300 Miles to Galveston by Rick Wiedeman Read Free Book Online Page B

that horizon.
    The three riders paused before the long, slow climb toward Spring Valley, Alpha, and finally LBJ.
    “Not bad for a cripple, a kid, and a desk jockey,” said Kurt.
    They all raised their water bottles and drank. Bane shifted his weight forward, pulled his artificial leg on, and used his cane to right himself. “I need to get up and stretch every so often.”
    “No problem. I’m in such bad shape I just need to stop to breathe.”
    Bane staggered to the opposite side of the street – something had caught his eye. Sophie lay in a nearby patch of grass and closed her eyes. Kurt looked down at her hair, spread out on the ground like a supermodel in a shampoo commercial. She was becoming a beautiful woman.
    “I thought we’d gotten you a helmet.”
    “Yep,” said Sophie. “We each had one. Guess we both forgot them.”
    Several years as a single dad had taught Kurt to choose his fights. This wouldn’t be one of them.
    “Dad?”
    “Mmm-hmm.”
    “Do you think they’ll eat Biscuit?”
    “Not enough meat on that little thing to worry about.”
    “I’ve seen the old people make soup out of squirrels.”
    “They won’t eat the dog. They’re friends, not zombies.”
    “I know. It’s just that, you know, things aren’t normal anymore.”
    “True, but I can’t imagine them doing that until there wasn’t a squirrel, bird, rabbit, rat, or stray dog left in the entire neighborhood.”
    “Yeah.”
    Kurt lay down beside her and they watched the clouds for a while. Bane was fishing something out of the drain with his cane.
    “Do you think God hates us?”
    Kurt chuckled. “God. I dunno.”
    “I mean, you told me once that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s not giving a crap. Seems like God doesn’t give a crap.”
    “I care about what happens to you. If God is a parent, he cares too.”
    “What if he’s not? What if all this horrible stuff... just happened?”
    “Then we still need to care about each other, or we won’t make it.”
    She nodded.
    Bane came back from his walk with a yellow-handled hatchet. “Found this by the drain.”
    “Cool,” said Sophie.
    “Lemme I see it,” said Kurt. Bane hesitated. “I’ll give it back.” Bane turned it over and gave it to him, handle first.
    Kurt ran his thumb along the edge, felt its heft. “This is nice. Good hammer side, too.”
    “Yes,” said Bane. Kurt handed it back to him, and Bane rubbed his fingers along the rubber grip. They stood there a moment, then Bane turned and stumbled back to his recumbent bicycle, where he unzipped a grey canvas bag and laid the hatchet inside.
    They started the long climb towards the LBJ bridge.
    Like most Dallas highways, LBJ had been under perpetual construction for Kurt’s entire life. Back when there was still a city, state, and federal government to plan and fund such things, LBJ had been expanded to 14 lanes, all dedicated to DriveFree, or network-controlled vehicles. The DriveFree tech had received federal funding back in President Obama’s second term, and after tests in Dallas, Phoenix, and Denver, was rolled out nationally. Incentives were given to trade in old, manual cars for the newer DriveFree models. A couple of start-ups tried to develop kits for adding DriveFree tech to older cars, but it was too expensive, and no federal money was spent in that direction.
    In the first 20 years, DriveFree vehicles ran on gasoline and ethanol, liquid natural gas (LNG), pure battery, or hybrid. Eventually LNG won the market. America, Norway, and Trinidad and Tobago became the leading LNG exporters, leaving Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East to sell oil to poorer countries who couldn’t convert easily, mostly in South America and Asia.
    They paused at Alpha, and let the breeze at the top of the hill cool them down.
    “I had no idea it was this steep,” said Kurt.
    No one else spoke.
    They pressed on.
    As they approached Dilbeck, a small side street that connected the neighborhood to the