Now the day is winding down. You have given considerable thought on what to do from here. Seems like there is no news at all coming from anywhere and the fact that there has been no traffic out on 85 has you worried to tears. Your home is about 300 miles away on the Georgia coast and you are worried about your family. If you dropped your trailer at the truck stop you'd probably have plenty of fuel to make it there. Seeing how you have not heard from anyone it makes it pretty clear that it's what your'e going to do. You have mapped it out and your'e wondering if you need to avoid the big roads or stick to the two lane and four lane divided highways.
The few questions you have are what's going on with the rest of the world? How are your wife and kids doing? Why isn't anything working? That really puzzles you. You think for a bit and you wonder if the pay phones inside the truck stop are working. After all, they don't have chips in them but will they work without electricity?
You rush inside to try them out and grab a door handle of an old phone room booth. Hoping against hope you pick up the receiver and place it to your ear. There is a noise but it is not a dial tone. A pulsing buzz is traveling through the lines. It's almost like a busy signal but it's not a staccato tone but a gradual high and low hum. You hit the keypad and you hear the tones registering but nothing is happening. At least you tried but your worries have only increased. Maybe you shouldn't have even tried that.
It's going on towards evening and the dusk has started to come around. You wonder if it would be a wise thing to start out in the evening or wait until morning. A few of the guys have already left the truck stop but there is no way to get in touch with them to find out what might be going on. Even after the trucks got started the CB radios still wouldn't work. The fear of the unknown has given you the heebie-jeebies but you know the smart thing to do is not to panic. Keeping your head in this situation is the best thing to do you think.
You go back inside the building and the owner offers you some food and coffee. You accept his offer and go back into the kitchen to make a plate from the various pots of provisions offered. The owner knows that the food in the coolers won't last indefinitely and that the fuel for the generators and the gas for the stoves will eventually run out so he might as well make use of it while it's still good. After all a lot of the food came from the truckers who had stopped in to take their sleep break.
The mechanic has shown everyone how to bypass their ecm's and you have yours running. The only thing you need to do is decide on a route and you can be home before too long or so you hope. You check the route and decide on the smaller state and local highways. You think that if the electricity has gone out that the chances are there would be a lot of mayhem going on in the larger cities. Not that Raliegh Durham was a sprawling metropolis but it would be better to go around it No use taking un-neccessary chances...
You walk back out to your truck and it's getting dark outside. It's overcast so there is no light from the moon and you suddenly wish you had brought your flashlight. You find your truck and you climb in to get your rest for the next days drive. It should be an interesting one you think.
You wonder about the fuel level in your tanks. Do you have enough to make it back? Would someone miss the fuel that was left in the reefers? After all one of the truckers left his trailer there unprotected but that wouldn't be like you to steal anything. You wonder what has gotten into you and your thoughts. Where else would you get fuel from? Will there be any other truck stops open? Will your a.t.m. card work? What if you get stuck somewhere and you can't use your money to buy any food either? You are pretty sure that the world as you know it has changed. You wonder what tomorrow will bring. You hope it will bring you safely home to your family.
For the first time in a long time you lock your doors as usual but you also wrap the seat belts through the door handles and tie them shut....
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