Tequila Jack’s dog Manley skittered to his feet when Jack rose and headed for the kitchen area. The refrigerator in the little cabin was nearly empty. He grabbed the last can of beer. As he popped the top, he reflected that he could live without a lot of things in the post-oil future, but he was going to miss a cold brew on a hot summer day.
Back at his computer one last time, Jack read about the quarantine rules and the consequences for breaking them. He wasn’t surprised that Democrat bastard Ramirez and his pal the President had imposed martial law in Los Angeles. State-sponsored violence and unconstitutional limits on citizens’ freedoms were anticipated in most of the Peak Oil literature. The bit Jack found amusing was the delicate language in which the government described how they would murder you if you tried to drive your family to safety, out of the disaster zone, using your own car.
A slobbery blue rubber ball rolled past Jack’s feet.
“You want to go to the lake, boy?”
Manley replied with a high-pitched bark and crouched with his head to the floor and his tail sticking up, wagging.
“In a minute,” Jack said, taking a long swig. “We’ll stop on the way down. But take it easy, we’ve got a ways to go.”
He turned off the computer, finished the beer, and stepped into the back room of the cabin where it was ten degrees cooler. Jack had built this bedroom into the side of the mountain for natural cooling in summer. And in the winter, despite the cold at four thousand feet, the bedroom temperature remained survivable even without heat. On the bed lay a framed backpack, loaded for overnight trekking. He stuffed in a few more items, then hoisted it onto his back and headed for the door. Manley yelped and leaped for joy at his heels.
The man and his Labrador weaved their way down a narrow canyon, heading roughly eastward on an unmaintained fire road so pitted and strewn with forest debris that it was almost impassable by car. In the canyon there were enough trees of the Angeles National Forest to justify the name, but when they reached a more serviceable road, the trees were replaced by arid scrub. As they walked, Manley covered at least three times the distance Jack did, bounding forward and back, chasing birds and small lizards. The area was devoid of human activity—precisely the kind of place Tequila Jack was looking for when he made the decision to survive the collapse. It was hard to believe they were only sixty miles from downtown L.A. and the region’s ten million people, but the mountains held back the hordes and their urban sprawl like a moat around a castle.
Pine Canyon Road turned into Ridge Route, and after an hour of pleasant walking, Quail Lake came into view. Manley took off at top speed. The “lake” was actually a reservoir on the west branch of the California Aqueduct which delivered water from Northern California to the desert areas of the southern state. At this time of year the water level was low, and ugly bathtub rings marred the shoreline. Manley plunged into the water.
While the dog frolicked in the lake, Jack strolled up the main highway. He saw none of the casual fishermen who typically showed up on weekends to try their luck on the reservoir, but he found what he was looking for. An abandoned car lay dead on the shoulder of the road. Using small tools extracted from his backpack, Jack pried open the gas tank cover and siphoned liquid from the tank. It stank of vinegar. He got enough to fill several one liter bottles.
“Let’s go, boy,” Jack called and whistled. Manley responded and soon was shaking his coat dry at Jack’s side.
Tequila Jack gazed at the cloudy liquid he’d collected. He wondered where it originally came from, what messed-up country had profited when it was harvested from the underground treasure trove that the country neither earned nor deserved. Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Venezuela? It didn’t matter. Thanks to him, his friends, and Envirowacko, the age of oil was ending.
He buried the bottle in his pack and headed west toward Interstate 5.
“About twenty miles, boy,” he said to the dog. “You up to it?”
The Wheeler Ridge oil field was the closest. After Wheeler Ridge, he planned to head west another twenty-five miles to the tiny Central Valley towns Maricopa, Taft and McKittrick—all legendary names in the history of California’s oil industry. The oil towns persisted in the barren, sparsely-populated land atop the massive Midway-Sunset oil field, where Jack would have his pick of targets. The journey was long but he had a sleeping bag and enough to eat. The schedule allowed plenty of time to hit a number of oil wells and find a working post office. Before they knew it, he and Manley would be back at the cabin.
“How’d you like to sleep under the stars, boy?” he said.