What Came After by Sam Winston

them over and doubled them over again and used them to grip the wirecutters. There was still current coming through, but not so much. A buzzing. He made a line of cuts and turned to look at Penny looking back at him. Trying to. He was certainly just a blur against the sun. Her own father just a blur. He turned back and made more cuts and pushed the fencing back and called her up and had her hug herself and put her through. The needle’s eye.
    The very first truck to come along stopped to pick them up. Weller holding his daughter in the crook of his elbow and sticking out a thumb the old way. That big white cat showing on the back of her pack. The truck was barreling south toward the Mason-Dixon line, loaded up and sealed tight. A National Motors truck on a National Motors highway. The driver threw open the passenger door and called down, “Jump in quick, buddy. I’m on a schedule, in case you ain’t heard.”
    His name was Joe and he’d aspired to this job all his life and he loved to talk, which is why he picked them up in the first place. Risking it. Born into a Management family in Queens. His father a doorman in a Manhattan apartment building and his mother a housekeeper and he and his brother both aspiring to hit the road at the first opportunity. Get out. He checked his watch and compared it against a readout on the dashboard and did a quick calculation on his fingers. Stepped on the gas. Watched the speedometer rise, the arrow pointing a few notches past one marker that was bigger than the rest and flagged in bright red. He squinted into the distance and asked Penny if she saw any trucks ahead of them and she smiled and shrugged. Shy and half blind. Weller answered for her. Said no. Nothing as far as he could see and he could see a long way from up here in the cab.
    The driver said fine. That was all right by him. He didn’t want to be gaining on somebody who was sticking to the rules. Fifty miles an hour come hell or high water, if they’d excuse his French.
    Weller tilted his head and looked over at the speedometer. Sixty-five. He said it felt like they were flying. Flying up here in this high cab at this high speed. Flying at any speed, come to that.
    The driver laughed and said aww, you’ll get used to it. He kept it pegged right where it was and checked his watch again and looked at some readouts on the dash. Drove with his tongue between his teeth, concentrating. Counting down after a while and then easing off the pedal and letting the truck slow back down to fifty on its own. Tapping the brakes just once when it got close. Checking everything one last time.
    “How about that,” he said. “Looks like we’ll hit Stamford right on the button. When the time comes I’ll give you two the word and you can climb back into the bunk and nobody’ll be the wiser.” Grinning like he’d gotten away with something, which he had.
    He said they used to do this with GPS but the satellites were down half the time now, so that was the end of that. Sunspots or whatever. Maybe they were just wearing out. Did things wear out in space? It didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t like there was weather up there or anything to bump into. As he understood it, there wasn’t even any air. It was a vacuum, like the vacuum inside a can. A vacuum preserved things, didn’t it? A week from now this load right here would be divided up into a million vacuum cans and it would last forever.
    Like he said, he loved to talk.
    Anyway, security just timed you now that they couldn’t trust the satellites. Fifty miles in between checkpoints at fifty miles an hour and you’d best be there on the dot. Show up late without a flat tire or something else on that order to show for it, and there’d be hell to pay. Excuse his French.
    Weller asked about the truck. A great sleek red Peterbilt as big as a mountain and moving. More than moving. Lapping up the miles. The driver said it was a 387 and it had come off the line in oh-eight, which made it