Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 18th | 4:03 PM | 29 degrees

Joey could tell that something at the warehouse had changed even before the chainlink gate rolled shut behind him.

The first sign was the way the two guards had talked to him before letting him through. They knew who he was at this point, had opened the gate at least half a dozen times for him after seeing who he was, but this time had been different. After the usual dance of flashlights blinding his eyes and him holding up his hands and stating his name, the guards didn’t immediately open the gate like they normally did. This time, they questioned him. Asked what he was actually doing at the high school, why he spent so much more time over there instead of here at the warehouse.

The confrontation was so unexpected that at first Joey hadn’t known what to say. Going to the school had been Darren’s idea, and these guys were well aware that the reason he was gone for so long was to keep an eye on Howell, to provide Darren with updates on what was going on inside the school whenever he got the chance to slip away unnoticed. Things like the three duffel bags full of guns Howell’s people had brought back. He reminded the guards of this and told them to call and ask Darren if they didn’t believe him, but they relented and let him through. But not before scrutinizing him under their flashlights like he was some kind of criminal.

Maybe they’d just forgotten about him. His face was an easily forgettable one, after all, his absence easy to miss for anyone not actively thinking about him. It had been a few days (nights?) since he’d last been here with an update, probably long enough for him to slip through someone’s memory.

But then he spotted two other flashlight beams moving along the sides of the fence, two more guards assigned to patrol the perimeter of the warehouse. Those hadn’t been there before, which made him realize the extra security had nothing at all to do with him. Something had happened.

Worried now, Joey approached the warehouse and leaned his bike against the wall, but as he reached for the handle, the door swung open and a woman with a rifle stepped out, the weapon’s barrel pointed at the ground but her finger uncomfortably close to the trigger. She looked him up and down the same way the guards had. “Well, look who decided to come back.”

He swallowed. As irrational as it was, the thought crossed his mind that he had done something wrong, something that had upset Darren so much the man had decided to cut his losses and get rid of him. Maybe Joey hadn’t been timely enough with his last update or his intel hadn’t been as detailed as Darren wanted. And maybe this woman was here to take him out back and put a bullet in his head.

“I need to talk to Darren,” he blurted out, hoping this would give his life enough value to be spared. “It’s about Howell.”

She stared at him a moment longer, then relaxed her posture. “Alright, kid, don’t piss yourself,” she said, a smug smirk on her face.

He followed her into the building’s lobby, wondering what had sparked the bizarre fear of his impending execution. There had been no logic to it, the idea had bloomed in his mind and in his chest before he had the chance to fully consider it. Joey had no reason to be worried, let alone be afraid of being executed. Darren wasn’t like that. He was just a man looking out for his people. Like Howell was. 

He chalked it up to a difference in personalities. Darren had a certain air about him that Howell could never hope to have, a disregard for rules and formalities that made him emanate strength and power. Get on Howell’s bad side and you might be scolded or forced to sit through a lecture on what you did wrong, but do the same with Darren and, well, something told him the punishment might be a bit more Old Testament.

 Further inside the warehouse, it struck Joey how warm the air around him was. No, not just warm. Hot. It might have been because of the frigid bike ride across town he’d just finished, but he could already feel the heat melting the chill from his nose and cheeks, spreading out through his entire body as the heated air enveloped him and warmed his blood. Howell had forbidden the heaters in the school to be set past 60, even when you could see your breath in some of the hallways. It was to conserve fuel, he knew, but that didn’t make it any less miserable to live in. Not when your body couldn’t get up to the summertime-in-Texas temperature it had spent the last two months getting acclimated to. No matter how much people at the school complained, Howell wouldn’t budge on the matter. As if a few extra degrees would hurt the fuel supply that much.

Joey paused. How could Darren afford to run the heaters here so high after what happened with the Valero? Shouldn’t he have the thermostats set even lower than Howell to stretch the remaining gas as far as possible?

“Not lost already, are you?” The woman asked, looking back at him with that stupid smirk.

“No.”

“Darren’s in his office. I assume you remember the way?”

Joey walked past her without answering. Before he started up the metal stairs leading up to Darren’s office, his eyes stopped on the main floor of the warehouse. The last time he’d seen it, the room had been littered with whatever looted supplies people had taken from homes in town–food, furniture, jewelry, electronics, and so on.

Now it looked like a military depot.

The piles of trinkets had been shoved to the far side of the warehouse and in their place were stacks of ammunition, tables covered with guns, boxes of bulletproof vests and tactical flashlights. It was like someone had raided a military surplus store and brought everything here. Most of the people standing around were already fully decked out in combat gear, some of them loading bullets into magazines. They looked ready for war.

“Joey!”

Joey flinched and looked up to see Darren staring down at him from the top of the stairs. For a brief moment he thought the man really was upset with him, but the expression on his face wasn’t one of anger–it was relief. 

“You don’t know how glad I am to see you right now.”

All the fear evaporated. Had Joey seriously thought he was in danger? Had it actually crossed his mind that this man–the one who had fed him and offered him a warm place to sleep without asking for anything in return–might have him taken out back and shot? He felt stupid. Ashamed. He shouldn’t have to constantly tiptoe around every interaction and expect the worst each time he heard his name called. Darren was nothing like his father. He was different.

“I wanted to give you an update on what Howell’s been doing,” Joey said once he reached the top of the stairs. “He’s got it in his head that you’re going to take over the Mobil, so he’s sending people to put defenses around the place and keep watch.”

Instead of laughing at how ridiculous the idea was, Darren’s smile fell away altogether. “How many people?”

“I–I don’t know. Maybe ten. But he sent them out with those guns and made sure they know how to use them.” Joey paused and glanced down at the people on the warehouse floor. At the rifles and handguns lined up on tables, the vests and ammunition scattered around in various piles. It hadn’t seriously occurred to him that Howell had a good reason to be worried, but seeing the state of the warehouse now, remembering the wariness the guards had shown toward him at the gate, dots began connecting in Joey’s mind and realization made his stomach drop. “Wait . . . You’re not going to try to take it, are you?”

Darren sighed, and instantly Joey knew that he was.

“But you can’t,” he said. “We can find another way to get gas. We can siphon–“

“There’s not enough to keep the generators going,” Darren said. “Even if we siphoned every car on this side of town, it would only last us a few weeks at best.”

“Then we go to the farms. They’ve got those big fuel tanks for tractors. Those would last–“

“Joey.”

“No,” he whispered, not wanting the others to hear him once against being so weak. The last thing he wanted was to give them more of a reason to turn against him. “There are kids at the school, old people. They need that gas just as much as we do, maybe more.”

“And I’ll make sure they get enough to survive on,” Darren said. “But we need it too, and Howell clearly doesn’t want us to have any.”

“We could ask him,” Joey suggested. “I’m sure he’d be willing to make some kind of deal.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that. If you just ask–“

Darren placed a hand on his shoulder and Joey hated that he flinched at the gesture. “Look, there’s something you need to know about Howell, something I didn’t tell you before because I knew that if I did, you wouldn’t want to go back to the school.”

Not even the high heaters could stop the icy dread that surged through Joey’s veins. Something had happened. “What?”

A moment of torturous silence stretched between them until Joey nearly shouted the question at him again just to put an end to his anxiety.

“The reason we lost the Valero,” Darren finally said, “is because Howell blew it up.”