HIDDEN

Darrell Maloney

Copyright 2013 by Darrell Maloney

A recap of FINAL DAWN, the first book in this series

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    Sometimes the gods of fate smile upon you, and bestow on you a treasure of such magnitude, such wonder, that you pinch yourself over and over until you finally believe it’s really real.

     And sometimes those same gods bestow upon you a bowl of smelly, steaming crap.

     They seldom do both within the same week.

     Mark Snyder seldom played the lottery himself. He considered it a hopeless waste of money. But the love of his life, Hannah Jelinovic, played regularly. And sweet Hannah had been sick in bed for two days and hadn’t been able to get out.

     So on a lark, Mark picked up a ticket for her. The right numbers came up and Hannah and Mark were suddenly multi-millionaires. Things seemingly couldn’t be better.

     But not so fast. The very next day Hannah went back to work as a contractor for NASA, tracking meteorites and asteroids in the heavens. She discovered a new one. One that was heading for earth. And it was bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs four million years before.

     For her efforts, Hannah was demoted and threatened with prison if she disclosed the information to anyone.

     “But why?” she asked.

     “Because it won’t be here for almost three years. We have plenty of time to divert it or destroy it. Telling the public will just cause panic.”

     But Mark and Hannah knew better than to trust the government. They began using their newfound wealth to prepare for Armageddon.

     The couple enlisted the help of Mark’s brother Bryan and her good friend and co-worker Sarah. They purchased an abandoned salt mine that would afford them the protection they needed to survive deep underground.

     Then it was just a matter of getting it ready. They created a list of those they’d take into the mine with them. Those family members and close friends who made the cut would become part of the forty who would spend five to seven years in the bowels of the earth. Waiting for the dirt kicked up by Saris 7 to fall back out of the atmosphere, so that the sun would shine through again and thaw a frozen planet.

     There were a lot of things to consider. It wasn’t just a matter of buying food and water for forty people for seven years. That would have been tough enough. But to do so secretly required a lot of planning.

     And there were other things as well. The group had to plan for electrical power, fuel, supplies, medicine, and a thousand other things people take for granted until faced with not having them anymore.

     Meanwhile, Hannah and Sarah waited for their employer to do the right thing… to tell the public what was coming, and let the world prepare for it. They heard from an insider that there are no plans to save the world. Only a chosen few in Washington and their families and friends. The President of the United States had a place to hide, in the cold war bomb proof shelters beneath the streets of Washington. And he had plans to take a few hundred or so others with him. Family, friends, cronies. For the rest of the United States, they’d be on their own.

     For Hannah and Mark, Sarah and Bryan, that just wouldn’t do. The girls risked prison to go on national television to tell the world. Then they went into hiding in the mine.

     The federal government, of course, tried to discredit them and claimed it was a hoax, until other scientists began speaking publicly around the world to support Hannah’s claims.

     Faced with undeniable evidence of the truth, the President had to backtrack. He shifted to his Plan B… another lie.

     “Don’t worry,” he told his citizens. “We have a plan. We’ll work with the Chinese. By combining their rockets with our nuclear warheads, we can send up a weapon capable of diverting the meteorite onto another path.”

     The world was conflicted. They desperately wanted to believe. No one wanted to die. But they knew they couldn’t trust the governments of the world. Some panicked. Some rioted. Some calmly accepted their fate.

     And some, like Mark and Hannah, continued to prepare for the end.

     A few days before impact, the mine was finally ready. The group gathered up family and friends and gave them shelter. It wasn’t a tropical paradise, but it would enable them to survive.

     Final Dawn ended when Saris 7 collided with the earth. Around the world, millions were dying. But deeply hidden in  an old salt mine outside of Junction, Texas, these forty people would survive.

     Here, in Hidden, is the story of their survival.

Chapter 1

     Mark awoke to find a very concerned Hannah, laying on the pillow next to him and staring at his face. Even first thing in the morning, she was more beautiful than most women were at the height of their day.

     “Hello, gorgeous. What are you looking at?”

     “Are you okay, honey?”

     “Yes. Why?”

     “You were mumbling in your sleep. I’ve never heard you do that before. I was just worried, that’s all.”

     “What was I saying?”

     “I don’t know. I don’t speak mumble. Were you having a bad dream?”

     “Well, yeah, kinda.”

     “Want to talk about it?”

     He looked at the clock on the bedside table.

     “Maybe later. But right now I want to get dressed. They’ll be ringing the breakfast bell in ten minutes and I’m starved.”

     She put her hand on his face and gently stroked his cheek.

“You know I’m here for you, honey, when you need to talk. Your problems are my problems. We deal with them together, remember?”

     “Yes, I know, silly. And I’ll tell you about my dream, eventually. But not right now. I just want to forget it right now.”

     She kissed him and said, “Well, get up, then, sailor boy. I’m hungry too.”

     He walked to the back of the recreational vehicle, to where the shower was located, and ran a little bit of water in the sink. The water was so severely rationed in the mine that each of them only had enough for a three minute shower each evening. They could have showered in the morning, sure. But they didn’t want to lie in each other’s arms at night smelling like sweaty pigs. So washing up in a sink each morning would have to do.

     He had Hannah to thank for the RV. It was her idea. He would have just bought a truckload of plywood and two by fours and built temporary shelters for each of the mine’s inhabitants.

     “No,” she’d said. “It’ll be stressful enough on everyone we love. They’ll have enough to deal with without having to live in some ugly wooden shack for seven long years. Let’s give them someplace to go each night where they can at least pretend they’re at home. With pictures on the walls and carpet on the floors. It’s the least we can do for them.”

     As usual, she was right. So they used a good chunk of their lottery winnings to buy identical RVs for their relatives and friends who followed them into the mine.

     It had struck him then that he wouldn’t have been able to pull this whole thing off without Hannah.

     Heck, without her, there would have been no reason to. He’d have done what millions of people were doing this very minute around the world. He’d be dying. At his own hand. Because for most people in the world, it was the best option they had.

     Hannah walked up behind him and placed a hand on his bare shoulder.

     “Thank you,” he said.

     “For what?”

     “For making life worth living.”

     He could see her smile in the mirror over the vanity.

     “I don’t know what that means, but I like the sound of it. And you’re welcome. Are you going to shave this morning?”

     “I don’t know, why?”

     “Don’t. I think I’m beginning to like the rugged look on you. It makes you look tough.”

     He laughed.

     “Oh, really?”

     He pulled on his jeans as the kitchen began ringing their old fashioned dinner bell. It was a signal for one and all that breakfast was ready.

     “Come on, doll. Let’s go eat.”

     They left their RV and walked, holding hands, to the dining bay. Halfway there, Hannah paused and drew a breath. She dropped Mark’s hand and held her expanded midsection.

     “Are you okay?”

     “Yes. I’m fine. Little sailor just decided he wants to roll around in there. I think he’s telling me he’s ready to come out and join the party.”

     “Well, tell him to wait until after we finish breakfast, will you?”

     The pair walked to the dining area and to the kitchen’s serving line at the back of Bay 9. Mark’s mom Phyllis came running out of the kitchen to hug them both. She saw Hannah holding her stomach as they walked up and couldn’t contain her excitement.

     “You’re getting close. It’s just a matter of days now. I can’t wait.”

     “Nope,” Hannah replied. “Neither can I. It’s going to be a great adventure for all of us.”

     Mark wanted no part of baby talk when he was starving to death. He asked, “What’s for breakfast, Mom?”

     “Your favorite, dear. Scrambled eggs and grits. With jellied toast on the side.”

     Mark’s mouth watered as one of Phyllis’ kitchen helpers handed him a tray.

     He enjoyed having eggs and grits for breakfast for two reasons. First of all, he loved both of them, and had since he was a boy. Second, since they were both relatively low in calories, that probably meant his mom and her staff of workers would work some magic and come up with a snack later in the day. Like maybe a brownie or a couple of cookies. And even now, although he was a grown man in every other way, he still had his little boy’s lust for sweets.

     Phyllis and her staff were becoming experts at counting calories. When Mark and Hannah began stocking food for their long stay in the mine, they very wisely counted calories instead of boxes. They carefully computed how many calories were in each item they stocked, and made sure there were enough total calories to provide each person 1800 per day. That’s what doctors said the human body needed to survive. And survival, after all, was the reason they were all here.

      Now it was up to Phyllis and her crew to plan three meals accordingly.

     It wasn’t an easy task. They had to determine how best to divide up those 1800 daily calories into three relatively healthy meals. Using too many calories might mean running out of food before they were able to break out of the mine. And that just wouldn’t do.

     Conversely, too few calories and people would run down, and slowly starve to death.

     So every night, after the evening meal, Phyllis and her staff sat down with their calculators and cookbooks and laid out a menu plan for the following day. And even though they’d only been in the mine for a short time, they were becoming very proficient at it.

     Mark and Hannah took their trays and sat down at a table next to her friend Sarah.

     Bryan, Mark’s brother and Sarah’s boyfriend, was already at the drink station pouring himself and Sarah some coffee.

     “You guys want anything, big brother?”

     “Coffee for me, thanks.”

     Hannah looked up.

     “Iced tea, please. Thank you, Bryan.”

     Mark placed his tray on the table and walked over to the huge whiteboard that took up a good sized part of the western wall in Bay 9.

     He took a black marker and an eraser, and went through what had become a morning ritual.

     In the lower right corner of the white board he’d made three boxes the day after they came into the mine.

     The first box was marked “DAYS IN” with permanent marker. A large number 6 below it was in erasable marker. Mark erased the 6 and replaced it with a 7.

     The second box was marked “DAYS TO GO.” Mark erased the number 2549 and replaced it with 2548. The number was just a guess at this point, of course. But it gave everyone a target to shoot for, and it could be modified later.

     One thing was certain, though. They had a long way to go.

     The third box took a bit more effort. Across the top were the words “THOUGHT FOR THE DAY.” Its purpose was to offer a bit of encouragement to help get everyone through the day. A scripture, a joke, or just some kind words.

     Today, he wrote “Congratulations. We’ve all survived our first week here. God is good.”

     His brother Bryan, who’d once toyed with the thought of becoming a minister, looked on approvingly. Then the pair joined their women for breakfast, and to talk about the day ahead.

     After breakfast, as they walked to the livestock bay to gather eggs for the kitchen, Hannah noted a sadness in her husband’s voice.

     “Do you want to talk about it now?”

     “Talk about what?”

     “Your dream. Or whatever else is bothering you.”

     He stopped and looked into her eyes.

     “I’ve had the same dream several times now. I’ve been dreaming that despite all our planning, despite everything we did to prepare, that we missed some things. Some very important things. The dream is not specific. But I see everyone here very sad. And I get the feeling that we missed something, and something really bad happens.”

     “Honey, you know we couldn’t plan for every single possibility. We did the best we could given the time we had. Whatever does or doesn’t happen in the years ahead, we will weather this storm together. And we’ll survive.”

     “You promise?”

     “You’re darn tootin’ I promise.”

Chapter 2

     Another week went by, and it seemed there were still a thousand and one things they had to do. Saris had hit earth exactly two weeks before, and outside most of the earth’s population was either already dead or getting very close to it.

     Inside the mine, though, these forty people were still trying to make the adjustment, and were settling into a routine.

     “Hey,” Bryan said. “I finally got a volunteer to help out at the water plant.”

     Mark asked “Who?”

     “Brad. He’ll do a good job. He’s old school like me. He’ll make sure the job gets done right.

     Sarah almost choked on her breakfast and looked at Bryan.

     “Old school? You? Mr. Party Animal? The guy who smuggled 12 cases of tequila in here and added it to our essential supplies?”

     Bryan chuckled and said “Hey, if we’re going to be here for seven years, that’s seven new year’s eves. And we can’t ring in a new year without having something to celebrate with.”

     Hannah was a bit more somber.

     “Well, personally, I think every year we survive this hell is a celebration unto itself. But I agree with you, Bryan. Brad will do a good job. How are the rest of the volunteer positions going? Is everything filled yet?”

     “Everything except the power plant helper. I think we can probably talk Robert into doing it. He’s got some electrician experience from way back when. Right now he’s helping John with security, though, so it’ll be a few weeks before he’s available.”

     “How long do you think we’ll have to be on heightened security?”

     Mark said, “I’m going to talk to John about it on my way to the farm. I’ll get his opinion, but I’m thinking until the snow gets too deep for people to drive. As long as the roads are still clear, anybody can just drive right up to our door and start trying to figure out how to get in. Once the roads are out of commission, they’ll have to hike to us in deep snow. And we’re four miles from the nearest house. That’s when I’ll finally feel safe enough to scale back on security a bit.”

     Sami, Sarah’s best friend, stepped over to their table.

     She asked, “Have y’all seen the latest on CNN?”

     “No.”

     “Come on over when you get finished eating. It’s getting worse and worse out there. And CNN is saying they’ll only be on the air for a few more days.”

     Sarah went into a funk. In past days she’d stayed glued to the television for hours at a time. As depressing as it was, it was also… fascinating. The whole world was crashing down around them. Millions of people were dying, and those still alive were becoming increasingly desperate.

     But she knew that someday, she and the others in the mine would be the only surviving witnesses for hundreds of miles. It was important to her that she was able to give her unborn children, and their children, an accurate picture of what happened when Saris 7 hit the earth.

     And besides, there wasn’t much else to do.

     She kissed Bryan and said “See you later.” Then she looked at Hannah and asked if she wanted to come.

     Hannah said “You guys go ahead. I’ll join you in a bit.”

     Bryan left too, saying he needed to refuel generator number one and do preventative maintenance on generator number two. Until he got his backup away from the security detail and trained, he was the only certified electrician available to keep the power flowing and the lights on. For the next few weeks, he’d be a busy man.

     “Well, here we are, alone again, sailor boy.” Hannah said. What’s on your agenda this morning?

     “Well, I have my daily date with the other woman in my life. She just can’t stand to go through her morning without my tender touch. I’m going to pull a few more pallets of cattle feed out of Bay 16 and put it closer to the livestock so I don’t have to lug it so far. And, I have to work with Mike and Stewart to teach them how to drain the gray water tanks on the RVs. I walked past one yesterday that was overflowing, and we can’t afford to waste the water.”

     Hannah leaned over and kissed her husband.

     “Well, you go ahead and see Sally and caress her the way she likes it. Just don’t get so attached to her that I start feeling jealous.”

     “Don’t worry, baby. You’ll always be the number one star on my hit parade.”

     Hannah went to join the girls and catch the latest developments on CNN.

     Mark walked to the livestock area in Bay 17, grabbed a bucket and stool and walked to the corner of the bay where a three hundred pound jersey cow stood with her udder full, ready for her daily milking.

     “Hello, Sally. You look happy to see me.”

Chapter 3

     The girls weren’t alone in Bay 8. The lounge area Mark and Bryan had constructed the year before very nicely accommodated up to twenty people comfortably, with several couches, recliners and easy chairs.

     On this particular morning, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. The children weren’t there, of course. They were in school in one of the mine’s two one-room school houses in Bay 6. No, these were all adults. And that was good, because much of what they were seeing would have caused nightmares for the young and weak hearted.

     Outside the safety of the mine, society had broken down and chaos was the order of the day. At least half of America had already perished. Those that remained were the steadfast  and gutsy who were convinced they were tough enough to stick out a seven year winter. Or those just too stubborn not to least try.

     The temperature had dropped to between five and ten degrees and had pretty much stabilized. It was the dead of winter, after all. The scientists who told the world of the “nuclear winter” explained that the earth would still have seasons. It would still be warmer in the summer, whenever the earth was closer to the sun, and colder in the winter when the sun was farther away.

     They wouldn’t be seasons like everyone was used to, however. Even on the dog days of summer, in mid to late August, the highs would not get above twenty five degrees. At least not initially.

     As the years went by, and more of the dust in the atmosphere settled, the temperatures would rise slowly. But it would take awhile. What the scientists pretty much agreed on was that the temperatures would not rise above freezing anywhere on earth for at least four years.

     In the fourth year, they said, perhaps those countries on the equator would see five to ten days above thirty two degrees, in the hottest part of the summer.

     In the fifth year, those five to ten days might stretch to twenty or thirty at the equator, and those countries five hundred to a thousand miles north and south of the equator would experience their own five to ten days above freezing. Then the following year, the equator might have forty five to sixty days of temperatures above freezing.

      The problem, the scientists said, was that the earth had never gone through this before. At least not in recorded history. They all had their theories, but nothing had been proven or even substantiated. There was no way to accurately determine how long the earth would take to warm again.

     In even the best case scenarios, though, citizens were told it would be at least five to seven years before they’d be able to live normal lives again. Five to seven years before there were enough warm days each year to grow crops. To reestablish civilization. To once again live anything like they were used to living.

     And, they were warned, for those who stuck it out, for those who wanted to survive, it was going to be anything but easy. All precipitation would now be in the form of ice and snow. And it wouldn’t melt. Couldn’t melt. It would be just too damn cold. No, it would accumulate instead. Would eventually be several feet high. And then, when the thaws finally did come, it would take a very long time to melt it all. And when it did melt the floods would come.

     No, it wouldn’t be pretty. Wouldn’t be pretty at all.

     On the television screen, a CNN reporter was broadcasting from Atlanta, and explaining that the city of Atlanta’s power plant was expecting to go off line within a week. Its coal reserves were running down, and it hadn’t switched to diesel or natural gas as many other cities had done in recent years. The coal plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia were shutting down. They could no longer find miners who were willing to go underground for eight hours a day and get covered in cancer-causing dust to chip coal from the ground so that people a thousand miles away could be comfortable.

     The dollar was worthless now. What good were wages if they couldn’t be spent? Miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania were busy gathering coal for their own use now. For use in the coal burning stoves that would keep their homes warm for seven long years.

     Or they were leaving those homes in search of somewhere better.

     The CNN reporter went on. Once the lights went out for good in Atlanta, the network had about a week’s supply of diesel for their generators. When that ran dry, they’d be off the air for good. Or at least until the thaw came in seven years. After that, no one really knew what would happen. Or what the world would look like.

     In the meantime, they would continue to report the news twenty four/seven, just as they always had. They still felt a duty, despite all that had happened, to keep their viewers informed.

     The anchor switched from the studio in Atlanta to a reporter in Kansas City. Kansas City had just implemented the first government run mass suicide facility in the country. And it was not lacking for customers.

     The concept was simple. Offer a painless and effective way to die for the doomed, and most people would choose the easy way out.

     So Kansas City took a basketball arena. And they made it airtight. And outside they brought in eight high powered gasoline generators. Each one of them was hauled in on the back of an eighteen wheeler and was as big as a locomotive. By running the generators at full capacity for two hours, and by connecting their exhausts to the air intakes for the arena’s ventilation fans, they were able to gas twenty thousand people at a time. Quickly, efficiently and painlessly.

     The CNN cameras showed a long line of families queued up outside the facility. Most of them had forlorn and resigned looks on their faces and many were in tears. Virtually all of them were holding hands, relishing the last hours of their lives together.

     The network switched to another camera just inside the building, where the families were slowly filing past tables staffed with nurses in crisp white uniforms. Each was handed a dose of a heavy sedative and offered a choice of Kool-Aid or various flavors of soft drinks to wash the pills down with.

     The CNN reporter noted succinctly that none of the drinks offered had caffeine which might slow the effects of the sedative. He also noted that children and babies were given the same heavy dosage as the adults. It would knock them out first, of course. But that was the intent.

     The adults were handed flyers with simple instructions. Since the sedatives had already been taken, their children would fall asleep in between ten to twenty minutes, depending on their weight and level of anxiety. The parents would follow suit in forty five minutes to an hour. They had that long to find their own corner of the arena to spend the rest of their time together and to relax and say their goodbyes. If they chose to, there were twelve thousand folding cots laid out throughout the facility, on the basketball court and on all the concourses. They could lie down if they wished while they waited to fall asleep.

     Dozens of ministers and priests were going around the facility administering last rites and providing solace where they could. In most cases, though, the citizens of Kansas City had already accepted their fate and said their prayers.

     Once the building was filled to capacity, a loud horn would sound to tell all medical personnel and clergy they had twenty minutes to clear the building.

     After twenty minutes the doors were sealed and the generators were powered up. After two hours they would be turned off again and the doors reopened.

     After four more hours the cleanup process would begin. Eight hundred volunteers would use tractors and luggage trailers, borrowed from the airport, to gather 20,000 bodies and place them on trucks for transport.

     The CNN reporter didn’t ask where they were transported to. He didn’t have to. A thick, acrid smoke had been drifting over from the city dump a mile and a half away for the last four days.

     The reporter sent it back to the studio with a tear in his eye, stating matter of factly that the process would be repeated around the clock until there were no more lines at the facility.

     Hannah and Sarah had seen enough. Hannah felt sick to her stomach. It wasn’t morning sickness.

     Sarah asked, “Are you all right, honey?”

     “Yes. It’s just that…”

     She swallowed hard.

     “It’s just that seeing those children’s faces… they looked so sad. And so hopeless.”

     She looked Sarah in the eyes before going on.

     “I should feel so guilty, but I don’t. I don’t feel guilty because I know my son is going to have a chance to live. He’ll be able to grow up and actually live and have a full life. What kind of monster does that make me that I don’t feel guilty about that?”

     She burst into tears.

     Sarah held her close and said, “That doesn’t make you a monster, honey. That makes you a mother.”

Chapter 4

      Mark finished milking Sally. He poured milk from the bucket into three empty plastic containers. Almost three gallons. Sally was a good producer. And that was a good thing. Because as long as she continued to produce milk in such amounts, her life in the mine was assured.

     Like it or not, the livestock operation in the mine had to be run like an old family farm. Once an animal wore out its usefulness it became food for the masses. It had to be that way. There was only a limited amount of cattle feed and water to go around. It couldn’t afford to be wasted.  

     After marking the date on each gallon of milk, Mark placed them on a rolling cart to wheel back to the kitchen. Before he left the bay, though, he gave each cow, and each pig, their allotted scoop of feed for the day. And three gallons of water for each cow and two gallons for each pig. They were separated in individual pens for this process. Mark would come back later in the day after the feed and water had been consumed, at which time he’d let them all loose into the large corral and let them mingle.

     He was hoping a couple of them would breed soon. Each cow had a colored ear tag which indicated its age. Whenever a new calf was born and deemed to be healthy, the oldest cow of the same sex could be slaughtered. This plan would accomplish two things. First, it would supplement the group’s food supply. Second, calves could be on half rations for their first year of life. By only eating half as much as a full grown cow, their feed reserves would last much longer.

     Once the cows and pigs were fed and watered, Mark walked over to the chicken coop and spread two scoops of chicken feed over the salt floor of the mine. Then he poured five gallons of water from a fifty five gallon drum into a low profile drinking trough. Every eleven days, he’d use a forklift to take the drum to one of the 5,000 gallon water tanks in Bay 15 and refill it.

     The hungry chickens all scrambled for the feed. They’d learned that once it was gone, there would be no more until the human returned the next morning. So the competition for each bit of feed was fierce.

     He took a head count of the chickens. thirty nine. Once that number hit sixty, he’d examine the colored tags wrapped around each bird’s leg. The tags would help him determine which birds were oldest, and they would be culled and slaughtered for food. It wasn’t a part of this job he enjoyed, but he did enjoy eating the meat he produced.

     They had a fine line to walk. They had enough chicken feed to get them through to the thaw, but only if they kept a tight reign on the chicken population.

     While the chickens were gorging, Mark walked into the chicken coop, took two empty egg trays from a shelf just inside the door, and gathered the eggs from the roosts inside the coop.

     Seventeen eggs. About average.

     There were eight nests, marked with orange duct tape, that would be left alone. These were the eggs that would be allowed to hatch.

     Like the cattle and pigs, the chickens would be allowed to breed, to constantly replenish their numbers. Allowing breeding would enable the herds and flock to remain strong, so that once the thaw came they could survive the rough conditions on the outside. Breeding would also allow a steady, if infrequent, supply of fresh meat for the forty persons living within the mine.

     Mark pushed the rolling cart to the kitchen, where he said hello to his mother and her staff of volunteer cooks. He put the milk and eggs in the refrigerator for the next day’s breakfast and pushed the cart outside the bay, parking it in the main aisle. He’d push it back to the livestock bay in a couple of hours, when he went back to let the animals out of their individual pens to mingle. And hopefully to mate.

     Mark’s next stop was to the security control center. Sami’s father John had volunteered to head up the security detail. For many years he’d been a cop in the Dallas Police Department. He’d reluctantly retired when the department said he’d gotten too old, and spent his days tending to his vegetable garden and walking his dogs. That is, until Mark and Hannah and Sami came to him and told him about Saris 7 and its collision course with earth.

     These days, John had a new mission. He was back in his element. It was his job to keep everyone safe from marauders who might want to attack the mine and steal its treasures.

     But it wouldn’t happen. Not on John’s watch.

     “Hello, Mark. How are you doing this morning?’

     “Just fine, John. Anything worth talking about?”

     “Nope.” He was standing in front of a bank of monitors, watching the outside activity captured on over a dozen cameras mounted on the mountain above the mine.

     “Traffic is getting sparse on the I-10. Either word has finally gotten around that Mexico closed its borders, or there just aren’t that many people left alive anymore. And it’s snowing again. Has been since about three this morning.”

     Mark looked at monitor 6. It was pointed directly at a snow gauge the brothers had installed in front of the mine a couple of months before. It would measure up to ten feet of snow eventually. For now, though, the number “1” was still visible.

     John said, “Any precipitation we get from here on out will be snow or ice. And it won’t melt. Hopefully it’ll get to four or five feet soon. Then nobody will be able to move outside. Then we can stand down and relax a little.”

     Marked stepped back into the main tunnel as Mike and Stuart came motoring by in an electric golf cart. On the back of the cart was a sixty gallon water tank. It was full of gray water the pair had pumped from the tanks of the RVs. It was the water the residents had used to wash their dishes and take showers.

     The water would be taken to the water treatment facility in Bay 10, where it would be pumped into one of several large cattle troughs. Each trough would be treated with powdered chlorine and a cocktail of chemicals that would break down and neutralize soap and shampoo. The water was also aerated several times a day.

     After being treated in this manner, the water would be ready for reuse in about ten days. It was safe to drink, but had a bad taste because of the chemicals.

     The plants in Karen’s greenhouse didn’t seem to mind the taste, though. Neither did the washing machines that everyone used to wash their laundry.

     Everything had to be recycled and reused whenever possible. It was essential to their survival.

Chapter 5

     On Buena Vista Drive, seventy four miles south of the mine, a different kind of survival operation was in full swing.

     Buena Vista was in the middle of a large housing development in the northern edge of San Antonio. It was a nice neighborhood. At least, it was before Saris 7 hit.

     Frank Woodard was a familiar sight around the neighborhood. Retired just a year earlier from the Bexar County Sheriff’s office, he was the logical person to head up the neighborhood watch program. And he did a great job at it. He knew everyone in the neighborhood, and he was the one they went to to resolve disputes, solve problems, or just ask for advice.

     When the news broke that a meteorite was going to wipe out most of humanity, the first thing Frank did was to set up a meeting with everyone on his block.

     He needed to know what everyone’s plans were as soon as they decided what they were going to do. He said there was strength in numbers, and when the marauders came it was important for everyone to stick together.

     He also made a promise to the group that changed everything on Buena Vista Drive forever.

     “Eva and I are staying put,” he said. “We’re going to ride out the storm, here in our house. We know it won’t be easy, but that’s the choice we made. If we don’t survive, I want you to take whatever you need from our home to help you survive. Knock my home down, and use the wood to keep you warm.  Take the insulation from my attic to reinforce the insulation in your own. Take what food and water stores we have left. Eva and I hope to survive. But if we don’t we want to increase your chances to.”

     Frank’s words brought many to tears. In the back of the room the man who lived three doors down stood up and said, “The same goes for me. If my family and I don’t make it, we’d like to know that our belongings went to someone else to help them survive. We do not believe in letting things go to waste.”

     He was followed by another neighbor. Then another. Finally every family on Frank’s block formed an agreement. If they left for safer ground, or didn’t survive the freeze, everything they left behind would be fair game.

     Frank made another promise to his neighbors as well. Those who didn’t survive would receive a proper burial. It might not be below ground. Digging graves would be almost impossible in ground that was hard frozen. But he promised he’d think of something. And he promised he’d pray over the graves, so that those who didn’t survive would have an easier path to heaven.

     It had been three weeks now since Saris 7 hit. It was dark out in the daytime, but not so dark that one couldn’t see his way around. Frank looked up at the sky. He could see a hazy yellow circle starting to sink low over the western horizon. He knew he had to hurry. Once the sun went down, it would be pitch black. And the marauders would come.

     A few days before, he and several of the neighbors had taken eight cars and lined them up at the end of the street. Bumper to bumper, they stretched from the corner of one house, through the yard to the street, across the street and to the corner of the opposite house. They had in effect built a barricade to keep out the intruders.

     Frank had taken a full sized sheet of plywood and spray painted a message on it. On one half was a skull and crossbones. On the other half were the words: “KEEP MOVING! WE ARE WELL ARMED AND WILL SHOOT ANYONE WHO COMES ONTO THIS STREET!”

     The first few nights he sat in his own car, parked a few houses up the street, and watched. The sign appeared to work. Several vehicles drove past, stopped to read the sign, and then went on their way. Apparently they figured that there were other places to go, other streets to rob, without having to take any risks.

     The other end of the street was already blocked with houses. Buena Vista Drive was a dead end street. There was only one way in and one way out. And now, thanks to the automobile barricade, the only way in or out was by foot.

     Frank had asked at the block meeting about everyone’s plans. He knew ahead of time that half of the neighbors would be heading south, toward Mexico. They’d try to make it through Mexico and into central America, where rumors were it would be warm enough to grow crops and survive until the thaw.

     Those who stayed behind knew better now, but it was too late to warn those who left. It had been all over the news that Mexico had closed their borders. There was a traffic jam stretching for two hundred miles on the American side of every road going into Mexico. Those who’d made the journey were trapped in their cars. They couldn’t go forward, and they couldn’t go back.

     Most people trapped in the traffic jam were committing suicide. The method of choice was by firearm. Fathers were shooting their children in the head as they slept. Or sometimes when they were wide awake. Then they shot their wives. And finally, after they made sure their families were gone, the fathers turned the guns on themselves.

     Those in the traffic jam who had no weapons listened intently for the gunshots to stop. Then they forced open the car doors of the makeshift tombs, took the gun and whatever ammunition they could find, and did the same thing with their own families. It was an ugly and grim sight.

     Frank and Eva, when seeing on CNN that the Mexican border was closed, tried desperately to get ahold of the neighbors and call them back. But it was impossible to get through because the cell towers couldn’t handle the workload. Too many people were sharing last words with loved ones.

     Frank hadn’t seen the Martins since the last block meeting three days before. The Martins lived in one of the corner houses, where the blockade of cars began, and were therefore more vulnerable than those in the center or end of the block. They’d told everyone else their plan was to barricade themselves up in their house and fend off the marauders until the marauders killed each other off. Then, when the Martins ran out of food, they’d start venturing out very carefully and search for provisions.

     Frank went to the Martin house and knocked on the front door. No answer. He yelled out to avoid getting shot. “It’s Frank Woodard. Just checking on you to make sure you’re okay.”

     He peeked in the living room window. The lights were on in the house, which made it very easy to see that there was no one moving around.

     Still, he didn’t want to break a window unnecessarily.

     He went to the garage door and pulled on it to see if it was unlocked. It wasn’t.

     Then he looked in the window on the garage door, and felt nauseous.

     “Sweet mother of God!” he muttered to himself.

     He went back to the front of the house, this time having no qualms about breaking the picture window and crawling into the living room. He ran to the garage and opened the door. He knew it was too late. The smell of the exhaust fumes had dissipated by then. There would be no chance to revive them. They had been dead for hours.

     “Why?” he asked himself, but knowing the answer. Some people just weren’t strong enough. Just weren’t up to the challenge of scratching out a meager existence for seven long cold years. They took the easy way out. He couldn’t blame them. But he wished they had given him a chance to try to talk them out of it.

     They all sat in the family car together, the four of them, with the windows rolled down, as they ran the car until it ran out of gas. Slowly relieving their anxiety. Coaxing them to sleep. A little bit of coughing, then blackness. All in all, a relatively painless way to go.

     He looked into the back seat. The two daughters, ages ten and twelve, were holding hands. In the front seat, Ed and Linda Martin were doing the same. Linda had an open Bible in her lap. She’d been reading scripture aloud to them in the last minutes.

     Frank turned away. He’d come back in a few days and drag the bodies out to the back yard. There was no hurry. They were frozen solid already.

     He looked around the garage for things that would come in handy. Things that would help he and Eva, and some of the others, to survive.

     In the corner he found two new 60 gallon garbage containers, stacked one inside the other. He looked at them. Never used. They’d come in handy to hold snow from the back yard, to drag into the house for melting and boiling in their fireplace.

     He dragged the trash cans into the Martin’s pantry and scrounged what he could. Seven two liter bottles of soda. Frozen, but drinkable once thawed. And more importantly, the bottles would come in handy for storing sterilized water.

     He left the canned goods behind. They were frozen and swollen now. Once thawed, the food inside would be tainted. He gathered up several boxes of Hamburger Helper, some macaroni and cheese, and dry stock:  rice and beans. And a full case of Ramen Noodles. A relative gold mine.

     Eva saw him trudging up the walk, dragging the trash cans behind him. She knew. She opened the door for him and saw the look of misery on his face.

     “They’re in a better place now, Frank. Stay strong. I need you to stay strong.”

     Frank said, “I’ll take the first watch. You get some sleep. Come and relieve me after you’ve rested.”

     She kissed him and shuffled off to bed. Frank went upstairs and turned off all the lights, then opened the blinds in the front bedroom. Then he did the same for the rear bedroom.

     For the rest of the night, he’d wear a path in the upstairs carpet, checking the street in front of the house for people who weren’t supposed to be there. Then he’d move to the back bedroom and check the back yard, and the empty field behind his house. Then back to the front again.

     Over his shoulder, locked and loaded, was his AR-15 assault rifle. He planned to give no warning shots. Ammunition was too valuable. Once he was out, there was no way to get more. No, the plywood sign they’d leaned up against the barricade of cars was all the warning anyone would get.

     Anyone climbing over the cars would be shot. And Frank was an excellent shot. One bullet to the torso was all it would take. If the intruder didn’t die instantly, he’d soon succumb to the bitter cold.

     And he’d leave the body there, for others to see. He wanted word to get around the neighborhood that the residents of Buena Vista Drive were in it for the long haul. And that they didn’t play.

Chapter 6

     Marty Hankins was much more than just a truck driver. He was a planner, a plotter, and a natural born leader. He grew up that way, knowing that when he walked into a room, some people would just gravitate to him. To ask his opinion of certain things. His positions on the political and societal issues of the day.

     And they wouldn’t just ask him the questions. They’d listen intently for his answers. And many times, his positions would become theirs.

     Marty had given up long before asking why this was. He just learned to accept it.

     So it was just a given that Marty became the leader of the group of truck drivers who’d said to hell with Saris 7. They wouldn’t give up like most of the rest of the world. They wouldn’t blow their brains out or lock themselves in a  garage with a running car to gas themselves to death. No. They would find a way to survive.

     Marty had been planning for many weeks. And here he was, a full week after Saris 7 had collided with the earth outside of Shenyang, China. A week after the sky had become the color of chocolate milk, obscuring the sun for what scientists said would be the next seven years. Here he was, at the Trucker’s Paradise truck stop, with three other men and a woman, all looking to him for answers.

     And Marty had them. He had all the answers. He had his plan laid out long before Saris was due to arrive. And in choosing him as their leader they’d made a smart move. He’d make sure they survived.

     The day Saris 7 hit was surreal. Most of the truckers on Interstate 10 outside of Junction, Texas had dropped their trailers on the side of the highway or at the truck stop. Then they’d taken their trucks, filled them with diesel, and bobtailed it to wherever home was. They decided it would be better to die with their families than all alone on a desolate highway somewhere.

     The truck stop was almost deserted by the time Saris 7 actually hit. Even though the yard, and the field behind it, was full of hundreds of dropped trailers, only the truck stop manager and two employees, and Marty Hankins’ group of five, remained.

     On the second day after impact, after the skies had darkened, John the truck stop manager tossed the keys to Marty.

     “I’ll be back, when and if this all blows over. If there’s anything worth coming back to. Good luck to you, Marty.”

     He shook Marty’s hand.

     Marty said, “Thank you, John. We’ll try our best to take care of the place and keep the looters at bay. 

     John looked around the place at all the empty shelves where his foodstuffs used to be. He managed a nervous chuckle, and both men understood why. There was simply nothing left to loot.

     “I’m leaving the pumps turned on. As long as the power company still operates anybody who shows up can help themselves to it. Are you guys all topped off?”

     Marty told him they were.

     “I put signs on all the fuel pumps to let people know the fuel is free as long as the pumps are working, and that there’s nothing left to loot inside the store. Hopefully that will keep them all out.”

     John went to his two cashiers still on duty.

     “You guys take whatever cash is in your drawers and go home to your families. I don’t know if the cash will do you any good or not. But it won’t do anybody any good sitting here. Don’t come back unless you’re still alive whenever the sun shines again. Good luck to you both.”

     The three of them – John and his cashiers, walked out the door and Marty locked it behind them. He watched them shuffling slowly toward their cars. Three doomed souls, spending their last days of life on a damaged earth.

     He joined the others in the trucker’s lounge.

     “Okay, time to get to work. Lenny, go unlock the yard. Do you still have the list of trailers we want to pull?”

     Lenny the yard man shook his head yes.

     “Tina, get your rig. Scott, you get yours. Joe, here’s the keys to mine. Grab the trailers Lenny points you to and bring them to the field. I’ll be there to spot you. If we work fast, we can get the camp set up before darkness sets in again.”

     The four scattered and Marty chuckled at his own words. “Before darkness sets in,” he’d said. Like it was bright even in the daytime.

     Scientists had explained before Saris 7 hit the earth what to expect. They said there would be a dark brown sky that would darken everything and make the earth freeze over. But they said the days wouldn’t go completely black. You’d still he able to see a few yards in front of you, they said. And if you looked up at the daytime sky, you might even be able to pick out the sun. Only it would look like a small yellow marble in a sea of brown. And it would provide no heat.

     Marty walked to the huge empty field behind the truck stop. He used a pair of wire cutters from his truck’s tool box to cut the barbed wire on the fence, and give his friends access to the field.

     He went to the far side of the field and waited. A minute or two later, Tina pulled in with a 53-foot white trailer. It had “Walmart” emblazoned on each side in big blue letters. He spotted her into place, told her to stay in her truck, and rolled down the trailer’s legs. Then he pulled the pin to release the trailer, disconnected her air lines and electric pigtail, and slapped on the door to let her know she was free. She drove off to get another load as Scott Burley drove into the field with the second trailer. This one was red in color, with the KFC logo painted on its sides. Fifty three feet of frozen chicken, cut up and ready to fry. That trailer would come in very handy in the months ahead.

      Several days before Saris hit, as all hell was breaking loose and truckers were abandoning their trailers by the hundreds, the group walked through the yard and selected the trailers they wanted.

     They chose the ones with metal seals on the doors. They knew those trailers were full. They also picked the ones with refrigerator units on the front of the trailers that were turned on. Those were full of perishables. But they discounted the reefer trailers with their temperatures set at forty degrees. Produce and dairy products were worthless to them. They wanted meat. And frozen food products that were easy to cook. Or already cooked.

     That’s why half the trailers they selected had Walmart painted on their sides. They knew that those trailers would be full of food they could prepare on a campfire. Or in one of the microwaves inside their trucks’ sleeper cabs. And as an added bonus, there was a good chance each trailer would also contain other items they could use. Clothing, blankets, tools, furniture… opening each trailer would be like opening a grab bag.

     Marty spotted Scott into position. He had Scott pull up tight next to the first trailer. And when a three inch space wasn’t good enough, he had him back up and try again.

     “Scrape the paint, Scott.” He said. “I want the trailers touching.”

     Scott Burley stayed in the cab while Marty dropped the trailer for him. Just as Scott was pulling away, Joe pulled in, driving Marty’s truck, towing the third trailer. Perfect timing.

     Within an hour, the group had fifteen 53 foot-long trailers side by side, forming the north wall of their compound.

     The south wall, twenty four feet away from the first, was a lot harder and took a lot longer. Each trailer had to be backed in, yet still had to touch the trailer that was backed in before it. Luckily, all of the drivers had many years experience behind the wheel, and knew what they were doing. 

     Once the south wall was complete, three trailers were backed into position on the east side, so their back doors were facing the inside of the compound like the other trailers.

     Then Joe brought a flatbed trailer full of plywood and lumber. He and Marty took the tarps and straps off the load and shoved it off the side of the trailer, and off to the side out of the way. By the time they were finished, it was a tangled mess of two by fours, four by fours and plywood. But there would be plenty of time to sort it all out and stack it later.

     Seven years worth of time.

     Once three of the four walls of trailers were in place, their task was almost finished. They retrieved three tankers full of diesel fuel and placed them in the field north of their new compound. They’d have taken all four tankers in the yard, but one of them had a leaky air line and the brakes wouldn’t disengage. So they settled for three. They read the gauges and did the math, and figured that 17,000 gallons of diesel would be enough even without the fourth trailer.

     They knew that diesel would be liquid gold to whatever survivors might come around in the months ahead. So they were careful to place the tankers on the north side of the compound, hidden from view of the truck stop and the highway that ran past it.

     The last step was building the west wall, using the last three trailers they’d picked from the yard. Before they closed the door on their compound, though, they drove all three of their tractors into the center of it. They used one of the truck stop’s yard tractors to place the final three trailers into position.

     When they were finished, they stood back and examined their handiwork. They had a secure compound, one hundred twenty feet by twenty four feet, surrounded by the back doors of thirty six trailers full of food and supplies. The only way in or out was to crawl under the trailers. It would be safe and easy to defend from marauders.

     There was more to be done, but they’d finish the details in the morning. That’s when they would take the heavy tarps that covered the lumber on the flatbed. They would cover the opening at the top of the compound with the tarps, cutting holes for each of the six exhaust pipes to peek through.

     They would take the plywood they’d pilfered from the lumber trailer and lean it up against the bottoms of the trailers, all the way around the compound. They had enough half inch plywood to place it five sheets thick. Two and a half inches would be thick enough to absorb high velocity bullets, and would be too heavy for someone to crawl under the trailer and just push over. However, they could easily lay the sheets down one at a time whenever they needed to leave the compound for any reason.

     Lastly, they needed to set up the equipment they’d taken from the truck stop. A portable pump and two hundred feet of fuel line. They’d run the line to one of the tankers in the north field, and would crank up the pump any time they needed more fuel for their rigs.

     Four portable diesel generators would provide power for the floodlights, which would run 24/7 in the darkened compound.

     Lastly, they set up a good sized campfire in the center of the compound that they’d keep burning for the next seven years, or as long as it took, until they could break out of their self-imposed prison. To keep the fire burning, they’d start with the lumber from the flatbed. Then they’d burn anything in the trailers they didn’t think they’d need.

     They’d offered Lenny, the yard man, the option of staying in the compound with them. But he declined. John, the truck stop manager, had hooked Lenny up by letting him set up home in a stock room. He had a bed and a couch in there, as well as a space heater, TV, DVD player and microwave. To power everything, he had a good sized generator that vented to the outside of the building. When he was finished with it, it wasn’t much different than a college dorm room.

     He’d scrounge food and other supplies from the trailers left at the truck stop. He’d melt snow and boil the water to drink. And Lenny had a secret he didn’t tell the others. In the back of the yard sat a nondescript twenty five foot trailer full of cigarettes and booze. It was headed to a chain of liquor stores in San Antonio when the trucker decided he’d rather spend his last few days with his family instead. So he dropped it in the yard and told Lenny what was in it.

     “I won’t be back,” the trucker had said. “Help yourself to whatever is in the trailer.”

     Lenny had been an alcoholic all his life. And his mouth watered at the prospect of an unlimited supply of free booze.

     It wouldn’t be an easy life on any of them. But it was relatively safe. And home is what you make it, after all.

     By the time the sun set in the chocolate brown sky, the four in the compound were exhausted. But Marty was the leader. So he volunteered to take the first watch. He told Joe, “Go grab a few hours of sleep. Then you can relieve me for the rest of the night.”

     And as the other three cranked up their tractors and let them run through the night, Marty spent the night crawling back and forth around the compound, kneeling down to watch, from underneath the south trailers. Watching for any sign of movement that would indicate trouble.

     It was going to be a long seven years.

Chapter 7

     It was Tuesday evening, and time for the weekly “tribal meeting.”

     The day the group had assembled in the abandoned salt mine to ride out the storm, they had met to decide their form of government. They fashioned it upon some of the Native American tribes. Every man and woman over the age of eighteen would have his or her say on key decisions that affected the group. Children would be expected to watch and learn, but to stay silent. Each adult who had something to say would have the opportunity to say it, and then given a chance to vote once all the talk was done.

     A small group of tribal elders, placed in their positions based solely on their age, would cast ballots to break all tie votes, and would also use their inherent wisdom and experience to settle disputes. As in most Native American societies, the word of the tribal elders was law and could not be disputed.

     As spokesperson for the tribal meetings, Mark was merely a mouthpiece whose job it was to steer the meeting in an orderly fashion and to ensure all protocol was followed. He had no more real power than anyone else in the group.

     “Good evening, all of you, and thank you for coming. I’d like to start off with a personal note of gratitude, if you will allow me, to those of you who have stepped up to the plate and agreed to help fill the volunteer positions needed to keep the mine running. Bryan and I knew going in that keeping the animals fed, keeping the power going, keeping the water flowing, was going to be more than we could handle alone. Thank you to all who have volunteered to help out.

     “You can see on the whiteboard behind me that we only have three more positions to fill. Karen is looking for a backup in the greenhouse, to grow fruits and vegetables, and to care for the fishes. It should ideally be someone with a green thumb. Or, at least someone who doesn’t kill every plant he touches like me. This position is part time, two days a week, and is needed solely so that Karen doesn’t have to work seven days a week.

     “We also have one position left for the water treatment plant. This person will drive a golf court to each of the RVs twice a week, to collect the gray water from each RV’s tanks. Then he’ll drive a different golf cart, with a fresh water tank, to each RV a couple of days a week to fill up the RV’s fresh water tank. It’s not a glamorous job, but it’s a necessary one.

     “Lastly, we’d like someone with some mechanical experience to help Robert maintain the motor pool. The motor pool is the fleet of vehicles we will need to survive after the earth thaws and we go back outside. Even though the vehicles sit most of the time, they still need to be started occasionally to keep their engines and batteries at peak operating levels. Also, routine maintenance and lubrication schedules have to be maintained.”

     A hand went up at a table in the back. It was Sami, Sarah’s childhood friend and confidant.

     “I’m good with plants, I can help Karen. But what will I be doing?”

     Karen spoke up.

     “It’s simple, really. We only have a small greenhouse, so we’re very limited for space. Therefore we don’t grow food to eat, although we will manage to provide an occasional tomato or strawberry for everyone. The primary reason we grow our plants is to collect seeds.

     “Seeds have a short life expectancy. Two or three years, tops. So we can’t just sit on seeds for seven years and then expect them to grow when the earth warms again. They would be worthless. So we’re growing just a couple of each plant, so that we can collect seeds. We’ll take those seeds and replant them a year later, so that we can do the same thing. That way when the breakout comes, we will have fresh seeds that we can use to plant an orchard of fruit trees, and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.”

      Someone else asked what kinds of plants were in the greenhouse.

     Karen went on.

     “In the center, at the tallest part, we have two apple trees. A Granny Smith and a Washington Red. Next to those we have a peach tree, a walnut tree and a pecan tree. In the tropical section of the greenhouse, which we keep extra warm with sun lamps, we have a lemon tree, an orange tree, a banana tree and a pineapple plant.

     “All of the trees are kept trimmed so they don’t exceed a few feet in height. The smaller they are the less water they require. That means that each tree will only produce a couple of fruit during any one year, but that’s really all we need for seed collection.

     “The rest of the floor space… the areas between and on each side of the trees, is used to plant all of the various fruits and vegetables. We currently have strawberries, cucumbers, four types of melons, seven types of beans, five types of squashes, three types of tomatoes, two types of wheat, two types of corn and three types of potatoes. Coffee beans and tea plants. Then of course, we have carrots, several kinds of peppers and some assorted herbs and spices. And, oh, yes. Three types of grapes.    

     Hannah interrupted her at that point.

     “Oh, goody!” Hannah said. “That means when we get out we can make our own wine.”

     The group erupted in chuckles, and some of the adults seemed appreciative that wine would be available again sometime in the future.

     Karen went on. “We don’t have the room to grow everything at one time, of course, but it helps that we only grow a couple of each thing. We’ll plant as many things as we can, and when they mature we’ll pull them up, harvest their seeds, and plant something else.”

     Sami said, “Okay, I’m in. Sign me up.”

     Mark wrote Sami’s name on the whiteboard, and addressed the group again.

     “Are there any other issues that need to be brought up?”

     Joe Kenny stood up.

     “Any chance we can get some more water for the RVs? I’m having a hard time getting by on just fifty gallons a week.”

     A couple others in the group nodded in agreement.

     Mark said, “We can put that to a vote in a moment, but let me explain the rationale behind the rationing. Right now we only have the capability of recycling two thousand gallons of water a week. As we get more experienced in the process and get better at it, we might be able to recycle more, but at the present time, that’s the best we can do.

     “When we incorporated the RV water rationing, it was based on that limit. If we use more of our drinking water than we can recycle, we’ll run out of it sooner. Then we’ll either have to stop putting water in the RVs completely or start drinking the recycled water. We could do that, because it’ll be safe to drink. But it will taste pretty nasty.

     “Ultimately, though, it’s everyone’s decision, and we can certainly vote on it if you wish. Does anyone else have anything to add?”

     John stood up to address Joe directly.

     “Joe, try taking a military shower, like they do when the Army is in the desert or somewhere else where water is in short supply. Turn the water on for just a few seconds, long enough to get your body and head wet. Then turn it off while you put soap on your body and shampoo on your head. Then turn the water back on and rinse everything off. That’s what I do and I only have to run the water for about three minutes each day. Fifty gallons a week is plenty for me.”

     Phyllis stood up and added, “When we first got here we were using the RV water to make our iced tea and coffee. The taste wasn’t a problem because the tea and coffee masked the bad taste of the water. But we drank between four and five gallons a week, and that was coming out of our fifty gallon ration. So now we carry water jugs over to the kitchen to get drinking water. Not only does our coffee and tea taste a bit better, but that’s an extra shower we can get each week.”

     Joe nodded at the suggestions. They made good sense.

     Mark went on.

     “Why don’t we take a quick vote first? We’ve vote on whether or not to increase the water quota. If we vote to increase, we’ll then have another discussion to decide how much. Is everyone okay with that?”

     A few heads nodded.

     “Anyone else want to speak before the vote?”

     No one stood up.

     “Very well, then. All in favor of increasing the RV water ration, please raise your hands.”

     No hands went up.

     “All in favor of leaving the water ration as is, please raise your hands.”

     The hands of every adult present went up, including Joe Kenney’s. Joe was a reasonable man. He’d try the suggestions given by his neighbors and was now confident he could live with the water restrictions..

     “Very well, the motion carries unanimously to leave the restriction as is. Is there any other new business, or anything else anyone wants to discuss?”

     There was no other business. The group as a whole were content with their lives in the mine. They could see on the television how difficult life was on the outside, and they knew they were luckier than most. To complain about their living conditions would be very small minded under the circumstances.

     They all knew they were lucky to be alive.

Chapter 8

     Mark looked through squinted eyes at the alarm clock. It was just after three a.m.

     He was never one who awakened easily in the middle of the night. Even when his body moved that early, it did so by rote. His mind was always in a fog that time of morning, a step or two behind his movements.

     So when Hannah nudged him awake and said, “Honey, it’s time,” it took him a few seconds to comprehend. Time for what? Time for sleep? Sure. Good night, my love.

     No, wait, time for… “Oh, my God!”

     He was suddenly wide awake, and moving, his mind going from zero to sixty like a souped up Camaro.

     But Hannah was the one carrying the baby. And she was the one who’d taken the courses on midwifery. She knew exactly what to do and when to do it. And she knew that the best course of action in this stage of the process was to remain calm.

     Mark was in full panic mode. “Okay, is it coming now? I mean, right now? Can you stop it until everybody is up? I mean, how much time do we have? Does it hurt? Can I get you something? Should I go get Karen and Sarah?”

     Hannah smiled the same beautiful smile that had won his heart the day they met so long before.

     “Relax, sailor boy. We have plenty of time.” She reached out to him and held him against her breasts and brushed her fingers through his hair. “We need to do this thing methodically, and carefully, and I’m going to need you to not panic. Are you with me on this part?”

     Mark’s mind was racing a hundred miles an hour, but she was right. He needed to be calm or he was no good use to her. And they needed to go through this together.

     “My water broke an hour ago. It made a big mess on the bed, but we can deal with that later. I’ve been timing my contractions, and they’re about twelve minutes apart now. So we’ve got plenty of time.”

     “What do you need for me to do, honey?”

     “The first thing I need from you is to remain calm. I need to move over to the clinic. Karen and I set up everything we’ll need over there two days ago when I told her I felt close.”

     “Should I wake Karen up?”

     “No, let her sleep. We’ve got at least a couple of hours to go. We’ll wake her when I’m five or six minutes apart. What we need now is to move over to the clinic and just let nature take its course.”

     “Wait here, I’ll get you a wheelchair.”

     “No, I’d rather walk. But I’ll move slowly, and I probably won’t make it there in twelve minutes. So I’ll need you to walk with me and support me when I have a contraction, or if I get dizzy or weak.”

     “Okay, let’s go.”

     “Hold your horses, sailor. Wait until after my next contraction.”

     He held her hand and looked into her deep brown eyes.

     “Have I told you that you are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen you? I mean, I’ve always heard that women are most beautiful when they’re carrying a child, but now I believe it’s really true.”

     “Thank you, honey. Will you still feel that way in four hours, when I’m covered with sweat and cursing your very existence for doing this to me?”

     “Yes, my love, even then.”

     She smiled and said, “Well, at least in a few hours I won’t be as big as a house any more.”

     He leaned over and kissed her.

     “Honey, you’re not as big as a house.”

     He could have left it at that, but he couldn’t resist.

     “A two car garage, maybe, but not a house.”

     It was his turn to smile, and Hannah laughed.

     “Wanna guess who’s not getting lucky tonight?”

     Then her smile went away and her face contorted into one of pain. Mark squeezed both her hands and held her close, but he knew that’s all he could do. She shuddered and whimpered like a small puppy in pain, waiting for the cramps to subside.

     Once they were gone, she took a deep breath and said, “Okay, my love, let’s go. But we’ll go slowly. There’s no rush.”

     They were within sight of the small clinic, perhaps fifty feet away, when the next wave came. It was a little bit harder than the one before it. Hannah assumed it was because she was on her feet and moving. She stood, slightly stooped over, and held her belly with both hands as she leaned into Mark. He steadied her while she rode out the contraction. Once it passed, she drew a deep breath and looked around, making sure she wasn’t too dizzy or weak to proceed.

     When she was ready, she moved on, holding onto her husband for support.

     Once inside the clinic, Mark helped her up on the table, and they timed the next three contractions. They were now just over eleven minutes apart, and almost perfectly spaced.

     From the patient’s table, Hannah very calmly instructed Mark on the preparations to make. She told him how to scrub up, then to glove his hands and get out the towels and instruments they’d sterilized ahead of time just for the event.

     Once he had everything laid out, he sat next to her, holding her hand, as they cycled together through the pain and laughter. They talked of their hopes and their dreams and their plans for this little boy, or girl, whichever God chose to give them. They agreed that this was a night that would stay with them forever. Mark offered to run to his small television studio in the back of Bay 8 to get a digital camcorder. “So we can capture it all for posterity,” he said.

     She smiled, but was very firm: “Don’t you dare.”

     When the contractions were six minutes apart, she said, “Okay. Now you can go wake up the girls. I need for you to be strong so they don’t panic. You have to tell them that everything is going according to plan, and they’re all going to deliver their first baby soon. Go now, and don’t dally.”

     Mark dutifully gathered up Sarah, Karen and Sami and led them all back to the clinic. There were equal parts joy, excitement and stress in the room. Everyone present was nervous but trying not to show it. And everyone in the room loved Hannah enough to not let her down.

     The first thing Karen did was take charge of the room. She took out her carefully written notes and laid them to the side of the exam chair. Hannah was the experienced midwife. She would guide them, unless she passed out or there were complications. If there were complications, someone would run to get Debbie. Debbie was a trained medic and EMT, and would know what to do.

     Silently, Karen said a prayer. Then she carefully took a measurement to see how much Hannah had dilated, and compared the number to the chart in her notes. Everything appeared to be going well.

     When the contractions were three minutes apart Mark lightened the mood by telling his wife the faces she was making looked just like the face she made during an orgasm. Hannah came back with, “Don’t make me come off this table…” and for a few brief moments it seemed everyone was having fun.

     At just before noon, the baby crowned and Hannah began pushing. She squeezed Mark’s hands until they were purple. He didn’t care, and actually barely felt it. He was busy wiping the sweat from Hannah’s face and telling her how gorgeous she was.

     When the time came, Karen handed him the baby to hold while she severed the umbilical cord and gathered up what was left of the birth sac. She bundled the waste up into a bloody sheet for disposal while Mark bathed his newborn son for the first time.

     Hannah was beaming. The tears on her cheeks were tears of happiness. And as she held little Markie for the first time, he looked at her and smiled. The whole room cried. Karen said, “It’s just gas,” and Hannah countered, “Na-uh. He just wanted to let his mommy know he’s happy to be here.”

     For the rest of the day it was just Hannah, Mark and the baby in the small clinic. The girls had helped Hannah transfer to the hospital bed, so she’d be more comfortable. The baby took to the nipple with no problem, prompting Hannah to comment he was just like his father, and Mark stood by with a bottle of newborn formula in case it was needed.

     In late afternoon, when Hannah’s exhaustion caught up with her, Mark rocked the baby while she slept, amazed at how lucky he was to have the two of them. The world had changed dramatically in the previous few months. The next years would bring even more drastic changes. But the one constant, the one thing that would help them survive, was the bond they had between the three of them. They had gone from being a couple to being a family. And despite all the chaos that was going on in the world, Mark considered himself the luckiest man on earth.

Chapter 9

     On Buena Vista Drive, the snow was accumulating quickly. The drifts were over three feet high now. Frank was on the roof of his house, shoveling off the excess snow. He knew that snow was incredibly heavy, and he couldn’t afford to let it collect more than a few inches high. The roofs had already collapsed on a couple of the vacant houses on the block, but that was okay. Those were the houses that Frank would slowly knock into pieces over the next few years anyway. A collapsed roof would just lesson the chances of it falling on him while he was gathering firewood.

     The accumulating snow was both a blessing and a curse. It made movement more difficult, and Frank saw fewer and fewer strangers’ footsteps in the snow when he made his daily surveillance walks.

     But it also made getting out more difficult for him. And getting out was essential for survival.

     Frank was lucky in that his wife Eva was way more brilliant than he’d ever be. Three years before, people around the world were going crazy convincing themselves that the Mayans’ doomsday prediction would mean the end of the world would occur on December 21, 2012. Eva had taken notice. For several months prior to that date, she had very quietly stocked up on non-perishable dry goods. In the back bedroom of their home were stacks of spaghetti and egg noodles, bags of rice, beans and dry soup, as well as two hundred boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and cases of Cup O’ Soup and Ramen noodles. There were also forty cases of drinking water. They were frozen solid now, of course. But the bottles were made to expand without breaking, so most of them were intact. Would it be enough for the two of them for seven years? No. But it would keep them for awhile. When they ran low Frank would start scavenging for food at the abandoned homes, and in a pinch he’d bring home meat from the dog, cat and squirrel carcasses lying frozen around the neighborhood. But that would be a last resort.

     As for the water, that wouldn’t be a problem as long as it was snowing. Frank gathered enough lumber to keep the fireplace burning twenty four hours a day. Perched on a pot hanger above the fire was an old stew pot. Twice a day, Frank took the pot out into the yard and heaped it full of snow, then returned it to the fire.

     The snow only took a couple of minutes to melt, but they boiled it for ten additional minutes, just to kill any parasites. Then they filtered the water through a cotton sock to catch any dirt particles or debris that might be in it, and poured it into empty drinking water bottles.

     On the days when they just didn’t feel like boiling water, they fell back on the bottled water from their spare bedroom. Leaned up against the brick wall of their fireplace, the heat from the burning wood would thaw out the frozen water bottles within twenty minutes or so.

     For entertainment, Frank would pour one cup of gasoline into the small gas generator they kept in the garage. It only put out two thousand watts, but it was enough to run three appliances: an old twenty inch television, a DVD player, and a microwave.

     Frank and Eva had developed a habit of cranking up the  generator each day at lunchtime. While their Ramen noodles were cooking in the microwave, they would watch movies as a brief respite from the chaos and misery that their world had become.

     So for the two hours or so each day that the generator would run before running out of fuel, the Woodards would have a hot meal and relax while watching actors who were more than likely dead, and pretending that the world was sane again.

     The irony of it was, they weren’t big movie watchers before Saris 7 hit. They had a handful of videos, mostly old John Wayne westerns. But the Castro house, because they had children, had literally hundreds of DVDs.

     Frank made a deal with Julio Castro the day Julio and his wife decided to kill themselves and their children. They were a good catholic family and followed the path that God set out for them. But Julio and Nancy couldn’t bear to think of the life their children would have to endure without their parents if they didn’t survive. They figured death with dignity was better than a life of suffering.

     So two days after Saris 7 hit, when civility had broken down and chaos ruled, Julio and Nancy had put their three children to bed and then paid Frank and Eva a visit. They offered the Woodards a deal. They said the Woodards were welcome to everything they had, including their home and what little food it held. If only Frank would give them a proper burial and say a prayer over their graves.

     The Castro children weren’t aware of the deal, of course. Eva tried to convince the Castros that they should tell the children, but they refused to. Let them enjoy their last days on earth, they said, free from the stress of knowing their end was near. Julio and Frank spent two days digging five graves in Frank and Eva’s back yard, trying to get them done before the ground grew too hard.

     And once the graves were dug, the Castros took their children aside and told them what they had planned.

     The children took it well. The youngest, a boy of ten, merely asked if it would hurt.

     Julio assured him it wouldn’t.  Julio had gone to pick up five of the suicide kits the city government had been offering just prior to Saris 7 hitting the earth. They explained to the children that they would be given a powerful sedative that would put them to sleep.

     “It will be just like every other time you’ve fallen asleep,” he said. “Only this time your mommy and I will be holding your hands. And once you’re asleep we will give you another shot that you won’t be able to feel. And that shot will take you up to heaven. And we will meet you there.”

     As planned, Frank had gone into the Castro home the following day. He found the bodies, the children lying side by side on the living room floor face up, their parents face down and draped over them, as though they were protecting them from evil.

     The bodies were frozen by the time Frank got to them. But he held up his end of the bargain. He carried the children one by one to his back yard, gently placed them into their graves and covered them up.

     Neither Julio or Nancy were small people, though. Frank couldn’t carry them, and he refused Eva’s offer to help him, with her bad back and all. Since Julio and Nancy were frozen solid, Frank merely strapped their bodies to a refrigerator dolly one at a time and wheeled them into his back yard for burial.

     It wasn’t a very dignified way to be moved, granted. But the Castros were way past caring. And Frank made sure their burials were proper. He said a prayer over each of the five graves and wished his friends bon voyage. Eva sang a couple of hymns and asked God to watch over them.

     Frank had used a Phillips screwdriver to punch a hole into the gasoline tank of the Castro’s SUV. He used a three gallon gas can to catch the gasoline which flowed from it, and when the gas can was full he plugged up the hole with chewing gum. This was the gas he and Eva used to power their generator each afternoon, and the DVDs from the Castro’s collection were the ones they used to escape from reality for two hours a day.

     Now, several weeks after the collision, the Castro’s roof had already collapsed from the weight of the snow. It was a two story house, though, and the ground floor was still intact.  So Frank had a habit of going into the Castro home every couple of days, carefully making his way up the staircase, and using a hand saw to cut the broken and twisted two by fours and rafters that were strewn about the upstairs part of the house. Once he had salvaged all the wood he could from the collapsed roof, he’d use a sledge hammer to break all the interior upstairs walls and use the studs inside of them.

     Lastly, in a year or two, he’d dismantle the first floor in the same manner, leaving piles of busted bricks and sheetrock behind, and pulling out all the wood to burn a little at a time in his fireplace.

     Frank figured that the wood in the Castro house would provide heat for himself and Eva for at least a year, maybe two. And once the Castro house was gone, there were several other abandoned houses on the block as well.

     Frank finished knocking the snow off his roof, but left the ladder in place. He knew he’d be up there again in a couple of weeks. As for the snow he knocked off, it was doing a pretty good job of piling up around the house. It was halfway up the windows now, and would provide great insulation to help the fireplace keep the house warm.

     Frank grabbed his sledgehammer and hand saw and trudged over to the Castro house. Half an hour later he came back with an armful of two by fours and a pocketful of rechargeable AA batteries. The batteries in the walkie talkie he carried anytime he was away from the house were getting weak now. He could recharge the new batteries during their daily generator time and use them as backup whenever the ones in his walkie talkie went dead.

     He dragged the new batch of lumber into the living room and kissed Eva.

     “Are you hungry, Frank? Ready for lunch?”

     “Yes, thank you, I’m starved. While you’re doing that I’m going to stoke the fire and get it going nice and hot again. And Titanic is nearly over. What’s up next at the Woodard Movie Theater?”

     “I need something lighter,” Eva replied. “How about Office Space?”

     Frank smiled. It was one of his favorites.

Chapter 10

     A bitter wind came through, blowing the accumulated snow off the top of the tarp covering the compound. Marty Hankins looked up and commented, “Well, I was wondering how we were gonna get that snow off before it tore through the canvas and buried us. Looks like Mother Nature’s gonna do it for us.”

     His friend and fellow trucker Joe Koslowski nodded in agreement and said, “Good. I didn’t much want to deal with three feet of snow on the ground in here.”

     Their compound was working like a charm thus far. In the center of it, between the trucks, they’d kept a large campfire going, burning the lumber they’d pilfered from a flatbed trailer the day they built their compound. Once it was gone, they started burning anything they found inside the trailers that they didn’t need or want. Furniture, mattresses, children’s clothing. In one of the Walmart trailers they even found four pallets of charcoal briquettes, which would be great for providing heat during the coldest days.

     They’d been worried that the campfire would cause problems with carbon monoxide, but found that the one inch gap between each trailer provided an ample supply of fresh air, but not so much that it chilled the camp.

     Joe took a cast iron skillet and dumped several pieces of frozen chicken and some water into it. Then he put it on the campfire to thaw out and cook. Once it was almost done he’d throw a bag of frozen vegetables and some seasoning into the skillet and end up with an edible stew.

     Marty said, “While you’re doing that I’m gonna go dig in a couple of the trailers and see if I can find some coffee. We’re running pretty low.”

     As he walked past Scott Burley’s truck, he chuckled and slapped his hand against the fiberglass sleeper cab three times. Scott had stood guard the previous night, and was probably sound asleep. The two of them went back several years, and always enjoyed messing with each other. It was all good natured, of course, but he just couldn’t help needling his friend every chance he got.

     Marty saw Tina come out of a trailer on the north end of the compound and enter one on the south end. They had spent a whole day a few days before restacking the cargo in some of the trailers so they had a path to each trailer’s front panel. Then they drilled peep holes so that whoever was on watch could move to one trailer on each side of the compound every few minutes and get a clear view of anyone who might be lurking about. Tina had the current watch.

     Marty looked behind him to make sure Joe wasn’t watching, then entered the same trailer as Tina.

     As Marty stepped into the trailer, his eyes met Tina’s and she asked, “Where’s Joe?”

     There was no mistaking the look in her eye or what she meant by the question.

     “Oh, he’s back at the campfire, cooking chicken.”

     She said, “Good. Keep an eye on him.”

     Tina went down to her knees in front of Marty and unzipped his jeans. He leaned back against the side of the trailer and enjoyed Tina’s talents, while peering outside the door where he could barely see Joe a mere fifty feet away.

     When she finished, she put him back together again, rezipped his zipper, and stood up to face him.

     “I’ve been hankering to do that all morning long. Why did it take you so long to get here?”

     “Well, if I knew that’s what you had in mind, I’d have been here sooner.”

     “Tomorrow morning, come sooner.”

     Marty smiled and said, “I can’t wait.”

     Tina stood at the front of the trailer, peering out the peephole, while Marty dug through several of the boxes looking for coffee.

     When he came across things they’d never use, like baby clothes or diapers, he threw them out the back door of the trailer into a pile. They’d make good fuel for the campfire.

     He said, “What do you think Joe will do if he ever finds out?”

     Tina laughed. “He’ll do the same thing he’s always done. Absolutely nothing.”

     “You mean he’s caught you before?”

     Tina went to him and kissed him deeply. Then she laughed again and went back to the peep hole.

     “Let me tell you something about Joe. Joe is the sweetest man in the world, and I love him dearly. But Joe has never been able to satisfy me in that way. Not even close. And he knows it. So bless his heart, he’s never raised a fuss when I’ve gone elsewhere.”

     “So why hide it?”

     “I prefer to hide it, because then there’s no drama. And I don’t feel as guilty. But there have been times in our marriage when he’s come home early and caught me right in the middle of something, and he just turned and closed the door. Never even mentioned it to me. Truth is, I could jump on you right in front of him and he’d just walk away and let it happen. But I’d rather keep it at a lower profile.”

     “Wow. That’s amazing.”

     “It is what it is. It doesn’t mean Joe and I don’t love each other. We really do. It just means that he accepts that he can’t handle me. So he lets me make other arrangements.”

     “Aha!”

     Marty found a case full of Hills Brothers coffee. He held up a three pound block in triumph.

     Tina giggled and said, “Hooray! You’re my hero! Be sure you bring me a cup.”

     Marty said, “No problem. I’ll be back in a bit,” as he jumped down off the back of the trailer and went to get the camp coffee pot.

Chapter 11

     Hannah squealed, “Mark, come quick! He’s doing it!”

     Mark was underneath the RV, replacing a rubber washer on the shower drain line.

     Hannah and the baby were in the common area between the RVs in Bay 3, on a patch of green artificial grass they’d installed on the mine’s floor to simulate a better place.

     And little Markie, just over a year old, was taking his first wobbly steps. Only one or two at a time, before plopping down on his diaper-covered bottom. But it still counted as walking, and Hannah was squealing in delight every time he did it.

     Markie, for his part, was also laughing, glad that his mommy was pleased with what he was doing. And maybe because he was proud that he was learning something new.

     He was saying four words now too. Mama and Dah, and yes and no. He especially liked to say “no.” Because the way he said it, accompanied by a very firm shake of his head, it never failed to make the big people in his life laugh at him. Hannah said he was shaping up to be a ham, just like his father.

     They were proud parents, enjoying every day, as their little guy grew and learned to do new things. He was healthy and happy, and totally unaware of their predicament. At some time, of course, when he was a bit older, they’d have to tell him of the great big world on the outside he was missing. But even in the confines of the mine, he wouldn’t lack for any of the important stuff… the love and mommy hugs and attention.

     “Wow, look at that big boy!” Mark said as he sat down four feet away from Hannah. “Can you come and see Daddy?”

     Markie laughed out loud. He loved attention. Hannah stood him up, aimed him toward Mark, and held both of his tiny hands. Markie looked at his daddy, got his courage up, and let go of Hannah’s fingers. He took three steps forward, collapsing in Mark’s hands.

     Mark held him up in the air, making a silly face and saying, “Wow, what a big guy you are!”

     Then he stood up with his son and helped Hannah to her feet. Come on, We’ve got to go show you off to your Grandma.”

     They walked over to the kitchen in the back of Bay 9, expecting to find Mark’s mom Phyllis in the kitchen, where she usually was at mid afternoon.

     “Hi, Helen. Is Mom in the back?”

     Helen Kenney replied, “Hi Mark. Hi Hannah.” She reached out and stole Markie from his father’s arms. “Hello, you big handsome boy, you. You are just the most precious guy I’ve seen in a very long time!” She nuzzled his tummy with her face and made him giggle.

     Helen turned back to Mark.

     “No, I’m afraid she wasn’t feeling well, so we sent her to her RV to rest. Tell her if she needs some chicken soup or something to make her feel better to say the word and I’ll bring it right over.”

     Mark and Hannah went to Bay 4 to the RV his mother occupied. They didn’t bother knocking. They never did. It was a second home to them. To the extent that one can call an RV a home, that is.

     They found her in bed watching an old Humphrey Bogart movie.

     “Mom, what’s the matter? Helen said you weren’t feeling well.”

     “Oh, I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry about me. I’ve just been feeling a little lightheaded lately, and a bit weak. It’s probably just because I’ve been on my feet a lot more these past few months in the kitchen. And let’s face it. I’m not getting any younger.

     “But Helen, bless her heart, told me this morning that she’s going to start filling in for me whenever I start feeling weak. So I’ll be fine.”

     Hannah wasn’t buying it. She looked at Mark and Mark recognized concern in her eyes.

     Hannah said, “I know what Grandma can probably use more than anything. Little boy hugs! They make me feel better no matter how bad I feel.”

     She put Markie down at the foot of the bed, and he promptly crawled up on the bed and under the covers with his Grandma.

     Hannah looked at Mark and said, “I’ll be right back.”

     Hannah walked out of the room, and Phyllis turned her attention to her grandson.

     “My, how you’ve grown. I love you so much. You always make Grammy feel better.”

     He snuggled with her, and she took a children’s book off her night table and read to him. Green Eggs and Ham was one of his favorites.

     Five minutes later, Hannah returned with Debbie, the mine’s resident medic.

     Debbie interrupted Phyllis’ reading long enough to say, “Mom, why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?”

     “Because I knew you’d just fuss over me.”

     Phyllis went back to reading. Debbie sat down beside her and took her pulse. She ran a digital thermometer across her mother’s forehead. Then she took the book from her mother’s hands and put it aside.

     “Mom, do you feel well enough to walk over to the clinic? I want to take some of your blood and do some lab tests on it.”

     “You can do lab tests?”

     “Well, not the same array you’d get at a hospital before the freeze. But yes, I can do a limited number of tests.”

     “Okay, as long as you walk with me in case I get dizzy.”

     Mark picked up Markie and looked at his sister. “Debbie, don’t you take any foolishness from this stubborn old gal about her not needing to be fussed over.”

     Debbie laughed and said, “Oh, don’t you worry about that. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I’m just as pigheaded as she is.”

     Phyllis looked at both of them and said, “Uh, hello! I’m right here, you know.” She gave them a “duh” look that lightened the moment.

     That evening Debbie dropped by Hannah and Mark’s RV and gave them an update.

     “I ran some tests, and took an x-ray, and she appears to have a considerable blockage in one of her main arteries. I gave her some Heparin intravenously, and will have her take a low dosage of Niaspan for the next few months. I may put her on an aspirin regimen at some point, but I’ll hold off for now.”

     Mark was visibly concerned.

     “How serious is it?”

     “Hopefully not too. I mean, we all have arterial blockage to some degree. We get it from the fatty foods we eat. It only becomes a problem when it starts to restrict the blood flow.

     “When it gets this serious, before the freeze we might have considered surgery. That’s obviously no longer an option. But if she watches her diet, I think there’s a good chance the Niaspan will help reduce the blockage over time.”

     “Do we have enough Niaspan for her long term treatment?”

     “Yes, it’s one of the basic drugs we were able to sock away before the freeze. I checked the freezer, and we’ve got enough to get her and a couple of other people through until the thaw, if anyone else needs it. After the thaw we’ll have to send you guys to a pharmacy to gather some more, if you can find it.

     “In the meantime, we need to encourage her to stay active, but to rest when she feels weak or dizzy. Also to eat better foods. I know it’s not easy in an environment like this, but she’s an expert at developing a separate diet plan for the diabetics, and for those with food allergies. Making her own diet plan that still gives her the calories, but with lower fat, should be easy for her.”

     Mark breathed easier, knowing that Debbie was on the case.

     “What’s her prognosis? For the long term, I mean?”

     “Well, let’s just say we should probably pray that there are still heart surgeons left alive out there when we break out of here. And that they still remember how to do arterial blockage surgery. All the medication she takes now, and all the changes to her diet, will extend her life, but they won’t fix the problem completely. They’ll keep it from getting much worse, hopefully. But eventually, she’s going to need to unblock that artery.”

     Mark slept fitfully that night. Was that the one thing they had failed to plan for? Should they have found a surgeon and invited him to join them? To bring a portable operating room and all his necessary tools of the trade with him? But then what? Would he need operating room nurses? Would he have to bring a staff of four or five people with him? And if so, which four or five of Mark’s relatives would they have had to leave behind?

     Hannah awoke at three a.m. to find him still awake. She wanted to take away his stress, to absorb his worry. But there was nothing she could do.

     “I’m sorry, honey. I wish I could do something to help.”

     He kissed her and said, “Just pray.”

     Mark looked across the room to the portable crib where Markie slept.

     “Isn’t it about time for him to wake up?”

     “Not quite yet. He usually wakes up around five a.m. But it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if he woke up a little early today.”

     She very gingerly touched her left breast, which was swollen and tender.

     Mark crawled out of bed and went to the kitchen, then came back with two baby bottles and Hannah’s breast pump.

     “Here you go, honey. Fill these up and go back to sleep. I’ll take care of the little squirt when he wakes up.”

     “Are you sure, baby?”

     “I’m positive. I can’t sleep anyway. No sense in both of us being up. And besides, you know I love to watch you sleep. That’s when you are most beautiful.”

     “You say the sweetest things. How did I manage to land such a sweet man?”

     He smiled and said, “I don’t know. You must have pissed somebody off big time. I was your booby prize.”

     She kneaded her left breast, squirting milk into the first of the bottles.

     “Speaking of boobies,” she said matter of factly, “I’m not making as much milk as I used to. Should we start converting him over to cereal?”

     “It’s up to you, honey. He’s a guy, after all. It wouldn’t bother him to suck on your boobies his whole life. So don’t wait for him to say he’s had enough.”

     She laughed that laugh he loved so much. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

     “Don’t tell me you’re just now finding that out.”

     “No, your secret’s been out for awhile.”

     He grew serious.

     “Remember we only have a limited amount of cereal mix. And we don’t know how many more babies are going to be born before we break out. Shoot, we might have five or six more ourselves.”

     Her eyes grew big and her eyebrows went up.

     He went on.

     “The longer you breastfeed, the longer our cereal supply will last. But ultimately, it’s up to you. When you feel the time is right, then we’ll switch over.”

     “I think I’ll talk to your mom about it tomorrow, and get her opinion on it. And speaking of your mom, how is she doing on her new healthier lifestyle?”

     “Oh, you know mom. She’s hard headed like Dad was. I don’t know how I managed to be so reasonable and level-headed with parents like that.”

     Hannah burst out laughing, then shushed herself so she didn’t wake the baby.

     “Hey, I resent that. Anyway, she’s hard headed and insisting that she’s just fine. But at least she’s taking her medicine, and is taking Debbie’s advice to change her diet and limit the time she spends on her feet. I think she realizes that this can be serious if she doesn’t make the effort.”

     Hannah finished the second bottle and handed it to Mark. He left one on the night table and took the other to the refrigerator. It would be the backup bottle in case Markie was extra hungry.

     When he crawled back into bed, Mark wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. Then he held her close and started gently running his fingers through her hair.

     “Now go back to sleep, my beautiful bride. I love you, baby.”

     “I love you too, honey. Good night.”

     She was asleep in no time, and dreaming. He knew because her eyelids were twitching. He kissed her on the forehead. Even after all this time, he couldn’t believe his luck in finding and catching the most wonderful woman in the world.    

Chapter 12

     Sarah went to Bay 24 to look for Bryan and bring him a bottle of water. She found him and his brother Mark with a tape measure and calculator.

     “Wow,” she said. “Isn’t that taking it just a bit to the extreme?”

     “Nope. We have to be absolutely precise or we won’t be able to find the rod.”

     At that very moment, Sami walked up. She had just finished feeding the livestock in Bay 17 and had seen the others walk past. She wanted to see where they were going.

     Sami said, “Hey, you all. Did y’all decide to throw a party and forget to invite me? Should I be offended? Was it something I said?”

     Sarah laughed and said, “No way! You know you’re the life of every party. A party can’t happen without you. No, the boys are deciding where to build their tunnel. I just came by because I’m nosey.”

     “Tunnel? Don’t we have, like, a door we can use?”

     Sami gave Sarah her best “duh” face.

     “I’ll let Bryan explain. He’s the engineer. Honey, tell Sami why you’re going to dig a tunnel.”

     Bryan rolled his eyes, as though he’d explained the plan a thousand times before. But Sarah was his girlfriend, after all, and she could be moody when she didn’t get her way. So Bryan did what most henpecked boyfriends do and complied with her request.

     He told Sami, “When the thaw comes we will move out of here and into the compound a couple of hundred yards east of here. It has a high wall built around it, and will provide us farm land to grow our crops, and grazing land for our livestock.

     “The problem is, we don’t know what the world is going to look like when we get out. We may be the only people alive for hundreds of miles. Or, there may be lots of people out there who are hungry and desperate.

     “If there are marauders out there, and if they find out we have fresh produce and livestock that isn’t available anywhere else in the area, they may try to take it from us.

     “Before we came in here, we got the compound ready. It already has a very elaborate security system. If the marauders come two or three at a time, we won’t have any problems fending them off.

     “But if they consolidate forces, and come fifty or a hundred strong, there’s a chance they might overpower us.

     “The tunnel will be our escape hatch. When we leave here we are going to reseal the mine, just like it is today, so that it’s almost impenetrable from the outside.

     “One end of the tunnel will be here, where you’re standing. The other end will be under the feed storage barn in the compound. It will be under a false floor in the barn, and no one will know it’s there.

     “If it ever appears we’re going to be overrun and the compound is going to fall into the marauders’ hands, we will all go to the feed barn, lift up the false floor, and come through the tunnel and back into the mine. We’ll be safe here, and the mine will still be stocked with everything we need to survive. And we’ll begin our plans to take back the compound from the marauders.”

     Sami asked, “But what if they chase us through the tunnel and attack us here?”

     “We’ll gather in the tunnel before they scale the walls. By the time they get in, we’ll be long gone. They won’t know where we went. We will have ladders leaning up against the inside of the wall on all four sides of the compound. Hopefully they’ll just assume we climbed over the wall and disappeared into the surrounding woods.

     “However, if they do get curious enough to look around for us, they’ll have a hard time finding the tunnel. We’ll cut power before we leave and take key components from the circuit panels so that they have no electricity. The feed barn will be pitch black, even in the daytime.

     “And even if they go in there with flashlights, they will have a hard time finding the section of false floor. It blends in very well.

     “But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that they find the false floor and discover our escape tunnel. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. We’ll have three different places where we’ll have dynamite buried into the tunnel walls, attached to electric charges. The tunnel will be pitch black, but we’ll have infrared cameras spaced throughout it. We’ll be able to see exactly where they are in the tunnel. And when they’re in the center of it, we can collapse the tunnel and either kill them instantly in the cave in, or make them suffer a long slow death as they run out of oxygen.

     “The same infrared cameras are dispersed throughout all the buildings in the compound. Even though the power will be off in the compound, the cameras will work. Because they’re all wired to the mine’s power grid. So after we evacuate the compound and come back here, we can track their every move. We can see how many of them there are, what their habits are, where they’re vulnerable.

     “Using that information, we can make plans to take the compound back. We’ll likely leave you women and children here where it’s safe. And we’ll either attack them en masse once we know how to do it, or we send teams through the tunnel at night to stalk them and pick them off two or three at a time.

     Sami was impressed.

     “Wow, you guys have really put a lot of thought into this.”

     Mark interjected, “Yeah, but the thinking part is easy. The digging is what’s hard. It’s going to take at least a year to dig the tunnel, wire it and plant the explosives.”

     Sami laughed.

     “Seems to me that time is something we have plenty of.”

     Sarah said, “You were saying something about finding a rod. What’s that all about?”

     Bryan explained.

     “Before we locked up the compound and gathered everyone up to bring them into the mine, Mark and I lifted up the section of false floor in the feed barn. Right now there’s just dirt underneath the barn’s wooden floor. The tunnel hasn’t been dug on that end. So to find the spot from here, we had to make some very precise calculations, and we took a long piece of rebar steel and hammered it into the ground under the barn.

     “If our calculations are correct, we’ll dig the tunnel exactly two hundred and seventy one yards and ten inches from this end of the mine, and we should come across the rebar that we knocked into the ground. That’ll tell us we’re under the false floor panel, and we just dig straight up from there.”

     Sarah said, “And if you miss the rebar?”

     “That, my dear, is simply something we choose not to think about. Missing our target is not an option.”

Chapter 13

     Frank knew as he trudged through the snow to the Martin house that the girls would be the hardest to deal with. The Martin family had been entombed in the car where they had died, safely tucked away in the garage of what was once their home, for several months now. Frank had stubbornly found one excuse after another to delay the inevitable.

     He’d woken up that morning, though, deciding enough was enough. They had suffered the indignity of not being buried for way too long. Today was the day he’d force himself to deal with it.

     So here he was, on a Tuesday morning, headed to the Martin house with a snow shovel and a blow torch.

     The snow was over two feet deep now, and even higher in the drifts. That was another reason he couldn’t put this off any longer. In a world with moderate temperatures, most of the precipitation came from the sky in the form of rain.

     In a normal world.

     But this world, a world of eternal winter, was anything but normal. Every bit of precipitation, all year around, came drifting down slowly in the form of snowflakes. And since the temperatures never went above freezing, it never melted away.

     All it did was accumulate. A few inches here, a few inches there. Almost two years after the day Saris 7 collided with earth, it was two feet high. If the scientists were right, it could be as long as seven years before the thaw finally came. How high would it be then?

     Certainly over the rooftops. Enough to make it impossible to get around.

     Frank was trying to do things the smart way. When he gathered snow to melt for water each day, he carried two five gallon painters buckets. The easy thing would have been to take them into his back yard. There was plenty of snow there, after all.

     But no. The smart thing was to remove the snow that was the most in his way.

     So he left the snow in his back yard. And he left the snow in his front yard as well. Instead, he got the snow from the pathways he made between each of the houses on his street. And in that way he was able to keep the paths open. To move with relative ease from his house to the vacant houses on the street, where he scavenged supplies and firewood. And to the other houses that were still occupied. So that he could check on his neighbors. Could he keep the paths open when the snow was over his head? He didn’t know. Only time would tell.

     He opened the gate to the privacy fence on the side of the Martin house. It creaked a cold moan, like an old man’s joints that moved only because they were forced to.

     He walked down the side of the house and into the back yard, looking at the roofline as he went. Even with the slope of the roof discouraging snow from accumulating there, he noticed there was at least eighteen inches. He knew, from watching the roofs of the other vacant houses on the block collapse one by one, that it wouldn’t be long. Perhaps the next snowfall. Or the one after that. Not long at all.

     Frank made a mental note to clear his own roof. The snow on his own roof was probably eight to ten inches high again. He’d have to climb up there with a snow shovel again and shove it all down.

     A good project for tomorrow, he decided. He had enough to deal with today.

     In the Martins’ back yard, he tried melting the two feet of snow with the blow torch. It put off enough heat to melt it quickly, but only the snow within a few inches of the flame. He was disappointed. He had hoped for a better result, so he had to give it a shot. But he’d known better than to get his hopes up.

     So he did it the old fashioned way. With a snow shovel. And an aching back.

     It took him two hours to clear a patch in the middle of the back yard twelve feet square. He stood back and looked at his handiwork.

     “Yep,” he said to himself. “That should do it.”

     He walked around to the front door, which he’d left unlocked from the last time he was here. Into the house and into the garage, where he pulled the handle to release the garage door from its electric door opener.

     He walked to the overhead door and lifted it up, as the piled up snow outside the door rushed in on his feet.

     His plan was to take the bodies through the house. He didn’t need the garage door open for his removal of the bodies. But it would come in handy for the light it would provide. For even though the daytime sky was still a milk chocolaty brown, it was still lighter than the blackness within the garage. And any light, no matter how weak, that found its way into the garage, would help a little.

     He started with his old friend Ed, sitting in the driver’s seat, stiff as a board, with his eyes closed and a look of serenity on his face. Frank couldn’t help but wonder how much easier it would have been to drag Ed’s corpse if he had died laying down flat instead of in the seated position.

     Maneuvering him through the doorways was the hardest part. It was not unlike dragging a recliner through a house, and having to figure out what was the best way to position it to get it through each doorway.

     All the while, of course, Frank had to remember that this was once a human being, and a dear friend. He tried his best to let Ed retain some semblance of dignity, by ensuring that he didn’t bump his head or face, as he dragged him to the back yard.

     Linda was a lot easier to move, for a couple of reasons. First, because she was a petite woman, half of Ed’s weight and considerably smaller. And also because out of the side of his eye when he went back into the garage, in the dark corner of the garage, Frank happened to notice something that made his job a lot easier.

     He had no idea why the Martins would have a wheelchair folded up in the corner of their garage. They were both in good health before they departed this life. He knew that Linda’s mother, who’d lived in a nursing home before Saris 7 hit, was in poor health. Perhaps the wheelchair was for periodic visits to the nursing home to take her mom out for a day shopping, or out to eat.

     In any event, Frank wished he’d found the wheelchair before he moved Ed.

     Linda and the girls were much easier to move. The only problem was that their bodies, frozen hard as stone, refused to sink softly into the leather seat as a living body would have done. They rocked back and forth as Frank wheeled them through the house, and Linda almost fell out a couple of times.

     In the end, though, he managed to get them to their final destination. They were lined up, the parents on the outside and the girls in the middle, as though Ed and Linda were still protecting their children even in death. Lying on their backs, with their knees raised up halfway to their chests, as though they exited this life doing some sort of macabre sit-up.

     He left them there, like that, because he was just too exhausted to finish the job.

     He knew they were safe from dogs or other predators. He hadn’t seen any animals, save Joe Smith’s dog three doors down, in weeks. He knew they’d all frozen or starved to death.

     He’d come back in a few days with a wheelbarrow and a sledge hammer. He’d swing the sledgehammer at the bottom few rows of the brick façade that covered the front and two sides of the Martin home.

     Then, when the wall cracked and popped and started to give way, he’d stand back and let the bricks collapse into a large pile. And then he’d load them into the wheelbarrow and make as many trips into the back yard as it took.

     As many as it took to cover the bodies in a large burial mound.

     He’d have preferred not to do it this way. He’d lived in New Orleans for a time as a youth, and the whole concept of above-ground burial was just something he found… creepy. But with the ground frozen solid, he knew this was the only way. Even cremation wasn’t an option. As cold as it was, a fire would not get hot enough to reduce a corpse to ashes. It would burn it, sure, as long as the body provided the fuel. But once the meat and fat were gone, the bones would be left to deal with. And even getting a frozen body to burn at all would require an awful lot of precious wood.

     No, this way was best. When the thaw came, the brick burial mound would protect the bodies from being consumed by whatever buzzards or other scavengers might survive the freeze. And they’d be hidden from view while they slowly rotted into dust.

     Frank carefully made his way back to his house. As he neared it, he heard someone call out his name. He turned around to find Joe Smith and Jesse Martinez approaching.

     Jesse said, “Hey, Frank. Haven’t seen you in a couple of days. we were starting to worry about you.”

     Frank managed a chuckle, despite what he’d just done at the Martin house.

     “Oh, don’t you worry about me. Only the good die young. I’ll live forever.”

     Joe piped in.

     “Frank, do you think you’ll be ready to go tomorrow, late morning?”

     “I have to clear my roof tomorrow and that’ll take most of the day. The next day is better for me. Do you have enough food to hold out until then?”

     Joe said, “We do,” and looked at Jesse. Jesse shook his head yes.

     Frank didn’t particularly relish his role as defacto leader for the families left on his street. But he was a natural leader, after all, and he had a good head on his shoulders.

     And he didn’t panic in a crisis like most men did. So he understood why they looked to him for guidance and advice.

     And at least with himself leading the way, he didn’t have to worry about following somebody else’s harebrained methods of survival which might or might not work. At least Frank was confident in his own ability to find ways to survive. And to help others do likewise.

     Frank asked Joe, “Are you still watching Symco?”

     “Oh, yes. Checking it several times a day and at night too.”

     “No activity? No vehicles? No smoke?”

     “None. The snow has drifted so high over there that you’d have to have four wheel drive to get anywhere near the place. And there aren’t any vehicle tracks, any snow pushed out of the way, anything to indicate anybody’s been in and out of there.”

     Frank said, “Good. Why don’t y’all come over tomorrow night? We’ll have what’s left of our coffee and sit in front of the fire and make out our plans. How about just before nightfall?”

     “Okay, good. We’ll see you then, Frank.”

Chapter 14

     Scott was on watch in the south trailer, peering through the peep hole, when he saw a familiar figure driving slowly toward the compound on a four wheel drive Gator. He keyed the microphone on his walkie talkie and said, “Marty, you there?”

     “Yeah, buddy. What’s up?”

     “Lenny’s driving up on the south.”

     “10-4.”

     Lenny walked up to the compound and yelled “Hello in the camp!”

     The generator happened to be running in the corner of the compound, charging the oversized batteries that ran their floodlights. Had they not known Lenny was out there, the noise from the generator would have kept him from being heard.

     But the security system Marty had set up was pretty effective. It was difficult for anyone to walk up to the compound without being spotted. And almost impossible for them to get in without being invited.

     Marty went to the back of the center trailer on the south wall. One by one he pulled the five sheets of plywood that served as protection from bullets, and let them drop onto the ground. Then he squatted down and crawled on his hands and knees the full length of the trailer.

     Once he was free of the trailer he stood up and greeted Lenny.

     “Hey, Lenny, what’s up?”

     “I was wondering if your offer to join you still stood.”

     Marty grew just a bit suspicious and his eyebrow went up.

     “Why? I thought you liked your place in the truck stop.”

     “Well, I did. I do. It’s just that… well, it’s not as safe as I thought it was.

     “We put signs on the door to let people know there’s nothing inside worth stealing, but people keep coming by anyway. Sometimes three or four groups a day. They travel in packs, and they’re all heavily armed. They show up in Hummers or Land Rovers or other four wheel drive vehicles, and go through the truck stop looking for things to steal. And they go through the trailers and take whatever they want.

     “Have they been violent?”

     “Not yet. I mean they haven’t shot me yet. But there have been a couple of times when they were pissed off because there was no food for them. And I thought they might take it out on me. I figure it’s only a matter of time before one of them gets so mad they just blow me away.”

     “If we let you in, you’ll have to carry your share of the load. You’ll have to pull your share of guard duty, and help keeping the campfire burning, and gathering stuff that will burn. You can’t come in if you’re going to be a slacker.”

     “Hell, you know me, Marty. You know I’m a good worker.”

     “I know you are, Lenny. If it was up to me alone I’d say sure. But it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t check with the others.”

     “I understand. If you think it’ll help, tell them I’m willing to buy my way in.”

     “How so?”

     “I’ve been spending my days going through all the trailers in the yard. I’ve been picking the good stuff out of them and putting it a little at a time in two busted up trailers in the back field.”

     “None of your visitors have found the stuff?”

     “Oh, hell no. They can see the trailers from the truck stop, but they’re a hundred yards away, leaning on their sides from flat tires, and beat all to hell. Even from a hundred yards away it’s easy to tell they’re junk trailers.”

     “What kind of stuff are you talking about?”

     “Cigarettes. dozens of cases of them. Enough to feed a pack a day habit for years. And they won’t go stale because of the twenty five degree temperatures. Also booze. Lots of it. Rum, gin, whiskey. Tequila. Alcohol don’t freeze, so none of the bottles have shattered. And even when it’s not cold it lasts for years.”

     Lenny winked and smiled a conspiratorial grin.

     “But that’s not the best part. Not at all.”

     “Go on.”

     “Microwaveable TV dinners. Thousands of them. All kinds of varieties. I know y’all have been cooking most of your meals over a campfire, in a stew pot. No more of that crap. Pop these babies in the microwave in your sleeper cab and two minutes later you have a piping hot meal.”

     Marty had to admit he was tired of cooking frozen fried chicken over a campfire. Even after all this time he wasn’t very good at it. More often than not it was burned to a crisp on the outside and still icy in the middle.

     “How many of those you got?”

     “Enough to feed all of us for at least a year.”

     “Wait here. Give me five minutes.”

     Marty’s mouth watered as he crawled back under the trailer and back into the camp. He’d run out of cigarettes two weeks before and had been irritable and moody. He tried to tell himself he was better off without cigarettes, that he didn’t really need them. But he didn’t realize how much he missed them until he was presented with the prospect of getting them back again.

     Back in the compound, he stood up and yelled for the rest to gather around.

     They were all anxious to welcome Lenny into the camp except for Scott Burley. He’d been slimming down for awhile, trying to make himself more attractive so he could make a pass at Tina. Marty had confided in him that Joe couldn’t satisfy his wife’s needs, and that she had an insatiable desire for sex. Tina also confided in Marty that she’d considered sharing her charms with Scott, except that he was too fat for her tastes.

     So from Scott’s twisted point of view, another man coming into the camp meant additional competition. Especially a young and skinny guy like Lenny. Scott didn’t like the idea at all. But he had to admit he liked the prospect of eating microwave dinners and tipping back a bottle of bourbon in the privacy of his sleeper cab. He’d keep trying to slim down, and maybe in a few more weeks he’d be able to tip back that bottle with Tina.

     “Sure. Let’s do it,” he said, making the decision unanimous.

     Marty said to Joe and Scott, “You two go get those conveyor pieces out of that trailer on the north side. The ones with the rollers. Do you remember which trailer you saw them in?”

     Joe said, “Yeah, it’s the second one from the east end.”

     While Joe and Scott were lining up rollers underneath the trailer, Marty rode on Lenny’s Gator to the trashed out trailers where he had his goodies stashed. They spent the rest of the day loading cases of goods onto the Gator, then driving it back to the compound. They unloaded the goods into a large pile and went back for more, while Joe and Scott rolled them one case at a time along the line of rollers and into the compound.

     They shut down operations one time, when off in the distance they caught a vague glimpse of a vehicle pulling into the truck stop. But in the haze of the chocolate brown sky, they knew they couldn’t be seen from that distance as long as they weren’t moving. So they sat down and took a smoke break until the vehicle pulled back out onto Interstate 10. It was the sweetest cigarette Marty had smoked in years, and just the pleasure of savoring it almost brought tears to his eyes.

     By the end of the day, as the little yellow marble in the sky set in the west, they wrapped up operations. They knew it would be pitch dark soon, and they needed to get back in the camp and reseal it. They didn’t get all of the goods, but they got more than half. Every one of them was sore, so they’d wait a couple of days before they finished the job.

     Lenny had no sleeper cab to sleep in like the others. He pulled a winter sleeping bag and half a dozen blankets from a Walmart trailer and bedded down for the night next to the campfire. It wasn’t the best of accommodations, but he’d make something better tomorrow. When he went to sleep, he slept like a baby. It was the first time in a long time he could sleep peacefully, secure in the knowledge that he was in a safe place protected by others. And that he wouldn’t be murdered in his sleep by a band of hoodlums who might show up at the truck stop looking for easy loot, then taking it out on him when they couldn’t find any.

     Tina, for her part, had been watching Lenny in the waning hours of the day. Joe noticed, but wouldn’t say anything to her about it. He knew he was powerless to control her hunger. Lenny was the only one in the compound who didn’t know it, but within a day or two he’d be spending quality time with Tina in the back of one of the half-empty trailers. Tina couldn’t wait. She watched him sleep, and thought to herself, “Get your rest, baby, and get your strength back. You’re gonna need it.”

Chapter 15

     Sarah and Sami were babysitting little Markie while doing their annual food inventory. Neither of them were moms, and when they volunteered to care for him for the day while Hannah got over a vicious cold they didn’t realize what they were in for.

     They said, “How hard could it be?”

     Famous last words…

     Markie was two now, and beginning to speak in sentences. His favorite sentence these days, though, was “No!”

     He was developing a mind of his own, and was learning that he could voice his opinion when he didn’t want to do something.

     Sami tried to reason with him.

     “Markie, sit right there on that box while Sarah and I count these other stacks of boxes.”

     “No! Don’t want to.”

     Sarah tried her luck.

     “Markie, I’ll give you a horsey ride if you’ll sit there quietly until we’re finished.”

     “No! Don’t want horsey ride!”

     Sarah made a shocked face, as though she couldn’t believe he didn’t want a horsey ride.

     Her face amused him, and he paused. Then he said, “Bullshit!”

     This time Sarah’s face truly did express shock. She looked at Sami, who dropped her clipboard and her jaw at the same time.

     “Did you teach him that?”

     Sarah said, “No way, not me. I’ve never heard him say that before. I promise.”

     Markie saw the concern they had about the word, and said, “Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.”

     Sarah was getting alarmed.

     “Markie, shhhhhh. That’s not a nice word.”

     “Bullshit, bullshit, buulllllllssshhhiitttttt.”

     Markie was having a blast. The girls failed to see the humor.

     Sami looked at her friend and said, “Oh, my God! What if Hannah thinks we taught him that? She’ll kill us!”

     Markie said “Mommy kill you guys!” Then he burst into laughter.

     Sami had an idea.

     “Markie, if you sit on those boxes while we finish our count, I’ll take you over to where the animals are and let you chase the chickens around. Okay?”

     Markie paused and looked at her.

     “I chase chickens?”

     “Yes.”

     “Okay.”

     He smiled.

     “I chase chickens. Bullshit. Hahahahaha!”

     Markie entertained himself by repeating his new word over and over again while he jumped and down on the box he was supposed to be sitting on.

     Then, just as the girls were finishing up, they heard Markie yelling “Whee!”

     They turned around to see him completely naked, slowly spinning around while peeing a huge circle around his body.

     The girls couldn’t help themselves. They looked at Markie, then at one another. Then they burst out laughing.

     “Sami, you’re my best friend in the world, right?”

     “Of course, sweetie. Why?”

     “Would you do me a big favor?”

     “Sure, what?”

     “If I ever come to you and say, Sami, I’m thinking of having some children of my own…”

     She turned and looked at Sami.

     “… would you take a baseball bat and beat me over the head until I come back to my senses?”

     “Sure, honey. It’s the least I can do for a friend.”

     “Markie, come on, sweetie. We’re finished. We’ll go chase the chickens now. But you have to put your clothes on first.”

     Instead, he stood in front of them with his hands on his hips and announced “I gots peepee.”

     Sarah said, “Yes, sir. We noticed. But you have to put your clothes back on if you want to chase chickens.”

     “I gots peepee. Bullshit. Bullshit.”

     Sami rolled her eyes.

     “Oh, great, here we go again.”

     After Markie wore himself out chasing chickens, he announced to the girls, “I tired now. I ready for my nap.”

     Sarah muttered, “Thank God!” under her breath as she gathered him up and carried him back home to his RV.

     They knocked on the door and Hannah shouted, “Come in!”

     “Mommy!”

     Sarah put Markie down and he went running to where Hannah was laying on the couch, watching a movie on television.

     “Thank you guys for watching him. Was he any trouble?”

     Sami and Sarah looked at each other, then shook their heads at the same time and said, “No, not at all. We had fun.”

     Markie chose that moment to play some more with his new word.

     “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”

     “Markie, no! Do not use that word!”

     “Sorry Mommy. I love you.”

     “I love you too, tiny sailor.”

     Sarah said, “Hannah, I swear to God, we did not teach him that word!”

     Hannah looked at her with an angry face. Then she  laughed.

     “Oh, I know. He heard it the other day when Mark and Bryan were arguing about their tunnel. They said it, and then he said it, and they thought it was so cute they encouraged him to say it some more. I wanted to kill them.”

     Sami said, “I’ll help.”

     The three enjoyed a bit of laughter while Markie fell asleep on Hannah’s shoulder.

     “Did you finish your inventory?”

     “Well, yes. With the counting part, anyway. We still have to do all the math, but we’ll have it all ready at the weekly meeting tomorrow night. It looks like we’ve got plenty of food for several more years. The kitchen staff is doing a great job of minimizing waste and using everything before it spoils.”

     “Well, that’s great news. Did you happen to see the guys out there?”

     “No, they’re playing in their tunnel again.”

     “Have you two ever been in the tunnel?”

     “No, why?”

     “They keep it so hush hush. They never talk about it to anybody else, like it’s a top secret project or something.”

     “I think they’ve regressed back to their childhoods. Like it’s their secret fort and they’re playing G.I. Joe or something.”

     “Wait a minute. Remember you’re talking about Mark and Bryan. I don’t think they ever really progressed much beyond their childhood.”

     “Good point. So it would be a very short trip back.”

     “Hey, you don’t think that maybe they have strippers down there, or a secret topless night club or something?”

     “No. Then the word would have gotten out and every single man in the mine would be down there every day. And the boys would be trying to sneak their way in.”

     “What is it with men and boobs anyway?”

     “Oh, don’t even get me started.”

     “Hey, I know we can’t do it now because the baby’s sleeping. But how about if tomorrow we just crash their mine?”

     “Literally, like blow it up?”

     “No, silly. We crash it like we’d crash a party. We just walk in and check the place out.”

     “Okay, that sounds like fun. Let’s do it.”

     Sarah put her hand on Hannah’s forehead and said, “You look flushed, Sweetie, and you feel a little warm. Are you okay?”

     “Yes, I’m fine. Just a little fever is all. I thought when we were all isolated in here we wouldn’t catch colds any more. I mean, how could I catch a cold when nobody else in here has one? Who did I catch it from?”

     “I think you’re thinking of the flu, dear. I don’t think you really catch a cold. I think it’s just something your body does when it’s in a weakened state, and the right conditions come along. The flu, on the other hand, is a virus. It’s passed from one person to another. And you’re right. Since we’re no longer exposed to the outside world, none of us should ever catch the flu again.”

     “Yay! No more flu shots!”

     “Ever?”

     “Ever.”

Chapter 16

     The following day, Hannah tucked Markie safely in bed for his morning nap. She had asked her niece Anna to keep an eye on him. Anna was Debbie’s daughter, seven years old now and full of life. She’d been begging for the chance to babysit, and although Hannah thought she was much too young, perhaps it was time to ease her into it.

     “Now, all you have to do is keep an eye on him. The TV won’t wake him up, as long as you keep it down low. Neither will the Wii if you leave the volume turned off. Just watch him, and if he starts to wake up, call me on the walkie talkie and I’ll come back.”

     “Okay, and thank you Aunt Hannah.”

     “Thank me for what, honey?”

     “Thank you for not treating me like a kid. Everybody treats me like a kid, but I’m almost eight, for crying out loud.”

     “I know, honey. They did the same thing to me when I was almost eight. And I hated it too. But it’ll change soon, I promise. As soon as they see how mature and responsible you are, they’ll change the way they look at you. Just try to be patient.”

     “Okay. And I’ll take good care of Markie. You can count on me.”

     Hannah smiled and kissed her on the forehead. Then she quietly left her RV and walked over to pick up Sarah and Sami in Bay 8.

     They were in the TV lounge watching a movie.

     “Oh, I’ve seen this before. I can’t remember the name of it. What’s it called?”

     “Who cares? It has Richard Gere in it.”

     “You’re hopeless, Sami. We need to get you a man.”

     “Yeah, right. Easy for you to say. You’ve got one. And in case you haven’t looked around here lately, the picking is kinda slim.”

     “I don’t know, I’ve seen Robert looking at you with those Paul Newman eyes of his.”

     “Oh, please. Robert only has eyes for those vehicles he works on all day long. And he always smells like motor oil.”

     “Well, he is a vehicle mechanic, after all. And I’ve always thought the smell of motor oil was sexy on a man. I think you should give him a chance.”

     “If you think oil smells sexy, then you take him. I’ll trade you him for Mark.”

     Hannah looked at Sarah and said, “Oh, no she didn’t.”

     Sarah answered, “Hey, leave me out of this. I refuse to take sides because I think you’re both equally nuts. But I will say this, Sami. Hannah’s not right about very many things, but she’s right about Robert. I’ve seen the way he looks at you too. He’s not Richard Gere, but he’s not bad looking either. And he’s a great guy. You should at least talk to him.”

     Sami shrugged and said, “Maybe. He is kinda cute when he grins.”

     “There you go, girl. Now, let’s go visit the tunnel before my tiny sailor wakes up.”

     They walked to Bay 24, past the orange traffic cones and the sign that said “CAUTION: OPEN PIT.”

     They walked down the wooden stair steps at the mouth of the tunnel and were instantly amazed at what they saw.

     For as far as they could see, a passageway stretched into the earth. Covered with wooden walls and an arched steel roof, with naked light bulbs installed in the upper right part of the tunnel every ten feet or so. On the floor to their right was a huge industrial fan, blowing a torrent of air into the tunnel. Up ahead, in the distance, they could make out a white cloud.

     And as they watched the cloud, a figure took shape in it, and then emerged from it. A ghostly white figure that took the shape of a man, and then a man they recognized. It was Mark’s cousin Brad.

     Brad put down the two buckets he was carrying and took off the respirator he was wearing to greet them.

     “Well good morning. What brings you lovely ladies into the fiery pits of hell?”

     “Oh, we just wanted to check the place out. To see if we could catch you guys playing cards, or watching dirty movies, or whatever you do down here all day.”

     He laughed and said, “Well, if you’re going any further, put on a respirator. Pull the straps good and tight over the back of your head, to keep the salt dust out of your lungs. It can do a lot of damage if you’re not careful.

     He pointed to the tunnel wall behind them. Several nails had been hammered into the wood, and on most of the nails hung respirator masks. Two of the nails were empty. Sarah guessed that’s where Mark and Bryan’s hung when they weren’t being used.

     “Thanks, Brad. What’s in the buckets?”

     “Salt. Chunks and powder. From the drills. We have a rule. You can’t leave the tunnel for any reason without carrying out two buckets. For chow, for bathroom breaks, at the end of each shift. For any reason at all. When we leave the tunnel, we haul out the waste. It’ll apply to you girls too, so I hope you brought your muscles with you.”

     He went up the steps and out of the tunnel. The girls put respirators on and headed into the abyss.

     Sixty yards later they entered the cloud of salt dust and their visibility decreased by half. After a minute they heard the high pitched whine of machinery. A little farther and they heard voices. On the floor to their left was a long line of bright orange buckets, like the two David had been carrying. Each of the buckets said “Home Depot Painter’s Bucket” on its side. And each one was filled about three quarters full with powdered salt.

     On their right side about a hundred yards in was a second industrial fan, identical to the first, blowing another high powered blast of air down the right side of the tunnel. They noticed that on the left side, the cloud of salt was slowly drifting outward, in the direction where they’d come.

     They guessed that the fans not only brought fresh air in for the tunnelers, it also served to help clear out the dust they were generating.

     They kept going through the white haze until they came to Mark, standing at the end of the tunnel shaft, holding a portable drill with a six inch auger blade at a 90 degree angle from his body. Behind him, Bryan used a leaf rake to pull the debris from around Mark’s feet and back a few feet, where he could then scoop it up with a flat shovel and dump it into buckets. Bryan saw the girls first, and was totally surprised, although the look on his face was hidden by the respirator.

     He tapped Mark on the shoulder, and Mark turned around to see the three girls. He turned off the drill, placed it on the floor of the tunnel, and used hand signals to motion everyone back, out of the dust cloud.

     The girls started out, and Mark yelled, “Hey!” from under his respirator. It was really unintelligible, but loud enough for the girls to hear and it stopped them in their tracks. Mark handed each of them a bucket to carry back with them.

     Sarah muttered, “Crap!” to herself, but each of them lugged their bucket back as instructed. The boys followed them carrying two buckets apiece.

     When they cleared the salty fog, Mark pulled off his respirator and said, “That’s far enough, girls. You can put them down there and I’ll get them later. Thanks for your help.”

     Hannah said, “Anytime, sailor. And by ‘anytime,’ I really mean never again. I’d kiss you but you’re all yuck.”

     She was right. Mark and Bryan, like Brad had been, were solid sheets of white. They looked like skinny polar bears, except for the parts of their faces that the respirators had covered.

     “What are y’all doing here?” Bryan asked.

     “We just wanted to get the grand tour, and to see if you were really working, or just goofing off.”

     Sami said, “I have to admit it’s pretty impressive. Much better than the little crawlspace I envisioned.”

     Hannah looked at the tunnel wall and added, “Now I recognize these things. These are those eight thousand fence posts you had me order a few months before we came in here.”

     Mark said, “Yep. Eight thousand fence posts, six feet tall and four inches square. And the metal pieces above your head are steel reinforced arches. Especially made for mine tunnels. Also four inches wide, with a load capacity of 12,800 pounds per square foot. It’s like a big tinker toy set, really. We dig out another four inches of salt, put a fence post on each side, and pound an arch support piece onto the top of them with a sledge hammer. Then we clean up the mess and grind out another four inches.”

     “Pretty impressive. How far do you get in a day?”

     “Well, when we first started, we were lucky to advance four inches a day. But like a lot of other things, this is something you get better at the more you do it. Now we have it down to a science, and we’re moving at twelve to sixteen inches a day.”

     “Wow! Good for you!”

     Sami piped in, “But hey, wait a minute. You’re all covered in salt. But you don’t look that way when you come back to join the rest of us every day. What’s up with that?”

     Hannah suddenly realized why the pair had so many secrets.

     “You guys are showering every day after you finish, aren’t you?”

     Bryan held a finger up to his lips and said, “Shhhhh.”

     Mark explained.

     “Back at the end of Bay 24, about two hundred feet or so, we’ve set up some portable showers. Every day, we have an alarm set to go off at exactly five o’clock. That tells us it’s time to knock off. We hit the portable showers to get all the salt off us, change into clean clothes, and then sit around planning for the next day while we wait for our hair to dry. Then we rejoin everybody else at the other end of the mine.”

     Bryan noticed the cold stare he was getting from Sarah.

     “Hey, I promise, it’s not a luxury type of shower. It’s just to get clean. And the only reason we kept it a secret was so nobody would complain that we were getting more showers than anybody else.”

     Mark added, “And the showers are set up over kiddie pools that catch all the water. It’s recycled with all the other gray water, so it’s not like we’re wasting it.”

     He looked at Hannah and said, “Of course, if you want, we can skip the shower, and come back looking like this every evening.”

     “Oh, no, I don’t think I’d like that.”

     Mark gave Hannah a salty kiss. Bryan leaned over for a kiss from Sarah, but she backed away. “Na-uh, not me!” She reached for his hand and shook it instead.

     Bryan looked at Mark and said, “We’d better get back to work if we want to make it to the two hundred yard mark today.”

     The two put their respirators back on, and Mark pointed to his heart and then to Hannah. Then the pair waved and disappeared back into the white haze.

     Hannah picked her bucket back up and the others looked at her. She said, “Hey, we’re heading that way anyway, right? Might as well help.”

     Sarah rolled her eyes and Sami grunted, but both followed their friend’s lead and picked up their buckets.

     After struggling with them to the top of the stairs, they encountered Brad, who had finished his bathroom break and was headed back into the tunnel.

     Sami asked, “Hey, Brad, where do we empty these things?”

     “Head toward the back of the bay about fifty yards or so. There’s a forklift parked back there, and just past the forklift you’ll see a big pile of salt powder and chunks. Just dump them and leave the buckets there. I’ll get them later. And thanks for your help, ladies.”

     The girls followed his directions and dumped the buckets on a huge pile of tunnel waste.

     “There’s their shower,” Hannah noted, pointing toward the back of the bay about fifty yards past the salt pile. They went over to check it out.

     The shower was no more than a string of three shower heads, mounted onto a two by four about eight feet apart. The two by four was mounted on the wall and fed by a water hose coming from the front of the bay. A small electric water heater was placed between a water valve and the wall.

     The last light bulb in the bay was directly over their heads. The bay stretched another hundred yards into the mountain, but this was where the light stopped.

     They looked into the dark abyss, and could barely make out, thirty yards in, several stacks of fence posts and arches. Supplies for the rest of the tunnel.

     Sarah looked at Hannah and giggled. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

     They looked at Sami, who smiled a wicked smile and said, “Let’s do it!”

     The boys had told them their alarm went off at exactly five p.m., at which time they wrapped things up and quite literally hit the showers.

     At precisely 4:45, in stealthy movements that would have impressed the most proficient of ninjas, the girls snuck past the entrance to the tunnel. Dressed in dark clothing and carrying binoculars, they disappeared into the darkness at the end of the bay. They hid behind the pallets of fence posts, and because they were in the darkness, they could see without being seen.

     Sure enough, at five after five, a trio of walking, talking snowmen came ambling through the bay toward them, each carrying two buckets of waste. They emptied the buckets, stacked them on the stack of three empties the girls had left there earlier, and turned on the water to their showers.

     The girls watched through binoculars as the three men took off their clothes and stepped into the kiddie pools beneath the showers.

     Hannah, of course, focused mainly on her husband. And his brother, but only out of curiosity. Sarah, conversely, admired her boyfriend Bryan’s glistening body. And also his brother Mark.

     Brad started out with his back to the girls. When he turned around, Hannah said to no one in particular, “Oh, my gosh! How is he even able to walk?”

     Sarah’s jaw simply dropped.

     Sami smiled and said, “Ladies, I think I’ve found the man of my dreams.”

     The men finished quickly, redressed, and hung around talking of football and the tunnel, and a dozen other things, while they waited for their hair to dry. Then they disappeared, headed back to the main part of the mine.

     The girls followed not far behind them. They giggled like little school girls caught up in a silly schoolyard conspiracy, swearing each other to secrecy.

     Hannah whispered, “We must never tell anyone of this.”

     Her friends agreed, almost as if they were ashamed of what they’d done.

     But they weren’t. After a few seconds all three of them erupted in laughter and gave each other a round of high fives.

Chapter 17

     When dinner was served that night, Sarah and Hannah sat at their usual table, with Mark and Bryan at their sides. Normally Sami sat at the table next to theirs and joined in the conversation of the day.

     Tonight, though, Sami had asked Brad if she could join him at a table at the edge of the dining room. She caught the eyes of the other girls and winked, causing Sarah and Hannah to erupt in laughter.

     Bryan asked, “What’s so funny?”

     “Oh, nothing. Just an inside joke.”

     Sarah asked, “So, what’s new with you guys?”

     Bryan said, “Nothing new with me. Just another day in the salt mines.”

     Mark groaned at the bad joke.

     “I’m putting the finishing touches on Channel 22. I’m going to roll it out tomorrow.”

     “What’s gonna be on it?”

     “Can’t tell you. It’s a big surprise. I’ll announce it at the meeting in a little bit.”

     Hannah looked at Sarah and rolled her eyes.

     “That’s my husband. An international man of mystery.”

     Sarah giggled, and resisted the urge to remind Hannah that Mark no longer had any secrets.

     Twenty minutes later Mark stepped to the front of the dining room and cleared his throat.

     “Can I have everyone’s attention, please? I think everyone who hasn’t already finished eating is close to it, so I’d like to get our Tuesday meeting underway. As usual, those of you who are not eighteen and are therefore unable to debate or vote are free to go if you wish. But you’re also free to stay if you want.”

     “Old business first. Last week we announced that we were doing our annual food inventory. It’s completed, thanks to a lot of hard work by Sami and Sarah. Would one of you girls care to come up and tell everyone what the results were?”

     Sarah looked at Sami, who gave her a “go ahead” sign.

     Sarah stepped to the front beside Mark and began.

     “As Mark said, this inventory is performed once a year and is done just to keep an accurate track of what our food stores are and to make sure we’ll have enough to last until the breakout.

     “We decided to do something different this year and factor in the calorie counts of our Meals Ready to Eat, or MRE stocks. You might recall that was never done before, because we considered them a last ditch emergency type of provisions. This year, though, we went ahead and counted them, using the logic that they are food, whether they’re considered last ditch or not. And that therefore they should be counted.

     “We also included sixteen pallets of pasta, Ramen noodles and soups that David recently found in the back of Bay 21. It’s not lighted back there, and somehow these sixteen pallets got mixed in with all of the truck and vehicle parts that are stored there. David was back there poking around with a flashlight, stumbling around for a specific type of fuel filter, when he came across them.

     “After we’ve done all the math and crunched all the numbers, we have determined that we have enough additional food to last eight years and seven months.”

     Smiles went up around the room. Everyone knew where this was heading.

     Someone stood up and asked, “And according to our latest estimates, how long before we get out of here?”

     Hannah, who had been tracking outside temperature trends since the beginning, stood up and said, “Between three and five years.”

     The smiles went around again.

     Mark took back the floor.

     “I can tell by everyone’s faces that we’re all thinking the same thing. To keep things orderly, I’d like to do this in two different steps. If someone will make a motion to increase our daily calorie intake, we can discuss and vote. If that motion passes, we can start debating how much.”

     Someone in the back of the room stood up and said, “I’d like to make a motion to increase our daily calories.”

     No less than five other people shouted almost simultaneously, “Second!”

     “Very well. All in favor of increasing our daily calorie intake, raise your hands.”

    Every adult’s hand in the room went up.

     Mark chuckled and said, “Well, that was easy. The motion carries. We will increase the calorie count. Who would like to suggest an amount for the increase?”

     Mark’s Uncle Marty said, “How about two hundred calories a day?”

     Joe Kenny was a bit more conservative. “How about a hundred? I mean, we’re already used to what we’re getting now. If we increase it too much, we might have to cut back again next year. I think it would be smarter to do it in incremental steps.”

     Several heads around the room nodded in agreement.

     Mark said, “Okay, we have a suggestion of two hundred additional calories per day and another suggestion of one hundred per day. Are there any other numbers anyone wants us to consider?”

     There were none.

     “Very well, we’ll put it to a vote. All in favor of two hundred additional calories per day, please raise your hands.”

     Mark’s mother Phyllis was the official vote counter.

     She announced “Twelve.”

     “Very well. All those in favor of one hundred additional calories per day?”

     Again, hands went up. Phyllis’ head bobbed slightly as she looked around and tallied the hands.

     “Seventeen.”

     “Very well, the motion carries. Effective tomorrow, the kitchen will start giving us an additional one hundred calories a day.”

     Phyllis, who was also in charge of the kitchen, said, “Looks like we’ll be baking a couple of trays of cookies tomorrow,” generating cheers across the room.

     Mark went on.

     “Okay, back to old business. Last week we discussed our plans for the tunnel we’re digging in the back of the mine, to connect with our compound next door. We just wanted to give you a status update. Bryan, would you do the honors?”

     “Sure,” Bryan said and walked up to the front.

     “We hit the two hundred yard mark this afternoon. That means we have a little over a hundred yards to go. It should take another five months or so, and then we will seal it until the breakout. Before we seal it, though, we will give a tour to anyone who wants to see it. In fact, we’ll have the capability to actually go through the tunnel and into the compound for those who are interested in checking the compound out. Right now it’s covered in three feet of snow, so there’s not much to see. But at least anyone who is interested can get some fresh air and play in the snow for a bit.”

     Bryan returned to his seat next to Sarah and Mark continued.

     “Last week I told all of you that we’d be adding a new channel to our closed circuit TV station. I didn’t tell anybody what it was last week because I wanted to wait until I finished transferring all the Dallas Cowboys games onto digital files.

     “For those of you who didn’t know, I was able to purchase copies of every single Cowboys game ever played, dating back to their first game in 1960. Most of them were on reel to reel tape or on sixteen millimeter film, and transferring them to digital took a lot of time.

     “But now it’s done, so tomorrow we’re rolling out Channel 22, the Cowboy Channel.

     “Weekdays it’ll be everything cowboy. Old television shows like Gunsmoke and Rawhide during the day. Every evening there will be either a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movie. All day Saturday it’ll be shows from the old days. Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy and such.

     “And on Sundays,” he beamed, “we will broadcast every Dallas Cowboys game ever played, in order. Four games every Sunday, back to back, with a brief intermission between each game. You’ll get to see Tom Landry pacing the sidelines in his fedora. Roger Staubach, Bullet Bob Hayes, Dandy Don Meredith, and every other Cowboy who ever played the game.

     “And it’ll be that way every Sunday until we break out of here.”

     Every one of the men in the crowd smiled broadly. Except for David, who grew up a yankee. He’d take a lot of crap every time Dallas played the Giants. But he’d take it in stride.

     “Okay, that’s all the old business, unless I forgot something and someone can refresh my memory.”

     Mark looked around the room. Nothing.

     “Good. Does anyone have any new business?”

     Again, silence.

     “Very well, then. I guess the meeting is adjourned. Thanks for staying behind and participating.”

     Mark went back to his table to find Hannah and Sarah watching intently as Sami and Brad left together.

     Sarah said to Hannah, “I’ll bet you a nickel she walks funny tomorrow and has a big smile on her face.”

     Mark was lost. He asked, “Who? Why?”

     Hannah giggled.

     “Never you mind.”

Chapter 18

     Joe Smith and Jesse Martinez knocked on Frank Woodard’s front door just before sunset. Frank welcomed them into his home, lifting up a heavy plastic tarp separating the entryway from the living room to let them through.

     Most of the other rooms, the ones not being used, had been sealed off. Frank and Eva pretty much lived in the living room now. That’s where their fireplace was, and it was the only warm room in the house.

     Frank had dragged a queen sized mattress in from the guest room months before. During the day, it was lifted up and leaned against the east wall of the room. At night, Frank moved the two recliners out of the way and laid it in the middle of the floor.

     The couple went to bed each night snuggling under six blankets and comforters, watching the fire crack and pop in the fireplace in front of them.

     Under other circumstances, such a cozy sleeping arrangement might be romantic. Here, though, in the midst of the great freeze, it was just a necessity for continued survival.

     “Hello, Eva. How have you been?”

     “I’ve been fine, Jesse. Joe. How are the families?”

     “Fine. Tired. Tired of being cold, tired of being hungry. You know how it is.”

     “Yes.”

     “Julie wants to get the wives together. She wants to see if anybody would be interested in moving in together. Putting everyone together in a couple of houses, and then knocking holes in the walls and building a plywood walkway between the houses. She wanted to see if the other wives thought it might help the weaker ones of the group.”

     Eva looked at Frank, and her eyebrows went up.

     “I never thought of doing that, but I’d be willing to consider it. Tell Julie to let me know when she wants to get together, and I’ll be there.”

     Frank changed the subject to the purpose for the night’s meeting.

     “Any activity over at Symco?”

     “No, Frank. None at all. We’ve been watching it day and night now for over a month. There are never any lights during the night time. Never any smoke during the day. No vehicle activity day or night.

     “The blanket of snow in the parking lots is undisturbed. Same for the snow on the access road. There hasn’t been any vehicle traffic there in months.”

     Frank scratched his head.

     “Okay. I’m convinced. If there was somebody there, we’d have had a sign by now. Now the only question is, do they have anything we can use?”

     Symco Food Service was a commercial food distribution center. When the earth was warm and active, it delivered wholesale foods of every type and brand to restaurants, gas stations and mom and pop grocers. It didn’t sell food by the case. It sold food by the pallet, or by the truckload. And by Frank’s reasoning, the big Symco warehouse, standing apparently unoccupied, probably still had food on its shelves. At least everyone assembled in this room, and their families, hoped so.

     Frank said, “I’ve got two old military duffle bags. They have straps on the back so they can be carried like a backpack. And they’ll hold a hell of a lot of stuff. I’ll carry one if one of you can carry the other.”

     Joe added, “I’ll carry it.”

     Jesse said, “I’ve got a black backpack I used to travel with, back in the days when I had a job and airplanes flew. It’s good sized. I’ll bring it.”

     “The hardest part of getting there is going to be clearing a path in that damn snow.”

     “Yes, but if we find food and supplies, we can go back several times. And the path we make will get a little easier to travel each time.”

     “When do you want to go?”

     “How about first thing in the morning,” Jesse suggested. “My boys know how to shoot, and they’ve got good heads on their shoulders. They’ll keep an eye on things while we’re gone.”

     “Joe, your house is closest to Symco. How about we meet up at your house at daybreak and leave out your back gate?”

     “Sounds like a plan. See you then.”

     Joe and Jesse said good night to Eva and walked toward the door. Eva called behind them, “Have Julie let me know when she gets the wives together. I’d like to be there.”

     Eva turned to Frank.

     “Do you really think there might be food in that building?”

     “I honestly don’t know, honey. There used to be. And a lot of it. Whether or not they emptied it out before the meteorite hit is anybody’s guess. But I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

     “I’ll pray you find some food, Frank. We’re getting desperately low.”

     “I know, dear. You pray, and so will I. If this doesn’t work out, I have no plan B.”

     Frank awoke the next morning long before dawn. With no electricity, and with the muddy brown sky obliterating the stars, it was impossible to tell how many hours before the pitiful sun broke across the horizon. But the light of the fire, burning in the fireplace, provided enough light to enable him to watch his beloved Eva sleep.

     He felt bad for her. When they’d married so long ago he made her a promise. He’d said, “I’m not the richest man in the world, nor the most handsome. I cannot promise you everything. But I will promise you that I will love you until my last breath, and will provide for you and protect you the best I can.”

     He’d always kept that promise. And until the world froze over, he’d never had to worry about her. Now he did.

     If the men were ambushed the next day by others, who’d claimed Symco for themselves, there was a chance Frank might not return. He worried about what might happen to Eva. Would she be strong enough to survive without him?

     Then he shook his head. No. He mustn’t think of such things. He had to return. She needed him. He vowed to be careful. And to back off at the first sign of trouble. As much as he hated the thought of coming back from Symco empty handed, he owed it to Eva, and the other men owed it to their wives, to come back alive.

     He boiled a pot of coffee on the fire and poured himself a cup. He took the pot off the fire and placed it off to the side. Not directly in the heat, but close enough to keep the coffee hot. He knew that Eva would want a hot cup when she woke up.

     While drinking his coffee and listening to Eva breathe, Frank looked out the window to the east. In the distance, through the muddy sky, he saw a small yellow marble rise over the horizon. The sun. It was time to go.

     He picked up the two olive drab duffle bags he’d placed next to the door the night before. Then he took one last look at Eva, softly blew her a kiss she’d never see, and tromped out into the snow.

     At Joe’s house, the trio checked their weapons to make sure they were locked and loaded, and headed out into the white abyss. It was slow going through the heavy snow. They had to stop frequently to rest. Their feet began to freeze, and their bodies began to ache.

     Symco was no more than two hundred yards from Joe’s back door. Before the freeze, it was an easy four minute walk.

     But now, everything was different. They could tell by the time they got to the massive Symco building that it was almost noon. The little yellow marble that was the earth’s sun was high in the sky by then. All of them dreaded the trip back.

     There was no sign of movement at Symco. No signs of life.

     “Let’s walk around the building, and see if we can find any open doors.”

     They had brought a pair of bolt cutters and a crow bar in the event they had to break in. But with frozen fingers and a desire to get inside, and out of the damn snow, none of them wanted to spend another half hour outside if there was an unlocked door to allow them entry.

     But no. They traversed the entire outside of the building, to find that every single door was secured with a shiny new hasp, and a high security padlock.

     Every door was also marked with a sign.

     “WARNING! Armed guards inside. Intruders will be fired upon.”

     Now they knew why none of the doors had been broken into. It made the group pause and think.

     “That’s actually a good thing,” Frank said. “It means that whatever food that was in there when the world went cold is still there.”

     “But what about the armed guards inside protecting it?”

     “Oh, bullshit. There are no armed guards. If there were, there would be smoke coming from the building. With no electric power, they’d have to build a fire to keep warm. And there would be vehicle tracks from when they brought new guards in and out every day. The sign is just a bogus attempt to keep people away.”

     “Well, it looks to me like they did a pretty damn good job.”

     Joe tried the bolt cutters on the padlock, to no avail. The high security lock was double tempered steel. The bolt cutters were no match for it.

     Jesse jammed the crow bar behind the hasp and was able to break it free from the door.

     The door itself was more difficult. It was secured by a heavy duty deadbolt, locked into a solid steel frame. But by taking turns pushing the crowbar, and applying every bit of strength they had left, they were finally able to jimmy it open.

     They stepped inside a pitch black building.

     Going from a pure white environment to one of total darkness was their most vulnerable moment and they all knew it.

     “Stay close to the ground, and don’t go any farther until our eyes adjust,” Frank instructed in a whisper.

     While laying there waiting for his pupils to dilate, Frank sniffed the air.

     He said, “No cigarette smoke. No smell of burned wood. No exhaust fumes from generators or vehicles.”

     The others smelled clean but stale air and agreed with Frank’s assessment.

     The warehouse was unoccupied.

     Now, the only question was, what was in it?

     Gradually, the trio’s vision adjusted and they were able to see a bit. They pulled out the flashlights they’d brought with them and walked down a main aisle.

     What they saw startled them. Everywhere they looked were pallets and pallets of food and paper goods. Not just at floor level, but also stacked five rows high in storage bins.

     “Damn!” Joe said. “This is better than Christmas morning.”

     “Okay, now what? We probably need to do this methodically.”

     “The first thing I want to do is find batteries. This is my last set, and if these flashlights go dead we’ll have a hell of a time.”

     “Agreed. This is my last pair also, and they’re getting pretty dim.”

     “Let’s look around for a walk-in refrigerator. In my Army quartermaster days, that’s where we stored them. The cold temperatures extended their shelf life.”

     Jesse attempted a lame joke. “Well, if that’s the case, around here they’ll last frickin forever.”

     Before long they stumbled across a large metallic room with a sign on the outside: “Film and Battery Stockroom.”

     Inside the room, which was in reality a large refrigerator, They found hundreds of cases of AA, C and D batteries. Frank tore open a case of D batteries and used two of them to replace the ones in his flashlight. It instantly got much brighter.”

     “Yes! They’re still good! Okay, I’m going to take a couple of dozen. We’ll split them up when we get home. Let’s go see what else is out there.”

     Frank’s friends switched out the batteries on their own lights and followed him back out into the warehouse.

     They began on the first row. A large black and yellow sign said “Aisle 01” above their heads, right next to a sign that said, “Stay on your toes. OSHA is watching your every step.”

     Jesse chuckled. Not anymore, they’re not.

     As they progressed down the aisle, they examined every pallet of boxes to see what was on it. They were amazed at the variety of items that Symco had stocked. Pretty much everything a convenience store or restaurant sold was here. Only in vastly larger quantities.

     They stopped when they came to a pallet of boxes marked “Charmin Bathroom Tissue.” All of the families had gotten used to going to the restroom by sitting on buckets, which were then dumped into holes dug into their back yards. But most of them were low on toilet paper, and a couple of the families had resorted to ripping the pages from phone books. Jesse tossed several rolls into his bag, and they moved on.

     A few pallets later they came across a pallet marked “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.” Again, they tore one of the cases open, removed a few boxes, and moved on.

     An hour later they were headed back home, each of their bags stuffed past capacity, slogging through the heavy snow.

     When they started, the heavy packs on their backs made them wonder if they had overdone it and tried to carry back too much. But the mere excitement from what they’d found and been able to gather caused an adrenaline rush and gave them more strength. And by following the same path back, it was a bit easier going, since much of the snow had been pushed aside.

     Still, it was almost sunset by the time they made it back. It had taken them longer than they expected, and their families were worried.

     They stopped at Joe’s house and dumped their bounty in a big pile on Joe’s living room floor. They divided up each item between the families, and set aside piles for the other two families still on the block as well. Lenny and Sue Geibel were a sweet elderly couple. Everyone knew that Lenny would have gone along to help, but was medically unable. And Widow Spencer, now seventy and headstrong, got an equal share as well. She was the unofficial mother and grandmother for the others. A wise old woman who took no guff, and expected no special treatment.

     Jesse dispatched his two teenaged sons to deliver the food and supplies to the Geibel family and to Widow Spencer. Jesse took his family’s share and prepared to go home, and Frank did the same.

     Joe suggested, “Why don’t we meet back here at sunrise again? If we’re up to it, I’d like to go back tomorrow. I want to get as much out of there as we can before somebody else discovers it and claims it as their own.”

     Frank said, “I’ll be here.” Jesse shook his head yes as well.

     And everyone slept a little better that night, with full bellies and a hope for a better tomorrow.

Chapter 19

     Lenny, the truck stop’s yard man, spent his first night in the compound lying in a winter sleeping bag next to the burning campfire. Despite the rough accommodations, he still slept better than he had in weeks. At least here, he wouldn’t have to worry about being shot or bludgeoned in his sleep by marauders. Here, he was among friends. Or at least acquaintances.

     The next morning, Scott Burley grabbed Lenny’s shoulder and shook him awake.

     “Wake up, Lenny. We’re gonna make some bacon and eggs for breakfast in a little bit. You’re in the way, though.”

     Lenny shook himself awake.

     “Where in hell did you get eggs?”

     Scott laughed. “Hell, we have half a truck full. It’s those liquid eggs that come in a quart carton, like a carton of milk. One of the trailers we grabbed was half full of them. We found out that once they thaw out, they’re good as new. So I keep half a dozen or so in my sleeper cab to thaw out, and we cook ‘em up for breakfast every morning. We get the bacon out of another trailer that was full of sliced bacon and breakfast sausage.”

     Lenny had been having Ramen noodles and frozen TV dinners for breakfast, lunch and dinner for several months. His mouth watered just thinking of a bacon and egg breakfast.

     Tina came over and sat down beside him. The sweet way she smelled reminded him that he hadn’t seen or talked to a woman in well over two years. It also reminded him that he hadn’t bathed or shaved in weeks.

     “How do y’all clean up and shave around here?”

     “You didn’t see our latrine over there?”

     “No. I got up in the middle of the night and wound up pissing under one of the trucks.”

     “Well, don’t do that. Marty will pitch a fit.”

     “I didn’t know you had a latrine.”

     It’s on the north wall. Third trailer from the end. It’s the one with the wooden steps leading up to the trailer.”

     “You built a latrine inside of a trailer?”

     “Sure. We found a whole trailer full of hardware and stuff, headed for a home improvement store. And we had just emptied out another trailer. We were trying to figure out what to do with the empty trailer and then we decided, let’s build a latrine in there.

     “So we took a reciprocating saw and cut a round hold in the floor, and then put a camping toilet over the top of it. Now it just drops onto a pile under the trailer.”

     “Don’t it smell?”

     “Oh, heck no. It freezes within just a few minutes. When everything starts to thaw out, it’ll stink to high heaven. But we’ll be out of here then anyway.”

     “What about washing up and shaving?”

     “You didn’t let me finish. We ran an electrical cord into the trailer with a portable heater. Any time the generator is running, the heater blows in there, and we insulated the back of the trailer. So it’s usually actually warm in there. Even after the generator has been off for a few hours it’s tolerable.”

     “Well, I’ll be damned.”

     “It ain’t the Hilton, but under the circumstances it’s a slice of heaven. Anyway, we put a sink in there too that was in the home improvement trailer. It’s one of those sinks that’s sunk into a stand alone cabinet for a small bathroom. We ran a drain line and drilled another hole under the sink to get rid of the water. So the sink drains.

     “The only thing we haven’t got in there is running water. So what we do is heat a pot of water on the campfire, then carry it in there and dump it into the sink. We wash up, shave and brush our teeth and whatever, then we drain the sink and it’s ready for somebody else. That pot of water sitting on the coals over there is for me. We call it a spit bath.”

     Lenny was impressed by the ingenuity the group had displayed.

     He asked, “Since I don’t have a place to sleep here, is there another empty trailer I can modify into a home?”

     “There aren’t any others that are completely empty, no. But there’s one that’s about half empty. And all of the trailers have been picked at, so they all have holes in them now. You can probably move what’s left in the one trailer out and into the other trailers. Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”

     Tina took him to a trailer on the south side of the compound.

     “It was full of furniture. We took some of the recliners and tables and stuff out of it. That’s where all the furniture around the campfire came from. We’ve been burning the bookcases and mattresses and other stuff we didn’t think we’d need in the fire, a little at a time.

     “Go ahead and decide what you want to keep, and move the rest out to the other trailers. If you can’t fit it in the other trailers, just stack it out of the way until we can burn it.”

     “Thanks, Tina. I really appreciate your help.”

     “Don’t mention it, Lenny. You owe me one, but we’ll figure out how you can pay me back real soon.”

     She winked at him and walked away.

     Lenny was confused by her wink, and didn’t understand what she meant. But he brushed it off and crawled into the trailer that would become his new home.

     The trailer had a little bit of everything. He quickly identified a couch, an easy chair, and two floor lamps he wanted to keep.

     He crawled to the front of the trailer and found a stack of double mattresses and three rolls of carpeting. Something else he found there pleased him. He saw the air vent that told him that even though this trailer was last used to haul furniture, it had a reefer unit mounted on the outside front of it.

     Lenny was elated. He knew that this trailer had once been used to haul frozen goods or produce. And that meant it had to be insulated. The walls, ceiling and floors of these types of trailers were specially designed to keep cold air in. And Lenny knew that it would also keep cold air out. Now he just had to figure out a way to heat the trailer. Then he’d have a fairly comfortable place to call home until the world thawed again.

     He started carrying dinette chairs and bookcases to the end of the trailer, so he could move them out to other places, when his nose caught the very distinct aroma of bacon frying. The mere scent caused his mouth to water, and he decided to hold off on his project.

     He hopped down from the trailer and carried one of the wooden dinette chairs to the campfire. There he broke it into pieces and added the wood to the fire. Marty walked up at the same time and was pleased to see Lenny contributing to camp chores.

     “Good morning, Lenny. You getting settled in okay?”

     “Hi, Marty. Yep. I’d say so. Let’s just say that today looks much brighter than yesterday did.”

Chapter 20

     Mark and Hannah lay in bed, her head upon his chest. He ran his fingers through her long chestnut hair and asked what she was thinking.

     “Oh nothing, really. More like wondering. Wondering what our future holds for us. Wondering how much we’ll have to struggle to survive after we get out of here.

     “Sarah and I talked once about how Markie’s face would light up in wonder when he saw his first butterfly. And I’m looking forward to seeing that. And when he gets to play on grass for the very first time. But what if there aren’t any butterflies anymore? What if their cocoons, or their larvae buried underground, were frozen just too long for them to reanimate? What if he never gets to experience those things at all?

     “And what about birds? And lady bugs? And fire flies? And all of God’s little creatures that we always just took for granted? We just always assumed they’d be there. But what if they’re not? What if they’re gone forever?”

     “But, honey. You’re the scientist. You should know that most creatures will always find a way to survive.”

     “I’m an astrophysicist, baby. Not a biologist. I don’t know any more about a particular species’ ability to survive than you do. I just think it will be a miserable world without some of God’s tiniest creatures. And it would be a shame if Markie and his baby sister never get a chance to know them.”

     Mark smiled. “That’s the first time you’ve talked about a second child in awhile. Does that mean you’re ready?”

     “Not quite yet. I want there to be a gap between them so that he’s old enough to protect her. Let’s wait until he’s five, and then we’ll start trying again.”

     “Back to the bug thing, I think I can put your mind at ease a bit. Have you ever read a book called What if the Bees Went Away?”

     She got a strange look on her face.

     “Why?”

     “Back about four years ago, when we just began making plans for the mine, I bought a copy at Barnes and Noble. I was concerned that the freeze would kill off all the honey bees, and then after the freeze was over we wouldn’t have them to pollinate our crops.”

     She looked at him with a “go on…” face.

     “Anyway, this book was written by Robin Bell. She’s a scientist too, from Montpelier, Indiana. She wrote this book talking about what would happen if a virus or something threatened to wipe out the honey bee, and whether or not mankind would be able to survive without them. A really brilliant woman who was very knowledgeable about the subject.

     “Her contention was that we have nothing to worry about. She said insects have an internal instinct to preserve their species. And that they would know when their numbers started to dwindle. And they’d take action to protect themselves by going to ground. Literally. By burrowing holes into the earth and building hives there. Hives that would allow their larvae to safely hibernate for many years.

     “She also said that bees with access to caves would seek moderate temperatures to move to. Places where they could survive year around, even in the winter. Like in deep caves and caverns, which are full of food for them.

     “She went a step farther and said that most insect species, and birds too, have similar instincts. And that some of them would survive viruses or plagues that might destroy most of their species.

     “I think that we’ll be surprised by how many birds and insects survive the big freeze. And I think we’ll see them again. Maybe in limited numbers at first. But I think as the years go by and they multiply, that they’ll repopulate the earth and become common again.

     “Although I personally hope that it’s the end of some of them, like mosquitoes and spiders.”

     “Don’t forget roaches. Yuck!”

     Hannah smiled a mischievous smile that told Mark she knew something he didn’t.

     “What are you smiling about?” he asked.

     “Wow, baby, that’s pretty profound, coming from a guy who usually just reads sports magazines. I certainly hope you’re right. I want to experience all the best things the world has to offer with Markie and his baby sister. Even the buggy parts. And I’ve read the book, and you’re right. Robin is a brilliant scientist and an excellent writer.”

     “Robin? You sound like you know her.”

     She couldn’t contain her laughter any longer.

     “You goofball. I knew her in college. She went to Baylor with us. She and her family live in San Antonio, not even fifty miles from here. She’s still a good friend of mine.”

     Her face suddenly dropped and her smile faded.

     “I hope they’ve all survived. I’d love to see her again after this is all over”

     Mark tried to bring her back from the sadness she was feeling.

     “Then I’m sure you will. I love you, doll.”

     Hannah rolled over and Mark put his arm around her waist.

     “I don’t know what the world will be like when this is all over. It’s likely going to change in a thousand different ways. But my love for you will never change. You know that, right?”

     She looked into his eyes.

     “Of course I know that, honey. Sometimes knowing that is the only thing that keeps me from giving up.”

Chapter 21

     Bryan had passed the word around the mine earlier that morning to expect a gunshot around nine a.m. The male calf that had been born three weeks before had made it through the newborn stage and was suckling well and gaining weight. He could now be considered healthy, which meant it was time for the oldest bull to be slaughtered.

     To keep from running out of cattle feed before the breakout, the group had to keep a tight control on the size of the herd. That meant killing one head each time a new calf was born.

     It wasn’t a pleasant task, but was a necessary one. After the breakout, when prairie grass was plentiful and they could grow grains on a large scale, they’d let their herd grow. Now, though, it wasn’t an option.

     At just before nine, Bryan and John went to the livestock bay with a rifle. During their morning feeding, Smokey the bull had been separated from the other cattle, lured into a segregated pen with an extra bucket of feed. He probably thought it was Christmas morning, when in reality it was his execution day.

     Bryan and John knew it was important not to get Smokey riled. If he was spooked or frightened, adrenalin would course through his body during the last minutes of his life and would spoil the meat. The same thing would happen if he were merely wounded. So death for Smokey had to come quickly, and out of the blue.

     A few minutes after nine, John stood behind Smokey’s left shoulder and Bryan stood in front of him. Smokey looked to Bryan, as though asking for more feed, and never felt the bullet enter his brain from behind his left ear.

     It was a painless death, and as humane as any death could be. Smokey collapsed to the ground without hearing or feeling a thing.

     At the sound of the shot, of course, several things happened at once. The other cattle spooked and bucked. But they were safely penned and couldn’t hurt themselves or anything else. They calmed down after a few minutes. Bryan wondered if they had a sense of what happened and then discounted it after they went back to drinking their water, or eating what was left of their feed, as though they had no care in the world. Blissfully ignorant, Bryan decided. The day would come when each of them would suffer the same fate, but today was not that day.

     The pigs heard the shot and scurried around their pen, squealing and hollering, as though offended that someone had the nerve to interrupt their activities. They, too, calmed down after a few minutes.

     The chickens took a bit longer to get back to normal. They clucked and squawked for a full hour after the gunshot. Bryan wondered why they were affected for so much longer, and wondered if they had a concept of death and its finality that the livestock didn’t. He knew from past slaughters that there would be few eggs tomorrow morning. When their shots had rung out in past months, most of the hens were so stressed that they simply refused to pass eggs the next day. Luckily, the kitchen told him they had a pretty good stock on hand from recent days.

     When the volunteer teachers in the two one room schoolhouses heard the shot, they took it as their cue to have frank discussions with their students about the cycle of life, and the fact that meat lovers like humans have to kill animals to get that meat.

     In the elementary school, Debbie’s little son David asked in all sincerity, “You mean they don’t grow the hamburger meat at McDonald’s?”

     In the school for older kids, the shot sparked a lively debate on the morality of man, who on the one hand is very kind to some animals, yet kills others for his food.

     When Mark heard the shot from the motor pool in Bay 21, he fired up a forklift and slowly drove toward the livestock bay. By the time he got there, John and Bryan already had chains wrapped around the rear hooves of the carcass that once was Smokey the bull.

     They tied the ends of each chain to the forks on the front of the lift, and Mark raised the forks up until the bull was raised completely off the floor. As Mark slowly crept out of the bay and over to Bay 18, where the butchery was, Smokey swung gently back and forth, as though dancing his way to bovine heaven.

     In the butchery, John took a long knife and slashed the bull’s throat, freeing several gallons of blood onto the floor. There was no effort to catch it or mop it up. It would soak into the porous salt floor within minutes. All it would leave would be a large pink spot a couple of feet in diameter, which would join several other pink spots already on the floor around it.

     After the dark red blood slowed to a trickle, John took the same knife and cut the animal the entire length of its underside. He stepped aside as Mark kicked a huge galvanized tub underneath the beast to catch the entrails. Bryan reached inside the body cavity and did what he liked the least: scooping out all the bloody guts that stayed behind.

     The tub was pushed aside for the time being, and John and Bryan each took a smaller knife to start skinning the animal. A cut was made on each leg to the top of the hoof, then completely around the hoof. The head, which weighed almost sixty pounds all by itself, was cut completely away. It wasn’t saved, as the first couple of cow heads had been. They had determined by now that they had plenty of food to get them until breakout. The first couple of heads were saved just in case they ran out of other food and needed them. This one would be tossed out with the entrails.

     Native American tribes made a point to save almost every bit of an animal they slaughtered. They would have saved the hide, tanned it, and used it to wrap around a teepee or to make a winter coat.

     In the mine, they had no teepees and already had plenty of winter coats. They had no need for the hide, so they would toss it out as well.

     Lastly, Mark cranked up a chainsaw and cut the carcass completely in half, so that there were two huge pieces of it hanging free.

     Within an hour after the shot rang out, the three men stood back and admired their handiwork. Each side of beef swung slowly, still reeling from the chainsaw’s final indignity.

     “Lot of steaks right there,” Mark observed.

     “Yes sir, buddy.”

     They would leave the carcass hanging for two full days to let it cure. That would make the meat tender and make it taste better. Two days later, they’d come back and hoist each piece onto a butcher’s table, one at a time. There they would use a variety of knives to cut it into steaks, roasts, and ribs, which would be wrapped in butcher paper and stored in the walk in freezer just inside the main entrance, until the kitchen staff called for it.

     They figured they’d harvest a bit over three hundred pounds of meat from the animal. Not bad for an hour’s work.

     Now, though, it was time to clean up the mess.

     Mark rolled over a 55 gallon drum with a removable wicked top. At the bottom of the drum was about twenty pounds of cattle and pig manure that they’d scraped off the livestock bay floor the day before.

     Picking up the tub of entrails and intestines, they dumped them into the drum. Then went the bull’s head and his hide.

     The drum was now completely full. Mark bolted the lid back on.

     By the time they came back to butcher the meat, the entrails inside the drum would have decomposed to the point where they were actively giving off methane gas.

     Mark would strike a match to the wick at the top of the drum, and a two inch flame would burn non-stop for forty to sixty days. Until the decomposition was complete and the methane gas burned completely off.

     It was a very effective way to dispose of animal waste and animal carcasses. In their early days in the mine, the boys capped the wicks and retained the methane gas inside the drums. At that time, they weren’t sure if they had enough diesel fuel to light the mine for the duration of the freeze. They were holding the drums in case they needed to use the methane drums to provide light after they ran out of fuel.

     These days, of course, that wasn’t an issue. More than three years after the freeze, they figured they were well past the halfway point. But they had only exhausted about twenty percent of their fuel supply.

     The trio walked back to the main part of the mine to the kitchen.

     Mark looked around for his mother Phyllis, but didn’t see her.

     “Helen, do you know where Mom is?”

     “She went to lay down, honey. She said she was fine, but a little light-headed. Been on her feet too long if you ask me. We kicked her out of here and told her to go relax. Should I put steak on the menu for tomorrow?”

     “Not yet. It’ll be a couple of days before we butcher it and package the meat. Plan for Thursday.”

     He went off to his mother’s RV to look in on her. This was happening more and more frequently, and it was starting to worry him.

Chapter 22

     It was August 14th. They’d been in the mine almost exactly three and a half years now.

     Before the freeze, on the outside of the mine, this would have been one of the hottest days of the year. Scorching hot. One of those days when people tried to fry eggs on the sidewalk.

     The crash of Saris 7 changed all that. On this day, at exactly 2:05 in the afternoon, a group of nine curious people stood around the control center at the front of Bay 8, opposite the mine’s entrance.

     They’d come running from near and far the minute they’d heard that the outside temperature was nearing 32 degrees. The point at which ice begins to melt.

     A Christmas morning-like excitement permeated the air. Smiles were the order of the day. All eyes were transfixed on a particular monitor in the upper corner of the security array. It was the monitor assigned to the camera at the front of the mine. Camera number 1. The one mounted on the outside of the mine face, aimed directly at a thermometer mounted on a snowy post outside the mine’s entrance.

     The thermometer that was reading 31 degrees.

     The group grew one or two at a time. The teachers at both of the small schoolhouses let their young charges go early to watch. And all of them stood in rapt anticipation for what they hoped beyond hope was going to happen.

     Then the thermometer ticked forward, ever so slightly. A roar erupted among those assembled. It was no longer Christmas-like. It was like Christmas and Easter and every birthday they ever had, all rolled into one.

     Several of the assembled even found tears. It was that joyful.

     It was a tiny step forward, of course. In a few hours the temperature would drop below freezing again. And tomorrow there was no guarantee it would rise to the magical mark again. But here, now, it was a symbol of hope. It was the first time in three and a half years that the world was warm enough to start thawing. And that first baby step toward eventual freedom from the mine was enough to brighten everyone’s spirits.

     Bryan, out of the blue, lowered his head. As he began to speak, others followed suit.

     “Lord Jesus, we thank you for watching over us for all this time. We have been blessed, where many others have not. We have faith that you have delivered us this far, and that you will continue to protect us, until we can break free from the bonds of this earth and do your good will once again. Thank you for the sign of hope, oh, Lord. And thank you for reminding us that with you as our savior, all things are possible. In your name, Amen.”

     Several of those present echoed the last word, almost in unison.

     John, the chief of security, was the one sitting at the console when he noticed the temperature rising to the magical number. It was he who’d sent a runner around the mine to alert the others about what was to happen. And it was he, being the one manning the security console at the time, who took great pleasure in logging the event. In a green logbook that contained all the minute details of each day’s activity, he took a black sharpie and wrote:

     2:05 p.m.: Recorded outside temp of 32 degrees for first time.

     And even though John was a former Dallas police detective and a professional in every way, he let the little boy inside of him come out to play for minute. After the entry, he wrote, “YIPPEE.” Followed by seventeen exclamation marks.

     It was a good day for all.

     Hannah hugged Mark and then kissed him. She looked at him and mouthed “I love you.”

     He took her in her arms and held her tight. Then he looked in her deep brown eyes and said “Thank you, honey.”

     She was perplexed.

     “For what?”

     “For giving me a reason to go on. Without you in my life, I’d have done what most of the people on the outside did and just ended my life and thought nothing of it. But you gave me a reason to go on. Thank you for that.”

     Her eyes teared and she held him close.

     “It’s really gonna happen, isn’t it?”

     “What’s gonna happen, doll?”

     “We’re really gonna get out of here someday. We’re going to be able to live normal lives again.”

     “Yes, baby. It’s really going to happen. It won’t be normal like it was before. But it’ll be a lot better than it is now.”

     Hannah went off to play cards with the girls and Mark went on a resupply run for the kitchen.

     He had a “shopping list” of things they wanted from the cold storage area to get them through the next five or six days. He took a look at it, memorized as much as he could, and then stuck it into his pocket.

     Directly across the security console was a large entryway which led to the mine’s entrance. It was almost as long as a football field, but had been carefully sealed off into four distinct insulated bays just after the group entered the mine. Each successive bay was accessed by a walkthrough door, which had itself been insulated by gluing heavy duty fiber insulation on with spray adhesive. The first bay was about twenty degrees cooler than the mine. The next bay was about twenty degrees cooler than the first. The last bay, which was separated from the outside world by just a steel overhead door, wasn’t insulated at all. It was the same temperature as the outside world. And that bay was where all the cold food was stored.

     There was a large walk-in freezer in the last bay as well, off to one side. The power had been cut when the temperature first dropped below freezing three and a half years before. It was simply unnecessary to run a freezer when the environment surrounding it was already frozen.

     The group had thought that the food stored outside the freezer, in freezer trucks, would be used up before the thaw began. And indeed, they had used a lot of it. But they’d have to keep an eye on it. Too many days in a row with temperatures above freezing outside, and the food in the trucks would start to thaw. They’d surely have to restore power to the walk-in freezer at some point, and maybe one or two of the freezer trucks as well.

     Today, though, Mark was headed out to the freezer bay to gather things for the kitchen, and would make the stockpile of frozen goods just a little bit smaller.

     Before he headed out, he donned a heavy duty blue parka and a pair of heavy gloves. He took a narrow rolling push cart, which he called a “u-boat” because high rails on each end made it resemble the letter “u.” Then he opened the first personnel door and pushed the u-boat into the cooler air of the first bay.

     He rolled through the first and second bays, then into the third. In this bay were stacked over three hundred cases of assorted types of potato chips and breakfast cereals. They were here because they required refrigeration but not the colder temperatures of the frozen food bay. He’d grab these items on the way back.

     Into the last bay he went. Even though he typically made these runs at least one day a week, he was always surprised by how abrasive the cold air felt against his face.

     He supposed it had more to do with the humidity than the cold. The interior of the mine was incredibly dry. So much so that it caused his skin to dry out and crack. He suspected that it was the bitter air, infiltrating and invading that dry skin, that caused it to sting and made it sensitive to the touch.

     But he would only be here for a few minutes. He could tolerate it for that long.

     He selected the items he’d remembered from the list. Four cases of frozen chicken wings. One case of frozen mixed vegetables. A case of pork chops. Three cases of quarter pound hot dogs, and a case of frozen waffles. Two frozen roasts and four cases of frozen chicken breasts. Two cases of white bread. He was careful to pick the heaviest items first, and to place them on the bottom of the u-boat. He didn’t want to crush anything. Food was too valuable to waste.

     Once he gathered everything he remembered, he took off a glove and winced as the bitter cold stung his dried and cracked fingers. He pulled the list from his pocket and made a mental note of the remaining items. Then he gathered them quickly, left the frozen bay as quickly as he could, and enjoyed the rush of the slightly warmer air in the next bay as it washed over his face.

     He grabbed a case of Doritos and another case of Cheetos and threw them on top of the frozen food. A case of Cap’N Crunch with Crunchberries, and his task was done.

     He wheeled the u-boat through the remaining bays and back into the mine. Into the kitchen he went, where he stacked the goods into several chest freezers for the kitchen staff.

     As he walked through the dining room on his way to the kitchen, he heard Hannah’s very distinctive little girl laugh, and it piqued his curiosity.

     Once he returned the u-boat to its assigned storage place across from the security console and returned the parka and gloves to a nearby coat hook, he went back to see what his beloved wife was laughing about.

     As he walked up to the girls, he heard Sarah say, “Ooh, ooh, I’ve got one… things you never hear a man say: ‘Let’s forget the football game, honey. There’s a good romance movie on the other channel.’”

     Sarah, Hannah, Sami and Beth all laughed uproariously.

     “Cute,” Mark said as he kissed Hannah on the top of her head.

     She looked at him and said, “Thanks honey. Your lips are cold.”

     Then she turned back to the girls and said, “I’ve got one… things you never hear a man say: ‘She’s a pretty girl, sure, but her breasts are just way too big.’”

     Another roar of laughter. Mark just shook his head.

     Mark said, “Ooh, ooh, I’ve got one! How about… things you never hear a woman say… ‘Let’s just sit around and bash our men. It’s fun and no one will think we’re crazy.’”

     The girls just looked at him.

     Sami said, “Don’t quit your day job, Mark.”

     “Fine. I’m going to go play with my son then.”

     As he walked away, he heard Sarah say, “Things you never hear a man say, ‘Hey, honey, let’s go shopping at the mall. I’ll carry your purse and all your bags for you.’”

     He went over to the side of the dining room, where little Markie was joyfully playing with a set of blocks. He stacked up five or six of them, then knocked them over and yelled, “Boom!” Then he did it again and again, laughing harder each time.

     Mark sat down on the floor beside him. “Hi, little man. What are you doing?”

     “Hi Daddy. I making blocks go boom.”

     “Did you know that your mom is silly?”

     Markie giggled a conspiratorial laugh.

     “Yep. I know. Mommy say you silly too.”

     Mark faked a shocked look at the comment, which caused his young son to fall over with laughter.

     “Hey, Markie, you wanna go chase the chickens around?”

     “Yay! Go chase chickens! Yay!”

     On their way out of the bay, Mark stole a look at his wife. She smiled and blew him a kiss. He stuck out his tongue.

Chapter 23

     Finding provisions in the Symco warehouse was nothing short of a miracle. The families on Buena Vista Drive had been running low on food and were having to ration it. The food from Symco brought them a newfound hope of survival as well as much needed nourishment.

     Still, finding the food created a new problem: what to do about the discovery.

     Several in the group thought it best to go back sparingly, just when they needed to. Their logic was that other people might be watching them come and go, headed to the warehouse with empty bags and coming back with full ones.

     It wasn’t that they weren’t willing to share with others necessarily. Their fear was that the marauders would discover their find and take it over by armed force. And that they’d go back to running out of things again.

     Others in the group saw it from a different perspective.

     “No. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next week or next month. We have to use this to our advantage. We have to keep this a secret as long as possible, and we need to go back every single day to gather more food. So that if it is taken over by marauders, we’ll at least have enough to keep us going for awhile.”

     The second group won the argument. It was just too hard knowing that the mountain of food existed, and resisting the urge to go get it.

     So the following day, Jesse Martinez went back to Symco with his two teenaged boys, filled the duffels full of an assortment of food, and trudged back home to divide the spoils up between the families.

     And thus became a routine that would stretch for months. Each day three of the men would head out, load up, and head back.

     The trip got easier over time, as the trail became easier to traverse. The snow got packed down and no longer had to be shoved out of the way. It helped that they had a few days that summer of temperatures above freezing. It melted about a foot of the snow pack. Much of it would come back in the winter, everyone knew. But it was a joyful sight to see. Partly because it made travel a bit easier for a time. But mostly because it served as a sign that there were indeed better days ahead, if they could just hold out.

     Each afternoon, the returning men assembled in Joe’s living room and carefully divided everything up. All of the families on the block got an equal share. Even those who didn’t make the trip. Everyone recognized and accepted that not everyone was up to the trip physically. But they all helped out in other ways. Even the Widow Spencer, as frail as she was, took care of the little ones and taught them how to read and write and spell. It was a community in every sense of the word. Frank was just sad that not all of the neighbors survived to this point.

     And he hoped they wouldn’t lose any more.

     Most of the items they brought back were staples. Dry stock like beans, rice and spaghetti noodles. Ramen noodles, and prepackaged and frozen goods. But occasionally they came across something special. Like the day they came home with several gallons of ice cream. Or the time they came home with twelve boxes of Kleenex tissue. For the first time in three years, the group could stop wiping their runny noses on their shirt sleeves.

     While scouring the garages of the dead or missing neighbors, Frank had managed to find several portable generators. He also found enough power cords to run a single electrical source to each of the homes. Gasoline to run the generators was obtained from cars whose owners were dead, and for two hours per day, he cranked up the generators and let each of the group have just a taste of what life once was, and would be again.

     Some of the neighbors plugged in a microwave oven during those two hours, and made a bag of stale popcorn or frozen TV dinners. Others, especially those with children, watched movies on DVD players. Joe and Julia always hooked up power to a small electric space heater. For two glorious hours, they sat in a large walk-in closet, with the door closed to hold the heat inside, and enjoyed the warmth.

     The Widow Spencer turned on the computer her grandson had given her a few months before the freeze. He’d spent more than a week trying to teach her how to use it, but she showed very little interest in the games or the internet. What she treasured were the four thousand family photos he’d loaded onto the hard drive for her. He’d spent weeks, he said, scanning each one just for her. Some of them went back to her childhood, and she was lost in her world of memories.

     Jason was her grandson’s name, she told Eva. She’d lost track of Jason and his family in the days before the freeze. They were driving to see her, from Indiana to Texas. The last she heard from them they were at a motel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Then nothing. She didn’t know if they had fallen victim to robbers and killers, or whether they’d just given up. She tried not to think about it much. It was much less painful to get lost in her photographs.

     “I want to live long enough to see green grass again,” she told Eva one evening while she was showing off her photos. “That’s all I want. Then the Lord can take me home to see my loved ones.”

     Eva kissed her on the forehead and said, “Not so fast. Once the grass is green again, Jason and his parents can resume their journey here to see you. And then you’ll want to hang around here longer, to make up for lost time. Just wait. You’ll see.”

     After five months of daily treks to Symco, Frank’s conscience began to bother him. They had enough food tucked away to last each family at least three more years. It was carefully hidden in attics, under beds, or even under the snow in the back yard, in case marauders overpowered them looking for food.

     And they would continue to get more, as long as they were able to safely go to and from Symco each day.

     But one night Frank had a bad dream that made him question the morality of claiming all the food for themselves.

     He asked to have a meeting of the families to discuss it.

     “You all know me. And you know that I’m a rational and God-fearing man. But lately I don’t feel like a good Christian. I feel no better than those marauders out there who take what they want regardless of who gets hurt in the process.

     “I had a dream the other night. I dreamed that the thaw finally happened, and that we all survived it. And in my dream, we ventured out, beyond our street, to see who else in the neighborhood survived.

     “I dreamed that we went into a house where we’d seen chimney smoke not too many weeks before, and that we were horrified by what we found. I dreamed that we found twenty or thirty people, mostly children, all dead by their own hand. And I dreamed that we found a note, to God, that was written by the last to die.

     “The note said:

Dear God, please forgive us. We have tried to be strong. We tried to hold out until the world was a better place, so that we could carry on for you again. But we failed in our efforts to find food. Even after several of our group took their own lives to leave more food for the children, it is all gone now. The poor children are suffering mightily. We must relieve them of their suffering. Forgive us, Lord, for what we are about to do. Please welcome us into Your kingdom.”

     Joe asked, “What are you proposing, Frank?”

     “I’m proposing that I venture out around the neighborhood. To the homes that have fires burning. And tell them there is food at Symco. There’s no reason for any more people to have to suffer and die.”

     “What if some of them are violent, Frank? What if they take over Symco and guard it with guns and keep it all to themselves?”

     “I’ll admit, there’s a possibility of that happening. But even if it does, I think we have enough food to keep us alive until the thaw. And we’ll continue to gather more food until it happens. If it happens. I have to believe in the good in people. I have to believe that anybody who goes into there will recognize that there’s enough for everybody, and there’s no reason to keep it all for themselves.”

     Joe held his tongue for a minute, as though trying to find the right words. Then he said, “I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism, Frank. I’ve seen too much evil since this whole thing happened. This freeze has brought out the worst of people. Hell, there’s been a dead marauder at the end of the block for two years now, frozen hard as a rock and warning others to keep away. That’s the only reason we haven’t been attacked, in my view.”

     He choked up for a moment, and went on.

     “But I’m a Christian too. And I know we have an obligation to try to save some of the others if we can. Do what you have to do, Frank. I will pray to God that we’re doing the right thing.”

     Eva took Frank’s hand and squeezed it firmly. He looked at her and she smiled warmly. Some of the others had reservations about Frank’s new mission. But not Eva. She knew he was doing God’s will and the right thing. And despite the risk, she was never more proud of him.

Chapter 24

     “He left again last night.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “Yes. I saw him hanging around the corner of the camp when I moved from the north lookout trailer to the south lookout trailer. After a few minutes I realized I left my cigarettes in the north trailer so I went back to get them. He wasn’t in the camp anymore, but I figured he just crawled into his sleeper and went to bed. I peeked out the hole at the front of the trailer anyway. And sure enough, there he was, trudging through the snow, headed toward that farmer’s house again.”

     Marty was concerned, but not overly so. Scott Burley was a grown man, after all, and free to go for a stroll whenever he wanted. Even a stroll through three feet of snow.

     “I wonder if this has anything to do with Tina avoiding him.”

     Tina walked up behind Marty and Lenny at that moment, as they sat beside the campfire waiting for the morning coffee to brew.

     “All right, y’all quit talking about me. Something to do with me avoiding who?”

     “Scott. I was standing watch last night and saw him sneak away again.”

     Tina said, “So what? Let him sneak away. Maybe he won’t come back.”

     “Why are you so mad at him, anyway?”

     “Because he came to me the other day and asked me outright if he could sleep with me. I told him no, and he started whining like a little baby. He said it wasn’t fair that I was taking care of you two occasionally even though I was married to Joe.”

     “And what did you tell him?”

     “I told him that Joe was a wonderful man and a fine husband, but that he’s known for a long time that he couldn’t tame me. And that he knew that going into the marriage, and accepted it. I told him that Joe and I don’t have a traditional marriage the way some holier than thou people think it should be and some people seem to have a problem with that. I also told him I don’t give a damn what other people think. I am my own woman and I’m not going to change.”

     “Did he back off at that point?”

     “Oh, hell no, he kept pushing. He didn’t back off until I told him look, I’m just not into fat guys. Not when there are other options. I told him he wouldn’t be a bad looking guy if he lost fifty pounds. I told him to lose some weight and then maybe I’d see him differently. And that’s true. I’m just not into fat guys. Never have been.”

     Lenny laughed and shook his head. “Tough love. What did he say when you told him that?”

     “I think I hurt his feelings. I feel bad about that, but like I said, he wouldn’t stop pushing. He said, ‘Fine! I don’t need you!’ and stormed off. That was three or four days ago, and we haven’t talked since.”

     Marty looked at Lenny.

     “Is he still gone?”

     “No, I heard him crank up his rig about two hours later. I think he snuck back in while I was in the east lookout trailer. He’s probably still sleeping.”

     Tina looked across the campfire at Lenny. She liked the way the light from the fire danced across his face.

     “So, Lenny, how are you coming on setting up your house in that empty trailer?”

     Lenny looked at her and couldn’t help but notice her wicked smile.

     “Pretty good. I found a good sized generator in one of the Home Depot trailers, so I have power now. A CD player and a small heater. And light to read by. It’s not quite home yet, but it’s getting there.”

     She got up and grabbed two frying pans from a cabinet to the right of the fire.

     “I’ll tell you what, boys. I’m going to fry up a skillet full of bacon and eggs. After we’re finished eating them, Lenny, why don’t you give me a grand tour of your place?”

     “Sure thing, Tina. I’d be happy to.”

     Marty said, “I haven’t seen it yet either. Mind if I tag along?”

     Lenny started to extend the same invitation to Marty, but Tina cut him off.

     “Would you mind waiting until later, Marty? Lenny and I have some things we’re going to do while we’re in there, and it requires a little bit of privacy.”

     Lenny looked at her in mock surprise and said, “We do?”

     Tina smiled.

     “Yep. We definitely do.”

     Marty laughed and said, “You kids have fun. I’ll check out the place another time.”

Chapter 25

     Hannah lay on Mark’s chest watching him sleep. Her head very gently rose and fell as he took each breath. She loved sleeping this way. It had a very calming effect on her, and helped her sleep better.

     She listened to his heartbeat, while reaching up and feeling her own pulse on the side of her neck. She wasn’t surprised to find that their hearts were beating in perfect sync. They were the perfect couple, after all. Everybody said so. And even if they hadn’t, Hannah knew it to be true anyway.

     They’d met on the campus of Baylor University, what seemed like an eternity before. Hannah was a beautiful astrophysicist. Men on campus told her constantly she could have been a model, and it was true. But to her, beauty was just a nice thing to have and could also be a hindrance. People looked at her and their jaws dropped. And a lot of them didn’t take her seriously. She always had to work harder than other students in her classes to prove she was worthy of being in their midst.

     When she made the Dean’s list and maintained one of the highest grade point averages at Baylor, they finally accepted her as more than just another beautiful girl. She had earned her place among her peers.

     They stopped questioning her brains and her resolve at that point. But they never stopped looking.

     Hannah’s beauty, although a bit of a curse at times, also had a good side. It brought her Mark.

     Back in those days, Mark was a semi-serious student, bouncing around campus at Baylor trying to find his way. He knew he wanted to be an engineer of some type. But several of the engineering fields interested him. He couldn’t make up his mind which one.

     It was while coming out of the administrative building one afternoon, after changing his class schedule for the fifth time, that he fell for Hannah.

     Literally.

     His head turned as she walked past, and as his eyes locked on her pretty face he stumbled down steps that he knew were there. He just lost focus and forgot.

     His books went flying everywhere and he tumbled to the ground.

     Hannah, as sweet as she was pretty, stopped to help him pick them up. Their eyes locked, and both of them felt it at the same time.

     Hannah would spend the next few days trying to find out more about the mysterious man who captured her heart. She didn’t believe in love at first sight, and they’d only exchanged a “thank you.” But somehow she had to find out who this man was and see him again.

     Mark, for his part, told all his friends that he was in love. They asked him who she was, and he said, “I don’t know. But I’m going to marry her someday.”

     They were able to find each other, of course. And they did get married, eventually.

     And both of them shared the belief that God had brought them together for a specific reason.

     After all, it was Hannah, the scientist, who had found out that a meteorite designated “Saris 7” was going to come crashing to earth and destroy most of humanity.

     And it was Mark who’d bought a winning lottery ticket that enabled them to survive the damage that Saris 7 caused.

     Without the other, they each would likely have perished.

     They both believed that God had put them together to save forty people, so that they could help repopulate the earth once the thaw came.

     And to that end, they were more than willing to do their part.

     Little Markie was sleeping in his own bed now, such as it was. It was the couch at the front of their RV that folded out into a bed, but it still counted. It was a big step for little Markie, and made him feel all grown up. After all, he was five now, and would be starting kindergarten at the mine’s one room schoolhouse in the fall. He was certainly big enough for his own bed.

     But Mark was a doting father, and still finely attuned to the vestiges of babyhood that little Markie still possessed. When Markie began to toss and turn in the mornings, entering that state where one can’t decide whether to sleep longer or wake up, Mark almost invariably heard him and started stirring as well.

     Hannah heard little Markie start to stir in the RV’s living room. And she watched Mark’s eyelids as they fluttered a couple of times, and then slowly opened.

     “Shhhh,” she whispered to him. “He’s not awake yet. He’s just beginning to stir.”

     He looked down at her lying on his chest and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

     “Good morning, gorgeous. How long have you been awake?”

     “Hi, handsome. Not long. I’ve just been laying here watching you. I so love you.”

     “Thank you, doll. I so love you too.”

     “You’d better,” she teased. “I’m the only one who will love you in your old age. Did you know you have a gray hair?”

     He looked at her with an expression best described as mild panic.

     “I do not!”

     She chuckled.

     “Do too! Right there in your sideburn, on the left side.”

     He crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom.

     While he was gone, Hannah took his pillow and held it close. She could still feel the warmth and smell the scent that his head left behind. She buried her face in it.

     Mark came back and crawled back in bed with her.

     “You were wrong. I don’t have a gray hair.”

     She drew back and examined him closely.

     “You plucked it out, you big cheater!”

     He laughed.

     “Yes, and next time I shave the sideburns are coming off, too. I’m way too young to be getting gray hairs.”

     She kissed him and smiled.

     “I never knew you were vain.”

     “I’m not vain. I just don’t want gray hair.”

     “Gray hair’s better than no hair. Maybe it’ll just all fall out and we can save some money on shampoo.”

     “You’re gonna get it.”

     “Ooh, promises promises.”

     At that moment the dinner bell in the dining room started to ring, indicating breakfast was ready.

     A sleepy eyed Markie walked into the couple’s bedroom.

     “Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddy. Let’s go eat.”

     Mark looked at Hannah and said, “He’s getting bossy, just like you.”

     She threw a pillow at him, and Markie squealed, “Oh, boy! Pillow fight!”

Chapter 26

     Throughout Mark and Hannah’s relationship they had grown to be wary when things went too smoothly for too long. Good times for them had a tendency to end with strikingly poor results.

     The night Hannah was offered a very prestigious, high paying job with NASA, for example, she came down with rheumatic fever and was bedridden for weeks. She understood when NASA had to withdraw the offer and give the position to someone else, but it still hurt.

     The day after Mark bought Hannah a winning lottery ticket that made them multi-millionaires, Hannah made the discovery that Saris 7 was going to collide with earth and kill most of mankind.

     The day after Mark proposed to Hannah, he was involved in a car accident on a highway outside of San Angelo. A long piece of angle iron slid off the end of a tractor trailer rig in front of Mark and came through his windshield. If he hadn’t been paying close attention at the time and quickly moved to the side it would have impaled him, through the chest and almost certainly his heart.

     It had always been that way. So it was easy to understand that whenever things seemed to be going well, Mark and Hannah had a very slight feeling of dread in the back of their minds that something, somehow, was getting ready to go terribly wrong.

     Hannah and little Markie sat at a table together in the dining room. Each of the tables were inlaid in various designs, and while mostly used for dining, each one had a dual purpose.

     One table near the front of the bay, for example, was inlaid with a Monopoly board design. A drawer underneath the table top held all the cash, tokens and deeds needed for a good game of Monopoly.

     Another table was inlaid with a Scrabble board, and its drawer contained Scrabble tiles, their holders, and a score pad.

     All twenty two of the tables came from the same manufacturing plant outside of Pittsburgh and each had a different theme.

     The table where Hannah and Markie sat on this particular afternoon was inlaid with a depiction of several huge Crayola crayons.

     Inside the drawer were several dozen crayons in various stages of use, and a handful of coloring books.

     Markie was a bit better than a scribbler now, but a bit short of DaVinci. He was putting the finishing touches on a purple dog, trying his best to stay mostly within the lines.

     “What are you going to name your dog, honey?”

     “Daddy.”

     She chuckled and said, “Well, that’s appropriate.”

     “Mommy, when can we go outside again?”

     “I don’t know, honey. Why do you ask?”

     “I watch TV sometimes. All the kids get to play outside. Climb trees and run in the grass. How come we can’t?”

     “We will soon, tiny sailor, I promise. Right now it’s just too cold outside. But in a couple of years, all the snow will go away and it will be warm again. And then we can be outside.”

     “Can I climb trees like the kids on the TV?”

     “Yes, sir, you certainly can.”

     “Mommy, will you do something nice for me?”

     “Sure. What?”

     “Will you not call me tiny sailor anymore? I am five now. I’m not tiny anymore.”

     She laughed.

     “Okay. But can I call you little sailor?”

     “Okay. That’s much better.”

     Both of them heard a commotion and looked up to see Brad running full speed through the mine, toward the livestock bay.

     Hannah was puzzled, but not overly concerned. Markie went back to his purple dog.

     Less than a minute later, Brad ran by again, going the other direction, with Mark by his side keeping pace. Hannah noticed that Mark was still wearing the blue rubber gloves he always wore when he milked Daisy the cow.

     This time she was concerned.

     “Mommy, why is Daddy running?”

     “I don’t know, honey. Let’s go find out.”

     They left the crayons scattered haphazardly on the table. Hannah grabbed her son’s hand and headed quickly to the east side of the mine, where the living quarters were.

     Hannah had a terrible sense of dread, and as soon as they turned the corner into Bay 5, her worst fears were confirmed.

    There, sitting on the steps in front of Phyllis Snyder’s RV, was Debbie Bay, Phyllis’ daughter and Mark’s sister. Her face was buried in her hands. Helen Kenney had her arms wrapped around her, trying her best to console her.

     Mark was nowhere to be seen, but Hannah knew exactly where he was. He was inside, with his mother’s body, probably crying inconsolably.

     Hannah had to get to him. He needed her more at this moment than ever before.

     Hannah took little Markie over to Helen and Debbie. Helen broke away from Debbie and reached for little Markie.

     Hannah looked at her son and said, “Honey, I want you to go see Auntie Helen for a few minutes, and I’ll be right back, okay?”

     Markie had his own plans.

     “No. Wanna go inside and watch cartoons with Grammy.”

     Sarah and Sami came running too, attracted by all the commotion.

     Helen said, “She left the kitchen a couple of hours ago. Said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to lay down. I came by to check on her and to bring her a bowl of hot soup, and I found her. I ran to find Debbie, and Debbie tried CPR. She even tried shocking her heart with one of those portable heart packs. But we both knew she was long gone.”

     Hannah fought back the tears. So did Helen, but she was losing the battle. Helen caught her eye and mouthed the words, “Go. He’ll be okay.”

     Hannah found Mark kneeling at his mother’s bedside, his face buried in her shoulder. He was trembling. She knew there was nothing she could say to comfort him. She knelt down beside him and placed her hand on the back of his neck. He collapsed in her arms and soaked her blouse. Neither said a word.

     After he composed himself, Mark kissed his mother on the forehead and said, “I love you, Mom. Peaceful journey to you. Take care of Dad and keep him out of trouble. I’ll see you again someday.”

     Then he pulled the sheet up and covered her face. He had seen her for the last time, save his memories.

Chapter 27

     Little Markie, being the youngest citizen of the mine, received plenty of attention in the days following his Grammy’s death. Everyone wanted to hold him and hug him, which he enjoyed. But he couldn’t understand all the sadness and tears.

     Death was a concept that he couldn’t quite get his hands around.

     “Grammy went to heaven to join Gramps,” Mark told him.

     “I don’t know Gramps. Is he Grammy’s daddy?”

     “No, he was my daddy. He was married to Grammy before he went to heaven.”

     “Oh. Are they going to come and visit us?”

     “No, I’m afraid not. Heaven is too far away.”

     “Then can we go to heaven and visit them? We can drive truck. It goes far.”

     “Someday we’ll all go to heaven and see them again. But it won’t be for a very long time.”

     They wrapped her body in white sheets and laid her gently on the floor in the back of bay twenty four. It struck Mark that this is what Jesus must have looked like when He was laid to rest. But he knew that she wouldn’t be coming back. Not now, not ever.

     The one thing they had never planned for was a burial while in the mine. Under the bleak circumstances, it should have been a basic requirement. Perhaps they had just been too busy to consider it. Or maybe subconsciously they just didn’t want to.

     They covered her body with salt from the tunnel. The burial mound stood a full three feet tall, and would compact over time.

     Mark knew that the body wouldn’t decompose into bones. He knew enough about the mysterious works of nature to know that the body would mummify as the salt absorbed the bodily fluids and protected it from parasites. This was good, because it gave them the option of moving the body later on, after the breakout, into a family plot they’d set aside in the compound.

     As usual, Karen was full of surprises. She’d stayed up all night the night before painting a piece of scrap plywood into the most beautiful of gravestones. She’d have loved it, and she’d have been very proud.

     Bryan, the closest thing they had in the mine to a preacher, said some pretty words and offered some comfort to the grieving. His words didn’t help the situation, of course. But they bought some time before the tears started flowing.

     And everyone, except little Anna, did a good job of holding back the tears. That was, until Karen pulled another surprise by producing a single yellow rose and placing it on the finished grave mound.

     Karen had been growing a single rosebush in the back of the greenhouse the whole time, unbeknownst to anyone other than her and Hannah. For special occasions, she’d tell everyone later.

     Special occasions, she’d say, like for a mother who’d just given birth to a new baby. Or to the elders, on a milestone wedding anniversary.

     Or, for a beloved who was taken away far too soon.

     Anna and David sang Amazing Grace and Rock of Ages, just the way Uncle Joe had taught them. Joe accompanied them on an acoustic guitar, and it was at that moment Mark noticed for the first time how his niece and nephew were growing up into fine young adults. And he let his thoughts wander for a moment about the cycle of life. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away…

     There was something about the simple grave, the pure white virtue of the mound, the single yellow rose. It was… beautiful. As sad as it was, it was indeed beautiful, and befitting of the life which laid beneath it.

     Mark knew this would be one of his favorite places to come in the months and years ahead. He knew it would offer him solace and peace, and a place to lose himself in his thoughts.

      He also knew that his love for this woman, and her love for him, wasn’t going to end just because he could no longer feel her tender touch, and watch her laughter. No, despite all they had been through, and even as the whole world was dying around them, that love would stay intact. Forever.

     Bryan would come back later in the day and install a spotlight, which would shine onto the grave day and night, as long as they were in the mine. He even installed a battery backup, so in the event of a power outage, her light would be the only one shining. A beacon in the night, he said.

     Bryan said it was the least he could do for her, since she’d brightened the lives of so many during the course of her lifetime.

     And all of them wondered, but dared not speak the words, whether she would suffer this indignity alone, or would have some company laying beside her, in eternal repose, at some point before they were able to break out.

Chapter 28

     Frank Woodard stuffed provisions into an olive drab duffle bag and put it on his back. Jesse Martinez asked him, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come along? There is strength in numbers, you know. And you should at least take your gun.”

     “No. They will view a single unarmed man as less of a threat. They are all probably as frightened of outsiders as we are. I need to be able to gain their trust, and show them I am no threat to them.”

     “And tell me again, why are you risking your life to help people you don’t even know?”

     “I don’t know, Jesse. It’s just something I feel I have to do.”

     Eva interjected, “He’s doing it because he’s a man of God. And because it’s what Jesus would have done if He were here.”

     She kissed her husband and admonished him.

     “Don’t take any unnecessary chances, honey. You owe me that much. If you feel threatened in any way, you get out of there and come back home to me. Understand?”

     “Yes, ma’am.”

     He saluted her and she laughed. It seemed to lighten the moment.

     Jesse Martinez walked him out to the street.

     “Jesse, I have a favor to ask of you.”

     “Frank, don’t even. I know what you’re going to ask, and you know my answer to it. You know damn well that if you don’t come back we will take good care of Eva. She is as much a part of my family now as my own children. You both are. You know that.”

     Frank never believed in man hugs before the freeze. But the frozen world had changed them all in so many ways. He hugged Jesse unashamedly and said, “Thank you, my friend.”

     Then he trudged off down the street toward the barricade of cars at the end of the block.

     Frank went two blocks over, to Maple Street, and one block south to Hollow Tree Drive. There, four houses from the corner, he found what he was looking for. Smoke coming from a chimney.

     It might be easy to hide in a world where three feet of snow blanketed the earth. But in such a world it was impossible to survive without fire, and the smoke would always give you away.

     The house was completely ringed with parked cars, which formed a circle of protection around it. Frank approached the house, hoping he wasn’t making a dreadful mistake.

     He stayed outside the ring of cars. If he was shot at, he reasoned, he would be able to dive down and take cover behind them.

     “Hello in the house!”

     There was dead silence. Not even the wind blew. The seconds seemed to take forever to tick by.

     “Hello in the house! My name is Frank. I mean you no harm!”

     Frank could not see what was happening in the house, of course, but he imagined a group of people scampering around, watching from behind the window blinds and heavy curtains. Wondering who this fool was and what he wanted.

     Or maybe it was just a single old codger who had a rifle trained on Frank, pulling back on the trigger at this very moment.

     Frank was getting ready to yell again when the front door opened about four inches.

     He couldn’t see anything. No one stepped out. But he heard a man’s voice yell, “What in hell do you want?”

     “I come in peace. I am not armed. I am just checking on my neighbors and friends. Do you have everything you need?”

     “It’s none of your damn business what we have!”

     “Fair enough. I brought you food in case you need it. I will leave it here. Then I will leave. You have my word, I mean you no harm.”

     Frank used his forearm to brush snow from the hood of one of the cars. Then he reached into the duffle bag and took out four boxes of spaghetti noodles and six jars of chicken bouillon. He placed them in plain view on the car’s hood.

     The two combined together with water would feed a dozen people for three or four days.

     Then he turned and left.

     He was forty feet away when he heard someone yelling again.

     “Mister, wait!”

     Frank knew it was dangerous, but he stopped and turned anyway.

     The door was open now, and the man he’d been conversing with was on the porch. In the yard was a teenage boy, maybe seventeen. He yelled, “Thank you!” as he scooped up the provisions and scurried back inside. The door closed quickly behind him.

     On the next block, Frank met two armed men at the end of the street pulling guard duty.

     “Stop right there! What do you want?”

     Frank dropped the bag and raised his hands.

     “My name is Frank. I live a few streets over. I mean you no harm. I am just checking on my neighbors and bringing them food if they need it.”

     “You have food?”

     “Yes. I will show you if you promise not to shoot me.”

     “Move slowly.”

     Frank slowly opened the duffle bag and removed two boxes of spaghetti noodles, three jars of chicken bouillon, and a six pack of canned Vienna sausages.

     “Canned goods are no good.”

     “No, these are fine,” Frank said. “There isn’t enough water in them to make the cans swell or break. Once you thaw them out they’re good. I eat them all the time.”

     One of the men seemed meaner than the other.

     “What if we just shoot you and take the whole bag?”

     “Well, you could. But then I wouldn’t be able to tell you where to get a lot more.”

     “What are you talking about?”

     “I know where there is a warehouse. A warehouse that has lots of food. Enough for me and mine, and for you and yours.”

     “How do we know you ain’t lying?”

     “I came unarmed. I am giving you food. Do you think I would do that if I meant you harm?”

     “Where do you live?”

     Frank wasn’t quite ready to share that information.

     “Not far. Think it over. Talk to the rest of your clan. I will be back in a couple of days. If one of you wants to know where the food is, I will take you and show you. If you don’t want to know, then just let me go in peace and I won’t bother you again.”

     He stacked the food in a pile on the snow and put the duffle on his back again. It was considerably lighter now.

     He looked at the men and felt pity for them. They couldn’t take their eyes off the food.

     Frank trudged away, fully expecting every step to be his last. He thought there was a better than average chance he’d be shot in the back of the head.

     But he wasn’t.

     Frank’s next stop, two blocks over, was a bit more heartening. He was greeted by a man and a woman who said they were the only ones left on their block. They’d been eating from all their neighbors’ houses, but the food was about gone. And as little as they had, they still invited Frank in to share their meager food before they knew what was in his backpack.

     “You’re the only ones left? What happened?”

     The man said, “The outlaws came. They went from house to house and took whatever they wanted. They killed everybody in the houses. Killed the pets too. The dogs and the cats. The only way we survived was by crawling into the crawlspace above the ceiling and hiding. All of our food was hidden in the box spring and under the snow. When they didn’t see any food, I think they thought we left like a lot of others. They left.

     “We went through the neighbor’s houses one by one. Most of them hid most of their food too, and we had to search hard to find it. We ate some of the dead animals too, I’m ashamed to say. I hope that God will forgive us for that.”

     The woman was probably about thirty but easily looked twice that.

     “Frank, you’ve been out and about. How many people are left alive out there?”

     He sadly said, “Not many, I’m afraid. Maybe a handful of people on some streets. Most streets, none at all. Most people either left and never came back, killed themselves, or froze to death in their sleep.”

     Frank left them the rest of his food and told them he’d be back in a couple of days to take the man to the warehouse.

     On his way back home with an empty duffle bag, Frank once again walked past the two men standing guard at the end of their block.

     This time they waved at him and smiled.

Chapter 29

    Marty happened to be on watch in the middle of the afternoon when he heard someone yelling on the north side of the compound. It pissed him off because they hadn’t expected intruders coming from the north. The only thing north of the camp were three tankers full of diesel fuel, which they used to run their generators, and a huge farmer’s field.

     Marty scrambled to the north trailer that served as their observation post. He looked out the peep hole and saw the farmer they’d leased the field from for a stolen trailer of meat. Standing beside the farmer was a young girl.

     “I wonder what the hell he wants,” Marty mumbled to himself. He heard the farmer yelling, “Hello in the camp!”

     Marty yelled back, “Stay there! I’m coming out!”

     The farmer gave no indication he’d heard Marty, which came as no surprise given the thickness of the trailer walls. Marty scrambled outside the trailer and yelled to Tina to take over his watch. Then he laid down the heavy sheets of plywood that were leaning against the bottom of the trailer and crawled out to the outside world.

     Tina moved to the south lookout trailer and stood watch on the side they’d always presumed was their primary threat. Lenny, more of curiosity than anything else, took Marty’s place in the north trailer and peeped through the hole.

     He saw Marty shake the farmer’s hand, then the girl’s. He couldn’t hear what they said to each other, since they were a good forty yards away. But he could tell they were having a heated discussion. Marty paced back and forth in front of them, kicking at the heavy snow in anger. At one point he took off his heavy gloves and slammed them to the ground.

     As for the girl, she had her arms wrapped tightly around herself and stared intently at the ground. Lenny thought that quite odd. He couldn’t tell, though, if her actions were those of someone who was very cold, or very much in distress.

     Finally, Marty turned to return to the camp and motioned for the farmer and the girl to follow.

     On hands and knees, the trio crawled under the trailer and into the compound. Lenny jumped down from the trailer and asked Marty, “What’s up?”

     Marty ignored him, but looked at Joe.

     He growled, “Where the hell is Scott?”

     “I don’t know, Marty. Probably crashed out in his sleeper as usual. Why?”

     “Go roll his ass out of bed and drag him out here.”

     Marty offered his guests a cup of coffee. They both eagerly accepted, and he could tell by the expression on their faces that they hadn’t had any in awhile.

     Scott Burley crawled out of his sleeper cab and stumbled to the ground, half asleep. He looked around and saw the farmer and the girl, and was instantly wide awake.

     And terrified.

     “Get over here, Scott. We’ve got something to discuss.”

     Scott stumbled to the others as though he were a condemned man walking to the death chamber.

     “Joe, Lenny, you remember Mason Bennett. He’s the farmer who was kind enough to let us set up camp on his land.”

     Joe and Lenny shook Mason’s hand. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but they could tell by Marty’s tone that Mason was no threat to them.

     “Tina! Come here a minute, okay?”

     Tina came to the edge of the trailer and looked at Marty. He asked her, “All clear out there?”

     “Yep.”

     “Good. Come down here a minute, would you? I want everybody to hear this.”

     Tina hopped down and joined the group.

     Marty turned to Mason and said, “Sir, would you tell everybody else what you told me out there?”

     Mason had tears in his eyes as he began his tale.

     “This is my daughter, Taylor. She’s but fifteen years old. My youngest. My baby.

     “She came to Jane and me this morning bawling like a baby. It took us forever to get her calmed down enough to get words out of her. Then she told us.”

     He glared at Scott with pure hatred.

     “She told us a man came through her window in the night. Put a hand over her face as she was sleeping. Whispered to her that he would break her neck if she screamed or called out.

     Taylor looked down as the story was told. Partly out of shame, partly in anger. Tina went to her and wrapped her arms around her.

     “He took my baby’s innocence. He brutalized her. He was no better than a vicious animal, and my baby will never be whole again. We came here for vengeance.”

     Joe saw the way Mason looked at Scott.

     “But how do you know it was him?”

     “The trail in the snow led straight from her bedroom window to here. It was the only trail away from the house. And there’s something else too. There were tracks under each of the south windows. Some old and covered over with new snow. Some more fresh. He’s been watching her, it looks like quite a while, through the windows. Probably my other daughters too. Like a damned pervert.”

     Mason looked at his daughter.

     “Honey, is that the man who did that to you?”

     Taylor continued to look down. She could not make the words come out. She shook her head yes.

     “Don’t feel ashamed,” Tina told her as she held her tightly. “You did nothing wrong. Don’t you dare take on this man’s shame for him.”

     At that moment, Scott Burley fell to his knees and begged, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just watching, and I… I don’t know. Something just came over me. I don’t know how it happened.”

     Mason reached inside his jacket and pulled out a 9 mm handgun. This was something no one expected. Mason leveled it at Scott’s chest. Joe was ready to charge him, but Marty put a hand on Joe’s shoulder to hold him back. All of them carried side arms, but Mason caught them off guard and had the drop on all of them.

     But Marty sensed that Mason wasn’t interested in a shootout. He only wanted justice for his daughter.

     The others took Marty’s cue and abandoned any plans to escalate the situation. None of them had a clue what was to happen next.

     Scott was the next one to speak.

     “Please, sir. Don’t shoot, I’m begging you. I’ll make it up to you somehow. I’ll make it up to the girl. Just don’t kill me.”

     Mason was unmoved. “I am a Christian man, and not a man of violence. But this thing you did cannot be undone. It cannot be made whole again. The Bible says an eye for an eye. A life for a life. And what you did to my baby was just as bad as killing her.”

     His words were strong, but his morals were too. As Scott knelt on the ground before him, tears pouring down his face and begging for his life, Mason’s face began to quiver. Then he dropped his hand. He could not take this man’s life, despite the evil that he’d done.

     Everyone present thought that was the end of it. Scott breathed  a sigh of relief.

     Then Taylor walked to where her father stood and took the gun from his quivering hands. The shame that had been on her face a minute before had been replaced by one of rage. Fire flew from her eyes as she raised the weapon again and pointed it straight at Scott’s heart.

     “You son of a bitch! You’re going straight to hell!”

     She placed both hands on the butt of the pistol in a shooter’s grip as Scott closed his eyes and waited for the explosion and the eternal blackness that would follow it.

     But Taylor’s hands, too, began to quiver. She, like her father, was too good a person to take another human life, no matter how much he deserved it.

     Taylor’s glare never waivered. Scott would not, could not look in her eyes. And finally, she dropped the gun in the dirt and turned away.

     Marty looked at Mason’s gun lying on the ground. Then he reached to the holster on his side and drew his own gun.

     Without so much as a single word or a moment’s hesitation, he pointed his gun at Scott Burley’s head and shot him at point blank range.

     Scott fell to the side, eyes wide open. But they’d never see again. Tina gasped and Taylor fell into her arms. The others looked at Marty for an explanation.

     Marty said, “We are not perfect people. We are all sinners in some form or fashion. But there are some things we just cannot tolerate.”

     Everyone else was frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Marty picked up Mason’s weapon and handed it back to him.

     “I’m sorry. I wish there was more we could do to help. But I can promise your daughter that he will never come to her again.”

     Joe grabbed a canvas tarp and dragged it over Scott’s body. Even in death, they were disgusted at the sight of him and didn’t want to see him.

     Mason and Taylor stayed for a time, had their coffee, and accepted a bag of ground coffee to take back home with them.

     “How is your food stock holding out?” Marty asked them.

     Mason lowered his eyes, as though ashamed. “It’s getting sparse. We’re having to ration everything now, to make it last as long as we can.”

     Marty understood Mason’s shame. No man likes to admit that he cannot provide for his family.

     “Well, don’t worry about that anymore. The snow’s still too deep to drive another trailer of food up to your farm house. But we’ve got plenty. And we’ll make sure you won’t run out.”

     Tina hadn’t left the compound in four years. But as she held Taylor, she made her a promise to come and check on her and the rest of the family periodically, and to find something nice to bring each time.

     She said, “Sometimes when bad things happen, we need someone to talk to. I know, because there were some terrible things that happened to me too at your age. I remember needing someone to talk to, but not feeling comfortable talking to my parents or sisters. If that happens to you, you tell your daddy to walk you over here to visit with me. I’m an excellent listener. And I’ll make sure you get back home safe.”

     Joe walked away and climbed aboard the big red trailer with “KFC” on the side. He jumped back down with a ten pound case of frozen chicken pieces.

     He handed it to Mason and said, “You come back every day or two and carry back what you can until you’re well stocked again. I promise you that as soon as that snow pack melts enough, I’ll haul a choice trailer full of food up the road to your farmhouse.”

     Mason didn’t know what to say. He could find no words, so Taylor found them for him.

     “Thank you. God bless you all.”

Chapter 30

     “Okay, now that all of the old business is out of the way, we’ll move on to new business.

     “Now that fall has settled in and the temperatures outside have returned to freezing again, Hannah and Sarah have crunched some numbers for us. I’m not a scientist, and I’d screw up whatever the numbers mean, so I’ll just shut up and let them share the results with you.”

     Mark stepped to one side as the girls walked to the front of the dining room. Hannah whispered to Mark, “You might want to sit down, honey. This will take a few minutes.”

     Sarah began.

     “Okay, as you know, the security team manning the security control center keeps a constant watch on the monitor watching the thermometer and snow gauge in the front of the mine. Any day the temperature goes above thirty two degrees they log it into their book so we can keep track of it. They also log in the depth of the snow at the same time every day so we can keep track of how much of it melts away.

     “As Mark said, the weather outside has gone below freezing again and as late as it is into fall, we think the thaw days are over for this year.

     “Hannah and I have crunched the numbers, taking into account that we had twenty seven days this year above freezing, and twelve days last year. We did some calculations and can presume that next year we’ll have about sixty days of thaw, give or take a couple.

     “That is significant, because it’s almost enough to grow a wheat crop. Not quite, but almost.”

     Hannah took over.

     “And it also means that for the first time, we know when we can break out of the mine. Because next year’s thaw period will be almost long enough to grow crops, then we have no doubts at all we’ll be able to grow crops the following year.

     “So, also for the first time, we have a breakout date. We can safely move from the mine to the compound when the thaw starts a year from this April.”

     Sarah went to the whiteboard and used an erasable marker to write the number 590 in large red letters.

     Hannah went on.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a countdown calendar.”

     A cheer went up around the room, and several people cried. Five hundred and ninety days was a long time away, to be sure. But it was the light at the end of the tunnel they’d been waiting for, for a very long time.

     “Any questions?”

     Brad called out from the back, “Does that mean we’ll have fresh fruits and vegetables to eat?”

     “Well, that’s a complicated answer. As far as the crops we grow in the fields after we break out, the answer is no. Karen will have enough fresh seeds for us to grow just a few dozen corn plants, a few dozen wheat plants and a few dozen sorghum plants. Those plants aren’t for eating. They are to provide more seeds so that we can plant an entire field of crops the following year.

     “But remember that we have two large greenhouses over there to grow other plants. We don’t know if they are damaged by the snowfall. The roofs are steep and equipped with what’s called “snow cutters” to prevent ice and snow buildup on them. Hopefully that prevented the roofs from collapsing.

     “If that’s the case, if the roofs didn’t collapse, then the greenhouses are large enough to grow enough vegetables and berries for us to have them at most meals.

     “The citrus trees we have in the small greenhouse here in the mine will be moved to the large greenhouses. Since the greenhouse here is so small, and since its purpose was to provide seeds instead of food, Karen has kept the trees closely cropped so that they only produced a couple of fruit per year.

     “Once the trees are moved, we will no longer have to crop them. The large greenhouses will provide plenty of room for the trees to grow. These types of trees typically increase their yield three fold with each passing year. So the first year after breakout, for example, we will expect only three oranges. The year after that, it should increase to about nine or so. The year after that, twenty seven or so. The fourth year is when we can expect to start getting a fairly good yield. Eighty one oranges or so. The fifth year, over two hundred.

     “As for the other fruit and nut trees, one of the first things we did when we purchased the land for the compound was plant an orchard. We consulted a professional agronomist to determine which strains of trees were most hearty and most likely to produce good fruit quickly. And then we bought those trees and planted them.

     “We knew that after a seven year freeze, a lot of trees wouldn’t come back at all. The more established the root system, and the heartier the tree, the more likelihood we’d have of our orchard coming back.

     “We planted ten trees each of apples, peaches, pears, apricots, plums, pecans and walnuts. We don’t know if they’ll come back, but if they do, they will bear fruit within two years.”

     Sami asked if there was a backup in case none of the trees survived.

     Hannah looked at Karen and asked, “Karen, can you take it from here?”

     Karen stood up and said, “Yes. We recognized early on that there was a chance that none of the trees in the orchard would survive. Mark and Bryan planted them as soon as they could, but their root system was less than three years old at the time of the freeze. That may have worked against them. Or, it’s possible that their youth might have helped them, in the same way a teenager is stronger than an old man.

     “The problem is, the earth hasn’t been through a seven year freeze. At least not since humans have been around. So we just aren’t sure what will happen. We can guess and speculate all day long. But in the end we’ll have to wait until the thaw comes, and see what happens.

     “Having said all that, we recognized the need for a plan B. So when we came in here, we brought with us seeds from all the plants I mentioned before. A year in, before the seeds were too old to be stable, I planted two of each type of tree in the greenhouse. I’ve been careful to keep them cropped to keep them from growing too big and taking over the greenhouse. Each of them is only about three feet high.

     “We will transfer them to the larger greenhouses, where they will be allowed to grow freely. If we get most or all of our orchard trees back, and if they bear fruit, that’s great. If we don’t, we will take these trees and transplant them in the orchard when it’s safe to do so. We can also use the seeds from the fruit they bear to plant additional trees in the orchard.

     “That’s what makes the answer to your question so complicated, Brad. There are so many factors we simply don’t know. The best case scenario, of course, is that all of the orchard trees come back and bear fruit the following year. If that happens, fruit and nuts should be plentiful except for the citrus which will take a little longer.

     “The worst case scenario is that few or none of the trees come back. If that happens, then fruit and nuts will continue to be scarce for the next three to four years.”

     It wasn’t the quick answer to his question that Brad had hoped for, but the girls had explained it well.

     “Thank you.”

     “You’re welcome. Are there any other questions about fruits and vegetables, or about our countdown calculations or anything?”

     There were no other questions. At least half of the group was punch drunk with elation, and hadn’t heard much conversation after the breakout announcement.

     Mark stood up again and asked, “Is there any other new business?”

     There was none.

     “Very well. I’ve been informed that Sarah and Bryan have an announcement they’d like to share with you.”

     Sarah held her place at the front of the group and Bryan joined her. Mark and Hannah returned to their seats. Mark looked at his wife and saw tears in her eyes. Hannah loved romantic moments.

     Sarah asked Bryan if he wanted to speak, and he took a slight bow to give her the honors. Sarah faced the group and said, “Bryan and I have finally set our wedding date. It will be on December 24th. I asked Bryan what he wanted for Christmas this year and he said he wanted my hand in marriage.

     Joe yelled from the back, “Yeah, but what’s the cheapskate giving you?”

     Sarah looked at Bryan and said, “His last name.”

     Then she kissed him. Everyone smiled and some of the women in the group dabbed at their eyes. Mark and Hannah looked at each other, not realizing they were thinking the same thought. They both wished that Phyllis was still there to share the moment.

Chapter 31

     Little Markie walked out of his one room schoolhouse and went bounding home, where he found Hannah cleaning the RV.

     He was proud of himself, and felt all grown up that he was allowed to walk the hundred yards home each day.

     “Hey Mommy! Mommy, guess what?”

     “Hi, little sailor. What?”

     “Today we took a field trip.”

     She smiled. She knew in advance about the elementary school’s excursion. But she pretended not to. It was much more fun that way, and gave little Markie so much more joy.

     She feigned a look of surprise.

     “A field trip? Wow, that is so exciting! Where on earth did you go?”

     “We went to the greenhouse. Aunt Karen showed us all the plants. And do you know what she gave us?”

     “No, what?”

     “Strawberries! Two of them. She gave each of us two of them. Julie ate the green part but I didn’t. I’m smarter than that. And besides, after Julie ate the green part Aunt Karen told the rest of us not to.”

     “Wow! That’s amazing! And what did you think about the strawberries? Did you like them?”

     “Oh, Mommy, they were so yummy. They were sweet but kinda sour. Have you ever had strawberries?”

     She scratched her head and pretended to fall into deep thought.

     “I think so. But it’s been so long I don’t really remember. Did you bring one of them home to share with me?”

     He looked at his feet and tried to find a good excuse.

     “Well, I was going to…”

     She laughed and cut him off.

     “That’s okay little man.” She kissed him on the mouth and said, “You still taste like strawberries. So you shared with me after all.”

     He smiled for a moment. Then his smile turned to chagrin, and he said, “Ah, mom. I’m too old for kisses. I’ll be six soon.”

     Her shocked look returned, and she put her hands on her hips and pretended to scold him.

     “Mark David Snyder! You will never ever ever be too old for your mother’s kisses.”

     “Not even when I’m a million?”

     “Not even then.”

     He smiled, suddenly okay with it.

     “Okay.”

     “Now, then. What else did you do in school today?”

     “I wrote my numbers. Starting at one and going through ten. Miss Helen said it was very good. Except…”

     “Except what?”

     He looked down. “Except… I wrote my seven backwards. But Miss Helen said that was okay, that we would work on it.”

     Hannah hugged him and smiled.

     “Do you want to know a secret?”

     Markie loved secrets. He equated secrets with the spies he sometimes watched on the “Spy Kids” movies.

     “Yeah, what?”

     “Remember, it’s our secret.”

     “Okay, Mommy. What?”

     “Your Daddy is thirty years old, and he still writes his sevens backwards.”

     “For the reals?”

     “Yup. For the reals.”

     He suddenly started laughing uproariously. Hannah aggravated the situation by tickling him, and Mark happened to walk in the door at that exact moment.

     He shouted in mock alarm, “Don’t worry, Markie! I’ll save you from the tickle monster!”

     Mark jumped in the middle of the fray and held Hannah’s arms so little Markie could get his revenge. Hannah wasn’t really ticklish, but pretended to be. The whole idea of tickling his Mommy gave Markie so much joy, she wasn’t about to deprive him of it.

     When Markie was all finished, the three collapsed in a heap, worn out and laughed out and tickled out. But not loved out. Not this family. Not ever.

     Markie said, “Mommy, how come cousin David has a sister and I don’t?”

     “Well, honey, God just hasn’t thought it was time to give you a sister yet. Do you want a sister?”

     “Yes, please. I think a sister would be cool. Would you ask God if I can have one?”

     Hannah looked at Mark, who just smiled.

     “Sure, honey. We will ask Him. And you can ask Him yourself if you want to, when you say your prayers tonight.”

     “Okay.”

     “But you realize that God might think you need a brother instead of a sister. Would it be okay if he sent you a brother instead?”

     “Sure. But I’d rather have a sister.”

     “Why?”

     “So we can name her Phyllis. I miss Grammy. I think Grammy would like it if we named her Phyllis. Don’t you think?”

     Hannah had to turn away.

     Mark picked up his son and hugged him.

     “You’re right, little man. I think Grammy would like that a lot.”

Chapter 32

     Bryan and Sarah had asked the elders for a private audience. They went before them and tried to explain their predicament. There was no longer a government on the outside of the mine. Might never be one again. And they didn’t want to wait that long to be married anyway.

     “We want to be married on Christmas Eve, but we want it to be official. Since there is no government and no license and no preachers, we want to ask your permission to proceed. That will make it official enough for us.”

     And so began the clan’s tradition of going before the elders to ask for permission to marry. No one knew it yet, but in the years ahead, it would become one of the most cherished of all the traditions passed down from the mine to future generations.

     But that was the future. Here, now, in the mine, Sarah and Bryan were nervous. What if the elders decided for whatever reason it wouldn’t be a good idea? What if they asked the couple to wait until the breakout, to see if somehow the local government was still up and running? What if they insisted that they find an ordained minister on the outside, after the breakout, so that the marriage would be legal in God’s eyes?

     But the elders merely asked, “Do you love each other, and will you place one another above all else, for the rest of your natural lives?”

     Bryan said, “Yes. And even longer.”

     Sarah looked in his eyes and said, “Until the end of time.”

     The elders looked at each other in agreement, and Bryan’s Uncle Marty, the chief elder, said, “Then you have our blessing. May you live long, love long, and be fruitful. And congratulations.”

     Hannah had enough foresight to bring her wedding dress into the mine before the freeze. It had to be hemmed, since Sarah was five inches shorter than Hannah. But the hem was done carefully, so that it could be removed at a future date. Sami had already let it be known that she had “next” on the dress, and she was almost as tall as Hannah.

     The rings were more of a problem. There simply weren’t any in the mine, and no way to get any.

     On the night he proposed to Sarah, Bryan realized he had no ring to place on her finger. He took a dark blue wire tie from a loaf of bread, wrapped it around her ring finger, and looked into her eyes.

     “You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that you have a stranglehold on my heart. It’s no longer mine. I just carry it for you now. It’s yours now and always will be.

     “It pains me that I have no real ring to give you. This is all I have, but I hope you’ll accept it with all my love. If you look at it, you’ll see that two sides came together and became one. Then they became intertwined. As simple as it is, it is symbolic of us. We met as two. Now we are one. Will you marry me?”

     Sarah cried and said, “After all that, how could I say no?”

     Karen, the only true artist in the mine, came to the rescue once again. Unbeknown to everyone, she spend three weeks fashioning his and hers wedding bands from a pair of silver spoons. She was able to melt them down, form rings, and etch the rings with a fashionable design. She presented the rings to the couple a week before the wedding as an early wedding gift.

     “I’m sorry there are no diamonds. Maybe these will do temporarily, until we get out of here and you can find something better.”

     Sarah stammered between her tears, “Oh, Karen, these are perfect. They are beautiful. How could I ever find anything more beautiful than these?”

     It was a simple ceremony. Mark presided over it on behalf of his brother, who would ordinarily have performed the wedding were he not the groom. It went off without a hitch, and as the husband kissed his bride for the first time there was a thunderous round of applause.

     Well, as thunderous as a group of only thirty eight people could make.

     When the kiss dragged on more than a few seconds, Markie stood up on his chair and yelled, “Ewww, cooties!” For him, it was time to go eat cake.

     Sarah, as many other brides are wont to do, decided she wanted to shed a couple of pounds prior to her wedding. So she made a deal with the kitchen staff. She knew, of course, that the kitchen kept a tight control on the calorie count. They had to, to extend the food stores.

     Sarah offered, “I’ll tell you what. I will forego a hundred fewer calories on my diet each day for the next twelve weeks, if you can take those calories and put them toward a small wedding cake.”

     The kitchen staff agreed, and it wouldn’t have gone any farther than that. Except that ladies do talk, after all. Before the next day was out, every woman in the mine had heard of the deal and had agreed to donate a hundred calories a day as well. Bryan fell in line too.

     Mark rebelled until Hannah threatened to withhold her feminine charms until after the wedding. Then he came around quickly and joined the rest.

     As a result of the effort, the kitchen was able to prepare a fabulous cake, with decadent whipped icing, and ice cream to boot.

     It was a beautiful wedding and a joyous and very happy reception.

Chapter 33

     Within two weeks Frank Woodard had managed to find more than a dozen families or small clusters of survivors in the neighborhoods around Buena Vista Drive.

     His days had become a routine. He’d leave his house with a duffle bag full of food for the hungry, and would seek them out by looking for telltale smoke coming from chimneys.

     Once he gained the trust of those he helped feed, he took them to the Symco warehouse and helped them select food that was still safe to eat. He showed them there Symco stored their flashlights, and batteries, and a dozen other things that would help their situations. And he’d encourage his new friends to come back daily, to build up their stocks of food at their homes, in case bad people ever took control of the Symco warehouse and cut off the food supply.

     Frank didn’t know it, but some around the neighborhood had taken to calling him “Saint Frank.” It wasn’t a sarcastic title. He was seen by many as an angel from heaven.

     For Frank’s part, he was happy to be able to help. But he was also disheartened. By his count, only fifty nine people survived in a neighborhood of several thousand.

     Frank’s friends Jesse Martinez and Joe Smith started on their own new mission. The snow pack was just two feet high now, and the two of them began getting help from volunteers to bury the dead in rather macabre above ground burial mounds.

     They went methodically, one street at a time, then one house at a time.

     The routine was the same. They knocked loudly on each door, and Joe yelled, “Hello in the house! We mean you no harm! We come to help you! If you do not want us here, make a loud noise and we will leave you in peace.”

     The volunteers would wait for about thirty seconds. Then Jesse repeated Joe’s words in Spanish.

     After another thirty seconds, the group broke into the home and conducted a room by room search. Any bodies they found, including the bodies of pets, were carried to the back yard and laid in the snow with as much dignity as they could manage.

     Then the group took sledge hammers to the bottom few courses of bricks on the house, causing the bricks above to collapse into a pile at their feet.

     The broken bricks and chunks of mortar were then used to cover the bodies. It would allow them to decompose slowly, without being left to rot in the open or picked apart by buzzards or other birds that might have found a way to survive.

     It would also lessen the chance of human survivors being stricken by airborne disease, spread because of the decomposing bodies.

     By the time spring came around, all of the survivors in the area had enough food to get them to the thaw, and nearly all the bodies were buried. Families from the different streets began getting out and following the paths in the snow to the others’ houses. A sense of community was starting to build again.

     No one knew what became of the marauders. They appeared to be long gone. Some worried, though, that they would be back.

     Others believed that the marauders were within their midst, and had merely stopped their terroristic ways because they grew tired of it, or finally stole enough to survive and decided they didn’t have to rob and kill anymore.

     In Frank’s mind, the marauders moved on after they decided that this particular neighborhood didn’t have much left to steal. Perhaps they found more lucrative neighborhoods to attack, or took over a Walmart or some other large food source.

     There was an ongoing debate about why the Symco Distribution Center was spared the wrath of the marauders. Some of the neighbors thought it was just a fluke. That it slipped through the cracks simply because the marauders didn’t know what it was. They thought it was the simple fact that it didn’t say “food” on the side of the building. That it could therefore be anything. A carpet distribution center. A lumber distribution center. Anything.

     This faction of the neighbors believed that if it had said “Symco Foods” on the side of the building, it would have been scavenged and occupied by armed killers long before Frank, Joe and Jesse ever made their first trip there.

     There were others among the neighbors who believed that the Symco warehouse was a gift from God Himself, left intact so that they could survive and carry on.

     Frank didn’t know which story to believe. He just took it for granted that they were lucky to be alive, and blessed with the food that would help them stay that way.

     Frank was on his way back from Symco one day that spring, taking delight that the top of the snow pack was shiny. That meant that the temperature was above freezing, and that the pack would melt a tiny bit that day.

     He and the others stopped to catch their breaths, when one of them looked skyward.

     “Look! Right there! To the right of the sun!”

     Frank looked up and, to the right of the yellow marble in the brown sky, he was able to catch a glimpse of a cloud.

     Granted, it was just a slightly darker patch of brown in a lighter brown sky, flying through the haze. But it was the first time they’d been able to make out a cloud in almost six years. It was a good start, and a good sign. It meant the sky was clearing.

Chapter 34

     In a large field behind the Trucker’s Paradise Truck Stop, Joe Koslowski was laying on a couch in his compound taking a nap when a drop of water hit the side of his face.

     It wasn’t enough to wake him, but he did raise a hand to his face to wipe away the water. It was a subconscious reflex he’d repeat several more times before the dripping water finally woke him up.

     Joe looked up and saw the drops falling from the heavy canvas tarps which covered the compound, saying, “What the hell?”

     Then he rolled off the couch to find his parka soaked with water.

     “Hot damn!”

     In previous thaws the snow on top of the canvas canopy thawed so slowly that the water was whisked away and evaporated into the wind. This time it was melting much faster than that. Fast enough to pool beneath the snow and actually soak the canvas, until the canvas became so saturated it began to drip through it.

     He scrambled into his truck’s sleeper cab and changed into a dry coat. Then he cranked up his rig so he could see what the outside temperature was.

     The light on his panel said it was 44 degrees.

     He went back outside and cheered.

     Marty and Lenny came running from Lenny’s trailer shack, where they’d been playing cards. Tina, on guard duty in the north lookout trailer, stuck her head out the door to see what was going on.

     What they saw was Joe laying down the four sheets of plywood leaning up against one of the trailers on the western wall and crawling out of the compound.

     Lenny and Marty followed.

     They looked out across the field at the rapidly dissolving snow pack. Once almost five feet deep, it was now down to less than a foot in some places. A couple more days like this one and they might be able to see the ground peeking through here and there.

     It was truly a joyous sight.

     Fifty yards away from the trailers, though, Marty and Lenny spotted something that troubled them.

     The pile of snow they’d shoveled over Scott Burley’s body the day Marty shot him in the head had mostly melted away. His entire torso was exposed, now, and his head and face soon would be.

     “Don’t worry about it,” Lenny told his friend. “I’ll take care of it.”

     It had been a monumental undertaking, getting Scott’s body that far. He wasn’t a small man, weighing in at over 260 pounds. They’d gotten him out of the compound by typing ropes to each of his feet and dragging him, a few inches at a time, until he was fifty yards away from the camp.

     Under other circumstances, they’d have buried him so they would have been rid of him forever. But when the ground was frozen hard as a rock, that wasn’t an option.

     So they did the next best thing. They covered him with snow, knowing full well that someday they’d have to find some way to dispose of him in a more permanent manner.

     Today was that day.

     Lenny walked over to the truck stop’s garage and cranked up the yard tractor, thankful that the six heavy duty batteries still had enough cranking power to turn over the engine.

     There had been a time, five years before, in the early days of the freeze, when he’d toyed with the idea of blocking the entrance of the truck stop to help keep marauders out. Looking back, he wondered why he’d never actually done it. Pity, he guessed, for those pour souls still out there who weren’t marauders.

     In any event, he knew that parked in the fifth row of trucks in the west parking lot, among the hundreds of trailers dropped by truckers so they could bobtail it home to their families, was a drop bottom trailer full of landscaping rocks. These were the rocks he’d once planned to use to block the entrance, before he had second thoughts.

     Lenny had driven dump trucks in his youth, and had made good money at it. For a time, he’d driven drop bottom trailers too, which were really just large dump trucks that discharged their loads from the bottom. Used mainly for road construction, he’d driven hundreds of them on various road projects all over Texas and Arkansas.

     He’d given up long haul trucking years before, when his left knee started bothering him. It just wouldn’t stand up to the strain of depressing the truck’s clutch five hundred times a day any more. He’d given up long hauling for the more stable work of truck stop yard manager.

     But by God, some things you just never forget. You never forget how to ride a bike, and you never forget how to drive a damn truck.

     He backed the yard rig into the rock trailer, then hopped out of the cab to lock the pin and hook up his pigtail and air lines.

     Then he climbed back into the rapidly warming cab and watched his gauges to see if his air pressure was building. After all this time, there was a good chance the air lines were shot and he wouldn’t be able to release the trailer brakes. He crossed his fingers as he saw the gauge slowly creep up.

     When the pressure hit 85 psi, he shoved the tractor into reverse and nudged it backwards a couple of inches to break it free from any ice holding the tires in place.

     Then he shifted into his lower second year and inched forward, watching in his mirrors to make sure the trailer’s tires were turning.

     “Damn!” he muttered to himself when he saw the left rear set of tires dragging across the ground instead of turning. The brake was frozen.

     Lenny crawled out of the cab and took a small sledge hammer out of the tool box, then crawled underneath the trailer to beat the brake free.

     Once back in the cab, with all wheels rolling, he crept across the yard and into the field where Scott Burley’s body lay. Then he parked the trailer over the body and opened the bottom door, burying the body with seventeen tons of rock. They’d never have to look at Scott Burley again.

     Lenny dropped the dumper where it sat, and since he was in a tractor anyway, he went back to the yard. There he went from trailer to trailer until he found one that had been headed for a supermarket chain before it got parked. In the trailer were dozens of cases of frozen meats and various types of shelf-stable foods.

     He hooked up to the trailer and crossed his fingers again. This one rolled free with no problem.

     Lenny drove out of the compound to the dirt road north of the field, which led back to Mason Bennett’s farmhouse.

     The Bennett family had visited the compound many times since the day Marty shot Scott dead in front of them. Most of the time they came for provisions. But sometimes they just came to visit. The truckers had been the only other people they’d seen in several years, after all. The group had become good friends.

     Lenny eased the trailer into the barn as Mason Bennett and his entire family came outside. The girls were jumping for joy. Mason couldn’t wait to crawl into the trailer to see what was in it. It was an atmosphere not unlike Christmas morning.

     Lenny showed Mason how to operate the reefer unit to keep the food frozen on thaw days, and told him anytime the reefer’s diesel tank ran low to get more from the compound’s tankers.

     “Now, then,” Lenny cautioned them. “Don’t you think just because you have your own food, that you can’t come to visit any more.”

     They promised they’d continue to come around, and Mason’s wife Connie gave Lenny a hug.

     “Lenny, what are your plans, and the plans of the others, when the world thaws out enough to move around again?”

     Lenny said, “I don’t know for sure. Marty and them were talking about a big fenced in compound they saw before the freeze. Marty said it was big enough to grow crops, and settle down. Maybe become farmers like you. But I don’t know. I haven’t committed to anything. This truck stop was my home and my life before the freeze. Maybe I’ll try to get it up and running again. I just don’t know.”

     “Well, whether you go with them or stay behind, you know you’ll always have a home with us. Any time you’re hungry or just need someone to talk to or a friendly face, you come on by here. You all have been very good to us, and you’re likely the only family we’ve got left. Just remember that, okay?”

     “I will. And thank you.”

     “And you can tell Marty and Joe and Tina the same thing if you want.”

     “Nope. I have a better idea. Why don’t y’all all come over tonight? I’ll dig a case of ribs and steaks out of our meat trailer and we’ll have a good old fashioned barbeque. Maybe we can talk about the future and what’s going to happen in the years ahead.”

     Mason grew melancholy. With a tear in his eye he said, “The future. That’s a thing I haven’t even considered for a long while. I guess I gave up hope that we even had one. But yes. We’ll be there. It sounds like a good plan.”

Chapter 35

     In the mine, too, they were watching the world outside thaw. One month to the day after Lenny buried Scott Burley under a trailer load of rocks, a group was gathered around the control console.

     Hannah and Sarah happened past on their way to the kitchen for coffee.

     “Hey, what are y’all looking at?”

     “There’s a car that broke down on Highway 83. We’re hoping they don’t come here looking for help.”

     Hannah and Sarah looked up at Monitor 7, where the others were focusing their eyes. Camera 7 was attached to the ham radio tower atop Salt Mountain, some 320 feet over their heads. It focused at the end of the narrow road that connected the mine and the compound with Highway 83. From the highway, the mine and compound were completely hidden by two hundred yards of trees and scrub brush. The height of the tower, however, gave the long distance camera a very clear view of the motorists’ plight.

     The group watched in fascination as two men worked on the engine of the white sedan, trying to get it started again.

     Hannah asked John, the head of security, “Are there very many cars out and about now, since the roads are finally clear of snow?”

     “We’ve been logging in counts, just to keep track of how many survivors are getting out and about now. It’s not many. Maybe ten to twelve cars a day on average. We don’t know if that means there are just a few brave souls willing to venture out, or if there just aren’t many people left alive.”

     Mark interrupted him.

     “Well, it looks like it’s a lucky day for these guys. Somebody came by and is stopping to help.”

     They watched as a brown pickup truck stopped behind the disabled car. A man got out of the pickup and went to help.

     What happened next would sicken all of them, and cement the group’s suspicion that there was still a lot of evil and pain in the world outside the mine.

     They watched helplessly as one of the men in the white sedan went to his trunk, removed an assault rifle, and shot the good Samaritan several times in the chest.

     The man went down instantly and didn’t move. He was obviously dead before he hit the ground.

     Two other figures, who appeared to be young adults or teens, rushed out of the pickup and ran to where the dead man laid. They knelt down beside him as the killer and his partner got into the pickup and drove away.

     “Oh, my God! They’ve killed him! In front of his family!”

     Mark ran toward the mine’s entrance, threw on his Parka and gloves, and headed for the mine’s door. Brad was right behind him.

     Before anyone could stop them, they burst through the four bays that separated the main part of the mine from the front door. Hannah could see them outside the mine on camera 2, which was focused on the mine’s door. Then she was able to follow their progress on the other cameras as they ran the two hundred yards down the narrow road toward the highway.

     John took charge within the mine.

     “You girls gather up as many of the adults as you can. Bring them here and tell them we’re calling an emergency meeting. We have to take a vote on whether or not to bring these people in with us. Go now. Go quickly.

     “David, go find the elders. Tell them what we’re doing. Go quickly.”

     Outside the mine, Mark and Brad made it to the scene of the shooting, to find two teenaged girls in hysterics. They almost bolted at the sight of two strange men appearing out of nowhere. After what they’d just witnessed, it was certainly understandable.

     When the girls saw Mark and Brad kneel over their dead father and feel for his pulse, they became aware that the men were there to help and not to hurt them more.

     The girls backed away, and were crying hysterically. Brad tried his best to calm them, but he was failing miserably.

     Mark could see the man was dead. Covered with blood and with three bullet holes in his chest, Mark knew his heart had been torn to shreds. Still, he felt that somehow he owed it to these girls to try.

     So for twenty minutes, even though he knew it was hopeless, Mark performed CPR on the man’s body. The girls watched in horror and prayed for a miracle.

     Inside the mine, most of the adults assembled at the security console. John briefed them on what had happened.

     “We just witnessed a murder. Two outlaws shot a man who had stopped to help them with a disabled car. Then they stole his truck and left. The man’s family is still out there. We have to decide whether to bring them in with us, or to let them stay out there and die. I am willing to give up part of my food ration for them if others will do the same.”

     Sarah said, “We just did the annual food inventory. We’ve got enough food for them without anybody giving up anything.”

     John went on. “We need seventeen votes to make a majority and bring these people in. Brad and Mark both voted yes before they went out to help. My vote makes three. Who else is with me?”

     Hannah, Sarah and David all knew he was lying about Mark and Brad casting votes. But none of them were going to call him on it.

     Hannah said “Four.”

     Sarah said “Five.”

     David said “Six.”

     By the time they were finished, it was unanimous. John told the girls to get some blankets and to greet the newcomers at the front door.

     “Wrap them up and take them immediately to the dining room. Helen, can you fix them some hot soup or cocoa to help warm them up?”

     “Certainly.”

     “Bryan, they’re going to be a mess emotionally. You’re the closest thing to a preacher we have.”

     “No problem, John. I’ll do what I can.”

     They watched the monitors as Mark and Brad headed back toward the mine with the children.

     John reflected. Other than the despair all of them felt the day Phyllis died, he suspected this would be everyone’s worst day in the mine.

Chapter 36

     Hannah, Sarah and Sami met the girls at the door of the mine and covered them with blankets. They were wearing Brad’s and Mark’s coats and still shivering. They looked tiny and frail inside the oversized coats, which were covered with the blood of their father.

     The girls stared into nothingness. They responded slowly to prods, but didn’t quite comprehend what was going on around them.

     Sarah knew from the limited medical training she’d received in college that the girls were in shock. They must be put in a nonthreatening environment immediately and comforted, while being kept warm, until they began to come out of it.

     They were led slowly through the mine to the kitchen, where they sat together eating soup while the others fawned over them. The women washed most of the blood from their hands and arms, took away the bloody coats and blankets, and replaced them with soft and warm comforters. They held the girls and rocked them, and cried with them, as if sharing their misery would somehow make it go away faster.

     The men in the mine had their own mission.

     Mark changed into clean clothes so that his blood-stained garments wouldn’t upset the girls again.

     Then he went to the front of the dining room, caught Hannah’s eye, and motioned her to come over.

     “How are they?”

     “They’ve been through hell. Physically they’re okay. But emotionally, it’s going to take awhile.”

     “We’re going out to retrieve the body. We’ll bury him next to Mom. It’s important that you keep them here, so they don’t see us bringing him in.”

     She nodded.

     “Baby, be careful.”

     Hannah went back to the girls, and Mark went to the security console to coordinate retrieval of the body.

     “John, will the walkie talkies reach to the highway?”

     “I doubt it, Mark. The mountain is too thick for the signal to go through. But I know they’ll reach to the mine entrance. We can put a relay man there.”

     “Very well. Brad, will you come with me again?”

     “Of course. How will we get him back here?”

     “We’ll take the u-boat we use to gather food from the freezers. It’ll fit through the walk-through doors and will take his weight with no problem. It won’t be the most dignified way to be moved, but he’s beyond the point of complaining.”

     John chimed in.

     “David, would you take a walkie talkie and stand in the doorway?”

     “Sure, John.”

     “Mark, you guys each take one in case one craps out. Everybody go to channel five. I can see inbound traffic on Highway 83 at least thirty seconds before they’ll be able to see you. David, if I see a vehicle, I’ll yell “Take cover.” You repeat it as soon as you hear it. Mark and Brad won’t be able to hear me, but they’ll hear you.”

     “Got it.”

     “Mark and Brad, you guys need to arm up. Just in case.”

     Ten minutes later Mark and Brad stepped back out of the mine, rolling the high-railed u-boat dolly in front of them. They rolled it slowly down the narrow road toward the highway as David stood behind in the doorway, watching their progress. What a lousy day this was turning out to be.

     At the end of the road, where it connected with the highway, the pair unshouldered their AR-15s and put them aside. They struggled to put the dead man onto the u-boat, and to tuck in his hands for the bumpy ride back to the mine.

     They took a quick look around before heading back. There was no traffic, or anything else living within their sight. In the absence of a breeze, they were barely able to make out the very faint hissing sound still coming from the disabled car’s overheated radiator.

     In the mine, the traumatized girls were beginning to share their story.

     Their names were Rachel and Roxanne. They’d survived the freeze holed up in a Walmart Store with their parents. They ate whatever they could find, mostly beans and rice, and burned whatever they couldn’t eat to keep warm. Their mother was sickly and frail even before the freeze came, they said. She quickly caught pneumonia and withered away before their very eyes. She died, and they had wrapped her frozen body in blankets and covered it with artificial flowers.

     The oldest, Rachel, continued with their sad tale.

     “Before the sky got dark, we drove around these parts looking for a safe place to hide. We saw a field full of cattle not far from here.

     “When the snow melted off the roads and we could drive again, Dad said he was tired of feeding us beans and rice. He said the cows would still be frozen in the fields, and that the meat would still be good once it thawed out. We found a dead cow, and he used an axe to chop off a hindquarter and put it in the back of the truck. He was going to make us a steak dinner tonight.”

     “How old are you, Rachel?”

     “I’m sixteen. I think. We lost track of what day it was a very long time ago. If it’s after July 17th, I’m sixteen. My sister Roxanne, she’s fifteen.”

     “Did you know the men who shot your dad?”

     “No. We never saw them before. We saw them broken down, with the hood of their car open. Daddy said it wasn’t proper to leave them there without trying to help. He said helping them was the Christian thing to do. And then they killed him. For what? I mean, Daddy would have taken them wherever they needed to go. They didn’t have to kill him.”

     Roxanne continued to stare into space, without saying a word. It was easy to see that she was the most traumatized of the two.

     Rachel looked at Sami and said, “Where will we go now? What will we do?”

     Sami held her close and said, “Shhhh… you’re part of us now. You’re part of our family. You’ll stay here with us, and you’ll never have to worry about being hungry or cold again.”

     Mark and Brad were able to recover the body and return it to the mine without being seen by Rachel and Roxanne. They placed it in Bay 24, next to Phyllis Snyder’s burial mound.

     They wrapped him from neck to toe in a white sheet, and washed his face and neck so that no blood was visible. They closed his eyelids and brushed his hair. Then they laid a white pillow beneath his head.

     Then Mark went back to the dining room bay to check on the two young girls.

     He again caught Hannah’s eye and motioned her over.

     “How are they doing?”

     “Rachel, the oldest, is a bit better, I think. Roxanne is in her own world right now. I hope she comes around, but it looks like it may be awhile.”

     “What else can I do?”

     “Nothing for now. Is the body inside the mine?”

     “Yes, he’s next to Mom. He’s cleaned up and laying in repose. If they want to see him, he’s ready. Do you know his name?”

     “Bill Meyers. Karen is already making a headstone for him.”

     “Where are we going to put them?”

     “Rachel seems to have bonded with Sami. Sami said they’ll stay with her for the time being. Until they’re strong enough to be on their own. Then we’ll put them in your mom’s old RV, if that’s okay with you and Bryan and Debbie.”

     “Okay. Sounds like a plan. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

     “Okay, Baby. And Mark…”

     “Yes?”

     “When that man shot their father, and when you ran out the door to help them…”

     He cut her off.

     “I know. It was stupid, and I’m sorry. I just did it without thinking.”

     She smiled.

     “No. I’m not upset about it. I know it could have been dangerous for you. But it’s what I would have expected from my knight in shining armor, to run to help someone in need. I guess what I’m saying is, at that point they needed you more than I did. And I’m proud of you for running to help them.”

     “Thank you honey.”

     “No, Sailor. Thank you, for being the hero I always knew you were. Someday they will thank you too. I am so lucky to have you. And I so love you.”

     Mark blushed, which under different circumstances would have made Hannah laugh.

     Instead, she kissed him on the cheek and went back to help Rachel and Roxanne.

Chapter 37

     The next couple of days were trying for all concerned. Hannah, Sarah and Sami took turns sitting up with the girls. It was a full two days before either of them laid their heads down and slept.

     The day after their arrival, they were told that their father had been brought into the mine and would be buried there. They were asked if they wanted to spend some time with him first.

     They asked the others to stay behind, to give them their time alone with him. Sarah and Sami watched from a distance, in case they were needed. But they didn’t intrude.

     Karen’s headstone was beautiful. Even though she’d never met the man, she poured her heart and soul into it. And for the funeral, she went to her computer and printed out the words to “Amazing Grace” in forty one copies.

     The funeral was sad, yet dignified. Calling it “beautiful” under the circumstances wouldn’t be proper. But it was, almost. Just as she did when Phyllis was buried, Karen produced a perfect long stemmed yellow rose to place atop the pure white burial mound.

     Rachel and Roxanne made a bumpy transition into their new life and new family. They had indeed lost track of the days, and Rachel had turned sixteen three weeks before.

     Roxanne had turned fifteen just a few days before that.

     The kitchen prepared them a belated birthday cake to try to give them something to smile about. It was a melancholy event. They had a long way to go.

     As quickly as the warm weather had come, it went away again. The snow fell once more, and once again the roads were covered.

     This time, though, was different. Everyone knew that this was their last autumn, and their last winter, inside the mine.

     They had less than six months to go now. And everyone presumed the last few months would go quickly, what with all the planning and preparations involved.

     As Thanksgiving approached, the feeling of despair that had permeated the walls of the mine for so very long was replaced with one of hope. As a school project, Miss Helen gave the elementary school children a day off from their regular learning, supplied them with an endless supply of construction paper and Elmer’s school glue, and told them to make decorations for the mine.

     The middle and high schoolers, in their own one-room schoolhouse, demanded of their teacher that they get a day off to help hang the decorations. And Miss Debbie relented, provided they were careful.

     And so it was that on their last Thanksgiving Day, the mine was decorated from floor to ceiling with happy turkey-like creatures, Pilgrims with funny hats, and Native Americans hosting their visitors from afar.

     Roxanne, the youngest of the Meyers girls, said, “That’s how I felt when we first came here. Like strangers violating someone else’s home. Thank you for taking us in”

     As Mark and Bryan walked up to join the group, Roxanne added, “And here come the turkeys, to join our holiday fun. How appropriate.”

     She immediately turned red and felt a need to apologize. But she was swarmed with hugs and high fives. She was finally comfortable enough in the group to join in the fun. She and her sister had come a very long way. They were, indeed, part of the family now.

     There were eight frozen turkeys and ten frozen hams left in the walk-in freezer. Bryan had selected four of each a few days before and taken them to the kitchen. They’d use the rest of the turkeys for their last Christmas dinner in the mine a few weeks later. After that, none of them would ever eat turkey again.

     Unless, of course, the wild turkeys that inhabited the area around the mine and the compound somehow found a way to survive the freeze. And no one was counting on that.

     As they sat in the dining room, eating what could be the next to last turkey dinner of their lives, Mark’s eyes turned to the countdown calendar on the huge whiteboard.

     The number read 180. Less than six months to go now, and if all went well, they’d leave this mine and never return.

     His mind flashed back to the early days, when many of the mine’s inhabitants were meeting for the very first time and getting to know one another. It was a sorrowful time. Every one of them had friends and relatives on the outside who probably weren’t going to make it. And every one of them mourned for them. Some openly, some privately. It wasn’t a happy time.

     But things were different now. Strangers had become friends. And the group as a whole, even those who didn’t share bloodlines or last names, were a big, mostly happy family now. The sorrow had been replaced with an optimistic anticipation, of what awaited them out there in the brave new world outside.

     Roxanne and Rachel were sharing Mark and Hannah’s table on this particular day. Roxanne somehow seemed to read Mark’s mind.

     “What will it be like, out there, when we leave? I mean, you’ve told us about the compound next door. But what’s it like? Is it safe?”

     Mark had a thought.

     “You know, Bryan and I been wanting to go over there to check on a few things, and maybe even try to fire up the generator, to see what kinds of problems we’re going to have as we get closer to moving. We can use some helpers. If you three want to come along, we’ll finish faster.”

     Hannah was instantly excited by the project.

     “Hey, cool. Count me in.”

     Rachel looked at her sister and said, “Us too. I’d like to check it out so I can relate to what everyone is talking about.”

     “Okay. We need to do it soon, before the snow pack starts to build again. I’ll talk to Bryan and see when he wants to go.”

     At that moment, Karen came around with one of her surprises.

     “Sorry this is late. It wasn’t done at the same time as everything else.”

     “Oh, that’s fine, Karen. The smell of fresh cranberries drifting through the place made it worth the wait.”

     “I grew three bushes, but one of them died. I still don’t know why. I wish there was more, but there’s only enough for a couple of tablespoons per person. Next year, in the bigger greenhouse, I’ll be able to grow a lot more.”

     Hannah got up and hugged her sister-in-law.

     “Thank you, sweetie, for all that you do for us. I so love you.”

Chapter 38

     Halfway across the country, at that very moment, a coup was taking place in Washington, D.C.

     Before the freeze, President Martin Sanders had made a decision to take his inner circle of family, friends and cronies into the series of underground bunkers beneath the streets of Washington. With them went all members of congress and the senate, and key members of the department of defense, as well as their families.

     The bunkers had been built in the 1950s and 60s, during the long cold war with the Soviet Union. They were built to withstand a nuclear blast and were meant as a temporary shelter. The idea was to protect the movers and shakers in the United States government for a few days or weeks, until it was safe for them to come out again. Then, in theory, they could move away from the decimated Washington D.C. area and command the war with the USSR from another location.

     The bunkers were never intended to house a thousand politicians and their families in luxury for seven years or more, while most of the rest of D.C. slowly starved or froze to death.

     To prepare the bunkers for their new mission, President Sanders spent months having it stocked with all the luxuries he was used to in his political life. Personal chefs and frozen lobster tails and crab legs by the truck load. Gold bars and fine paintings. Flat screen televisions and masseuses and barbers and hair stylists for the women. The latest in exercise equipment for the first rate gymnasium and supplies for their Olympic sized swimming pool.

     Thinking he could do all of this without the American public finding out about it was Sanders’ first mistake, of course. Someone had to drive all of those truckloads of crab legs and televisions into the bunker and offload them. Those truckers weren’t included in the chosen few who would enter the bunker and lock themselves in just before Saris 7 hit.

     And the barbers, and stylists, and personal chefs all had friends and family who caught wind of the plan, and who themselves weren’t given golden tickets either. Word did indeed get out, and it got out quickly.

     President Sanders’ second mistake was lying to the American people when he told them he had a plan to save them. He claimed it was to prevent widespread panic. But the panic happened anyway, once the citizens found out they’d been deceived.

     No, the real reason he lied and said the United States was working with the Chinese to send a nuclear warhead into outer space to blast the meteorite off course was for his own benefit. He didn’t want the American people to force him to do something he cared not do. He had a safe place to go. So did his family and friends. The American people? They could just go to hell.

     And, to be fair, a lot of scientists said there was nothing he could do. That knocking the meteorite off course was a one in a million chance.

     But he didn’t even try. He didn’t try because he was safe in the knowledge that he would survive, even as untold millions wouldn’t.

     And it was that, the fact that he didn’t even try, that outraged the citizens.

     Lastly, the President’s final mistake was assuming there would be no survivors. But nothing motivates someone to survive harsh conditions more than hatred and vengeance.

     It was true that the dead outnumbered the survivors five thousand to one.

     But the few hundred survivors in Washington, D.C. who made it to the thaw were livid.

     They weren’t angry at Mother Nature, for bringing the wrath of the heavens down upon them.

     No, they were angry at President Sanders, for taking care of himself and those close to him, while letting the others fend for themselves.

     Long before the rising temperatures began to melt the snow pack, the survivors started plotting their revenge. When the summers grew warm enough for them to begin venturing out, they found the doors to the bunkers. They found the ventilation shafts that supplied the bunkers with air. And they found the underground water tanks that supplied the bunker with drinking water, and water for its Olympic sized pool.

     And those few hundred survivors banded together to form their own mini-government. It was a government of the people, by the people, but its purpose wasn’t to control commerce and trade and provide for its citizens. No, its sole purpose was to take vengeance on all the people in the bunker. The ones they had come to despise. The ones they came to call “the lobster eaters.”

     In the fifth year, they had taken welding equipment to each of the bunker’s doors and welded them closed. Then, as an added measure, they backed trucks up against each door, cut the brake lines and flattened the tires. The only way anyone was coming out of those doors was to somehow figure out how to break the outer welds from the inside of the bunker. Then, if they were somehow able to accomplish that impossible task, to push forty tons of dead truck weight. It wasn’t going to happen.

     The main door, though, they decided not to block.

     Instead, the survivors took four U.S. Army deuce and a half trucks from the Washington, D.C. armory and backed them up, side by side, to a point forty yards from the main door. On the back of each truck they mounted a twenty caliber machine gun, and aimed each gun at the door. And they manned their guns twenty four hours a day.

     In the spring of the sixth year of the freeze, they wrapped all of the ventilation shafts with heavy plastic and turned off the valves on the water source.

     Inside the bunker, no one had a clue why the water stopped running. Plumbers told the President that the fresh water source had been disrupted, but they didn’t know how. The one thing they never suspected that someone had done it on purpose. After all, there weren’t supposed to be any survivors on the outside.

     They had underestimated the lengths to which hatred will motivate a man to survive.

     Then they noticed it was getting harder and harder to breathe as each day went by. When the carbon dioxide alarms began going off intermittently, they finally figured out it wasn’t just the water that had been turned off.

     Their solution was to open the doors and let in some fresh air.

     But the doors wouldn’t open.

     One by one they went to each of the doors and unlocked them. Pushed against them. Hit them with battering rams. Nothing.

     Finally, they went to the main door. A team of three men unlocked the door and it opened easily. For a brief moment they were jubilant, and cheered. Then they saw the trucks with the machine guns mounted on them. The next thing they saw was also the last… the muzzle flashes from the machine gun barrels that tore them to shreds.

     Others inside the bunker managed to get the main door closed and locked again.

     They were safe from the machine guns.

     But not from the lack of oxygen.

     And one by one over the coming days, they passed out. Some woke up again, but it would be just a temporary respite. Most simply succumbed.

     As for the President and his family, they were among the last to go. Weeks earlier, when the air first started to get musty and it began to become apparent that something might be wrong, the President had his trusted aides gather compressed oxygen bottles from the decontamination pits and take them to the President’s private quarters. They sealed the quarters and used the oxygen to continue to breathe easily while others outside the quarters were dropping like flies. It was selfish and cruel, but was what should have been expected from a man who didn’t even make an effort to save his citizens.

     Some in the bunker, of course, grew desperate. Several times, the main door was opened, and men tried to leave. Some waved white flags. Others yelled that they were Senator So-And-So, and actually demanded they be allowed safe passage. Some tried to plead for their lives. Others tried to bargain with food, or gold bars, or political favors.

     All of them, every last one, were ripped to shreds by machine gun fire.

     The men manning the guns never stopped to consider the morality of what they were doing. They were too consumed by anger and hatred. Every single one of them had family members and friends who’d died miserable and painful deaths.

     If Sanders had tried to save them, they might have forgiven him. Might have spared his life. Might even have helped Sanders and the rest try to rebuild their country.

     But what angered them the most was that he wouldn’t even try.

     As for President Sanders, he was one of the last to die. In the last hour before he died, he took the lives of his family, with a handgun. He put them out of their misery first, ensuring they were dead, before finally turning the gun on himself. It was perhaps the only decent thing he did during the whole affair.

Chapter 39

     In those last few months before the world was livable again, the snow once again started to fall. The roads that had been clear during the summer were now once again under a blanket of white.

     Some were discouraged. They felt Mother Nature was teasing them, by giving them a taste of warmth, and then cruelly pulling it back again.

     But those who had been counting the warm weather days from one year to the next knew that the number of warm days was growing more and more each year. And they knew that the following spring, the thaw would bring warmth that would last more or less until fall.

     No, it wouldn’t be balmy. But it would be livable. And it would seem like old times again.

     On Buena Vista Drive in San Antonio, they were making plans for the next stage in their lives.

     “We can dig up the dead grass in all the front yards. Dig up the trees and shrubs too. Dig up all the front yards until they’re nothing but dirt. And that will give us at least two acres to grow crops. If we do the same to the back yards, we’ll have twice that amount.”

     “But where will we get the seeds to plant?”

     Frank had already pondered the question even before it came, and was ready with the answer.

     “There’s a Walmart store a mile away. When the freeze hit, I’m sure it was ransacked. I’ll bet anything edible was taken off the shelves and is long gone.

     “But I’ll make another bet too. I’ll bet that in the Walmart garden center, I’ll bet that stand full of flower and vegetable seeds is still untouched. I mean, who would think to take tomato and squash seeds when the world is freezing over? I’m going to make a trip there tomorrow, before the snow gets too deep to walk again.”

     “Is it wise to walk now that there’s snow on the ground? I mean, it’ll make it too easy for any marauders out there to track you.”

     “I’m going to use that to my advantage. Watching for footprints in the snow works both ways. If there are people still going in and out of the Walmart for food or supplies, I’ll be able to tell before I just walk in there and get ambushed.”

     “What if the seeds won’t grow because they’re so old?”

     Eva spoke up.

     “They’ve got to grow. And they will. God has watched over us this long and kept us alive for a reason. He wouldn’t let us down now.”

     Jesse added, “Before the freeze came, I remember seeing this show once on the Discovery Channel. It talked about what would happen if a virus or some kind of plant disease wiped out all the world’s crops. A bunch of scientists said it was a possibility, so some of the countries got together and built this huge seed repository up around the arctic somewhere. It was buried below ground, in the ice, and they were storing thousands of varieties and strains of seeds in there, in the event such a catastrophe ever happened for real.”

     “I’m not walking to the Arctic, Jesse. It’s way too far.”

     Frank was joking, of course, and the group laughed.

     “My point is, if they store these seeds in the Arctic to preserve them, then wouldn’t the freeze also preserve them? I mean, maybe they go into hibernation or suspended animation or something when they freeze. Maybe they’ll be as good as new.”

     “That is a valid point. And we need to get some before others realize that’s their future food supply and clean all the seeds out.”

     Jesse said, “Frank, I’m going with you. If there are marauders anywhere near Walmart, you’ll need backup.”

     “Okay, Jesse. You’re welcome to come. We’ll take a couple of duffles, in case we see anything else we can use.”

     The next morning, as soon as it was light in the sky, Frank and Jesse set out.

     The going was relatively easy. Since the warm weather months had cleared the roads of snow, the new snow pack was only about four inches. It was no match for the hiking boots both men wore.

     They were careful to watch for vehicle tracks and footprints. But they saw none.

     “I wonder where all the people are?”

     “Mostly dead, I suppose. Or maybe since the weather turned cold again they’re holed up in their houses.”

     They looked around for the telltale chimney smoke that told them which houses were occupied. They could count the number of smoke trails on two hands during their one mile hike.

     There just weren’t many survivors left.

     As they neared the Walmart, they both unshouldered their AR-15s and charged them. They didn’t want to appear as a threat to anyone who might be watching. But they didn’t want to be at a disadvantage either if a firefight started.

     Before they went in, they crept completely around the store. They knew that if anyone was going in and out of the building for supplies or food, they wouldn’t necessarily use the front door. There were plenty of fire escape doors and overhead doors around the building that could be used as well.

     But they saw no footprints. And there was no smoke coming from the building either.

     Frank knew that if there were people hiding inside the store, they’d have to keep a fire going to melt snow for drinking water, and to cook their food and keep from freezing to death. And burning a fire inside a building, of course, would be deadly unless there was a place for rising smoke to exit the building.

     This Walmart was built with dozens of plastic skylights which once helped reduce the building’s electricity costs. They could very easily be punched out to allow smoke to leave the building.

     The pair had watched as they approached the Walmart. There was no smoke coming from the building.

     The lack of smoke and footprints convinced both men that the building was unoccupied.

     When they went inside, they found out why.

     Frank and Jesse entered the Walmart through a fire escape door at the back of the building. It was slightly ajar, and opened to the outside. But the snow that had drifted up against the door told the pair that no one had walked through it since the snow started to fall again a couple of weeks before.

     The door entered into what once was the butcher department. Long stainless steel tables, once used by butchers to slice and package meat, now lay dusty and unused. All the meat that might have been here when the panic started was long gone, of course. So was everything else that might have been edible.

     They paused a few minutes to let their eyes adjust to the semi darkness. They brought flashlights with them, but preferred not to use them unless they had to. Just in case they were wrong about the building being unoccupied.

     Very slowly the pair progressed through a set of double swinging doors and out into the store itself.

     What they saw amazed them. It looked like the store had been hit by a huge bomb blast. There was debris everywhere. But it was easy to see that it was mostly inedible items. Frozen and swollen canned goods by the hundreds. Laundry soap. Kitty litter. A whole lot of everything, but virtually nothing in the way of edible food.

     Most of the shelves had been toppled over, either by angry crowds frustrated because all the food was gone, or by vandals.

     Frank was puzzled to see that dozens and dozens of bags of flour, though, had been thrown around and broken open, and a fine dusting of flour seemed to be everywhere. Were some people actually so stupid that they didn’t know flour and water could keep them alive? Apparently so.

     They also noticed that many of the skylights had indeed been broken out, and much of the debris was covered with a light blanket of snow. Frank could still smell the scent of burned wood, from long ago. He assumed that some people did use the building for shelter from the cold at one time. But he also correctly assumed that they were long gone.

     The broken skylights, and the ones that glowed a brilliant white from the sun shining through their snow cover, made it easier to navigate the sea of debris.

     It was slow going, to be sure. Climbing over a pile of twisted shelving units and loose boxes created the possibility of falling and breaking an arm or a leg. There were a lot of sharp edges, too, and a cut meant a risk of infection. And infections could be deadly.

     In the center of the store, in what used to be the ladies wear section, the pair came across an area that had been cleared of all racks and debris. The scent in the air changed from the faint smell of burned wood to the more powerful and repugnant smell of rotting human flesh.

     There, in the center of the clearing, gathered around the remnants of what was once a campfire, were three bodies. Two were in sleeping bags, a woman and a teenaged boy, the bags gathered tightly around their heads and necks as though they were sound asleep in the freezing cold when they were shot in the head.

     The third body, a man in his forties, sat apart from the other two, his head mostly blown apart, and a gun still in his hand. Frank surmised that it was a father who shot his wife and son before taking his own life.

     The smell of rotting flesh came during the two months of thaw, when the bodies started the decomposition process, before they froze again. Frank was becoming all too familiar with the rancid smell as he walked through the neighborhoods around Buena Vista Drive. He knew that literally hundreds of homes in the area still had scenes eerily similar to this one.

     When they made it to the Pharmacy department, they noticed that the steel cage which had been lowered into place the last time the pharmacy closed had been violently pulled to the side to allow entry. Drug addicts, Frank supposed, whose need for drugs was easily as powerful as the one for food.

     They crawled into the Pharmacy and used their flashlights to scan the bottles still on the shelves. It took several minutes to find what they needed, but their patience was rewarded. They found Cogentin, Depakote and lithium carbonate, and threw them into one of their bags. The next day, Frank would take the medicines to a family a few streets over. The husband, he’d found out a week before, was bi-polar and hadn’t had meds to take for quite awhile. He was unable to control his mood swings and was becoming increasingly violent. The medicines would make it easier to regulate his moods and would make it safer for those around him.

     They grabbed a few other items from the pharmacy as well. Penicillin and topical ointments. Pain pills and bandages.

     Then they moved on to the garden section, stopping along the way to get two bags of cat food and a box of kitty snacks for Widow Spencer’s cats.

     And sure enough, there next to the garden tools in the corner of the garden center, was a rack of seeds for every vegetable imaginable, and many fruits and melons as well.

     But even better was the stack of small brown boxes a couple of feet away from the rack.

     This stack, five boxes in all, contained a new shipment of seeds that someone was apparently tasked to put onto the rack just before Saris 7 hit. Saris 7 struck the earth on January 15th, six years before. Apparently the middle of January was when Walmart started preparing for the upcoming growing season.

     And that worked to their advantage. That meant that the seeds in the brown boxes were the freshest seeds available. And perhaps when fresh seeds freeze, they stand a better change of still being good when thawed out six years later.

     At least that’s what Frank and Jesse were banking on.

     They went through each of the boxes, and found that each type of seed came in a bundle of twenty plastic packages.

     Jesse asked, “Should we take them all?”

     “No. Let’s not be greedy. Others will have the same idea, and will come for them too. Let’s take four packs of each. If they’re good, that’s plenty for our needs. If they don’t work, then the others won’t be any good either.”

     They carefully peeled off four packages of seeds from each bundle and tossed them into their bags. Then they filled up their bags with plant food and fertilizer and headed back for home.

     In a few weeks the ground would thaw, and they would start to dig up the front lawns of all the houses on the block. And, if their luck held, in a few months they’d be able to grow their own food supply.

     None of them, of course, were looking forward to living an existence free of meat. Frank had never thought there was much need for vegetables. But it was food, after all, and he’d adapted to a lot worse things since the skies turned brown and the world turned cold.

     He figured he could adapt to this one as well.

     And besides, once the world was more or less back to normal and it was safe to travel, he planned to visit an area up north where he used to go deer hunting. His logic was that if any mammal could find a way to survive a seven year winter, it was a white tail deer.

     His old deer hunting ground was an area just east of Junction, on Highway 83. Near a place they called Salt Mountain.

Chapter 40

     They knew they shouldn’t have done it. They knew it wasn’t fair to everyone else. But here were two bottles of Jose Cuervo that Bryan had squirreled away all those years beneath the dresser in his RV. Saving them for a special occasion.

     And if being only a couple of months away from finally breaking out of the mine wasn’t a special occasion, then what else was?

     And so it was that Mark and Hannah left little Markie in the care of his cousin Anna and joined the others in the back of the vehicle storage bay.

     On the way, they stopped at the security desk to inform John where they’d be. They didn’t want to be thought of as intruders and shot when they walked back out of the back of the mine.

     John was a nondrinker. He didn’t care. And he couldn’t begrudge the group a little bit of fun.

     John’s only admonition was to keep an eye on his daughter, Sami. He said he didn’t want her to get so drunk that Brad took advantage of her.

     Hannah and Mark both bit their lips as they walked away from John. Fifty yards away and out of earshot, Mark asked if she was thinking the same thing he was.

     Hannah giggled and replied. “Yes. I’m not worried about Brad taking advantage of Sami. I’m wondering who’s gonna protect poor Brad from her.”

     They joined Sami and Brad, and Sarah and Bryan, and they all sat around for the next four hours doing tequila shots and reminiscing.

     At one point, the subject of weddings came up.

     “Shoot,” Hannah slurred slightly. “You guys are next.”

     She was looking at Sami and Brad.

     Sami giggled and then gushed, “Nope. Not this girl. Brad’s just my boy toy.”

     She poked him in the ribs.

     “I’ll use him and abuse him and then I’ll throw him away, just like a snotty old tissue full of boogers.”

     The group roared at Sami’s descriptive claim.

     Sarah spoke up and said, “Oh, bullshit. You’d better not throw him away. Men with Brad’s… attributes aren’t easy to find, you know.”

     The girls giggled even more than they normally would have without the tequila.

     Bryan scoffed.

     “What attributes? Brad has no attributes. He farts and tells bad jokes. What do you mean, he has attributes?”

     Hannah added, “Oh, he has attributes. Why, he has the prettiest… smile I’ve ever seen.”

     “Yeah, well, that’s just because he has no sense.”

     Brad, for his part, let the debate roar on. He was feeling no pain and in fact was close to passing out.

     The group eventually got tired of talking about Brad and went on to other topics.

     “What do you think it’ll be like once we get out of here? Do you think the world will be a better place without as many people?”

     “I don’t know. I’d like to think so. I mean, there will be fewer jerks, sure. But there will be fewer good people too.”

     Hannah said, “I think I’ll miss the mine.”

     Sarah gave her a strange look.

     “Really?”

     “Yes. I mean, the routine of it. Or maybe the consistency is a better word. I mean, I always knew where my friends were, and never had to worry about Markie going off with a stranger. It’s become… comfortable here.”

     “The only thing I’m going to miss is the constant temperature. Never having to decide in the morning whether to wear long sleeves or short sleeves, shorts or pants. It was always the same every day. Made picking out a wardrobe much simpler.”

     “Oh, I’m not like you at all. I miss the cold weather. When we went to the mine’s door to meet Rachel and Roxanne, I loved the feel of the cold air on my face. I missed it a lot.”

     Sami turned to the guys and asked, “What are you guys going to miss most about the mine?”

     But she got no response from the men. Brad had finished passing out and was softly snoring. Mark was laying on his right side, his hands folded together and tucked up under his face, sleeping with a sly grin on his face. Hannah wondered what he was dreaming about.

     Bryan’s head was in Sarah’s lap, mouth wide open, a long line of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth and soaking Sarah’s pants.

     The men’s efforts to out drink the women had done them in. The girls all looked at each other and laughed.

     “What a bunch of lightweights we have.”

Chapter 41

     They entered the tunnel with miner’s lights fastened to their heads. It would make it easier to move around the main building in the compound if they couldn’t get the power turned on and had to work in the dark.

     One by one they went down the steps into the long tunnel. Rachel and Roxanne had never been in the tunnel before and marveled at it.

     “You guys dug this yourself?”

     “Yes. Well, the boys did.”

     “Wow! How long did it take?”

     Bryan said, “About a year and a half, five or six hours a day.”

     “That must have been a lot of work.”

     “Yes, but it was a good thing too. It kept us from getting bored. Gave us something to do to pass away all the hours.”

     Brad chimed in.

     “And it gave us a chance to talk about our women and share all of their secrets with each other.”

     He was getting his revenge for the tequila-fueled conversation two nights before.

     The women looked at each other in mild panic. Sami made a mental note to grill Brad later about what secrets the men had shared. Sami stared daggers at Brad. He just smiled back and blew her a kiss.

     As they neared the end of the tunnel, they felt the temperature start to drop. By the time they got to the far end and walked up the steps into the feed barn inside the compound, they had all put gloves on and raised the hoods on their parkas.

     They walked out the east door of the feed barn and out into the snow. Roxanne and Rachel were used to the snow and quite tired of it. Hannah, Sarah and Sami, though, seemed to enjoy kicking it around. It was the first time they’d walked through snow in six and a half years.

     Back inside the mine, John sat at the security console watching them walk across the compound from a camera mounted atop Salt Mountain. His role was to provide lookout for them. If he saw something he didn’t like, such as a passing vehicle pulling over and stopping, or someone walking through the woods nearby, he would immediately sound the alarm.

     He would get on his walkie talkie and call for the group to get back to the mine immediately.

     His call would have to be relayed, of course. The radio signal would not reach through the thick salt mountain to the outside. David was standing at the mine’s entrance to the tunnel.

     Sami, after she got tired of kicking the snow around, would wait at the exit of the tunnel. If John were to raise the alarm, he would call David, who would relay the alarm to Sami, who would relay it to the others.

     It was a haphazard way of spreading the word, sure. But it was the best they could do.

     Even after they relocated to the compound in a few weeks, the mine would never totally go away. It would always be their evacuation site in case of future emergencies. Bearing that in mind, Mark and Bryan had already discussed rigging some sort of hotline between the security consoles at each location. For the time being, though, it didn’t exist.

     So the seven of them- Mark and Hannah, Bryan and Sarah, Brad, Rachel and Roxanne, crept slowly toward the main building in the compound. It was seven years old, yet had never been occupied. Its sole purpose had been to accommodate their group of forty, and its future generations, after they were able to break out of the mine.

     So it was built, furnished and stocked with provisions, and then abandoned.

     The building itself was very attractive. It looked like a three star hotel, or a dormitory at an upscale university. In the years ahead, they would come to refer to it as “the big house,” a humorous reference to a prison. Now though, the whole concept of living there was still alien and not quite comfortable. For now they just referred to it as the main building.

     They entered the main building through the south door. Bryan had to wipe heavy axle grease away from the lock before he slipped in the key. The grease was to prevent water from getting inside the lock and freezing. And it worked quite well. After seven years, the lock opened easily and the door swung open without so much as a creak.

     Down the long hallway they went, to a junction at the center of the L-shaped building. There they all took the stairway down to the basement, still staying together, and went to a door marked “Generator Room.”

     Mark asked the others to stay outside in the hallway. The room wasn’t that large, and they’d get in the way, he said.

     And that was true. However, that was only half of his reasoning. After not being fired up for seven long years, there was a chance that one of the generator’s batteries would blow. And if it did, Mark wanted Hannah and the others on the other side of the heavy concrete wall where they would be safe.

     Mark and Brad went into the generator room. They had already discussed several times the day before what needed to be done to get the generator running again. They split up the tasks beforehand and went about the things they had to do.

     Brad took a six foot ladder and a gallon of fuel stabilizer off the storage shelf. He crawled to the top of the ladder and opened up the trap door on a five hundred gallon diesel storage tank. Then he poured in the fuel stabilizer and climbed back down to retrieve a large shovel. Back up the ladder he went with the shovel, which he lowered down into the tank. From atop the ladder, he worked the shovel back and forth inside the tank to mix the diesel fuel that had been sitting dormant and settling for seven long years. At the same time, the fuel stabilizer would be mixing with the fuel to absorb any water and provide an octane boost to it.

     While Brad was treating the diesel, Mark was busy on the batteries. There were a series of four diesel truck batteries, side by side and connected together with heavy duty cables. They selected this type of battery specifically because it was renowned for its long life and cranking power. It takes a lot of power to start up a diesel truck. And that’s what these generators were, after all. The main generator and its backup were essentially oversized truck engines without the trucks.

     Mark removed the cables one by one and scraped the corrosion off of each terminal. Then he took the caps off the batteries and checked their water levels. Once done, he returned the cables.

     To give the old batteries a little extra boost, he took a brand new battery out of a box and connected it in line with the other four. He took a package of powdered acid, carefully opened it, and poured it in roughly equal amounts into each of the battery’s cells. Then he took two gallons of distilled water he’d brought with him in a backpack and poured a gallon and a half into the new battery.

     Brad finished stirring the diesel and stepped of the ladder to the bottom of the tank. He closed a small valve that fed the fuel line from the tank to the generator and lowered the end of the hose so that the hose drained into a bucket. He was trying to catch any sediment that settled to the bottom of the tank before it made its way to the generator and fouled it out.

     Once the fuel line was clear, he turned on the tank valve and let another gallon of fuel fall into the bucket. Then he reclosed the valve, reattached the hose, and changed out the three fuel filters on the generator. These were the last line of defense to catch sediment and debris before the fuel was pumped into the engine. Brand new filters would catch whatever they missed. Or at least that’s what they hoped.

     Mark finished up with the batteries and began examining the generator with a fine toothed comb. Every seal, every belt, every hose. He was looking for anything that might be too brittle, too worn, too stiff. He turned the flywheel and it moved easily. That was a good sign. The belts were still tight, and the rubber hoses were still relatively soft to the touch. Everything seemed to be in order.

     Brad finished with the filters and began pumping air out of the line.

     At the same time, Mark primed the fuel pump and sprayed a little bit of ether into the intake. He turned the ignition key halfway on to heat up the glow plugs. He crossed the fingers on his left hand.

     Brad, who was born and raised a good catholic boy, crossed himself, looked up, and uttered a single word plea: “Please…”

     When the glow plugs burned red, Mark turned the key the rest of the way.

     The generator fired up without hesitation, its meaty roar causing the whole room to vibrate.

     Brad and Mark shared a high five, and Brad shouted, “Hallelujah!”

Chapter 42

     In the hallway, outside the generator room, the rest of the group heard the generator fire up and cheered.

     Mark came out and told them, “Okay. So far so good. Bryan, your turn at bat.”

     Mark’s comment needed no explanation. They had a game plan worked out ahead of time. The first step was the generator. Once it was up and running, Brad would stay behind in the generator room to keep an eye on it. He’d monitor the generator in case the fuel line got clogged, or it overheated, or one of the belts or hoses broke.

     Mark would go with Bryan, who was a master electrician, to the electrical room a few doors down. The next step was getting the power back on.

     Once in the electrical room, Bryan took the panels off the breaker boxes so he could inspect the wiring. One of his biggest fears was that rodents would infest the space behind the boxes, looking for a place to escape the freeze. And rodents were notorious for gnawing on electrical wiring.

     Their luck was holding. There were no signs of either critters or their nests, and none of the wires seemed to be frayed or loose.

     He put the panels back on and screwed them back in place.

     Bryan looked at his big brother and said, “Okay, buddy. Say a prayer.”

     Then he reached for the breaker switch marked “Fire Alarm System.”

     He flipped it, and immediately beeps from smoke detectors could be heard around the building. Red lights came on in the hallways, wherever there was a fire alarm pull box. Over each door, a bright red “EXIT” sign suddenly lit up.

     One by one, Bryan flipped the breakers, at the same time watching the fire panel very closely. Each room was equipped with a smoke detector, and they were all wired into this panel. If there was an electrical short in any of the rooms, he’d know it almost immediately. He would cut power to that room and he and Mark would scramble there to try to kill the fire with extinguishers.

     One by one. One switch at a time. Both brothers looked at the panel with much anticipation. When they made it all the way through with no alarms, they breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

     In the hallway, the lights suddenly came on, and were so bright everyone had to squint until their eyes adjusted.

     Once they were able to see clearly, they looked at each other and saw unrestrained joy. Then they looked up and down the barren basement hallway. Only Hannah had been in this basement before the freeze. It looked just as it did before, except she was amazed at how much dust now covered the floor. Seven years worth of dust.

     Mark came out of the electrical room and told the girls, “Almost done. Follow me to the boiler room.”

     Down the hall and around the corner they went until they came to a double doored room marked “Boiler and Water Room.”

     The girls followed Mark inside.

     Mark hit the power switch on a control panel full of gauges and meters. A dozen lights came on, and nearly all of them were red. A series of gauges all read zero.

     Sarah muttered, “Uh, oh. That can’t be good.”

     Mark responded, “Don’t panic just yet.”

     He went to the corner of the room and leaned over a huge red valve. It reminded Sarah of the steering wheel on her grandfather’s old Dodge pickup truck.

     Mark leaned into the valve and turned it. There was an immediate “whoosh” sound as water entered the pipes.

     Mark ran back to the console and looked at the gauges as the pressure started to build on each floor of the building. Within thirty seconds all the red lights went off. First the ones for the first floor, then the second floor, then the third.

     He hovered over the console for another minute, watching for a sudden drop in pressure that would indicate a pipe had burst. He saw none.

     Racing across to the other side of the room, he opened a second valve that fed the water tank for the boiler. The boiler was electric, with a diesel burner backup. He’d check the diesel system later. Right now, the electric main heater would suffice. If the boiler worked, it would not only supply hot water, it would also heat the building. It was as essential as electricity and water to the group’s plans to occupy their new home.

     The force of the water pressure turned the ice within it to mush, and forced it into the tank. Mark turned on the control panel to the tank to get a reading. The temperature gauge said the water was twenty eight degrees. Not a problem. It would warm up soon enough. He hit the switches for burners number one and two.

     Then he went back to the main water control console and checked it again. It was still okay.

     “Okay, ladies. Do you all have your walkies turned on to channel 5?”

     The girls all shook their heads.

     “Okay, I’m going to stay behind and keep an eye on things here. You know what you have to do. Have fun!”

     It was time to implement the next step in their game plan. Everyone had a job to do and knew exactly how they were going to do it.

     Hannah and Roxanne immediately ran up the stairs to the third floor. All of the room doors had been left unlocked. They started at the east end of the hallway, in apartment 301.

     After entering apartment 301, they turned on all the lights. The light in the hallway didn’t come on. Hannah made note of it on a small note pad they’d brought with them. Hannah went to the kitchen and crawled under the sink. She turned on the water valve that supplied water to the sink, and then turned on the faucet, letting it run for a minute while she checked to see if anything was leaking. Once she was satisfied, she turned the faucet back off and reclosed the valve.

     Roxanne went to the bathroom and did exactly the same thing. Then she turned on the shower and let it run for a few seconds.

     Once the faucets passed the leak test, the pair met back in the living room, turned off the lights, and left the apartment.

     They then went across the hall to apartment 302 and repeated the process.

     While Hannah and Roxanne were doing their checks on the third floor, Sarah and Rachel were going through the same procedure on the second floor. As each team finished, they had designated areas on the first floor they’d proceed to next.

     Meanwhile, Brad stayed in the generator room keeping a close eye on the massive Cummings diesel engine. At the same time, he was going through the same procedure they’d used on the first generator to prep the backup.

     If the main generator stopped working or started to overheat, Brad would switch over to the backup generator in an effort to keep the power flowing.

     Bryan, in turn, stayed in the electrical room monitoring the breaker panels and control panel. If any wiring in the building shorted out or caught fire, he’d know it immediately and could cut power to that section of the building. Then he’d call for help on the radio and head that way to put out the fire.

     Mark closely monitored the boiler, watching for leaks. He also kept a close eye on the temperature gauge to see how warm the water was getting, and the pressure gauge to make sure the pressure was rising along with the temperature.

     In all three rooms, everything appeared to be working perfectly.

     It took the girls a little under two hours to finish their checks. As planned, they all ended up in the main kitchen together, and called Mark on the radio.

     Hannah did the honors.

     “Mark, this is Hannah, we’re all finished and in the kitchen.”

     “Okay, honey. I’m going to close the feed valve to the boiler, I need you to turn on all the faucets, cold and hot water, to empty most of it out. Leave them on so they don’t freeze back up again, and come back down to the basement.”

     “10-4 good buddy, copy that. We’re gonna convoy back down your way, and we’ll keep an eye out for Smokey the Bear hiding in the bushes. Roger that.”

     Hannah couldn’t resist. She and Mark had watched “Smokey and the Bandit” the night before.

     When the girls made their way back to Mark, he shut down the boiler and the group went to the electrical room.

     Bryan cut power to the building and it went black again. That was Brad’s signal to turn his miner’s light back on and shut down the generator.

     The entire group met up again where they’d split up originally, in the basement hallway outside the generator room.

     They left the building through the same door they’d entered, and met up with Sami in the feed barn.

     “Well, it’s about time y’all got back,” Sami chastised. “I’ve been freezing my ass off out here.”

     Brad grabbed her and spun her around.

     “Nope. It’s still there.”

     “Smart aleck.”

     Once in the tunnel and halfway back to the mine the crew finally began to warm up and shared notes while they walked. The girls made a list of things to fix, and it was all minor stuff. A few light bulbs that were out. Several dripping faucets. One minor leak under a kitchen sink.

     All in all, things were much better than expected. If there were any delays in their plans to move from the mine to the compound, it wouldn’t be because the building wasn’t ready to go.

     “So, what’s next?” Sarah asked.

     Bryan asked Mark, “What do you think about firing everything up a couple of weeks prior? We can actually put a couple of people over there. Move them in as an advance team, so to speak. They can monitor everything and actually live there for the last two weeks. Cook their meals there and everything. If there are any bugs, they’ll find them.”

     “Good idea. Let’s check with John to make sure the security people can monitor both areas at the same time. If they can do it, we’ll ask for volunteers. I’d volunteer with Hannah, but I don’t want to take Markie over there until we know everything is working and the place is warm. It’s going to take at least two full days to bring the inside temperature up to 70 degrees, remember.”

     Brad turned to Sami with a questioning look on his face. She shook her head yes.

     “Sami and I will do it.”

     Sarah spoke up.

     “Bryan and I will too.”

     “Thanks for volunteering me, sweetheart.”

     “Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

     Sami corrected her.

     “Ahem. Almost to yourselves.”

     “Oh, please. You two will never leave your room. Let’s be real.”

     By the time they stepped out of the tunnel and into the mine, it was settled. In four weeks, Bryan, Sarah, Sami and Brad would move into the compound and make it their home. If nothing went wrong, then two weeks later, on April fifteenth, the rest would join them.

Chapter 43

      The next few weeks flew by. After seven long years in the mine, everyone was looking forward to being free again. But there were also some fears.

     They were worried about the millions of corpses on the outside. Not just humans, but mammals of every size and shape. The cattle that Rachel and Roxanne’s father had been scavenging just before he was shot. Deer, rabbits, even rodents. Within a square mile of their location there might be thousands of them, slowly rotting away.

     Some of the decomposition had already taken place, of course. In each of the previous three years, the temperatures in late spring and early summer had crept above freezing. Just a few days the first year, and almost sixty days the third. It was sufficient time for most of the corpses to thaw, and then rot to some degree before refreezing. So after three years of thawing, decomposing and then refreezing, most of the corpses were in varying stages of decomposition.

     Most, but not all. Hannah and Sarah, who were both scientists, shared a theory that many of the corpses had never thawed. That perhaps they were in various types of shelters, or in heavily wooded areas with heavy shade cover. And that maybe temperatures that never went above forty degrees, even for weeks at a time, never quite thawed the corpses enough to allow them to rot.

     They pointed out that even with daytime temperatures as high as sixty two degrees, the nights were sometimes frigid. Sometimes as low as thirty. And those low nighttime temperatures would inhibit thawing.

     It wasn’t just that they disliked corpses, although they obviously did.

     What they were more worried about was the possibility of airborne diseases, carried by microorganisms into the air on a windy day, then perhaps traveling miles before settling into the compound and being inhaled by someone.

     When they had the main building built in the compound, they disguised what they were doing by lying to the builder. They claimed to be representatives of a corporation in California that specialized in the treatment of drug and alcohol addicts. They said the compound would be a rehab facility, and would house the rich and famous and their sons and daughters. The isolated location, they said, was for privacy and protection from the prying eyes of the press. And to isolate the patients from so-called “friends” who might further the addiction by smuggling in drugs or booze.

     Since these were well to do clients who were used to the very best, the builder was told, no expenses would be spared.

     And since some of their patients might suffer from allergies in this part of the country they weren’t used to, there must be a special feature to the building.

     It must be equipped with a hypoallergenic ventilation system.

     The builder had readily agreed, of course. Builders love add-ons. The more unusual the better, for with every add-on comes another reason to tack on additional profits.

     And so it was that the outside air drawn into the main building first passed through special filters that scrubbed it of all microorganisms as well as pollens. Air inside the building was also continually recycled through the same ventilation system.

     The only time anyone would be in danger would be when they were actually outside, and the temperature was above freezing.

     Hannah foresaw this too, and ordered twenty thousand surgical masks and four thousand pairs of latex gloves, which sat in storage containers in the back of Bay 24. It was probably overkill, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

     At one of their last group meetings in the mine, Hannah and Sarah explained the dangers of airborne disease to the group, and an unwritten law was agreed upon. For at least three years, anyone who ventured outside when the temperature was above freezing must wear a mask and gloves. It would be a pain in everyone’s side. But it would be better than a miserable death.

     The day after this meeting, it was time. Sarah, Bryan, Sami and Brad said their goodbyes, packed a few changes in clothing, and walked through the tunnel to the compound. Bryan and Brad restarted the generator and turned the power and water back on, and the four spent their days puttering around the building dusting, cleaning, and making minor repairs.

     Mark had already spent a day running Cat-5 wiring through the tunnel and across the ground of the compound. Inside the main building, he split the cable to install a telephone connection between the building and the mine’s security desk, a computer link to the mine’s computer system, and a very noisy alarm that could be heard throughout the building. It was loud enough to wake the heaviest sleeper in the middle of a deep slumber.

     The alarm would only be used if the security desk saw someone approaching the compound on one of their surveillance cameras. It would give the four people in the compound the option of either scrambling back to the mine, or arming themselves and preparing for battle.

Chapter 44

     On April 14th, the day before the big breakout, the tension was thick in the mine. So was the excitement. Sarah and Bryan had come for a surprise visit as the group sat down for breakfast. They told everyone that their new home in the compound was all cleaned up, the repairs had been made, and that it was toasty warm.

     They said the very best thing about living at the compound was that they could take hot showers as often as they wanted. And they had flushing toilets too.

     It was the simple things in life they had missed the most.

     Mark and David had spent several hours the day before working on the three reefer trucks just inside the mine’s entrance. The term “reefer” was a misnomer, of course. It implied that the trucks could only get refrigerator cold. In fact, the compressors on the front of each truck could go as low as twenty degrees, and that made the trucks ideal for storing the rest of the frozen meat and other food products in the mine’s walk-in freezer.

     Once they had the trucks working, they spent the rest of the previous day moving food from the freezer to the trucks. Now they were all loaded and ready to go. Their condensers were set to twenty four degrees, and would come on automatically any time the temperature rose above that, whether the truck was running or not. The trucks would be parked in the lot north of the main building, and would be monitored closely until all the food inside them was used up.

     Karen’s fruit and vegetable plants, and her small fruit trees, were carefully loaded into another small truck. This truck had no climate or temperature control. But it was a short journey to the greenhouses next door, so they didn’t expect any problems keeping the plants alive. If they were to die, Karen had plenty of seeds with which to start anew.

     Karen was happy to get a report from Bryan and Sarah that both greenhouses had weathered the freeze with just minor damage. She had been afraid that the snow packed on the roofs would collapse them over time, and render them absolutely useless. Bryan and Mark had put their heads together when they contracted for construction of the greenhouses, and they were adamant that the roofs be pitched at sixty degrees. That was considerably steeper than a normal greenhouse roof, but the builder complied and the brothers’ bet paid off. The roofs were so steep that the snow could not accumulate on them. Instead it rolled down the side and fell harmlessly to the ground below.

     “I was amazed,” Sarah told Karen. “We walked into the greenhouse and it was actually warm in there. I even took off my coat. And then I went into the back, where it’s double paned, your greenhouse within a greenhouse. The thermometer said seventy degrees. I thought it was broken until I felt so hot I had to loosen my collar.”

     Karen said, “Good. That’s where I plan to grow our tropical stuff. Soon we’ll be having oranges and lemons and grapefruits. As many as we can eat.”

     “I can’t wait.”

     That evening the elders called everyone together to offer a blessing, and to thank God for watching over them during the mine years. They also asked Him to continue to watch over them as they began life in their brave new world.

     When night came, no one slept much. They were like children on Christmas Eve. Full of hope and anticipation and excitement.

     The next morning, after breakfast, the elders asked everyone to go back to their RVs and take their suitcases and other belongings to the entrance to the tunnel.

     Mark’s Uncle Marty said, “We don’t want anyone to go over there until the livestock, plants, vehicles and food are moved over there. There will be trucks, tractors and all manner of other vehicles driving all over the compound by people who have not driven in seven years. We don’t want any accidents to happen.

     “Mark and Bryan will give the all clear when everything is in place, and then we’ll walk over through the tunnel. You will be given a pair of latex gloves and a surgical mask as you enter the tunnel. You must wear them until you get into the main building in the compound. Then they are to be taken off and disposed of.

     “If you can handle your own luggage, that’s great. If you can’t, put your name on it and we’ll have the young guys who think they’re strong come back for it. Those of you who need extra assistance, don’t be shy. Ask for it. We want to make sure that everybody makes it over there safely.

     “Any questions?”

     There were none.

     “Very well, then. Let’s get started.”

     It took several hours to move the vehicles over. Mark and David unloaded enough of the frozen food to fill up the four large chest freezers in the new kitchen. Then they parked the trucks side by side on the large parking lot on the north side of the building.

     The cattle were split into two equal herds and placed into one half of each of the barns. The pigs were divided the same way and placed in the other half of the barns. The chickens were divided between the two coops.

     The crawfish, catfish and perch were released into the pond. Mark hoped that the fish that were already in there before the freeze had found a way to survive. If they didn’t, then surely the new ones would.

     Karen’s plants were taken out of the truck, and the planter boxes were arranged neatly on work tables within Greenhouse number one. Karen would transplant each plant one at a time into larger boxes, where they would be allowed to expand and greatly increase their output.

     The farm tractors were brought over, as were the pickup trucks, golf carts and quad runners. Once they were all parked, Mark gave the all clear.

     For the first time in seven years, the mine they’d all called home would be completely empty. Except for the bodies of Phyllis Snyder and Bill Meyers. And they would be moved whenever a small family graveyard could be constructed in the back of the compound.

     One by one, the residents emerged from the tunnel and into the crisp cool air. Every one of them paused and looked up at the afternoon sun, enjoying its warmth on their faces.

     Like a ragtag bunch of children, they fairly danced in the snow, delighted to see it for the first time in seven years. A couple picked it up and threw it, or kicked it in the direction of others. Between the snow and the sunshine overhead, the short trek between the buildings in the compound was a delightful experience.

Chapter 45

     Once inside the main building, they reassembled in the huge lobby, in front of a large fireplace and a roaring fire. Sarah and Sami handed each of them a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows as they came in, and they were asked to sit on the floor in front of the fireplace, or on one of several couches surrounding it.

     The newcomers who had never been in the building before looked around and marveled at the sight. It reminded some of the lobby of a luxury hotel. Its features were exquisite, the design beautiful. It would be a nice place to call home.

     Mark stood before the group and said, “I hope nobody minds, but we’ve already taken the liberty of designating the three apartments closest to the common area for the elders, out of respect. We’ve also reserved the west wing of the first floor for those among us who have disabilities or use scooters or walkers.

     “The north wing is available for anyone on a first come first serve basis.

     “We’ve placed the third floor off limits for the time being. That’s so we can close off the vents and cut power to that floor and help conserve our resources. We won’t be rationing power or water like we did in the mine, but we still don’t want to waste any more diesel fuel than we have to.

     “Eventually, as our families grow, we’ll start utilizing the apartments on the third floor. But for now we’ll just use it for storage.

     “After we’re finished, feel free to walk through the place and look around. The apartments are all unlocked, so you can feel free to look through them and select the one you want. For those of you with larger families, please note that the two apartments on each end of each hallway have three bedrooms. All the apartments in the middle of the hallways have two bedrooms.

     “The floor plans for the apartments are identical, but they are furnished differently. Some have traditional furniture, some are more modern. A couple of them, and I don’t remember which ones, have antique furniture.

     “Every apartment has either an upright piano or a pool table. Those of you who select an apartment with a piano but don’t know how to play it should see Joe. He has offered to teach anyone who wants to learn.

     “There will be no more restrictions on water, as I said. No more three minute showers. I know that’ll make everyone happy.”

     He looked at Bryan and said, “What am I forgetting?”

     Bryan took over.

     “There are kitchens in each apartment. The main kitchen will still operate as it always has. But they will also share the food in their cupboard and freezers for those who would like to prepare their own meals in their apartments. They only ask that you let them know in advance if you won’t be joining them for a particular meal so that they don’t prepare too much.

     “John has informed us that the security console is up and running, and that all of the outside cameras and monitors appear to be working. We don’t expect any threats from the outside world for the foreseeable future, but just to be on the safe side, we want to keep all doors to the outside locked, at least for awhile.

     “We’re asking the people who live in the apartments next to the exit doors to help us keep an eye on them. If you see them standing open, or notice they didn’t close all the way, please secure them.

     “If you go outside, remember that the door will lock behind you. We have hung several keys on the wall next to each exit door. They are on lanyards, so you can place a key around your neck as you go out and won’t have to worry about losing it. Please return the key when you reenter the building.

     “Also, just a reminder, don’t forget to wear your facemask whenever you go outside. This is just for the warm weather months. Once the winter sets in and everything freezes again, we’ll suspend this request. Next year at this time we’ll make a decision whether to continue this precaution. For now, please wear your mask.

     “That’s all I’ve got. Anyone else?”

     Hannah spoke up.

     “There is a small whiteboard for messages on the wall in the hallway, next to each apartment. Once you select your new home, please write your name on the whiteboard so your neighbors can find you.

     “The keys for each apartment are on the counter in each kitchen. Each apartment has two keys. If you need more than that, see Mark or Brad or Bryan. They have a key machine in the basement and they can make you some more. If you lock yourself out, just go to the security console. It will be manned twenty four hours a day, and they have a master key you can borrow.

     “Helen tells me that the dinner bell will ring at 7 p.m. sharp. Have fun picking out your new apartment, and welcome to your new home.”

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      Thank you for reading Hidden. I sincerely hope you liked it. Please enjoy this preview from the next book in the series, Breakout.

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     Hannah ran from the security center screaming.

     “Oh, my God! They’re knocking down the gate!”

     Skully slammed the Humvee into reverse and backed up forty feet to get a running start. This time the heavy steel gate gave way, but still didn’t break free. He backed up to try again.

     Bryan scrambled from one corner of the roof to the other, trying to get a clean shot. But there simply wasn’t one. The high steel fence they’d built to protect themselves now protected their attackers by hiding them from view.

     Bryan knew he wouldn’t get a shot until Skully and his gang broke through the gate. And then it would be too late.

     John had sounded the evacuation alarm twenty minutes before, and most of the residents were already in the tunnel, headed back to the mine.

     Sarah and Hannah went from room to room to make sure everyone got the word. Karen was in the tunnel counting heads.

     Sami was conscious and able to walk, but had lost a lot of blood and was light-headed. The pain from the bullet would come later. Right now she was just numb and in semi-shock. Helen led her toward the safety of the mine.

     Skully hit the steel gate a third time. This time one of the hinges popped. He knew one more time would do it.

     Bryan trained his rifle on the inside of the gate, ready to fire as soon as the vehicle broke through. His plan was to take out the driver first, then as many of the passengers as he could.

     Skully didn’t know it now, but he was living his very last seconds on earth.

     The fourth time was the charm. The Humvee hit the gates and flattened one of them, driving over it and then over Mark. The huge front wheel drove over Mark’s chest, shattering his ribcage and collapsing one lung, and leaving him in agony and unable to move. Or breathe.

     Bryan squeezed off a shot that went through the windshield and hit Skully squarely in the chest. His heart exploded and he was dead even before his head slumped forward and rested on the steering wheel.

     Five other men scrambled out of the Humvee and scattered in all directions. Bryan was able to clip one in the leg before he hid behind a trailer.

     Over the radio on his hip, Bryan heard Hannah’s panicked voice: “All clear! All clear!”

     Bryan took two more shots in the general direction of his enemies, just to keep them from coming out of hiding. Then he scrambled down from the roof, ran between the greenhouses, and to the ladder leaning up against the inside of the fence on the south side of the compound. He shouldered his weapon and fairly ran up the ladder, dropping down to the other side and turning his ankle as he did so. He heard bullets hitting the fence behind him as he hobbled away to safety.

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      Breakout will be available for purchase from Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers in April, 2014.