Free H2O by Irving Belateche Page B

Territory’s eastern border was thirty
miles inland from the coast and past that border were two thousand miles of
dead land. I went back to the thought I’d had many years ago – that the extra
water was being shipped to small towns that had survived on the east coast. But
just as I had concluded back then, hauling water across two thousand miles of
dead land didn’t make any sense. Lily had to be wrong. The water had to
be heading south.
    A minute
later, the truck started rolling over a patch of rough road and we were
suddenly bounced around in the rigging. It was painful. “Do like this,” Lily
said, putting her hands up against the bottom of the tank and pressing her back
against the rigging. “Hold yourself in place, not too rigid, like your arms are
shock absorbers.”
    I put my hands
on the bottom of the tank and secured myself against the rigging. The tank felt
cool from the water inside. We bumped along for a couple hundred yards until
the road turned smooth again.
    As the trucker
neared the center of Yachats, he slowed down and stopped a number of times as
he maneuvered through the various intersections. During this stretch, we
could’ve climbed out, but we didn’t. And neither of us brought up the next
move. Instead, we rearranged some of the sacks so pedestrians couldn’t see us
and I complained about the smell of diesel. Lily said she had learned to ignore
it.
    The trucker ground
to another stop when he hit the town’s major north-south artery. We were about
to get the first clue to the water’s ultimate destination.
     
     
    The trucker turned south. But
this didn’t mean that he’d definitely continue south, and I wondered if Lily
knew that. It didn’t take long for me to find out.
    “If he’s going
east, he’s going to take the 126,” she said.
    That meant she
knew the Territory well. The 126 led inland to the 5, a highway that connected
Portland, Salem, and Eugene. The 5 was a dead highway leading to dead cities.
As a teen, I’d dug up an old and barely legible map of the Western states.
There were no detailed maps of the Territory and I’d thought I’d discovered a
rare treasure. A useful treasure. Back then, Benny and I still dreamt of
exploring the Territory so I memorized this map. But unlike Lily, we never
found the courage to pursue our dream.
    “You want to
follow the water?” she said.
    “By staying
under the truck?” I asked.
    “That’d be the
plan. For now.”
    I didn’t
answer.
     
     
    We were closing in on the 126 and
I still doubted the trucker would turn east. But regardless of whether he was
headed east or south, he was headed into the wilderness. “What about food?” I
asked.
    “We steal a
little of the trucker’s food when he’s sleeping,” Lily said. “He’ll think it’s
a marauder.”
    “Sounds like
you know the drill.”
    “Yeah. And
sometimes it even works.”
    “And what
happens when it doesn’t?”
    “You go
hungry.”
    The trucker
slowed down, then started to execute a wide turn.
    No doubt about
it.
    “East,” Lily
said.

 
Chapter Fifteen
     
    The next stretch on the 126 would
give us time to reconsider our decision. Not that I’d officially made a
decision. I still hadn’t really answered Lily, and I knew that there’d be
opportunities up ahead to scramble out from under the truck. The trucker would
be navigating the inland hills of the 126, and he’d have to slow down a bunch
of times. Each time would be a chance to climb out and cut this trip short. But
when the trucker hit the long flat stretch east of the border, we’d be stuck.
Of course, that assumed that long flat stretch still existed. I’d never heard
of anyone venturing past the border and coming back.
     
     
    The trucker navigated the hills
and neither Lily nor I said anything. The unwieldy water tanks weaved back and
forth and, on the sharper curves, the trucker came to an almost complete stop.
    “What do you
want to do?” Lily asked.
    I knew what
she wanted to do.