Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 17, 2024 | 6:52 PM
They blew up the Valero.
Darren pulled his F-250 through the gates outside the warehouse and rolled to a stop by the main door. He killed the engine and sat there in the silence for a minute, listening to the ringing in his ears and feeling his heartbeat pound up near his temple. As soon as he walked inside the questions would start, and he really wasn’t in the mood for a Q and A session.
What he was in the mood for was stringing up every last one of the dumbasses responsible for what had happened. One job—they had one incredibly simple job: make sure no one takes gas from the Valero. It wasn’t to threaten anyone who comes down the interstate ramp, it wasn’t to shoot at any vehicles that so much as put on their turn signal. It definitely wasn’t to blow the whole damn gas station to hell and back.
Yet that’s exactly what they did.
Everything Darren had worked toward to get the warehouse running and secure, all the trust his people had placed in him after he proved himself worthy of being their leader, it would all be gone the second they found out what had happened. It wouldn’t matter that he had opened his doors and filled the warehouse with food, water, and medicine, not once the generators used up the last of the fuel supply. When the lights went out and the heaters stopped running, people would inevitably leave. Some would make shelters of their own in town, others would follow the ones who had fled town a week ago and try their luck in the hills. Some might even crawl to the high school and beg Howell to let them in. Then Darren would truly be on his own. Dethroned and left to roam the empty darkness of his empty castle. A few would undoubtedly stay out of sheer desperation, but they would no longer see him as their leader. That time was over. He was over. And the instant his former followers realized that they outnumbered him, the warehouse and anything he had would be theirs for the taking. Darren would be exiled from his own property or, more likely, shot in the back of the head for his failure and incompetency, and the ones he had let down would take his crown to place on another’s head.
It all played out in his mind like it had already happened.
And the real kick in the balls was that it wasn’t even his fault. Jackson—the hotheaded idiot Darren had assigned to lead security at the Valero—he was the one responsible for this mess. He was the one who shot the driver of that SUV coming down the ramp. He’s the reason the vehicle lost control and crashed into the pump, the reason the whole Valero was currently burning the last of its fuel off into the night. He was also the reason Darren knew his time was running short.
Jackson had been defiant outside the gas station, not just defensive when Darren asked what had happened but borderline rebellious. Seditious. Trying to turn the blame back onto Darren by saying it was his fault for not making the barricade longer. As if there were an infinite amount of cars left in town with keys still in the ignition. If Darren could have constructed a wall of vehicles that wrapped all the way around Honey Grove to keep people out he would have, but the resources weren’t at his disposal. And even if they were, a project of that magnitude would take far longer than a single week to complete. Blocking the highway ramps with abandoned cars was never meant to be a permanent solution, but Darren still thought it was an impressive feat for what little they had to work with. Jackson, on the other hand, clearly believed he could have done the job better, and from the doubtful looks that had been on the other faces glowing in the firelight, he wasn’t the only one.
So Darren had done the only thing he could to reinforce his standing as leader. He knocked the son of a bitch out. But much like the barricade, that admittedly impulsive action would only fix things in the short-term. He needed a plan and he needed it now.
Darren got out of his truck and pocketed the keys, then made his way into the warehouse. The expected crowd stood waiting just inside the door but he ignored their questions and headed up the metal stairs to his office. Once inside, he closed the door and shuttered the blinds overlooking the warehouse floor. Turned off the overhead lights he’d forgotten to turn off when he left and switched on a small LED lamp in the corner.
With the Valero gone, electricity was an even scarcer resource. The realization changed how Darren saw the world. Everywhere he looked he saw the drain on power, each snaking cord diverting precious gasoline away from the dwindling fuel supply, each burning bulb and spinning fan blade increasing the generator’s unsatisfiable hunger. How much energy did running a single lamp waste? How many unnecessary devices had been plugged in and turned on that they could do without? And how long would it take for everything to break down when the generators finally sputtered and starved?
He collapsed into his office chair and rubbed his face. There was too much to do, and the list kept growing and growing. But top priority, both for the warehouse as well as for Darren, was to stretch the remaining fuel supply and make it last as long as possible. Every hour the generators stayed on was more time for him to figure out the rest of his problems. It also had the benefit of being the easiest task on his list. All he had to do was figure out what the warehouse needed and then get rid of anything it didn’t.
The thought came to him before he could stop it.
Get rid of anything . . .
Darren shook his head as if the idea had been suggested by someone else in the room. No, he wouldn’t go that far. He wasn’t a murderer. Besides, even if he did have a way to discretely get rid of Jackson, there were a dozen witnesses who had seen the punch he threw. It wouldn’t take an FBI agent to connect those dots and turn the entire warehouse against him.
But how long until that happened anyway, once Jackson and the others told everyone that the incomplete barricade was the reason for what happened?
Leaning back in his chair, Darren scratched at the stubble on his chin. He had to come up with something before Jackson came back, and with the way things had been going he knew he wouldn’t be lucky enough for the man to get blown up while shoveling dirt onto the fires.
He grabbed the walkie-talkie from his desk and held down the transmit button. “Aaron.”
A few seconds passed, then the radio crackled to life. “Yeah, boss?”
“Keep the gate closed and call me the second you see the others. I need to have a word with Jackson, in private.”
Half an hour later, Darren stood on the metal walkway outside his office and looked out over all the faces staring up at him, all the people waiting in silent apprehension for him to finally tell them what was going on. He took a breath, knuckles white against the steel rail, and exhaled.
“They blew up the Valero.”
The expressions changed from worry to fear in a matter of microseconds. Shouts of what and how and why smashed against other words impossible to make out, the crowd suddenly alive with disbelief and terror. After a few moments, a single repeated question came out above all the others: “Who?”
Darren tightened his grip even more on the steel rail he leaned against until flecks of rust flaked off and spiraled to the floor. This was it, the moment of truth. The next few minutes would either ensure his future or destroy it. It was now so quiet he could hear the generator running outside. “Howell.”
Outrage again erupted through the warehouse, questions and insults ricocheting off the walls of the room like machine gun fire.
“I didn’t expect it either,” Darren said, holding up a hand to silence the voices. “I underestimated him. That’s on me. But Howell is even crazier than I thought he was. He wanted more gas, and when I told him he couldn’t take ours he decided that if he couldn’t have it then no one could. He got one of his people to drive a van into the pumps, some suicidal coward who had an explosive device rigged into the car. Luckily,” Darren motioned to the man standing off to his right, the man with a now very bruised and swollen jaw, “our own Jackson Kennedy here was able to take out the driver before the device could be fully detonated. By that point, though, it was too late. The van hit one of the pumps and exploded. But because of this man’s quick thinking and fine shooting, we just might be able to salvage something from the pump that wasn’t destroyed in the attack. So let’s all give a hand for Jackson Kennedy! “
Obediently, the people began to clap and cheer for the man they believed to be their hero, but the rage remained there even as the sound grew. The cheers echoing through the warehouse were far from any last-second touchdown applause Darren had heard before. This was laced with an underlying hatred rapidly boiling to the surface, an applause not for the man sheepishly waving back at them but rather for the knowledge—the appreciation—that this man had killed one of their enemies.
How quickly they had come to believe the lie, Darren thought as the roar continue to grow. No doubt, no discussion, just unhesitant trust that what he told them was the truth. They had all been inside the warehouse when the explosion happened. They didn’t know what happened. They hadn’t seen any evidence for what had actually taken place. All they had to go on was the fabrications spilling out of Darren’s mouth about a heroic act, about the false hope of a surviving gas pump that could be salvaged, about the blame resting on some villain outside of their group. It was all just baseless words and nothing more. A story. But that was all it took.
Darren held up a hand until the applause died down. “Yes, we really do have Mr. Kennedy to thank for how all this turned out.” He cast a glance to his right, hoping the man understood just how fast the room would turn on him if the truth ever came out. But Jackson appeared to get the message; he had taken a sudden interest in looking down at his shoes. “But we’ve got another problem now. We’ve got no more gas and every minute our generator uses up a little more of what we have left. So that leaves us with a choice. We can slap some solar panels on our roof like all those energy regulators recommended—” a few people chuckled at this “—or we can take Howell’s gas station right out of his hands and make the son of a bitch pay for what he did!”
The warehouse exploded. Rifles and handguns lifted up over the crowd like deadly flags, the room full of blood-red faces and open mouths stretched wide in a communal call for revenge. For a full minute the people let out their rage, the wordless roar growing so loud it became like static that crackled in Darren’s ears. He threw a fist into the air and grinned down at the people, his people, and wondered why he had ever worried they might turn against him. He owned them. They didn’t know it, Darren hardly recognized it himself, but one thing he had no doubt about was the power racing up and down his spine as the shouting continued. The people had listened to his story and accepted it with zealous fervor. As long as he controlled the narrative, he controlled those who believed it, as well, and that meant they would do anything he said simply because he said it.
Darren clapped Jackson on the shoulder and turned from his people, giving them all some time to stew in their outrage and revel in the company of the hero he had made for them. As he stepped into his office he thought he heard the roar start to die down, but a rhythmic pattern moved through the noise and replaced the cacophony of disorganized shouting with a string of words that repeated over and over.
Smiling, he sat at his desk as the words resolved into a chant he could make out even with the office door closed:
“Make him pay! Make him pay! Make him pay!“
The Blink 