#78: I lied

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(some time later)

It had been a few weeks since Scamps died. The old man was taking it poorly. He wasn't all that old by current standards but he felt old...oooold. When he was a teenager and had been drafted into his first war he'd thought then that he would be lucky to see his twenty fifth birthday. That day came and went...many decades go. Viet Nam hadn't been his last war. He'd been in several. It turned out that he was good at war. He had retired from the military after a long and distinguished career. Oddly enough not a lot of what he did was known or acknowledged ...much of it 'didn't happen'.

Times had changed and Sixty was the new forty they said. He was older than sixty...but he wasn't feeble nor fragile. Not much anyway. He could still do a days work.

And he did. Or he had, until that last election. THE Last election. There had been no more elections after that. Then the economy had began to collapse. He, and millions of others, had only THOUGHT that things were hard before THAT President got re-elected. They found out differently. The ones that survived the MeltDown.

Shame about the country.

Things got so bad and the insurgents in the District Of Corruption got so crazy, so anti-american and so unconstitutional that Texas and several other states, both jointly and separately, had all but seceded from the Union. The Union still existed but it was really in name only. In reality there were the Free States, the Badlands. the Hell-Holes and the Slave States.

The old man recalled that somber meeting in which he, and the other Texas Owner Operators had met with the owner of the trucking company. He had been leased to that company for a number of years. That company was in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was tending toward heavy regulation of business and the suppression of individual freedoms. It was time to go back to Texas. He, and the others, had said their goodbyes, then squared their accounts and departed.

He'd found another company in Texas to lease his truck to. BadLands Trucking it was called. BLT specialized in hauling XyloclondianDust to the Badlands printers.

They supplied three D printers of all kinds.

XyloclondianDust was used in their 3D printers to enhance production. It took special trailers to deliver the dust. The dust was so fine that it was almost liquid, but it had no surface tension...that made it difficult to handle.
BLT had those special trailers. It took special drivers too and Sam was that kind of special.

If a trailer could haul dust without spilling any of it then that trailer could haul other things too... and they did. Generally but not exclusively they hauled agricultural products back to Texas, mostly grain. It was a dangerous and risky job due to the bandits but it paid accordingly.

Sam was making very good money. His war-fighting years provided him with experience in dealing with the risk. Like riding a bicycle he’d not forgot how. It was a good thing too. There were more bandits and Jihadists all the time. The Caliphate had a foothold in North America and was trying for total domination.

Sam had left Pennsylvania just before the MeltDown. The MeltDown was a transition period of unrest, unease and widespread violence. It had been pretty bad. When the welfare checks stopped coming the entitlement class began rioting. Afterward pretty much everything was trashed it kind of settled down to an even boil. The eastern and western coastal cities, in fact many of the big cities everywhere, had done poorly.

The States that had been oppressive to citizens and businesses with excessive laws and law enforcement became Slave States in all but name. Radical Islam got a claw hold and began to establish a Caliphate. Dhimitude was being established.

Conform or die.

The worst cities had turned into Hell-Holes and were starving. Very few trucking companies would go there and the cities had meager goods and services. People were literally dying of hunger. The Hell-Hole Gang Lords sent out bandit convoys into the BadLands, the borderlands between the Slave and the Free States, to steal stuff. All of the trucks in the BorderLands were heavily armed. BLT had a deserved reputation for being MORE heavily armed....and not bashful about using it's weapons.

Chicago was the biggest non-coastal Hell-Hole, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver weren't much better. Albert Turkey and the death spiral state of New Mexico were bad too. Technically and legally there was still law and order according to the Federal Government, and the President for Life. That was a fantasy. Under THAT President the Federal Government had tried to take too big of a bite. That bite choked it. THAT President tried to use the military to beat down the civilian populace. The military told him to go take a hike. The military was loyal to the Constitution first ....not the President. The military would protect the borders but they wouldn't violate Posse Comatose.

The country had fragmented. The Big MeltDown. Many a Federal and state official met an untimely demise. Some bitter lone wolfs had made a hobby of collecting ears. A lot of people had a “little list, of people who would never be missed”...and oddly enough those people were NOT missed. The Federal Employment rolls depleted rapidly. It was not a life enhancing moment to tell someone that you worked for the Feds. People died by the thousands. It was like Chicago writ large.

In the Free States it was different. A Free Market thrived in the Free States and the population was more free than any other group of people ever had been in history. Freed from the government imposed mind-numbing regulations businesses prospered. When business prospered so did innovation and invention. Innovation prompted more innovation and technology galloped forward.

Decades before the MeltDown when he was in his forties Sam’s Grandpa had died. The old man was well past one hundred when he passed on. Sam came from a long lived clan. Sam’s grandpa had a pet dog. The dog was part of the family. The dog grieved himself to death in a few months. Sam had sworn that he would never leave a pet alone in this world when he died.

Sam had then expected to live another twenty years, or so. No way would he live as long as his grandpa, perhaps he'd live as long as his father though. His father had lived to be eighty before being shot by a jealous husband. Sam thought he had a fairly good chance of living to be sixty. Cats sometimes lived twenty years and he liked cats so he felt safe in adopting a kitten....and later, another one.

Two cats were plenty in the cab of a semi-truck so he didn't continue to acquire felines. Two were enough. So it went for almost thirty years. The cats grew old but Sam just grew older. The time came when both of his cats had died and he was left alone....again. Damn.

“I swore that I'd never risk leaving a pet alone in this world after I died” said the old man out loud.

Sam sat there for a minute. He looked outside the truck at the surrounding countryside. He closed his eyes and he whispered.

“I lied”

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Next Episode
#79: Do you have any Cats
Previous Episode
#77 :At the Animal Shelter…
First Episode
# 1 : In the beginning…

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