The counterman gave him one, and the kid began to write letters on a napkin. After a while he stopped.
‘It’s saying “Attention” over and over again. Wait.’
We waited. The air horn beat its longs and short into the still morning air. Then the pattern changed and
the kid started to write again. We hung over his shoulders and watched the message form. ‘Someone
must pump fuel. Someone will not be harmed. All fuel must be pumped. This shall be done now. Now
someone will pump fuel.’
The air blasts kept up, but the kid stopped writing. ‘It’s just repeating “Attention” again,’ he said.
The truck repeated its message again and again. I didn’t like the look of the words, printed on the
napkin in block style. They looked machinelike, ruthless. There would be no compromise with those
words. You did or you didn’t.
‘Well,’ the kid said, ‘what do we do?’
‘Nothing,’ the trucker said. His face was excited and working. ‘All we have to do is wait. They must all
be low on fuel. One of the little ones out back has already stopped. All we have to do -‘
The air horn stopped. The truck backed up and joined its fellows. They waited in a semicircle,
headlights pointed in towards us.
‘There’s a bulldozer out there,’ I said.
Jerry looked at me. ‘You think they’ll rip the place down?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at the counterman. ‘They couldn’t do that, could they?’
The counterman shrugged.
‘We oughta vote,’ the trucker said. ‘No blackmail, damn it. All we gotta do is wait.’ He had repeated it
three times now, like a charm.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Vote.’
‘Wait,’ the trucker said immediately.
‘I think we ought to fuel them,’ I said. ‘We can wait for a better chance to get away. Counterman?’
‘Stay in here,’ he said. ‘You want to be their slaves? That’s what it’ll come to. You want to spend the rest
of your life changin’ oil filters every time one of those . . . things blats its horn? Not me.’ He looked darkly out the window. ‘Let them starve.’
I looked at the kid and the girl.
‘I think he’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s the only way to stop them. If someone was going to rescue us, they would have. God knows what’s going on in other places.’ And the girl, with Snodgrass in her eyes,
nodded and stepped closer to him.
‘That’s it then,’ I said.
I went over to the cigarette machine and got a pack without looking at the brand. I’d stopped smoking a
year ago, but this seemed like a good time to start again. The smoke rasped harsh in my lungs.
Twenty minutes crawled by. The trucks out front waited. In back, they were lining up at the pumps.
‘I think it was all a bluff,’ the trucker said. ‘Just -,
Then there was a louder, harsher, choppier note, the sound of an engine revving up and falling off, then
revving up again. The bulldozer.
It glittered like a yellowjacket in the sun, a Caterpillar with clattering steel treads. Black smoke belched
from its short stack as it wheeled around to face us.
‘It’s going to charge,’ the trucker said. There was a look of utter surprise on his face. ‘It’s going to
charge!’
‘Get back,’ I said. ‘Behind the counter.’
The bulldozer was still revving. Gear-shift levers moved themselves. Heat shimmer hung over its
smoking stack. Suddenly the dozer blade lifted, a heavy steel curve clotted with dried dirt. Then, with a
screaming howl of power, it roared straight at us.
‘The counter!’ I gave the trucker a shove, and that started them.
There was a small concrete verge between the parking lot and the grass. The dozer charged over it,
blade lifting for a moment, and then it rammed the front wall head-on. Glass exploded inwards with a
heavy, coughing roar and the wood frame crashed into splinters. One of the overhead light globes fell,
splashing more glass. Crockery fell from the shelves. The girl was screaming but the sound was almost
lost beneath the steady, pounding roar of the Cat’s engine.
It reversed, clanked across the chewed strip of lawn, and lunged forward again, sending the remaining