Gary ‘Gearhead’'s Arc

Chapter 4 of 15

Gary spent the afternoon watching the post Sherrie's people had left behind, waiting for the Cadillac crew to show up and see it. They never came. By evening, he went back to work on the trailer reinforcements, listening for engines that didn't arrive. The word came two days later from a salvager passing through—the stranger had been moved to the old train station at the edge of Rust Creek. The building still had its sign and broken clock face, but everyone called it Echo Warehouse now because of how sound bounced off the empty platforms. Gary asked if the Ravens knew. The salvager said they'd been circling the place for three days straight, bikes lined up outside like they were waiting for something. Gary paid him in scrap and sent him on his way, then stood in his yard staring at Sherrie's post. The stranger wasn't his problem anymore, but the Ravens hunting near a building Sherrie was using meant the war was heating up, and he'd already picked a side. Gary drove his flatbed truck into Rust Creek the next morning, taking the long route past the train station. The Ravens were there—masked riders on heavy bikes, engines idling in a loose perimeter around the building. They weren't trying to get in. They were waiting for someone to come out. Gary slowed enough to see what they were guarding, and through a gap in the fence line he spotted it: an old vault built into the foundation, half-buried under the platform where passengers used to wait for trains that would never come again. The rust on its surface was thick enough to hide the lock, but the Ravens had cleared away enough debris that the door was visible. Whatever Sherrie's people had stashed in that building, the Ravens wanted what was underneath it. Gary drove back to the scrapyard and pulled the tarp off the pile of fortification materials the Cadillac crew had left behind. He'd kept them after refusing the deal, but now they carried a different weight. The Ravens were one block from Barry's bar and camped outside Echo Warehouse, which meant they were tightening their grip on Rust Creek. If Gary wanted his marketplace to survive, he couldn't stay neutral—and he'd already stopped being neutral the moment he handed over that case. He started unloading steel plates and posts from the pile, measuring where the first wall section would go. The choice had already been made. Now he just had to build something strong enough to live with it.