Apparently they could always find a few extra dollars for a gallon of gas, too. Trent scowled at all the gas-powered pickups and SUVs parked side-by-side in the wide diagonal slots that lined Main Street. Some of them were old, from back when that was the only form of fuel available and everybody thought the Arabs would keep selling it forever, but some of them were new, and those were the ones that particularly chapped Trent’s ass. A person could maybe be excused for driving a gas-guzzler if that’s all they could afford—and the used ones were definitely cheap if you didn’t count the operating expense—but a new one cost just as much as a new electric, and it still burned a gallon of gas every ten or fifteen miles. There were a few fuel-efficient cars around—Volkswagens and Toyotas and the like that people restored for fun—but most of the people who liked those kind of cars also cared about the environment, so they generally converted them over to electric anyway.

Somebody in a flat-black Suburban was just leaving as Trent and Donna drove up. His exhaust pipe belched a blue cloud of smoke when he started up the engine, and the noise was like machine-gun fire. If he had a muffler at all, it was just a glass pack. He revved the engine a couple of times just to make sure everybody knew he was an obnoxious bastard as well as a selfish one.

“Must have a little teeny dick,” Trent said as the guy backed out of his spot and roared away. “If the government wants to ban something, they ought to go for those damn things.”

Donna laughed. “What, little teeny dicks? I’d be for banning those.”

“You know what I meant, woman.” He poked her in the side, an easy move since she was sitting right next to him on the pickups bench seat.