In the mornings we would eat breakfast around the central fire. I got my first taste of coffee. I didn’t see what the big deal was; it was bitter and foul. But the others each had their cup in the morning and as part of the caravan I could have gotten one too. I gave mine to Miguel, who seemed to appreciate the gesture.

  The coffee was traded from deep south, but while the caravan could afford it as a luxury trade good, most of their cargo was made of more practical items. I guess my grandfather was never a coffee drinker, because when I asked Miguel he said that the caravan could have gotten him a few cans every year but that they never did.

  It was on a morning like any other that a sudden gunshot interrupted our breakfast. Everyone raced to arm themselves; I yanked out my Ruger and looked about, trying to identify where the danger came from.

  “Settle down boys, settle down,” Niel said. “Threat’s dealt with. Get back to business.”

  Everyone seemed to calm down, but I was left wondering what the hell had just happened. I asked Miguel, who just shrugged. Miguel didn’t seem to care about anything except running his truck.

  So I went to find Niel, who nodded at me. And that’s when I saw what the gunshot was about. One of the guards was busy digging a grave for a serf boy. He looked like he was about thirteen or fourteen. He was shirtless, and had a blotch on the left side of his chest that proved he was cursed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We caught him trying to steal from us last night,” Niel said. “We just finished his interrogation. Then we found out he was cursed, so we did the natural thing to do.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You got a problem?”

  “No sir,” I said. Grandfather would have probably done the same to a transient who tried to steal something valuable. Assuming they were cursed, at least. If they didn’t have any signs of bloodline decay, maybe they’d get a second chance, but that was in the Bends. I knew better than to question Niel.

  Niel could put me in the grave next to the kid and nobody would question it.

  “Then get the fuck out of here.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, and I went back to sit in the cab and wait for Miguel.

  #