Free Foreign Enemies and Traitors by Matthew Bracken Page B

is.”
     
    ****
     
    Stanley Fromish slept fitfully, tossing beneath his tangled blankets.  He was alone, as he’d been for a year.  His wife, Molly, had been on a shopping trip over in Memphis when the first quake struck, and he had never seen or heard from her again.  In his dreams he saw her trapped between pancaked concrete slabs in a collapsed shopping mall, calling out to him for help.  That was his worst nightmare from the quakes, seeing his beloved wife partly crushed and trapped in debris, unable to escape, dying of thirst, pain and shock.  Fortunately, his two young daughters had been home with him on that fateful day, and so they had survived the quake and all that had followed. 
    What saved them from the even more terrible aftermath of the quakes was his gas station in the crossroads town of Carrolton, five miles west of the Tennessee River.  By some fluke of geography and engineering, the State Road 214 bridge had been deemed repairable after the quakes, while the much longer I-40 bridge twenty miles to the north had not.  Interstate 40 was the main route connecting Memphis, Jackson and Nashville, but after the quakes sleepy State Road 214 became a detour route of strategic significance.  Stanley Fromish owned the first service station on the west side of the river with large storage tanks, which overnight had made his gas station critically important to the state and federal governments. 
    Several of the concrete spans on the high 214 bridge had toppled from their towers after the first quake.  In the weeks following the first of the two major earthquakes, a one-lane steel truss had been thrown across the still-standing bridge supports.  This one-lane replacement bridge went down in the second big shaker three weeks later and was eventually replaced with two lanes of metal grating over steel I-beams.  Trucks had to cross the narrow jury-rigged span at low speed.
    State Road 214 was the only remaining route into western Tennessee, not counting the roads coming up from Mississippi.  Little help could come from that direction, since the state of Mississippi was already a disaster area even before the quakes.  All of the other bridges crossing the Mississippi and Ohio rivers into western Tennessee were still wrecked.  So the rickety two-lane temporary bridge had assumed strategic importance, and along with it, so had Stanley Fromish’s gas station.
    Through hard work and some luck, Fromish had maintained personal control of his service station and mini-mart throughout the year of unending emergency.  Food from the mini-mart had helped to see them through the early months of the crisis.  After the first quake in December, he’d had the foresight to move every crumb of food and beverage bottle from the mini-mart to his home’s basement.  The first waves of looters found an open store that was already empty from ceiling to floor, and they moved on.  Thereafter, National Guard troops and later the Mexicans had been stationed right at the gas station.  As a result, he had not been forced to fend off bandits or roaming gangs. 
    Because of his station’s critical location, it had been chosen to receive fuel allotments.  These deliveries came from tanker trucks driven across the Tennessee River under military escort.  No matter how it came, the important thing was that his station had been selected to receive the precious gasoline and diesel.  A military generator was used to power his pumps, and while it was running he was able to electrify his service station, his garage, and his home.
    The fuel was needed not only by the local civilians but also by the American, Mexican, and other foreign troops struggling to keep the peace and guard the reconstruction crews.  For the first three months, the station operated under military control, with Stanley Fromish simply following orders, taking the gas deliveries and pumping it out to military and law enforcement vehicles.  Eventually the gas station