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logistics of it, kept everybody occupied and gave them a common purpose. So rather than give up, they all focused on the problem of finding a route around the swarm—as if it was part of a long-term plan, and not merely another meaningless obstacle.
    And for many, it did fit in with a plan of sorts. The rumors of a safe place came from that direction like the smell of a summer day comes off the horizon before the sun has even risen. It was something to hope for, a direction to go. Eastward, somewhere. They’d heard about this possible Shan-gri-la from hitchhikers and fellow-roamers. How far east, though, nobody could say.
    Danny was out front in the interceptor with Kelley at her side as always; then came the scouts on their motorcycles, half a dozen of them. They rode herd, sometimes falling back, sometimes stringing out ahead, keeping an eye on the shadows. The main file of vehicles traveled in no particular order, except that the motor home was always in the middle, and the ambulance always at the back; the convoy was mostly heavy-duty pickups, SUVs, and panel vans. What people wanted was a heavy vehicle with a durable suspension and enough room to lie down inside. There was also a roach coach, which served meals for the entire Tribe, if there was food enough, and a lineman’s repair truck with elevating basket that made an excellent sentry platform. One of the vans contained enough tools to perform almost any vehicle repair. Spare parts could be found wherever there was an abandoned car.
    They had a dedicated vehicle for tagalong strangers to the Tribe, as well: the Courtesy Bus, a parking shuttle painted with black-and-yellow zebra stripes to make it easy to find at the airport. The driver sat inside an improvised angle iron and chicken wire booth, and the big windows made it easy to see what the passengers were up to from outside. Mike Patterson was handcuffed to one of the grab bars in the back of the shuttle, which very much interested the other outsiders aboard that night. The Tribe’s policy was to pick up hitchhikers regardless of their appearance, as long as there were fewer than six in any one group. But they had to ride in the shuttle. The driver, Sue Baxter of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was prepared to drive the shuttle into a telephone pole if her charges tried to commandeer the vehicle. They’d never had any trouble like that, but after all that had happened so far, there was a tendency to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
    They drove through the night, reaching the truck stop as the moon was emerging cold and hard above the distant hills.
    •   •   •
    It was one of those vast plazas of asphalt and concrete designed to get hundreds of vehicles and their passengers refueled and back on the road all at once, day and night. There must have been fifty gas pumps under a gigantic gullwing roof mounted on posts. At the center of the plaza was a sprawling collection of ransacked fast food restaurants and souvenir shops. They were surrounded by abandoned vehicles, mostly big rigs. There wasn’t much left to forage for. But the Tribe wasn’t looking for materiel, except fuel. Someday soon, all the gasoline would go bad—phase separation, contamination, and especially water getting into the ethanol-laced stuff. Gas had been around five bucks a gallon when the end came. Now it was priceless—and free of charge, if you had a siphon pump and a lookout watching for zeroes.
    Besides gasoline, if there was any, what they needed most was a good place to wait a couple of days while the scouts went the long way around to find a route to the east. These big truck stop plazas were excellent for holing up as they were generally fenced on three sides and the acres of pavement around them meant zeroes couldn’t attack from places of concealment. Nice field of fire, head-to-toe beaten zone, and three-way enfilade potential, as Danny had once described them. In better times it would have been lit up like the sun at night;