Ellie and crew head off to the highway for some recon, and almost run into a patrol. They hide just in time, and the patrol gets spooked by a rabbit instead.

I heard a rifle being cocked, a few comments, then a violently loud explosion. The rabbit suddenly became little fragments of rabbit, spread over the ground and rocks, a bit of fur splattered on the trunk of a tree.

1) …why was their rifle not already charged? Like five seconds ago they were in high alert status because they heard something in the bushes, but…what, they were going to go into battle with no rounds chambered? Fuck, you’re supposed to do that before even leaving the wire. ‘These must be the professional soldiers’ my ass.

2) WHAT THE FUCK HOW BIG IS THAT CALLIBER???? WAS THE RABBIT FULL OF C4? I’M SO CONFUSED.

I mean, I’m not that confused, this book never met a Hollywood movie trope it didn’t fully adopt, BUT STILL.

The light switched off, the patrol got back into its formation, and continued down the road like a dark crocodile.

And another thing. These guys are walking around with the lights off and only turn on a search light when they hear something. So…???????? Why? If they’re on the lookout for suspicious things, they’re not doing a very good job of it. And it’s not for sneaky purposes, because they’re walking on an elevated road. Ellie even points out that they’re all silhouetted against the sky. They’re visible, and even if they do want to rely on the dark for (ineffectual) cover, they don’t seem to care much that they just advertised their position to the whole area.

We also saw a second patrol; a truck with a spotlight mounted on the roof of the cabin and a machine gun in the back. It wasn’t a very smart arrangement, because we could see it from a long way off, the light combing the bush, backwards and forwards.

You saw the guys on foot, too, and the truck guys probably aren’t looking for random teens. They’re looking for signs of disturbance or traps. Besides, they’re part of a large convoy, the sound would give them away without the light. The only unsmart part of this arrangement is that they’re in the back of the convoy instead of the front for some reason.

And then….they go to see the bridge.

There’s a small river and a very long, very old and rickety one-lane bridge crossing it. So rickety that people doubt it’s safety for even civilian cars doing a low level of traffic.

But somehow, it’s holding up under a constant cavalcade of armored trucks.

Then again, in this world bulldozers are bulletproof and go 90KPM, so maybe their civilian cars are just as heavy and the bridge is built to handle that?

(BTW, armies have engineers who can bring in heavy-duty bridges and they are pretty awesome.)

After spending all night staring at roads and bridges that shouldn’t be operational anymore, but somehow are, they go to their rally point and take a nap. Upon waking, Homer thinks they should blow the bridge.

IDK, man, it’s stood up to an entire army of armored trucks crossing it, what can you do that’s worse than that? This thing is either tough as shit or held up with magic.

Petrol’s our easiest and best way of making explosions.

…not really? Seems more like a think you set fires with, not explosions. But, again, this book is so hard up for explosions it’ll even blow up a rabbit.

The text even specifies that it’s a wooden bridge, just set it on fire! Fire is way easier to do than explosions!

So Homer comes up with a brilliant plan of “cause a cattle stampede as a distraction and then put a petrol tanker truck under the bridge and light a trail of petrol to make it explode.”

We talked and talked for hours, trying to find the flaws

It took hours? Really?

Obviously the main one is ‘that’s not how explosions work,’ but right after that would be ‘and if they did work like that, a purpose-built petrol tanker would have safety features built in to stop it so…?’ Third on my list would be ‘why on earth would stampeding cattle go towards a narrow bridge when the slope down to the river is, by your description, pretty gentle?’

Like, did it take hours because they just had SO MANY flaws, is that it?

The book does not agree with me and thinks this is an awesome, clever plan and the kids are all excited to go through with it.

They spend the day getting all set up, and in the evening Fi and Ellie go to the gas company to steal a tanker. The tanker, at least, reads like a real truck and not some bizzaro hybrid construction machine. Much time is given to them checking the petrol levels in the truck and figuring out what air brakes are, so yay, the rare section with research done. And then.

Fi was already trying to call the boys on the walkie-talkie, but there was too much interference from the truck engine.

…interference. From the truck engine.

Whut?

I mean, if the engine was just too loud to hear anything, sure, but interference when talking about radios actually means something specific.

I tried to look it up, and the only thing the internet would tell me is about engines causing trouble with installed radios, and then only because the radio has electric components that start from within the engine. Doesn’t really apply to walkie-talkies.

“I’ll walk from here on,” she said, “and call you from each corner. It’ll be just as quick. Turn the engine off while you’re waiting each time, though, do you think? It’s pretty noisy.”

Oh, oh baby, no, no, your poor truck, don’t do that to your poor truck!

Like, Fi saying that I get, she’s a townie and okay. But Ellie! Why are you agreeing! Do you really not have an diesel engines on your farm? You should know better!

Fi and Ellie get the tanker into place, with some hijinks along the way that aren’t too bad, so I’ve nothing to talk about. All in all a lot of this part of the story is just nitpicking on technical stuff, because, well, calling something interference or not knowing that diesel engines have to be warm, that’s not the worst faux pas, or even on the list of them.

We climbed the ladder to the top of the tanker and loosened the lids of the four tanks

It’s just that, well, this plan is stupid and I can’t stop thinking about how it’s stupid and that makes me want to pick at it. The book can’t help but shoot itself in the foot with this plan, and doing so continually, because JFC if you want the tanks to explode then why would you OPEN THEM?

For a book that has such a love of explosions it sure doesn’t know how they work, does it?