Gary ‘Gearhead’'s Arc

Chapter 5 of 15

Gary spent four days cutting steel and sinking posts into the dirt around the scrapyard's perimeter. The wall sections went up in pieces—plates welded to frames, gaps filled with chain link and sheet metal. It wasn't pretty, but it stood. By the fifth morning, the fortifications were half-finished, running along the eastern edge and curving toward the trailer. He'd used most of the materials from the Cadillac crew's pile and pulled the rest from his own stock. The work left him filthy and tired, but he kept at it because the alternative was waiting for someone else to decide his scrapyard's future. The campground appeared on the sixth morning. Gary spotted it while carrying steel plates to the next wall section—four patched tents arranged in a loose circle outside his property line, centered around a fire ring built from salvaged bricks. A barrel and some crates sat near the largest tent. Someone had hung tarps between two scraggly trees for shade. There were maybe eight or ten people total, hard to count with some still inside the tents. They'd set up just far enough back that they weren't on his land, but close enough that the message was clear: they'd seen something being built and decided to wait. Gary lowered the steel plate and watched a woman in worn coveralls tend the fire. She looked up, met his eyes for a second, then went back to her work. No one approached the fence line. No one called out. They were just there, camping in his shadow like they'd already decided this was the safest spot left on the strip. Gary walked to the unfinished section of wall and set down the plate. The wire mesh sagged between the stone pillars he'd raised the day before, gaps still wide enough for a person to slip through if they wanted. He'd planned to finish this section by tomorrow, but now he had an audience watching every move. He picked up his welder and started on the frame, the torch flaring bright in the morning light. Behind him, someone from the camp coughed. A child's voice asked a question he couldn't make out. Gary kept his eyes on the weld, but his mind was running the numbers. Eight people meant eight mouths. If they stayed, they'd need water and food. If they didn't have either, they'd start asking. And if word spread that his scrapyard had fortifications going up, more would come. The marketplace he wanted to build needed people—but not desperate ones camping on his doorstep before he had walls to protect them. He finished the weld and stepped back. The frame held. The gaps didn't. By evening, Gary walked to the edge of his property with a pair of work gloves in his hand. They were old ones he'd found in a desk drawer inside the trailer—heavy yellow leather with a pre-war logo stamped on the cuffs, stained with grease and mud that wasn't his. The woman tending the fire stood when she saw him coming. Up close, she looked older than he'd first thought, with dirt under her nails and a scar across her knuckles that said she knew how to work. Gary stopped at the property line and held out the gloves. "You know how to weld?" he asked. She looked at the gloves, then at the half-finished wall behind him. "Enough to make it hold," she said. Gary nodded and tossed them to her. "Then you work the seams on the north side. Two hours a day. Your people get water from my cistern and you camp inside the fence line once the walls are done. But you follow the rules I set, and if trouble comes, you help hold it off." The woman pulled on the gloves and flexed her fingers, testing the fit. They were too big, but she didn't complain. "We can do that," she said. Gary turned and walked back toward the trailer, feeling the weight of what he'd just started. He'd wanted a marketplace. Now he had the first people who'd need it to survive—and the first ones who'd have to help him build it.