The Auto Transport Convoy In The Night

By Author: Jared Pearce
Total Articles: 1
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As we lay awake in bed, counting the stars and whispering of sweet nothings, the Earth came alive with a rumbling quiet enough to disturb even the least paranoid among us, but loud enough to awaken no one. She heard it first, pressing a finger against my lips. The auto transport convoy was on the move. We listened; it was headed west of northwest. That could only mean one thing: the bears. The bears lived fifteen miles west-northwest of the town, at the next stop along the only road extending in that direction. The auto transport companies in town would never send their prize convoy into the forbidden landsunless.The bears had sacked the convoy, ten years back, in the days when even their cubs hated us. We'd driven them back into the woods when the auto transporters had moved into town. In the days before the auto transporters had begun their reign, the humans and the bears had enjoyed a relatively quiet co-existence, albeit not exactly a friendly one. They left us alone, for the most part, as long as we didn't walk into the wrong parts of town at the wrong times. We left them alone, as long as it wasn't hunting season. But ...
... in the days following the restructuring, all of that changed. We needed the Perimeter back, and the bears needed to move out of the forestor else.Several auto transport companies needed to build a rail hub, which was part of a planned route to serve as the backbone for cross-continental transportation. Maxwell Crenshaw, then President of the United States, had just issued his famous Proclamation of Smooth Sailing. "I do proclaim that from this day forward," he'd said, "no American will ever waste one infinitely valuable second sitting in traffic again. We shall prosper, we shall move swiftly, and we shall reign!" Crenshaw, of course, held shares in all four major auto transport companies. Every car in the world would be carried on Crenshaw's rails. The election had been cancelled that year, because Crenshaw controlled more proxy votes than any other candidate. No sooner did the microphones start to ring from Crenshaw's declaration than the bears started to flee the woods. They weren't stupid. They would live to fight another day.Like today.Adrianna and I didn't move a muscle, at first. We listened to the auto transport convoy—listened for any telltale shimmies or shakes that the ground might reveal to us. From the acoustical properties in the ground, we surmised that the convoy was most likely moving anywhere from one to two hundred vehicles in the west-northwest direction. We knew what most commoners don't know, thanks to our network. The auto transportation outfit just outside of town still maintained a functional underground bunker, and it was enormous. The only thing we hadn't discerned was its purpose. We knew that it was there, we knew that the facility was near bear territory, and we knew that the auto transport companies in town could drive a large number of vehicles down into it. Our eyes exchanged a question, and neither of us knew the answer.We couldn't tell what kind of vehicles were being moved. Our ears were tuned, but even Listeners like Adrianna and I couldn't pick up details like that—at least not yet. We could tell that the auto transport convoy was carrying light vehicles. They weren't large trucks, but maybe light pickups. That didn't preclude the possibility that the convoy was carrying weapons. Was it really coming down to war with the bears? And if so, who was making the first strike? Were we waiting for them to attack, or would we be the aggressors?The auto transport convoy rumbled on. We would soon find out.