[color=f7941d][b]Duncan Moran Albuquerque, NM I-40 (on the western end of town near the Rio Grande) Aug 27, 2016 (The date assumes the Plague hit last year.)[/b][/color] [color=f7941d][b]Prologue[/b][/color] With his family dead - even before the Plague - Duncan had been more than fortunate to find himself in a decent foster family. It had been an older couple who had actually doted on him, finding him to be a model son. His grandparents wanted to take him in, but admittedly their health hadn’t been the best. So they had met with the foster parents, researched them, and given their approval - and even some financial support for their eldest grandson. Duncan had gone from living in near poverty to upper middle income overnight. His foster father had worked at Sandia Labs. His mother was a doctor. It had probably been the best months of his life before the plague hit. As soon as his foster parents realized just how bad the situation was they overreacted - or thought they did. The single best thing his father did was start teaching Duncan some technological survival basics - and help the boy convert his book collection to digital format, creating backups. His foster father taught him how to convert a car to alcohol. Duncan hated mechanics, but paid attention. The man also left Duncan instructions on how to convert military diesel and expanded Duncan book collection. He also made sure Duncan got his driver’s licence. When it became apparent that Duncan wasn’t getting sick even as he watched his foster parents die, they sent him out in a small RV to the Jemez Mts where they had a cabin. It was remote and well stocked to get the whole family through about 5 years of survival. But Duncan only stayed the winter. Finally heading out to see if anyone was alive. In 6 months the Plague had wiped out over 7 billion people. At least he assumed as much. Duncan was the luckiest kid alive. Duncan was the only kid alive. That sucked. He had imagined what it would be like to have a whole world to himself. He had thought it would be great. He didn’t like people. Oh he had - once upon a time. That was before his stepfather had beaten the empathy out of him. That was before his brother’s gang had half beaten him to death in a hazing ritual expecting him to join them. They hadn’t taken no for an answer. That was before their rival gang had killed his brother and come after him out of revenge for his brother doing something. Duncan still had no idea what. That was before the gang had broken into his home and killed his mother. It might very well have been a miracle that Duncan had been taken in by the sort of foster family he’d gotten. He had taken to calling them Mom and Dad rather quickly. With them he had even begun to reconnect with people. Losing them had cost him more emotions that he had thought he had left. Yeah, he was lucky. Good luck, bad luck. He had it all. As winter drew to a close he packed up for a long trip and rolled out - well armed, well prepared. He crossed the US via the south all the way to Florida, then up the east coast, across the north to Seattle, down to LA … and finally back home. Along the way he monitored radio channels, looked for signs of people, fired off fireworks, guns, eventually even a small brass cannon. But the entire way he never saw signs of people. He stopped off at a place he had researched in McAlester, OK, and took as much Zeolite as he could haul. He discovered a freezer half filled with boudon near New Orleans and ate so much he got sick. In Florida he went crabbing and floundering at a bay he used to fish at. He found a great catfishing place and smoked as much as he could. He shot a deer at 300 yards in Virginia, smoked that and used some of the meat for a stew. Instant rice took care of the rest. He went through the Smithsonian, White House (sat in the Oval Office - yes, THAT chair), saw a few other monuments, and moved on. He raided MIT for books. He stopped off at Punxsutawney, PA to see if he could find the Phil the gopher. But he figured the animal had been let loose to the wild and become some predator’s meal by now. He ran across a pride of lions in North Dakota of all places. They were chowing down on a cow right there on the road. The king of the jungle hardly seemed to notice Duncan. Wisely Duncan made a detour. It seemed that some of the zookeepers had let animals lose when they could no longer keep up with feeding them. Joy. He visited the Kansas City area and Little Rock, AZ grabbing as much ammunition as he could carry from a couple of manufacturing plants. In Cincinnati he visited the Kroger’s DC and stocked up on whatever supplies he could stuff into his trailer. Duncan raided the Shell Oil refinery in the area of Carson, CA for technical data on oil refining. Then he cut across to Arizona where he picked up as many solar panels and inverters as he could carry. By this time he had ditched the RV in favor of a military heavy semi pulling a 53 foot dry van and a fuel tanker full of diesel. While it slowed him down, it got the job done. And he was able to carry enough fuel that he’d never have to stop again for a long time. Oddly enough he had no problems with fuel. But he kept blowing tires. For over a months before he realized why. It wasn’t the rubber going bad, or the heat of the summer. No … be was overloaded by about 40,000 pounds. After that trip he started running lighter. And he avoided the long steep hills of the Pacific Northwest and I-15 coming out of California. [color=f7941d][b]Today[/b][/color] Duncan had finally managed to convert his car to run on alcohol and was ready for a test run. It was really pretty stupid. He had picked a McLaren P1 for which to test his alcohol conversion. The very notion of such an attempt with so little knowledge on the subject would have made any car enthusiast cringe. There had been only 375 made. But he had a Lamborghini Veneno he planned to work on once he had the bugs ironed out. The P1 was at least a hybrid and could run even without fuel - though only a very short distance and nowhere near as fast. Duncan was still trying to dream up a way to make the thing solar - and even had some ideas. It really was a waste of time - time that he should be spending working on other things. But he needed an outlet - a new way to have fun. And while he had never been bitten by the car bug like most teenage boys, he did like go carts. To him this was just the life sized version. Once he was sure the car was running good he topped off with his new fuel mix. His initial test runs were on the airport runways - the flattest, most open area around. Then he took his show on the road… He hopped on I 40 around at the exit closest to Kirtland AFB’s North east entrance and brought the car to a halt. He had measured out a distance to I-25 - where there was a major truck stop. He set his timer and hit the pedal on the right. He hit 60 in about 4 seconds. The P1 was rated at 0 to 100 km in 2.8 seconds, but he wasn’t the best driver around. And as the needle climbed something caught his eye on the eastbound side of the interstate that made him come to an abrupt halt. It was movement where there shouldn’t have been movement.