RISE FROM THE ASHES

THE REBIRTH OF SAN ANTONIO

By

Darrell Maloney

Copyright 2014 by Darrell Maloney

A Recap of Book 1 of This Series,

COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON

     Scott Harter was nothing special. Just an ordinary guy living in the suburbs with a typical family and a dog named Duke.

     If anything set Scott apart from everybody else, it was his extraordinary luck. All his life, he seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He’d started his business at just the right moment, getting in early on what would become a booming self storage industry. He seemed to know when and how to play the stock market so that his money grew at a steady pace.

     And he took most of it out of the market to invest in real estate. Just before the market took a huge downturn in 2007.

     It was also his good luck that drove him to dig inside a storage locker when its renter defaulted on his contract.

     And maybe just a little bit of curiosity as well.

     What he found in the locker didn’t make much sense at first. Some old maps of the heavens. A lot of literature about the Mayans. And a journal, left behind by an old college professor who seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.

     Scott read the journal. And the more he read, the more concerned he got.

     “The Mayans never said the world was going to end,” the old professor wrote. “They said that December 21, 2012 started a new era. An era they called ‘the last period of progress.’”

     The implications were worrisome, and drove Scott to investigate the clues the mysterious professor had left behind. He’d noted that the Mayans had identified every one of the planets and all their moons, even though they had no telescopes. The Mayans learned to predict earthquakes and tidal waves. Modern scientists still couldn’t do that, even with all their knowledge and fancy equipment.

     And then Scott found the answer he’d been looking for. It turned out the Mayans could also predict solar flare activity. They discovered that solar storms, like most other things in the universe, run in cycles. Just as earth had seasons of increased storm activity, so did the sun.

     But unlike earth, which has a hurricane season each year, the sun’s storms happened less frequently. Every two hundred years, give or take a few.

     The professor noted that in 1820, a mysterious thing happened on a global scale.

     Millions of people around the world suddenly felt nauseous and disoriented. Many of them threw up or fainted. Farm animals lost their balance and fell over.

     Doctors at the time had no answers for the malady. But it only seemed to last for a few hours, and left no long term effects. So it went down in history as one of those things man just wasn’t meant to understand.

     The Mayans also foresaw the coming of technology. Archaeologists had deciphered Mayan hieroglyphics that spoke of machines which allowed man to travel about without the aid of animals. They even described airships and radio waves.

     And the Mayans seemed to understand somehow that the reason the 1820 event would cause no real harm was because there were no powered machines.

     But during the “last period of progress,” there would be plenty of them.

     And just as the Mayans had seen the planets and their moons without the aid of telescopes, they also knew, beyond all reason, that the cyclic solar activities around the year 2020, give or take a few years, would cause unfathomable damage.

     But not to people. The people might get sick or dizzy. That would be a minor inconvenience.

     The machines, on the other hand, would take the big hit. For when the massive solar flares sent electromagnetic pulses streaming toward the earth at half a million miles an hour, it would affect anything electric. Or electronic. And while humans and other mammals might just throw up or feel faint, the machines would be shorted out.

     Forever.

     But Scott did his homework, and his research. He discovered that scientists had long before developed something called a Faraday cage. A Faraday cage had the capability of protecting electronics and electric items from the electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs.

     And he figured out how to build modified versions of the Faraday cages.

     Scott knew that when the EMPs bombarded the earth, everything with circuits and batteries would cease to function. All the vehicles on the roads would stop dead in their tracks. Airplanes would fall from the sky. The entire world would experience an immediate blackout.

     People would wonder why their televisions and lights no longer worked. They’d try to call the power companies to complain. But their cell phones wouldn’t work either. They’d get into their cars and their cars wouldn’t start.

     And the world would quickly descend into chaos.

     It was an ugly vision.

     But with the mysterious professor’s notes and the research Scott did at the library, he had the tools he needed to prepare for the inevitable. He had the know-how and the drive. What he didn’t have was the time.

     A big problem, as Scott saw it, was that the Mayans weren’t very specific. The professor said that the solar storms came about every two hundred years. He’d commented in his notes that it was akin to predicting on which day the first snowstorm of the winter might come. It was obviously coming. But pinning it down far ahead of time was just a little bit harder.

     Once the window opened on December 21, 2012, it might be a day before the EMPs hit. Or it might be several years.

     Scott had been a pessimist pretty much his entire life. So he did what was prudent. He hoped for the best. But he expected the worst.

     He enlisted the help of his girlfriend, Joyce, and borrowed from the bank to purchase a section of land in the hill country above San Antonio. It was far enough away from the city to be safe from the turmoil that would engulf the urban areas. It was also rural enough to be able to grow crops and raise livestock.

     For the better part of two years, the pair worked against the clock, praying each day that the EMPs would hold off a little longer, until they were finished.

     Finally, their compound was ready to occupy. They’d prepared a large field for growing crops. Enlarged a small playa lake and diverted a stream to fill it; then stocked it with fish.

     They’d built a tall security fence around most of the compound, to hide the fact that they were keeping cattle, pigs, chickens and rabbits on the inside.

     And most importantly, Scott built a huge Faraday cage, the size of a two car garage. Inside the cage he’d placed the small things they’d need to carry on the lives they’d become accustomed to. The television sets and microwaves and video games.

     And the important things, too. Batteries. Spare parts to get the vehicles running again. Spare pumps and transformers and surveillance cameras.

     On the day the EMPs came, Joyce and the rest of their small group were all in San Antonio, ninety miles away from their safe haven. Everyone except Scott, who was still at the compound.

     It was a school day, and Scott’s boys were in class when the lights went out.

     They were well versed on what to do. Scott had drilled them many times. They each removed a black backpack from their lockers and headed for their house in the suburbs. On foot.

     Inside the backpacks were water and food for their journey, and a tiny Faraday box containing a walkie talkie and batteries.

     The boys’ mother Linda was sitting in traffic when her car died. She looked around at dozens of other motorists getting out of their cars and cursing. Then raising their hoods and scratching their heads. And she noticed that the stop lights were no longer working. Neither was the marquee outside a movie theater she’d been reading a few moments before.

     Joyce, Scott’s girlfriend, walked out of her darkened office just in time to see a commercial airliner fall from the sky.

     They all knew what had just happened. And they knew what they had to do.

     Coming from all different directions, the group gathered at Scott’s home in north San Antonio.

     And they had an unexpected guest. Scott’s oldest son brought his girlfriend, Sara.

     “Her parents are in St. Louis,” he’d explained. “I couldn’t leave her all alone to fend for herself. She wouldn’t make it.”

     The group welcomed Sara as one of their own. But Linda, the boys’ mother and Scott’s ex-wife, could see that Sara had a secret she was keeping.

     Scott, meanwhile, had removed a four wheel drive utility vehicle from his Faraday barn and was high-tailing it south, following a string of high tension power lines that would never work again.

     He was ninety miles away, and wouldn’t make it until after nightfall.

     Once the group was together in the city, they spent the next day preparing for their long journey back to the compound. Knowing it was too dangerous to travel during the day, they napped and waited for the darkness.

     When night fell the second night after the blackout, the riots started all over the city.

     But this group of six, and a black lab named Duke, were headed out, slowly working their way north to the compound. Traveling in a group slowed them down. It took two full nights to get there, but when the sun broke over the horizon at the end of that second night, they were safe.

     The world around them was going mad. In the cities, people were outraged at the electric companies for not having the power back on. The water was no longer flowing, and people were getting desperately thirsty. They were angry and looking for someone to blame.

     The vehicles weren’t running any more, and the streets were littered with abandoned cars and trucks.

     Even the police and fire crews were helpless, and having to resort to riding commandeered bicycles to help those they could get to.

     All the ugliness of mankind came out. The looting started, and then the violence. Buildings were set on fire and cars were overturned. The decent people holed themselves up in their houses. The bad roamed the streets, looking for whatever they could plunder.

     At the compound, the group of six was safe. But there was a lot to be done.

A Recap of Book 2 of the series,

AFTER THE DUST SETTLED

     Things went relatively smoothly at the compound. The group fell into a normal routine, although at times they felt like the city girl in the old television show Green Acres. “Goodbye, city life!”

     They transitioned into a farming and ranching lifestyle. With the help of Tom Haskins, their one and only neighbor, they learned to plant and harvest crops, and how to care for livestock.

     That wasn’t to say it was easy. They learned first hand that the old adage about a farmer’s work never being done was indeed true. Especially since they’d neglected to plan for farming on a large scale.

     The cost of seed planters and harvesters wouldn’t have made it prudent to buy them just to plant a single acre of crops anyway. Even if they had been able to afford them. So they opted for the old fashioned way. Planting, irrigating, and harvesting an acre of corn by hand. Then doing the same with an acre of wheat.

     The planting process along took all of them working from dawn to dusk an entire week to finish. A whole week of crawling around on hands and knees, getting filthy, then stumbling to bed unable to stand up straight.

     Zachary summed it up best by observing, “No wonder farmers know so many cuss words.”

     There were other difficulties as well. The secrets that Sara had been keeping finally came out. And she had a new one too. But this one wouldn’t remain secret for long, as her midsection began to expand and she outgrew her clothes item by item.

     She was terrified that the group would send her away, to have the baby on her own in a cold and cruel world. But they surprised her. They treated her better than her own parents ever did. And they made it clear to her that she, and the baby, were part of their family now. And that she would never be cast out. That she had just as much right to be there as anyone.

     Scott developed a close friendship with a San Antonio police officer named John Castro. A war hero, John fought hard to join the SAPD despite leaving half a leg in the burning sands of Fallujah. And he was fighting equally hard to save the city he loved.

     Scott and John talked frequently by ham radio. Scott learned that San Antonio was decimated. Less than five percent of the city would survive the waves of starvation and suicides. Bodies were stacked in the streets and burned until they were merely piles of ashes and bones.

     But that wasn’t all. The decomposing bodies had created a pneumonia-like plague that was sweeping through the cities. It was treatable only with massive doses of penicillin, and was ravaging what was left of the population.

     John was sure to be infected eventually. He was out among the masses every day, trying to restore order and to bring his city back from the brink. But he was desperate to get his wife and two girls away from the city.

     Scott’s group was aware that the citizens of San Antonio were in dire straights. And they wanted to help. So they planted an extra out-of-cycle wheat crop, and harvested it seventy seven days later.

     Tom Haskins went to work on a Walmart truck abandoned by the side of the road since the blackout. He was able to get it running, and seventy two boxes of unprocessed wheat were added to the load of food.

     Tom and Scott took a harrowing trip back to the city and dropped the load. In exchange for the food, they brought back something even better: John’s wife and daughters.

     Then John came down with the plague. He went into a coma because he was allergic to penicillin and couldn’t be treated using the normal protocol. San Antonio was out of an alternative antibiotic. But Tom was able to find some in nearby Junction.

     The story ended when Scott made a second run to San Antonio, to drop off the medication that would save his friend’s life.

     Now all he had to do was get back safely.

And now, Book 3 of the series,

RISE FROM THE ASHES

THE REBIRTH OF SAN ANTONIO

-1-

     Scott had dropped the amoxicillin at the fence line. He could see a shadowy figure fifty feet away, and knew it was John’s friend Robbie. Robbie was also a San Antonio cop, and had been John’s partner for almost three years.

     “Don’t get too close, Scott,” Robbie called from the darkness. “I could be a carrier. Just drop the backpack there and I’ll come and get it after you back away. And God bless you, Scott, for doing this. Hopefully this medicine will bring John out of his coma and save his life.”

     Scott had felt a sense of dread as he walked back to where he parked his Gator. He’d always been a little bit paranoid. Now his mind was working overtime, coming up with all kinds of nightmare scenarios.

     Like maybe someone had hotwired his Gator and stolen it.

     Or even worse, maybe they were waiting to ambush him and just take the key by force.

     He knew that the world had become an ugly and very violent place since the blackout. And he knew that in a world where few vehicles were operable, powered transportation was more valuable than gold.

     But his Gator was still there. And there was no one else around.

     Now the only question was, would it start? He’d driven it hard for ninety miles. It was a utility vehicle, comfortable around an industrial environment, carrying cargo for short distances. But hauling ass for three straight hours was something else. The engine had smelled hot when he finally turned it off half an hour before. Was he too hard on it? Would it refuse to start again?

     He looked to the sky and said, “Please, Lord, I don’t ask for much. But I’m asking for this.”

     Then he held his breath and turned the key. It fired right up.

     He felt the weight of the world being lifted from his shoulders. And as he turned the wheeler north again, following a string of high tension power lines out of the city and back to his compound near Junction, he laughed at himself for being so paranoid.

     His plan was to take it easier and slower going back up the mountain. The Gator was by nature a relatively stealthy machine. Made by the John Deere Company, it was painted dark green. He’d opted for the black seats instead of the bright yellow, so that the machine was damn near invisible on a moonless night.

     Even with the partial moon in the sky above his head, it wasn’t easy to see without night vision goggles.

     And Scott was betting that there weren’t a lot of people out there with night vision goggles.

     The Gator was also almost silent when allowed to creep at its own pace. It was slow, sure. But with no foot on the accelerator, the only noise was the low hum of the engine and the twigs crunching under the balloon tires.

     It wasn’t until the driver pressed the accelerator that the engine started to roar.

     On the way down the mountain, Scott had traded stealth for speed. He had to get the medicine to the hospital to save his friend’s life. He had to take the risk.

     Going back, though, his plan was to keep his foot off the accelerator and let the wheeler creep until it was clear of the city. Then he’d pick up his pace a bit.

     It had taken him three hours to get down the mountain. He had five hours left until daybreak.

     With any luck, he’d make it back just before the sun came up.

     It was a good plan.

     In theory.

     The problem with good plans is that sometimes others who do not share one’s goals and expectations have plans of their own.

     Scott was only two miles from his old house in the northern suburbs of San Antonio where he’d made the medicine drop.

     He was moving along slowly at four miles an hour and virtually silent. And he was closely watching the landscape ahead of him.

     But Scott wasn’t a warrior by nature, and was a rookie when it came to urban warfare or guerilla tactics. He made a dreadful error. He wasn’t watching behind him.

     He’d seen the two cars, sitting side by side alongside the roadway. They’d been there for awhile, with flat tires and broken windshields and graffiti spray painted on the sides.

     When he and Tom had driven the Walmart truck down the mountain a few weeks before, the cars had been there then. They caused some concern, but once they passed them by they ceased to be of interest.

     When Scott came down the mountain at full speed several hours before, he paid them less attention. He remembered them from the first trip and no longer considered them a potential threat.

     And now, on his way back up the mountain, they were little more than a landmark.

     But they were more than just a landmark to the four men hiding behind them.

     The four men had seen Scott come speeding by an hour and a half before, but who were caught off guard and couldn’t stop him until Scott was long gone.

     The same four men had correctly reasoned that whatever goes up must come down. And that whoever drives past going in one direction is likely to return in the opposite direction.

     So they hid behind the abandoned cars and waited.

     And sure enough, Scott came creeping toward them, staring more or less straight ahead.

     The group of men could have stood up and fired upon him then.

     But they didn’t. They were cowards and back shooters. So as Scott slowly approached their position from the south, they crawled to the east side of the abandoned cars, then around the cars to come out behind him.

     It was only then that one of them leveled an AK-47 in Scott’s direction and pulled the trigger.

     The bullet entered Scott’s upper back, halfway between his spine and shoulder socket. It made a small hole in his back, passed completely through his shoulder blade, and exited through a larger hole in his upper left chest.

     Had the shot not caught him completely off guard, he would have likely floored the accelerator and tried to outrun his attackers.

     But getting shot from behind was the last thing that Scott had expected. He’d made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to consider all possible scenarios.

     He’d let his guard down, and it had cost him.

     He’d been too relaxed when the bullet struck. Too limber. And the sheer force of the bullet forced his body off balance. Only his left hand had been on the steering wheel, and it was immediately knocked free. He twisted off the side of the Gator and tumbled to the ground.

     Before he even hit the ground he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

     But now it was too late.

     Scott lay on the pavement, holding his shoulder with his right hand and writhing in pain.

     His assailants, on the other hand, whooped and hollered for joy. The wheeler continued to creep forward at four miles an hour, not knowing or caring that its operator had been quite literally shot off of it.

     One of the men ran the machine down and jumped aboard, then turned it around and drove it back. The others were busy back slapping and high fiving each other.

     Scott reached for his handgun and was kicked soundly in the face with a hard leather boot. He instantly felt his front teeth loosen and tasted the leaden taste of his own blood.

     “Try that again, you son of a bitch, and I’ll shoot you through the head this time.”

-2-

     Scott had always considered himself a very lucky man. And now he was cursing himself. Because of his own stupidity, his luck had finally run out.

     The pain was almost unbearable, and he fought hard to keep from passing out.

     “So, where’d you get this fancy little machine here, Buddy?”

     Scott didn’t answer.

     “What’s the matter, mister? Cat got your tongue, does it?”

     One of the other men laughed.

     “No, I think my size twelve got some of his teeth, that’s what I think happened.”

     “You don’t mind if we take your machine for a little spin, now do you? We promise we’ll bring it right back. You just wait right here and we’ll be back in five minutes. You have my word on that.”

     “Get up, you son of a bitch.”

     Scott felt himself being pulled up by his shirt collar. Someone took off the web belt he had around his waist, and ripped the night vision goggles from his face.

     Then they shoved him into the dirt by the side of the road.

     They struck Scott as rednecks, from their language and demeanor. Scott had nothing against rednecks. He’d considered several of them his friends, back in the old days. As a group, they weren’t a bad lot.

     The problem was, once a redneck made up his mind about something, he seldom changed it. And that worried Scott.

     “What do you think we should do with him, Joe?”

     “I say let’s just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it.”

     “I don’t know. I’m down to my last few bullets. Don’t want to waste another one on this scumbag. He’ll bleed to death soon enough from his first wound. You’re getting careless in your old age, Davey. Used to, you’d have blown him away instead of just wounding him.”

     “Please,” Scott pleaded. “You’ve got my vehicle. Killing me won’t get you anything else, or help you any more. Just leave me to die in peace.”

     “Maybe we should just beat him to death. How about it, Joe?”

     “Nah. He’s right. It makes no sense to waste any more effort on a man who’s just gonna die anyway. Let’s get the hell out of here before that gunshot attracts anybody else.”

     Scott lay in the dirt, trying to come to grips with the pain. But his mind overruled him. The human mind, in its mercy, shuts down when the physical pain becomes too great for one to bear.

     The last thing Scott heard before he blacked out was the sound of his Gator driving off in the distance.

     He came to sometime later, but he didn’t have a clue what time it was. He was fairly good about guessing the time of day by looking at the position of the sun.

     Nighttime, though, was a different story.

     It was still dark. And the moon had changed position in the sky. But he wasn’t sure whether he’d been out for five minutes or five hours.

     His assailants were long gone. Probably thought he died when he passed out. Or maybe they just wanted him to suffer a slow and agonizing death.

     He felt his wound. It wasn’t bleeding profusely. It was more a heavy ooze. But he’d lost enough blood to soak his shirt. And that worried him.

     He lay there for a minute, trying to regain his senses. Things were foggy, and although the pain wasn’t as great as before, he knew he had to control it. If he passed out a second time, he might bleed out without ever waking up again.

     He’d passed out lying on his right side, his head slumped down to the pavement. The wound, on the left side of his body, had been elevated, above the heart. He never had any medical training, and certainly didn’t know much about trauma to the body, but he wondered if the position his body was in when he passed out saved his life. That if he had fallen the other way, if the wound was beneath him, would he have bled to death?

     He shook his head, trying to get back on track. Whatever happened or didn’t happen up to this point no longer mattered.

     What mattered now was that he was still alive, but that he was in a world of hurt. And only he could save himself. There was no 911 to call, no ambulance to pick him up. He had a choice. He could lay here and die, or he could drag himself to safety.

     Wherever the hell that was.

     He stumbled slowly to his feet. He couldn’t risk rising too fast and passing out a second time. He might not wake up again.

     At least the pain wasn’t as severe as before.  Mother Nature’s way of having mercy on him, he supposed. Oh, it still hurt like hell. But either it had become tolerable or his mind had adjusted to it.

     He thought back to the old movies he’d seen where macho actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood got shot and then sloughed it off, like it was nothing.

     Screw them. Getting shot hurt, and it sucked big time.

     He couldn’t go north. He knew that he was more than eighty miles from the compound. And although the grade was gradual, it was uphill all the way. At best he might manage a couple of miles a day. That was just too far to go, and too long to get there. Even if he hadn’t been shot it would be an ordeal. Now it was an impossibility.

     He reached his right hand to the exit wound on his left shoulder. The blood was seeping slowly. It was starting to clot. He doubted it would stop completely on its own, and he debated whether or not to rip a piece from his shirt tail to shove into the hole. Then he decided not to. At least not now. If his being upright and walking around made the bleeding worse, it would be an option. But he didn’t want to restart the heavy bleeding again if he could help it.

     The exit wound was as big as his thumb. He was lucky, he knew. Going through his shoulder blade the way it did the bullet could have send jagged pieces of bone in front of it, and ripped a gaping hole in his chest. He decided he was lucky to be alive. And he hoped to stay that way for awhile.

     He headed south, toward his old house, but off the roadway. In case his attackers came back by to finish the job or to see if he’d died yet, be wanted to be in the brush where they couldn’t find him.

     On his way down the mountain, he’d cursed the partial moon in the night sky. Now, without the night vision goggles, he was glad to have it. It gave him just enough light to see a few yards ahead of him, so he could go around the heavy shrubs and mesquite trees, instead of plowing headlong into them.

     To his left, forty yards away, was a row of suburban houses, blackened for months by the power outage. Something seemed eerie about them, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. They seemed somehow out of place, like from another world.

     Then it dawned on him, it was their stillness. There was no sound of people conversing. No dogs barking. Nothing. They were little more than props. No longer containers of life and joy. Nothing but cold walls and reminders of a better time.

     He suspected the dogs had starved to death in the days and weeks following the blackout. Or put out of their misery by compassionate owners. And many, he supposed, were probably eaten as the survivors became more and more desperate for food.

     Scott wondered how many of the houses had become tombs. John had told him that hundreds of thousands of people took their own lives in the privacy of their homes rather than deal with an inevitable, harsher fate. He said entire families were gassing themselves to death in their garages, or taking poison together and dying in one another’s arms. In many cases, fathers were shooting their entire families, and then turning the guns on themselves.

     He said he knew of cases where families had no means to kill themselves, and went into neighbors’ houses after the shooting stopped. So they could retrieve the weapons and show their own families the same mercy.

     That’s where the plague had come from, John told him. From all the decaying bodies hidden in the houses. The flies found them. And the mosquitoes tried to feed off them. And it was the insects that spread the plague to the masses.

     It was like kicking a man when he was down. The survivors had endured so much already, and then the plague came to decimate the city even more.

     Step by step, foot by foot, Scott stumbled into the darkness. He wasn’t sure how far he had to go. The two hundred foot towers carrying the power lines overhead were each numbered. They were painted with reflective white paint which were easy to see with night vision goggles. But with just the moonlight, they were impossible to make out from fifty yards away. He could go closer, but he’d be exposed to his attackers if they happened to come back. And as slow as he was moving, he likely wouldn’t have time to make it back to the brush after he heard their vehicle.

     He caught himself. It wasn’t their vehicle, damnit. It was his, and they were sons of bitches for taking it.

     No, going back under the towers wasn’t an option. He’d stay in the brush, plodding slowly along, watching the shape of the darkened houses until they started looking familiar to him.

-3-

     Scott felt the sensation of being light headed and dizzy. He felt his wound. It didn’t appear to have started bleeding again. He couldn’t reach the entry wound, but he could tell by the way his bloody shirt stuck to his back how much blood he’d lost. And the blood spot didn’t appear to be getting any larger.

     He guessed that it was a combination of blood loss and dehydration that was causing his light headedness, and hoped he’d be able to make it to his old house.

     That was his last thought before passing out a second time.

     This time he came around to the sensation of something crawling across his face. He felt a searing pain across his back, as though he were being burned with a hot poker. He arose, still dazed and confused, and was horrified to find that he was covered with fire ants. And the worst part was, he was too weak to brush them off.

     He endured their stinging while he tried to regain his senses. For a couple of moments he couldn’t even remember being shot. Or where he was. He wondered how in hell he came to be lying in the dirt, near an ant bed, in the middle of nowhere.

     Slowly, it all came back to him. In a fog, he looked around for the men who’d done this to him. But there was no one around. He managed to roll over, and the sun burned his eyes. It was directly overhead now. Noon or very close to it, he guessed.

     It took a monumental effort to prop himself upon one knee, and another to stand. The ants continued to sting him until they fell off one by one. Oddly enough, it was the only pain he felt. The bullet wound had turned from the sharp pain it was the night before to something else. Something akin to numbness.

     His vision was foggy. His eyelids dragged slowly across his eyeballs. He knew he was dehydrated. Perhaps that was why the bleeding stopped. Perhaps it was too thick to flow.

     He tried to focus on the high tower to his right. To make out the number on it. 14545.

     Damn it. In his confusion, he’d come too far. He’d passed by the sanctuary of his home. He’d spent a good portion of the night passed out in the dirt and being devoured by an army of angry ants for no good reason.

     His body wanted him to find a soft place in the grass to lie down and go to sleep. His mind half agreed, but also argued half-heartedly that to lay back down now would mean an almost certain death.

     So he backtracked. Trudging slowly along, he retraced his steps for a quarter of a mile until the rooftops looked familiar.

     He came to his back fence, and was disheartened to see that Robbie had replaced the section of fence he’d removed the night before when Scott dropped off the medicine. Now he had to figure out how he was going to get over a six foot privacy fence when he could barely stand up.

     He finally reached up with both hands and placed them upon the top of one of the fence slats.

     With all the strength he could muster, he pulled.

     He was lucky in that the fence was several years old. The wood had softened a bit, and the two nails holding the slat to the top brace gave way a bit.

     It wasn’t much. Maybe half an inch or so. But it was enough to give him a little more leverage the next time he pulled. And they came out a bit more then.

     It took him four pulls to rip the first slat off the fence. And seven for the second.

     He wasn’t sure he had the strength to pull a third slat off, but he didn’t need to. He was able to squeeze through the twelve and a half inch hole the two slats had given him.

     He still wasn’t in his right mind.

     At first, he was a little bit pissed that Robbie had left without securing the sliding door to his patio.

     Then he realized that the house had almost certainly been looted of all its food, and probably its valuables as well. And had the door been locked, he’d have used more of his rapidly diminishing strength breaking in.

     He pulled a drinking glass from the cupboard and turned on his kitchen faucet. He knew the water was safe to drink. John had told him the water plant had managed to become partially operational again a couple of weeks before.

     Still, as a precaution, and as thirsty as he was, he let it run for a full two minutes to flush the pipes before he filled his cup.

     It dawned on him that of all the water he’d drank in his entire life, this was the best. And he didn’t stop until he drank two full glasses.

     He looked around, and was surprised that most of his belongings were still there. Everything had been rifled through. The kitchen drawers had been dumped on the floor and most of the things in the cupboard had been angrily tossed aside. But there didn’t appear to be anything missing.

     He stumbled over to the couch, with the intent of laying there for just a few moments.

     When he woke up again, it was completely dark.

-4-

     Scott’s loved ones at the compound were frantic. Scott’s plans were to drop off the medicine around midnight. That would have given him around five hours or so of darkness, to cover his journey back up the mountain.

     Joyce had tried to sleep, but tossed and turned all night. She didn’t share the same sense of foreboding that Scott had. Her discomfort was caused more by the mere fact that the man she loved was out there, all alone, on a dangerous mission. And if anything did go wrong, there was very little she or anyone else could do to help him.

     At three a.m. she finally got up and went to the security console. Linda, Scott’s ex-wife, was pulling her normal shift, watching the monitors for any sign of his vehicle.

     Under the best case scenario, he’d be coming into view on the tower’s south facing camera any minute.

     Linda said, “I’ve been trying to raise him on the radio every ten or fifteen minutes for the last hour. I haven’t heard as much as a peep. And you, honey, look like hell. Did you get any sleep at all?”

     Joyce managed a smile.

     “Gee, thanks a lot. Not much. I’m going to be up anyway. If you want, I’ll relieve you so you can go get some sleep yourself.”

     “Thanks, but you know I can’t sleep while he’s out there either. Besides, I need to be here when he arrives so we don’t leave the monitors unmanned when you go running out there to slobber all over him. How about if you pour us some coffee and we’ll wait together?”

     “Okay, that’s a deal.”

     Joyce went to the kitchen and put a dark hazelnut roast K-cup into the Keurig.

     “What are you in the mood for, Linda?”

     “English toffee with a teaspoon of sugar.”

     Joyce went through a drawer and pulled out Linda’s choice while she listened to her friend try again to raise Scott on the radio.

     “Scott, this is Linda. Come in if you copy. And even if you don’t copy, come in anyway. We’re starting to worry a bit.”

     Joyce was raised a good Catholic girl, and although she stopped going to mass many years before, she was still a believer.

     She crossed herself and looked up to the ceiling and said, “Please, Father. Bring him back safely.”

     But there was no answer to Linda’s radio call.

     The small desk clock on the security console read 3:22 when Joyce returned with the coffees.

     “He should be here by now. Or at least in radio range.”

     When he left, he was able to check in when he was ten miles out. Now, she had to assume that he was still more than ten miles away.

     Linda tried to calm her nerves.

     “He probably saw something he didn’t like and he’s going extra slow. You remember that when we came up here we crept at four miles an hour so the engine didn’t make any noise. And it took us a full two nights to get here. If he’s doing the same thing just as a precaution, he won’t be here until tomorrow night. Or maybe even the next night, considering the late start he got leaving San Antonio. Just do me a favor, girlfriend, and don’t panic.”

     “That’s easy for you to say. He’s not your man anymore.”

     As soon as Joyce uttered the words, she wished she could take them back. She saw the hurt on Linda’s face. The words weren’t meant to be hurtful, they just came out wrong.

     “Oh, my. I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant…”

     “Oh, don’t worry about it. I know what you meant. And you’re right. Scott and I aren’t married anymore. But we’re still good friends and I still have love for him in my heart. But here’s the thing. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have. And he’s always been an overly cautious man. In everything he does. If he saw something he didn’t like, or sensed some kind of danger, he’s not the kind of guy who would just ignore it and rush back just so he could make it back to a nice warm bed to sleep in.

     “He’d take his time. Make modifications to his plans. Maybe even seek an alternate route, just to avoid trouble. And if it took him twice as long to get here, he’d do that. Because in the end he’s a smart man. And he knows it’s better to be extra cautious and show up late, than to be careless and not come back at all.”

     “I know. There have been times when I’ve thought him too cautious. But you’re right. He’ll do whatever he can to get back here, even if it takes longer.

     “But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

     The women turned as they heard the faint sound of an alarm clock going off upstairs. They guessed it was Jordan’s. It was four a.m. now, and everyone had hoped the night before that Scott would be home by then.

     Five minutes later Jordan came stumbling down the stairs, still half asleep.

     Linda called out, “Hey, baby, what are you doing up so early?”

     “Hi, Mom. Hi Joyce. I got up to welcome dad home and find out how everything went. Where is he?”

     Joyce smiled and tried to hide the concern on her face.

     “He’s not home yet, hon. But he should be calling in anytime. You’re welcome to join us if you want, or we can wake you up when he comes in.”

     If Jordan was concerned at all, he didn’t let on. It was possible that he was just too groggy for the implications to sink in.

     He yawned and stretched. Then he said, “Okay, then. I’m going back to bed. Don’t forget to have him knock on my door when he gets home, okay?”

     “Sure, honey. We’ll do that.”

     Linda intentionally waited until she heard Jordan’s bedroom door close before she tried the radio again.

     “Scott, this is Linda. Come in.”

     She waited twenty seconds for a response while Joyce crossed her fingers.

     Then she tried again.

     “Scott, please come in so we’ll know you’re doing okay.”

     Again, silence.

     The back door suddenly opened, and Tom Haskins walked in. He wasn’t in the flannel pajama pants and t-shirt that he had a habit of sleeping in, even in the summertime. He was fully dressed, in jeans and a work shirt, as though he were going somewhere.

     He went over to the security console and leaned over to kiss Linda.

     “Well, hello, stranger. What are you doing up so early? You’re not supposed to relieve me until six.”

     “I’ve been listening to you calling Scott and on the radio and getting no response. Did I do the math wrong? Shouldn’t he be home by now?”

     “Yes, but that was the best case scenario. He said from the beginning that if everything didn’t go smoothly he might have to find an alternate route back, or might have to take his time getting back up the mountain.”

     Tom eyed both women carefully. He could see the worry on their faces, despite their efforts to hide it.

     “Are you two okay?”

     Linda nodded her head yes, but not in a very convincing way.

     Joyce was more honest.

     “I know that he’s probably just being prudent and extra cautious. But honestly, if he doesn’t make it home before sunrise, this is going to be the longest day of my life.”

     They all knew that Scott wouldn’t travel in the daylight. It was just too risky. If he couldn’t make it back before the sun came up, he’d hole up in a heavy thicket of brush, or in a cave, or anywhere he could remain unseen until the darkness returned.

     Tom tried to come up with some encouraging words.

     “Now, don’t y’all go worrying too much. You know how careful he is. I’ll bet it’s nothing more than he’s running behind schedule, and that his radio is acting up. You just wait and see. He never misses a breakfast, and he won’t miss one today either.”

     Both women could see, though, that Tom was even having trouble convincing himself.

-5-

     By mid day, everyone at the compound was in a full scale panic. The unspoken order of the day was to stay as busy as possible. It was impossible to get their minds off the situation, but they tried anyway. Linda and Sara went for a long walk to gather apples from the old apple tree by the fishing pond. They didn’t need any apples, and in fact knew there probably wouldn’t be any worth picking because they’d harvested all the good ones just a couple of weeks before. But it seemed a good way to kill a couple of hours, and that was their real mission.

     They intentionally left their radios in the house so they didn’t have to hear Joyce’s plaintive radio calls every ten minutes. Pleas that had gone unanswered all night and so far into the day.

     Tom took the boys and put them to work in the yard, digging fence post holes to reinforce a sagging pig pen. It seemed some of the hogs liked to lean against it while they napped, and parts of it were now leaning twenty degrees.

     It wasn’t in danger of collapsing, and in fact didn’t really need repair. At least not for a long time to come.

     But Tom knew, and the boys suspected, that make-work details such as this would keep them from looking at the clock every five minutes and going crazy.

     Hannah, the new arrival and John’s wife, spent several hours that morning “schooling” her girls. She’d done her level best to teach them things they no longer had a chance to learn in school, and had done so since the power went out.

     Normally the girls hated it. But on this particular day they didn’t seem to mind it.

     Even though it was hard to focus.

     Hannah had tried hailing someone from the San Antonio Police Department several times on the ham radio. She didn’t know if any of the other officers had such radios, but she figured it was worth a shot. Robbie was in the habit now of calling her every other day to give her the status on John, and to share whatever other news was going on. But they had spoken the day before, to make arrangements for Scott’s medicine delivery. He wasn’t scheduled to report in for another day.

     Hannah was hoping against hope that her calls for “any SAPD officer” would catch someone’s attention. Maybe another cop who knew Robbie and could pass a message to him that Hannah needed to talk ASAP.

     But she had no luck at all.

     Over dinner that evening, the mood was understandably somber. No one wanted to talk about Scott and his reason for not showing. The topic was an eight hundred pound gorilla sitting in the corner of the dining room, eyeing each of them with suspicion and seemingly ready to pounce on anyone who uttered Scott’s name.

     And each of them was looking forward to the darkness.

     They knew that whatever had delayed him, he wouldn’t travel in the daylight. It was way too risky and he was way too vulnerable.

     Nightfall, though, would bring renewed hope that he’d call in on the radio. Say he was sorry for the delay, but that he was getting close to home and would be there soon.

     Or, if he no longer had a working radio, nightfall would bring the chance he’d show up on the monitor from the tower cam, and they could rush out and open the gate for him.

     After dinner, Hannah organized a “movie marathon” for the three younger kids.

     “You can stay up as late as you want watching movies. And you can eat as much ice cream and popcorn as you want. There are only three rules you must abide by.

     Rule number one is no arguing about which movie you’re going to watch. You have to decide nicely among yourselves and agree on the next movie before you start it. The first time I hear anyone arguing, the television and DVD player get turned off and everyone goes right to bed.

     Rule number two is you can’t fall asleep. If you fall asleep I’ll wake you up and send you upstairs to your bedroom.

     Rule number three is that you stay in the den and leave us big people alone.

     Zachary said, “That’s only because you don’t want us to hear while you all plot our murders.”

     Little Misty’s mouth dropped open.

     Hannah said, “Don’t worry, Sugar. He’s only kidding.”

     Then she looked directly at Zachary and added, “The only murder I’m planning is his.”

     After the younger kids were settled in the den watching The Rugrats Movie, Hannah went to the kitchen to join Linda, Joyce and Tom at the table drinking coffee.

     Linda said, “Thank you for taking care of that, Hannah. That was sweet.”

     Linda and Joyce knew Hannah’s logic behind the all night movie marathon. Tom had never been a mother, so he was still clueless.

     “So, what’s with letting the little hoodlums stay up all night?”

     Hannah explained.

     “They wouldn’t get a wink of sleep in their beds anyway. They’d just come down here every half hour to ask if Scott was back yet. This way, they’re kind of included in the Scott watch. So they’ll feel like they’re part of the group. If he makes it back tonight, they’ll be up to help greet him.”

     “And if he doesn’t make it back tonight?”

     “Then they’ll be so tired that they’ll sleep most of the day tomorrow instead of being miserable and thinking the worst.”

     Linda looked at Tom and asked, “Tom, what do you think is the most likely scenario?”

     He thought long and hard, and chose his words carefully.

     “Well, obviously something went wrong. And we can assume it was one of two things. Either he was hurt, or he had trouble with his vehicle. Knowing how careful Scott is by nature, I’d say that the second option is the most likely scenario.”

     “Do you really think so?”

     “Yes. You see, those Gators you have out there are a fine piece of equipment. Hell, John Deere has been around for over a hundred years, and they put out some great machines. But the Gator is a utility vehicle. It’s meant for doing odd jobs around a farm or a ranch.

     “It’s not made to run at full speed for several hours at a time. That’s very hard on it, and that’s not what it was designed for.

     “And it carries no spare parts. If it blows a tire or the water hose ruptures, there’s nothing you can do but walk.

     “That’s where I place my money. I think he was on his way back and had a breakdown. And now he’s on foot making his way back up here. And I think that he’s got his radio off to conserve the batteries so they’re still fresh when he’s within range. And then he’s gonna call in and tell us he’s all right.”

     “Well, how long do you think that’ll be?”

     “Your guess is as good as mine. If he broke down fifteen miles from here, he should be within radio range tonight. But if he broke down seventy miles away, it might be several days. Figure ten to twelve miles a night. I wouldn’t expect any more than that, because of the upgrade. It’s not that noticeable when you’re in a vehicle. But I’ll bet it is when you’re on foot.

     “Didn’t y’all have him drop some provisions along the way?”

     “Yes. Trash bags placed ten miles apart, with water and granola bars in them. Just in case.”

     “Well, I’d say your ‘just in case’ was a smart move. He won’t have to veer off course to look for water or something to eat, and he’ll be able to keep up his strength and keep his wits about him.

     “He’ll probably show up tonight sometime. And if he doesn’t, that leaves us with two options.”

     “And what are those, Tom?”

     “Either we wait him out and give him a chance to get here on his own. Or if he doesn’t show tonight, I can take another Gator and look for him the next night.”

     Linda looked suddenly panicked.

     “No. I don’t even want to consider that option. I mean, if God forbid, something happened to Scott, we don’t want the same thing to happen to you too.”

     “Well then, little darlin’. Let’s just hope he makes it back home tonight so we don’t have to worry about that.”

-6-

     The sun set at 7:04 p.m. that night. At 7:10 Jordan made his first radio call.

     “Dad, this is Jordan. Come in.”

     Silence.

     “Dad, this is Jordan. Please come in.”

     Still nothing.

     He would repeat the process every ten minutes until he went off shift at eight. Then Hannah would relieve him and do the same until midnight, until she swapped out with Joyce.

     And each time they made a call, the entire house gave their undivided attention. Even in the den, Zachary hit the pause button to stop whatever movie they were watching every time he heard someone calling out for his father.

     And secretly, each one of them was silently praying for Scott’s safe return.

     Just after midnight, Misty crashed on the floor of the den, hugging her teddy bear.

     Rachel and Zachary made it until a little after three a.m., then fell asleep on the couch, side by side, her head on his shoulder. His head rested on hers.

     Linda couldn’t help herself. It was too cute a moment to pass up. She turned on the floor lamps on each side of the couch, turned off the flash on her digital camera, and snapped their photo.

     She said, “Someday, if these two just happen to fall in love and get married, this will be their very first ‘together’ pic.”

     Hannah whispered to her, “That’s a possibility, you know. Rachel has fallen in love with him. She told me so the other day.”

     “He has a crush on her too. I can see it in the way he looks at her. Isn’t puppy love wonderful?”

     Tom was skeptical.

     “Puppy love. What foolishness. Don’t you women have something worthwhile to talk about?”

     “Like what, Tom?”

     “Oh, I don’t know. Fishing, or baseball, or sports in general. Anything that doesn’t involve kissing, romance or feelings.”

     “Tom, you’re just an old grouch. Love is what makes the world go around. If our mothers and fathers didn’t love each other, then none of us would be here. Including you.”

     “Now I know you’re confusing love with something more physical.”

     “Whatever. The bottom line is, we happen to outnumber you at the present time, so we get to choose what we want to talk about.”

     Tom was unswayed.

     “Hey, Jordan. What do you think about all of this?”

     “Leave me out of this one, Tom. You dug your own grave, and I’m not going to let you drag me into it with you.”

     Hannah looked at Linda and laughed.

     “That’s a smart boy you raised there.”

     Joyce looked at the kids, sound asleep and dreaming little kid dreams.

     “Should we try to move them?”

     “No, let’s not. If Scott makes it back tonight, they’ll want to be here to greet him. If not, we can wake them up at sunrise to send them upstairs.”

     “They look so peaceful when they’re sleeping. Like little angels.”

     “Yeah, well, looks can be very deceiving.”

     It was five thirty when Linda thought she heard a squawk on the radio.

     “Scott, this is Linda. Was that you?”

     Nothing.

     “Scott, this is Linda. Did you say something?”

     Still nothing.

     They weren’t quite sure what the squawk was. A bit of atmospheric interference, perhaps. Or maybe someone else on the same frequency. Perhaps it was Scott, on the outer edges of the radio’s range, trying to get a signal.

     In any event, it was a moot point. The sun was breaking over the horizon. If it was Scott, he would be bedding down and waiting for the night to return. He wouldn’t be getting any closer than he was right now, and his signal wouldn’t be getting any stronger.

     And it wouldn’t be any easier for the rest of them to get through this new day without knowing where or how he was.

-7-

     Scott lay on the couch for what seemed hours, debating on whether to move. The bleeding seemed to have stopped on both his entry and exit wounds. His shoulder was still mostly numb. The searing pain from the night before was now more a dull ache.

     He was thirsty. But all in all, he didn’t think he was in too bad of shape for a man who’d been shot and left for dead. And he wondered if he was better off just staying thirsty, instead of moving and taking the chance of restarting the bleeding.

     He very gingerly felt the area around the wound. It didn’t feel hot to the touch, or particularly hard. He wasn’t a medical expert, but he took that to mean that he wasn’t bleeding internally. At least not to the degree that he’d lose all of his blood.

     Still, he knew he couldn’t lay here forever. He was in a comfortable and safe setting, but no one lived here anymore. No one would show up to help him. He had to keep his wits about him, and figure out a way to get himself to a hospital.

     He dozed off to sleep again.

     When he awakened, it was no longer dark outside. From the angle of the light coming through the window, he guessed late morning.

     He was parched. He needed water.

     As gingerly as he could, he eased himself off of the couch and onto his knees. He knew not to stand too quickly. He knew that blood loss would cause him lightheadedness and he might pass out again.

     And he knew if he passed out from a standing position and hit the floor hard, the bleeding would probably restart.

     So he took his time.

     First, he was on both knees next to the couch. Then one knee. Then on both feet, but bent over with his hands on his knees.

     And slowly… very slowly, he lifted his head and straightened his body.

     And he felt dizzy. He felt himself starting to pass out.

     He bent over again and put his hands back on his knees to steady himself. And took several deep breaths.

     When he felt he was ready, he tried again. More slowly this time.

     The second time was the charm. He’d been able to stand, and as far as he could tell the wound hadn’t started bleeding again.

     He knew his body would be trying to replenish his blood supply, and it would need plenty of water to do so.

     His balance appeared to be good. So he slowly walked, one step at a time, back to the kitchen sink, and to the half filled water glass he’d left there before.

     He drank two full glasses, before his stomach started to rebel. He felt nauseous. Almost like he wanted to throw the water back up again.

     Then he felt confused. Why would his body want to throw up water?

     Maybe it wanted food instead.

     But that wasn’t going to happen. He knew instinctively that every bit of food that had once been in the house had already been looted. And even if it hadn’t been, he had no strength to go looking for it.

     Then it occurred to him that maybe he was delusional. Maybe he wasn’t nauseated at all. Maybe his mind was just trying to tell him to slow down. To stop guzzling his water. To give his body time to process what he already drank.

     He drank most of a third glass, more slowly this time.

     The nausea went away. But the lightheadedness returned.

     He held onto the kitchen island for support. He stood there for what was only a minute or so, but it seemed like hours. He could see the couch, a mere fifteen feet away. If he could make it there, he could rest once again, while he decided what to do next.

     He had to leave the house. He knew that. Help wouldn’t come to him, not here. He had to go to them. Get to a hospital. Or to someone who could take him to one.

     He took a couple of deep breaths and let go of the island. He put his left food in front of his right and struggled to retain his balance.

     That was as far as he got before he passed out and fell to the floor once again.

-8-

     Robbie had been calling in the early afternoons with his status updates. He was working twelve hour shifts because the SAPD was so undermanned now. On their extended shift schedule, day shift officers took their lunch around two p.m.

     It was an odd time of the afternoon to stop for chow, but for some reason that always seemed to be the quietist time of day.

     Before John checked himself into the hospital, he and Robbie usually managed to meet somewhere in North District 2 and had lunch together. With his best friend in the hospital, lunch wasn’t nearly as much fun for Robbie. Half the time he just worked right through. The days he didn’t were the days that he used his lunch hour to go to John’s house to update Hannah on his condition.

     Everyone in the compound knew that Robbie generally called between two and three p.m. on even numbered days.

     And on this even numbered day, most of them huddled behind Hannah at the security desk, waiting for his call.

     At two fifty, the call finally came.

     “Hannah, this is Robbie. Got your ears on?”

     “I’m here, Robbie. Go ahead.”

     “Just wanted to give you John’s status. I delivered the meds to his hospital room as soon as I got them. I went by there this morning to check up on him. There’s no change so far, but the doctors are optimistic. They say that now that he’s getting his full course, chances are very good the infection will start to clear and he’ll come out of his coma.”

     “Thank you, Robbie, for that. And God bless you for keeping me informed. I have to ask another big favor of you.”

     “I’ll try. What do you need?”

     “Scott, the man who brought you the amoxicillin, is missing. He never came back home two nights ago. We’re worried sick that something may have happened to him.”

     “When should he have returned?”

     “He should have been back just a few hours after he left you. Some of us are afraid he may be injured or wounded, and in need of help. Do you remember hearing any gunshots in your area after he left you that night?”

     “I don’t remember. But I hear gunshots every night of the week. You know that. I’ve learned to tune them out most of the time, unless they’re very close or directed at me.”

     “Is there anything you can do to search the area behind Scott’s house, where the power lines are? He would have been heading north.”

     “Yes. I’ll take a drive there this afternoon. Is there a road under the power lines?”

     “Yes. That’s the road we took to get up here. Hold on a minute. His girlfriend Joyce wants to talk to you.”

     “Robbie, this is Joyce. I know you’ve got your hands full down there, and I wouldn’t ask for your help, but we’re desperate.”

     “It’s okay, Joyce. He brought the medicine that’s going to save my best friend’s life. I’ll help any way I can. I never saw the vehicle he was in. Can you describe it for me?”

     “It’s a four wheel drive Gator. It’s a utility vehicle made by John Deere. Green in color. It’s like a quad runner on steroids, with a very small pickup bed in the back.”

     “Okay, I’ve seen those. The grounds crew at the Alamo Dome use those when they’re setting up for the rodeo each year.”

     “Our worst fears are that he was shot and the Gator was taken from him. If that’s the case, he may be laying out there somewhere wounded and in need of medical attention.

     “Our best case scenario, the one we’re really hoping for, is that the Gator broke down and he couldn’t get it running, and that he’s walking back.”

     “Not a problem. I’ll watch out for the Gator. If I see it broken down, I’ll just head north until I come across him.”

     “No, I’m afraid it’s not that easy, Robbie. He won’t travel during the daytime. He knows it’s too dangerous. He’ll hide in the brush and sleep during the day, and then resume his travels at night.”

     “It’ll be hard to find him if he’s sleeping in the brush.”

     “We’ve thought of that. But here’s how you can find him. As you drive north under the power lines, you’ll periodically see a black trash bag. Those are his emergency food and water caches, in the event he had to walk back. He was going to drop one of them every ten miles or so. If the first few bags you come across are empty, that means he went past that point and took the water and food out of the bag.”

     “Okay.”

     “When you come to a bag that still has water and granola bars, that means you’ve passed him. He hasn’t made it that far yet.”

     “Okay. When I get to that point, if I yell for him is he likely to hear me?”

     “Maybe, but maybe not. If he’s close by he might. But that’s a ten mile stretch where he could be hiding. He has night vision goggles. If you write him a note and attach it to the bag, you can tell him to wait there for you. Then you can come back in the night and pick him up.”

     Robbie’s heart sank, but he didn’t say anything. He hated all nighters. Especially as tired and overworked as he was. But he’d do whatever he could to help. He’d tell Scott in the note that he’d pick him up in the hours just before sunrise. Then he’d go in a couple of hours early to do it. He’d lose a little sleep, but since his wife died he didn’t have much of a life anyway.

     “Okay, let me get off of here and head out that way. John told me you guys want to keep your location a secret, and I think that’s a good idea. If I find him I’ll bring him as far as he’ll let me, without telling me where you are. If I can’t find him I’ll call you back later tonight or tomorrow and let you know that too.”

     There was a third option, that he’d find Scott’s body. But he intentionally didn’t mention that.

-9-

     Robbie left John and Hannah’s house and got back into his squad car. He called in to report that he was back on duty, and asked if he had any calls.

     “Negative. All’s quiet in your sector.”

     The timing was good. The afternoons were usually relatively slow. Suicide calls, mostly, until darkness. Then the thugs started to come out. This was definitely the best time of day to go search for a missing guy on a John Deere Gator.

     The scrap of paper with Scott’s address was still in the cup holder of his patrol car from two nights before. 3064 Royal Valley Drive. That was a good thing. Robbie had a good memory, and probably could have found his way back even without the help, but as tired as he was, his memory might fail him.

     He turned onto Royal Valley Drive and drove up a steep hill that seemed to go on forever.

     As he came up to 3064, he slowed, and noted how different the house looked in the daytime. He also noted that it was the second two story house from the corner, and was the color of a Coors beer can.

     Robbie could see the tall power lines behind the house. Now all he had to do was find an access road to get over to them.

     As he drove away from 3064 Royal Valley Drive, Scott lay unconscious on the living room floor, his breathing labored and shallow. He’d lost an awful lot of blood and was near death.

     Robbie drove up the street, looking for a turnoff toward the power lines. As he drove, he formulated a game plan. If he did indeed find the Gator broken down and abandoned, he’d continue north underneath the power lines and check the black plastic trash bags as he went. Once he found the full one, he’d double back, and use the police car’s public address speaker to announce, “Scott, this is John’s friend Robbie. I’m here to help you.”

     He knew that if Scott was within a quarter mile of the car, he’d hear him and come out of the brush. And that would save Robbie the trouble of having to come back at night to pick him up.

     He’d make the announcement continually, and drive slowly enough to allow Scott time to wake up and come out of hiding. And on the odd chance they didn’t hook up, the note would be on the bag directing him to stay put and wait for Robbie to come for him before dawn.

     It was a brilliant plan. He congratulated himself for thinking of it.

     Two blocks farther up the street, there was a break in the houses and a gravel road that headed off toward the power lines.

     A small white sign with blue lettering announced:

     Bexar Metropolitan Power Company. Keep out.

     Robbie turned his patrol car and drove slowly up the gravel road. After forty yards, it connected with a narrow paved road that headed north underneath the high tension lines.

     Driving beneath the huge towers was intimidating, but he suspected it would have been much worse if he had known there was power coursing through the wires overhead.

     As he drove slowly north, he kept watch on the backs of the houses, trying to determine which one was Scott’s. If he was attacked, it might have happened before he drove off on his Gator. That might be where his body was. Robbie hoped that wasn’t the case. But that’s where he’d begin his search.

     There it was. A two story house, second house from the corner, the color of a Coors can. Robbie suddenly got thirsty for a cold beer. It had been a long time since he’d had one.

     As he looked at the house off in the distance, he saw something. It was pure luck that he saw it. The scrub brush blocked most of it. But there, forty yards away, directly behind Scott’s house, there was something somehow peculiar about the fence.

     It appeared to be missing a couple of pieces.

     Robbie parked his cruiser and walked through the area to the fence. As he walked, he continued to look through the brush for a body, or for signs of a struggle. He saw neither.

     When he got to the fence, he saw that two of the fence slats had been ripped off and left laying on the ground.

     A looter, he’d suspected, too lazy to hop the fence.

     But then he noticed something even more peculiar. One of the slats still attached to the fence, the one adjacent to the hole, had blood on it.

     Whoever pulled those two slats off the fence and squeezed through the hole was injured in some way.

     Robbie Benton wasn’t a small guy. He was bulky in the manner of someone who’d lifted weights most of his life, and was born with naturally broad shoulders.

     Plus, he’d added bulk that morning when he donned his bulletproof vest and service belt.

     There was no way he was going to fit through that small hole in the fence.

     But he figured, what the hell? The damage was already done. So he grabbed the top of the next picket and pulled hard on it until it separated from the cross pieces. He laid it on the ground and grabbed the next one. Then one more.

     Now it was more accommodating for a man of his size. He squeezed through the fence, drew his service weapon, and keyed his microphone.

     “Northwest, this is Charlie one-nine.”

     “Go ahead, Charlie one-nine.

     “Show me at three oh six four Royal Valley Drive, at the rear of the house. I’m out of my unit, investigating a possible prowler and a report of a missing person.”

     “10-4. Do you need backup?”

     “Not at present.”

     Robbie noted that the sliding patio door had been left completely open.

     It wasn’t an uncommon thing for prowlers to do. Especially when they weren’t sure if the house might be occupied. They wanted a quick getaway in case they encountered an angry homeowner with a weapon.

     “SAPD. Come out of the house, do it now!”

     He listened closely for any sign of movement or any conversation inside the house. He half expected to hear the sounds of someone opening the front door and bolting through it.

     Had that happened, he wouldn’t have given chase. The SAPD had shifted its focus from capturing petty criminals to helping the community survive. Looters were everywhere, and the vast majority of them never hurt anyone. They were just doing what they had to do to stay alive.

     Not hearing any sounds within the house made Robbie a bit more confident it was empty, and he moved closer for a better look. That’s when he saw Scott, through the open patio door, lying unconscious on the living room floor.

     “Northwest, this is Charlie one-nine.”

     “Go ahead, Charlie one-nine.”

     “Do you have a unit with a paramedic on-board near my location?”

     “Any unit with a medic, respond to three oh six four Royal Valley Drive, see Charlie one-nine.”

     “Charlie three-one, rolling, five minutes. Is Charlie one-nine the patient?”

     Robbie keyed his mike.

     “Negative. Patient is a civilian. I believe he’s the man who brought the medicine to save John Castro.”

     The paramedic got on the radio.

     “What’s his condition?”

     “Unconscious. Bullet wound to the upper shoulder. Not bleeding at present, but his clothing is soaked. He’s breathing, but just barely.”

     “10-4. We can stabilize and transport. Be there in a couple of minutes.”

 -10-

     “This is Robbie calling from San Antonio for Hannah. Are you there, Hannah?”

     The radio call caught everyone off guard. It was just after dinnertime, and everyone was dreading another long night when they would all be up, hoping and praying  for Scott to appear. Or at least get close enough to call on his radio to report he was okay.

     But they weren’t expecting a call from Robbie.

     Hannah rushed from the dining room to the security console. She was half full of anticipation and half full of dread. She knew Robbie wouldn’t call unless he had something to report.

     The only question was, what was he reporting? It could be very good news, or very bad.

     “Go ahead, Robbie. This is Hannah.”

     “Hi, Hannah. First of all, I don’t want to get your hopes up. We found a man in Scott’s house. Unconscious from a bullet wound. He’s alive, but the doctors say that he lost an awful lot of blood and he’s in bad shape.

     “The problem is, we don’t know who it is. It might be Scott, but we can’t tell because he has no identification on him.

     “It could be someone who was shot in a gun battle and took refuge in Scott’s house.

     “All we know for sure is that he was in Scott’s living room, passed out on the floor, and that he gained access through the back fence.

     “Can you put his wife on the radio to give me a description?”

     “Robbie, this is Joyce. I’m his girlfriend. He’s about six feet tall and around a hundred and eighty pounds or so. Dark brown hair and brown mustache, but his mustache is starting to gray.”

     “Any tattoos?”

     “Yes. He’s got the words, “Ride Like The Wind” on his upper left arm and a Harley Davidson emblem beneath it.”

     “Okay, good! That’s the information I was looking for. It’s definitely Scott. He was shot once, and apparently his vehicle was stolen. Like I said, he is unconscious and critical. The doctors did surgery and repaired the damaged vein, but he’s lost a lot of blood and will have a long road to recovery.”

     Joyce wept, but tried her best to maintain her composure. Linda hugged her sons and openly cried.

     “Thank you, Robbie. Thank you so much.”

     “It’s not a problem. I’ll call you back daily until he regains consciousness, and will pass on anything he has to tell you. The doctors want to know if he has any drug allergies.”

     “No. None.”

     “Okay. I’ll go back by there and let them know. Is Hannah still close by?”

     Joyce handed Hannah the microphone.

     “Go ahead, Robbie.”

     “Hannah, I have some news for you too. We took Scott to the same hospital where John is staying. After we got Scott admitted, I went up to Quarantine to check on him. The doctor said his white blood cell count is looking much better, and that the infection is going away. He also said that John is starting to move his hands and legs a bit. He hasn’t woken up yet, but they’re saying they’re hopeful he will within a few days. So I guess all of those prayers have been working.”

     Now Hannah was crying too.

     “Thank you, Robbie. For everything.”

     “Don’t mention it. I’ll call again sometime tomorrow to report on both of your patients, unless something significant happens before then. Is there anything either of you want me to tell them if they wake up before I check in again?”

     Hannah looked at Joyce.

     Joyce nodded her head yes, but couldn’t seem to get any words out.

     “Joyce says to tell Scott she loves him. Same goes for me if John comes around.”

     “Okay, you got it. Keep the faith, you two.”

     Hannah left the security desk and sat on the couch. Rachel and Misty sat on either side of her and she held them close. They cried together.

     Tom looked around the room and saw that everyone was either in tears or close to it. And he felt his own eyes getting moist.

     He turned and walked outside. Tough guys don’t cry. And when they do, they sure as hell don’t let anyone see it.

-11-

     “He’ll be okay. You just have to have faith. That’s what my mom tells us whenever we start worrying about my dad.”

     Rachel was trying her best to console Zachary after he got the news about his father.

     “I know. It’s just that… well, I guess I always thought that Dad was invincible. I mean, he’s always been the strongest man I know. He’s always been able to win at everything. I guess I just assumed that if he was shooting it out with someone else, that he would win that too.

     “Or maybe I just didn’t consider the alternative because my mind wouldn’t let me.”

     “Or, there are other possibilities. Maybe there were several of them and he was outnumbered. Maybe there were fifty bad guys, and he shot forty nine, but then the last one got a lucky shot. Or maybe they bushwhacked him, like they do in old cowboy movies. Maybe they shot him without giving him a chance to fight back.”

     “Yeah, maybe. That would make more sense, I guess.”

     Rachel reached out and held his hand. She looked into his eyes and said, “In the end, it doesn’t really matter. He’s alive, and that’s all that really counts.”

     She put her arms around him and held him. He hadn’t expected that, but he enjoyed it. He enjoyed it a lot.

     “How are you two doing out here?”

     They looked up to see Linda stepping off the back porch and walking toward them.

     “Okay, I guess. How long do you think they’ll keep him, Mom?”

     “I don’t know, Zach. You heard the same thing I did. I know it takes the body a while to replace lost blood. I suppose it depends on how much blood he lost, and whether they have blood of his type to give him. If they don’t, if his body has to make its own, then I expect it’ll take a lot longer.

     “The main thing is, he’s at a hospital, and he’s under the care of doctors, and I’m sure they’re doing everything they can for him.”

     “Do you think we can go visit him?”

     “I’m sorry, honey. But you know that the city’s been hit hard by the plague. We’re darn lucky it hasn’t spread up here. But if we went down there and got exposed to it, we’d probably bring it back with us. And then some of us, probably starting with your brother’s baby, would get sick and might die.

     “I know your first impulse is to run down there to support your father, but you’ll have to trust me on this. Your dad will understand. In fact, I’m fairly certain that he would not want us to go see him. He realizes the risks more than anyone.

     “We’ll just have to trust the doctors to take good care of him, and trust Hannah’s friend Robbie to keep us informed on his condition.”

     Rachel was no longer holding Zachary in her arms, but she never let go of his hand. It didn’t escape Linda’s notice, and she made a mental note to talk to him about it later, when Rachel wasn’t around. She already had one grandchild on the way. She certainly didn’t want another one. At least not right now. The world was way too chaotic, and way too dangerous.

     “You gonna be okay?”

     “Yeah. I just miss him is all. And I’m worried about him.”

     “I know, son. I feel the same way. But you could look at it another way. We’re better off than we were yesterday. Yesterday we didn’t know if he was even still alive. Today we know that he’s not only alive, but that he’s in the care of the people who can make him well again. And he’s a strong man, and stubborn too. He’s not going down without a fight. You know that.”

     “I know that. And yes, I’m okay.”

     “That’s my boy.”

     “Mom?”

     “Yes?”

     “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. Especially in front of my girlfriend.”

     She smiled.

     “Oh? Why not? Last I checked, you weren’t a man yet. But you’re right. You’ve grown up a lot over the last few months. We all have.

     “But even more important than that is the ‘girlfriend’ thing. When did that happen? I thought you two hated each other. If that changed, I didn’t get the memo.”

     “We never hated each other. It just took us awhile to get to know each other is all. And yes, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now.”

     Zachary looked at Rachel, needing her support.

     “Right?”

     She shyly nodded her head.

     Linda helped take her off the hot seat.

     “Well, okay, then. I guess if you are officially boyfriend and girlfriend I’ll have to start treating you a bit differently. Rachel, does your mom know?”

     “I don’t know. I mean, I think she suspects, but she’s never really asked me.”

     “Would you like for me to tell her?”

     “Sure. I mean, would you?”

     “No problem. I need to talk to her about our new surveillance schedule anyway.”

     Zachary asked, “What surveillance schedule?”

     “Watching you two. Constantly. Rachel’s mom and I will have to decide how to break the day into shifts. So one of us can be with you two for twelve hours a day and the other can take the other twelve hours. I hope Hannah doesn’t mind working the night shift. I hate working nights.”

     Then she seemed to get a great idea.

     “Hey, we can ask Joyce for her help. I’ll bet she’d follow you for eight hours a day. That would give us three watchers instead of two.”

     “Mom…”

     He was halfway sure his mother was kidding. But only halfway. Rachel, for her part, looked horrified.

     “What, son?”

     “We know all out sex and abstinence and all of that stuff. We learned it all in sex ed class. And we’ve already talked about it. The whole concept of it kind of creeps us both out, to be honest.”

     Rachel offered her own terminology.

     “Yes. It’s all icky!”

     “Trust us, Mom. We’re a long way from even thinking about that kind of stuff.”

     “That’s what I thought about your brother, Zach, and he and Sara let us down. Now they’re going to be parents.”

     “Yeah, well, my brother’s a moron. Just because he’s older than me doesn’t make him more mature. We won’t do anything, Mom. We haven’t even kissed yet. You don’t have to worry about us.”

     Linda walked away actually believing him. She’d still talk to Hannah, but she’d tell Hannah that the pair seem to be mature enough to handle a relationship without intimacy.

    But she’d watch them like a hawk anyway.

-12-

     Scott woke up in the hospital and looked around. He was slightly shocked to find himself there, with tubes stuck in his left arm and upper shoulder. His mouth was painfully dry and his throat was incredibly sore. But he was alive.

     At least he assumed he was. Death, he suspected, didn’t hurt this much.

     His whole body was stiff and sore. It hurt to move his head, but his vision was still cloudy. His peripheral wouldn’t take in everything. So he fought through the pain and moved his head to scope out the surroundings.

     The last thing he remembered was walking from the kitchen to the couch. Had he made it to the couch and taken a nap? And then had he flagged down a patrol car and hitched a ride to the hospital? Had the loss of blood caused him to have amnesia and forget all of that?

     Or was this the most realistic dream he’d ever had?

     He looked above his head and saw several bags of fluids. The big bags of saline he recognized. The others he wasn’t so sure of. Some ugly yellow stuff dripping slowly into a tube. It was the color of butterscotch pudding, but he imagined it probably didn’t taste that good. A smaller bag of a clear liquid. It was labeled, but he couldn’t make out what the label said.

     On the side of the bed he could see two other bags, containing his bodily fluids. The urine bag was almost full.

     His vision was slowly clearing, enough to make out some of the words on the whiteboard on the east wall.

Charge Nurse: Gonzalez.

Attending Physician: Joco.

Harter, Scott, NKA.

Change linens every third day. Last Done: Tuesday.

     He muttered to himself, “How long have I been in here, anyway?”

     An orderly started to walk into the room, saw Scott looking around, and immediately exited without saying a word.

     A minute later a nurse came in. At least Scott assumed she was a nurse. She had a nurse’s nametag on her civilian clothes, and a nurse’s demeanor.

     Scott got the sense she would have been quite attractive a few months before. Now she just looked harried and worn.

     “Hi. I’m Becky. How are you, Mr. Harter?”

     He tried to speak, but nothing came out. His throat was dry and very raw.

     “You can nod your head if you wish. We took out your breathing tube yesterday and let you start breathing on your own. Your throat is still raw from the tube. They tend to cause a lot of inflammation and soreness after a few days.

     “The good news is, you’re breathing on your own again. The muscle stiffness will go away after a couple of days. The pain will take longer, I’m afraid. I can bring you some lozenges to suck on now that you’re awake again.

     He nodded his head yes.

     He tried to speak, but was only able to get a single word out, in a husky whisper: “How…”

     “Try not to speak, Mr. Harter. That’ll just cause further irritation.

     “I think you asked ‘how.’ Let me see if I can read your mind. I’ll tell you everything I know, and if I’ve missed anything, I’ll go get you a pen and a writing pad. Fair enough?”

     He nodded his head again.

     “But first things first. We have you down as having no known allergies. Is that correct?”

     He nodded his head.

     “Good. Now, you can use your fingers for this one. On a scale of one to ten, one being a happy dance and ten being unbearable agony, what is your pain level right now?”

     He thought for a moment and then held up three fingers.

     “Okay, that’s good. Is it mostly in your wound area?”

     He nodded his head again.

     “Okay. We took you off of morphine last night. You seemed to be resting comfortably without it. If the pain level starts to rise, let me know and I’ll bring you some pain pills. Okay?”

     He nodded again.

     “If you were asking how did you get here, it’s my understanding that you were found unconscious by the SAPD and they brought you in. Just in the nick of time, apparently. The surgical team said they actually lost you twice on the table. That’s where the bruises on your chest came from.

     “If you were going to ask how long you’ve been asleep, you’ve been here eleven days. That’s a long time to be asleep, but you were almost out of blood, and your body put itself into a coma so it could recover.

     “If you were going to ask if your family knows your whereabouts, the answer is yes. One of your friends comes by to check on you every two days, like clockwork. He says he passes the information onto your family and keeps them abreast of your status.

     “Let’s see, what else? If you were trying to ask me to do the tango, you’ll have to wait a couple more days. You’re still too weak.”

     She smiled.

     “Just kidding about that. I don’t dance.”

     Scott smiled too.

     “You were shot once and spent four and a half hours in surgery. The bullet went all the way through, and in case you keep count, you have…”

     She peeked at one of the forms on the clipboard at the foot of his bed.

     “…you have seventy two new stitches.”

     He winced, just a bit.

     She laughed.

     “Oh, don’t worry. You’ve already been through the worst part. Taking them out is a piece of cake. They’re coming out today, by the way, so you’ll see for yourself later.

     “The line going into your shoulder is called a picc line. You’re getting your nourishment through it. That’s that big bag of stuff that looks like chicken noodle soup without the noodles. Now that you’re awake, the doctor will probably put you on a liquid diet, and then transition you to solids gradually.

     “The other line is just saline solution to keep you hydrated. The smaller bags are an antibiotic to prevent infections, and a stool softener.”

     She smiled warmly.

     “One more thing everybody wants to know. When can you get out of here? That one’s up to Doctor Joco. He’s making his rounds, and he should be in to see you within an hour or so.

     “So, I think that covers most of it. I’ll be right back with a note pad and a pen, so you can ask whatever I missed.”

     While Nurse Becky was gone, Scott took the opportunity to look around the room again. The stiffness in his neck was going away and he was regaining his mobility.

     He could tell he was in the pediatric ward by the décor. The walls had depictions of purple elephants dancing with green giraffes. Over in the corner, a hippopotamus on a skateboard was rolling past a zebra with a hula hoop.

     It didn’t matter much, of course, but he wondered why he was being treated here.

     Nurse Becky was back.

     The first question Scott scrawled was, “What’s with the purple elephants?”

     She smiled again.

     “These days we put patients wherever we have space, and this was the only room available when you came in. Two whole floors of the hospital are on quarantine now, because of the plague. All the unaffected patients were moved off those floors and into the other wards. I heard a rumor yesterday that the quarantined floors are getting pretty crowded, and they may have to convert a third. If you stay here very much longer, you may get a roommate.

     “Any other questions?”

     He started writing again.

     “No. Just a couple of comments. First, thank you for the briefing. It was very thorough. And second, you have beautiful eyes. Thanks for taking such good care of me while I was napping.”

     Scott was aware that what he wrote would probably be interpreted as flirting but he didn’t care. Although he wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, he’d learned a few important things in his lifetime.

     One was that a patient should always be nice to his nurses. They went through a lot during the course of a typical day. After cleaning soiled sheets, wiping up vomit, and emptying bedpans, the last thing they wanted or needed was overly demanding and surly patients.

     Second, compliments to a woman – any woman, are as important to her as oxygen. It’s something all women need occasionally to let them know they’re appreciated. He suspected that in this environment, compliments were probably rarely given.

     And finally, Scott had lived his life believing that one should never mince words and should say what was on one’s mind without sugarcoating or concealing anything. She did have beautiful eyes, and he felt she should know that.

     For Nurse Becky’s part, the compliment couldn’t have come at a better time. She’d been working fourteen hour days for weeks, was run ragged and felt like dirt. It was nice of this man to notice she was still a human being. And even nicer of him to remind her.

     “Why, thank you, kind sir. You just made my whole day. If there’s anything you need, the buzzer is hanging on the bed rail. As I said, the doctor will be in to see you shortly. I’ll look in on you again in a couple of hours to get your vitals and check your pain level. If there’s anything you need in the meantime, just push the button to the nurse’s station.”

     With that she walked out of the room, and Scott was left to his own thoughts. He wondered how things were going back at the compound, and hoped everything was running smoothly in his absence.

-13-

     Scott dozed off and thought he was dreaming when he heard voices again. Then he recognized one of them as Nurse Becky’s and slowly opened his eyes.

     A tall thin man with olive skin stood over him.

     “Well, Mr. Harter. Welcome back to the world of the living. You’ve been asleep a long time. How are you feeling?”

     Scott managed to nod his head. He hoped the doctor understood.

     He seemed to.

     “That’s good. I’m sure you remember none of your ordeal, so you’ll have to take my word for it. You’ve come a very long way.

     “I have some good news as well as some bad. Your white cell count is pretty much back to normal now, and that means we’ve whipped the infection from your wound. We’ll be taking you off of antibiotics very soon. Your wound is healing very well, and one of my interns will be removing the external sutures this afternoon. The internal ones will dissolve on their own.

     “There’s bad news too. You were out there without a mask, and were exposed to the plague. Thus far you haven’t displayed any of the symptoms, which is why you’re in this ward instead of under quarantine. However, we’re going to monitor you closely, and the moment you show any sign of the disease you’ll be transported out of here immediately.

     “It may be that the penicillin you were receiving for the infection in your wound protected you from the plague. It’s possible that you had it and have ridden out the storm and are now immune. But we have no way of knowing that. You should assume that you were exposed and are a carrier.”

     Scott reached for his pad and scrawled, “When will I be released? And when can I go home?”

     “The policeman who brought you in said he was a friend of yours, and he explained your situation. The first of your questions is easy. As long as you continue to progress, you can expect to be out of here in a week or two. First we’ll get you eating again, then try to regain use of your digestive system. Once you can expel everything normally, and are strong enough to get around on your own, we’ll kick you out of here.

     “As for going home, that’s a bit more complicated.”

     The doctor must have seen the look of disappointment on Scott’s face.

     He elaborated.

     “Look. You were out there unmasked. If you’re lucky, you’re only a potential carrier now. If you caught it, you’ll come down with symptoms at some point and we’ll have to hit you with antibiotics again. It’s also possible, like I said, that you already had it and the penicillin we gave you for your wound took care of it. If that’s the case, we’ll probably never know. Right now we’ll have to go with the assumption that you’re at least carrying it.

     “Whether or not you decide to go home right away depends on how much you love your family. That’s very blunt, but unfortunately it’s reality. Robbie tells me that right now they’re in a safe place, and that’s great. But if you are a carrier and go back to them, you could kill them all. Or at least the most vulnerable among them.”

     Scott scribbled, “Do you mean I’m stuck here forever?”

     “No. Plagues normally run through an area, do their damage, and then dissipate. Sometimes they come back for a second round, but usually not. Indications are this one will run its course and won’t be back. The latest estimates from the CDC say that we’ll ride out the storm within the next few months. In the meantime, I’d strongly suggest you stay here. It’ll be safer for you, and certainly safer for your family as well.

     “I’ve got to get back to my rounds, but I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. Are there any other questions I can answer for you before I go?”

     Scott was in a daze, but it had nothing to do with his wound or his weakened state. He was trying to wrap his head around the idea of being away from everyone he loved for several months.

     He looked at the doctor and weakly shook his head no.

     As promised, an intern stepped in as the sun started to drop low and its light cast shadows in the room. He turned on the room light, and Scott was relieved that the hospital had power.

     The intern seemed to read Scott’s thoughts.

     “They finally got the generators repaired a few days ago. The wiring was insulated against power surges, which protected it from the EMPs. But we couldn’t get the power back on until the generators were working again. Before then we were doing everything we could during the day, and then working by candlelight at night. It was medieval. Simply awful. I’m Jeff, by the way.”

     Scott managed to squeak out a single word.

     “Scott.”

     “It’s easier on your throat if you whisper, Scott.”

     He tore open a suture removal kit, which was essentially a pair of tweezers and a small pair of blunt scissors in a sterile paper packet.

     “Okay, we’ll do the front side first. Then I’ll have you lay on your side and I’ll do the other side. You ready?”

     Scott whispered “yes,” and was surprised to see that Jeff was right. It didn’t hurt his throat to whisper.

     Jeff poked at his wound, and said, “It looks like it’s healing well. You’ll feel some tugs, but it shouldn’t hurt.”

     It took almost half an hour to remove the stitches. Jeff applied some type of cream and bandages to both sides of Scott’s shoulder. Then he eased Scott back onto his back.

     For the first time, Scott could see a strange man standing in the hallway watching. He wondered who the man was, but didn’t ask.

     “Okay, no bleeders, no discharges. I didn’t see any sign of localized infection. I think we can safely say you’ve survived your first gunshot wound. Let’s try to make it your last one too.

     “We’ll change your bandage daily, and will keep an eye on both wounds. When you move around in bed, be gentle. We don’t want you to reopen the wound and have to restitch it. Any questions?”

     Scott shook his head no.

     “Okay, then. I’ll get out of your way and let you spend time with your visitor.”

     “Thank you,” Scott whispered.

     Jeff walked out of the room and the strange man came in from the hallway.

     Scott recognized the man’s voice immediately. No introduction was necessary, but he got one anyway.

     “Hello, Scott. I’m Robbie.”

\

-14-

     Although the two had never met, at least formally, it seemed that Scott had found an old friend. And he had a lot of questions.

    He asked, in a hoarse and painful whisper, “They told me the police found me and brought me in. Was that you?”

     “Yes. Joyce was worried sick about you. She and Hannah asked me to go look for you, and I found you unconscious in your living room. You were in bad shape. They tell me you died twice on the operating table.”

     “Thank you, Robbie.”

     “Don’t mention it. You saved the life of my best friend. And you know what they say,” he smiled. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

     “Does Joyce know I’m alive?”

     “Yes. I’ve been coming by here every other day, after I visit John upstairs, to check on you. Then I go to John and Hannah’s house to give them an update. They’ll be glad to hear you’re awake.”

     “How’s John doing?”

     “His involuntary mobility is increasing. That’s doctor speak for ‘he moves his arms and legs in his sleep.’ They tell me that’s a good sign. For a long time he just laid there like a tree trunk. So I guess any movement at all is a step in the right direction.”

     “Can you give Joyce and my kids a message for me?”

     “I was going to ask what you want me to tell them.”

     “Would you tell them I’m going to be fine, but the doctor says I have to stay here until the plague plays itself out?”

     “Sure. I’ll tell them. I suspected they’d tell you that. Do you have any plans on what you’ll do in the meantime?”

     “No idea. Stay at my house and help the survivors grow crops, I suppose. I’ve learned a little bit about farming from a friend of mine. Is the National Guard still going around handing out food from the back of trucks? Maybe I can help them too.”

     “Yes, they’re still doing that, but they won’t let you volunteer. They stopped accepting help from civilians a while back. A lot of the volunteers were stealing the food for their own families or giving extra rations to people they knew.

     “I have a better idea, if you’re interested.”

     Scott gave him a blank look.

     “Ever think of becoming a cop?”

     It hurt when Scott laughed, and he quickly stopped. But he could tell by the look on Robbie’s face that he was serious.

     “No. I mean I’ve never thought about it. And I’m pretty sure I’m too old and out of shape to go through your police academy.”

     “There is no police academy, Scott. There hasn’t been one since the blackout. Most of the instructors are dead now. Those that survived are working the streets with the rest of us. And we’re woefully undermanned. These days we’re doing everything by OJT. On the Job Training. We find good men who are willing to help, team them up with an experienced officer, and they learn as they go.”

     Scott smiled and whispered, “If you don’t mind me saying so, that sounds like a hell of a way to run a police department.”

     “Well, I agree with you on that, my friend. But under the circumstances we don’t have a lot of options.”

     “But you don’t know me from Adam, or anything about me.”

     “My best friend John trusted you enough to place his wife and daughters under your care. Obviously he has faith in you. And you almost got yourself killed saving his life. Those two things are all I need to know.”

     “Well, thank you for that.”

     “Think about the offer, Scott. The Chief of Police has the final say-so, so you’ll have to meet with him. But I’ll vouch for you.”

     “Okay. I’ll give it some thought.”

     “I’m headed over to John and Hannah’s house to call your people. I’ll stop back by the day after tomorrow and check up on you again. In the meantime, get your rest and get well. In my next report, I want to tell Joyce you’re out of bed and jogging around the hospital to get in shape for your new job.”

     “Yeah, right. Thanks again, Robbie. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you.”

     “And John wouldn’t be upstairs if it weren’t for you. Karma’s not always a bitch. Sometimes it’s pretty good at repaying debts. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

     Robbie walked out of the room and Scott closed his eyes to think. He thought what a kick his sons would get at the prospect of their father becoming a cop.

     He smiled. “Officer Harter.” It did have a nice ring to it.

     Then he drifted off to sleep.

-15-

     “Hey, you awake?”

     Scott had been pondering his future when Robbie Benton rapped his knuckles on the door frame.

     “Oh, hi, Robbie. Come in.”

     Robbie stepped in, followed by a tall thin man with graying hair and a very distinguished demeanor.

     “Scott, this is our Chief of Police, Mike Martinez.”

     Martinez reached across the bed to shake Scott’s right hand.

     “Nice to meet you. Scott. You know, you’ve already got a reputation as a hero with SAPD officers. Your risking your own life to bring medicine for Officer Castro was above and beyond. I’ve been a fan of John Castro since his first day on the force. He fought hard just for the privilege of joining us. I don’t know if his wife told you about his background. He was a one legged war hero. Most disabled vets would have hung it up and lived out their lives on their pensions and been happy. But not John. He fought hard to prove himself capable of being a cop. He fought even harder to prove those who said it couldn’t be done wrong. And he showed everybody what he was made of. He was and still is a great officer. And for me personally, he became a great friend. And almost a second son.

     “He’s a hell of a cop. And he was almost brought down. Not by a felon’s bullet or in a high speed pursuit, but by a damn virus caused by decaying bodies. And by his own body’s allergy to penicillin.

     “And he would certainly have died if you hadn’t risked your own life to save his.”

     Scott looked up at Chief Martinez and noticed a tear in the man’s eye. It was obvious that John Castro meant a lot to him.

     The chief continued.

    “There are a lot of things I hate about this job. I’ve had to visit several young wives over the years to deliver terrible news about their husbands being killed or critically injured in the line of duty. I’ve hated those times.”

     He suddenly smiled, which seemed to Scott to be totally out of place. Behind him, Robbie bit his lip, trying his best to hide his own smile.

     Scott was confused.

     Martinez went on.

     “There are other things about this job, though, that I thoroughly enjoy. Like having the power to tell my officers to back off and let me be the one to share occasional good news. Like Officer Benton, for example.

     “Officer Benton was chomping at the bits to rush down here and give you a bit of good news. But I held him back. I told him to hold his tongue. I told him that there’s only one chief in the SAPD. And that’s me. And sometimes I just pull rank, because, well, because that’s the kind of son of a bitch I am.

     “So I told Robbie to keep his mouth closed. That I wanted to be the one to tell you that John Castro woke up last night. And that he wants to see you.”

     Scott caught his breath, and smiled.

     The chief went on.

     “He’s still dazed and confused. He’s been asleep for a long time, so that’s understandable. But when I told him you might become a peace officer he smiled. When I told him he could take you under his wing and become your training officer, he smiled again. That tells me he approves of the idea.”

     Now it was Scott’s turn to speak.

     “But I’ve never been a police officer. Never wanted to be. Never aspired to it. When I was a kid, and my friends wanted to be policemen, I wanted to be a fireman instead.”

     Martinez laughed.

     “Well, it’s not for everybody. And I won’t twist your arm. But let’s just deal with the facts here. The first fact is that you can’t leave San Antonio for the foreseeable future without putting your family in great peril. You’re going to need something to do to occupy your time, or you’ll go bonkers.

     “Fact two: The San Antonio Police Department is critically manned. We’re doing all we can to help as many people as we can, but the sad reality is we don’t have enough officers to do everything we want or need to do.

     “Fact three: Regardless of what your aspirations were when you were a kid, you’re the type of man we’re looking for. You put your ass on the line to save someone you never even met. That alone told me everything I needed to know to decide I wanted you to join us. The decision is yours, of course, but I think you’d be a good fit with our department.

     “Of course, it’s hard work. But there are some benefits. We eat the same FEMA rations as everybody else, but they’re delivered to the station so you don’t have to stand in line for an hour to get them. We have transportation and the bad guys don’t. And by the way, thanks for that. I understand you are the one who introduced John Castro to the guy who told us how to get our squad cars running again.

     “The city counsel has created a program called ‘Houses for Hours’ for city employees. Since money doesn’t exist anymore, they saw a need for a means to pay workers for their trouble. The city has seized thousands of homes from people who have committed suicide or disappeared. Any city employee who works forty hours per week for a year gets their choice of the available houses, no strings attached. And a guarantee that they won’t have to pay property taxes for ten years.

     “Here’s the biggie, Scott. I know you already have a home outside the city. You may not need or want another home. And you may not be willing to commit for a year with us. You may want to run home to your family the moment the CDC gives the all clear and says the plague is through with us.

     “And I wouldn’t blame you for that. Hell, I’d do the same thing. But if you’re the kind of man I think you are, you’ll figure that since you’re going to be here anyway, you’ll want to help wherever you can. If you’re the kind of man I think you are, you’ll realize that you can help a lot more people riding around with John Castro than you would sitting in your house waiting for the plague to go away.”

     Nurse Becky walked into the room to record Scott’s vitals, and put an old fashioned thermometer in his mouth.

     Chief Martinez said, “Hey, that reminds me of an old joke. Do you know the difference between an oral and a rectal thermometer?”

     Scott, unable to speak with the thermometer under his tongue, merely shrugged.

     “The taste.”

     The chief laughed. Scott suddenly looked panicked. Robbie grinned and Nurse Becky just rolled her eyes.

     Scott decided at that point he liked Chief Martinez. They had the same sense of humor.

     Martinez said, “Well, think about it. Let Officer Benton or Officer Castro know if you want to join us, and I’ll bring you a badge and swear you in. If you choose not to, then I wish you well and thank you for everything you’ve already done, on behalf of our great city.”

     He held out his hand and Scott took it.

     Martinez turned on his heels and headed for the door, but Scott stopped him.

     “Chief?”

     Martinez turned and said, “Yes?”

     “I’ve already been thinking about it. Count me in.”

     “I’m confident you’ll be a fine officer. The doctor told me you’ll be out of here in a couple of days. I’ll be back to see you before then.”

     Nurse Becky waited until Martinez and Robbie were gone before she smiled and commented, “You’re a sucker for punishment, aren’t you, Mr. Harter?”

     Scott asked, “How so?”

     “You’ve just survived an ordeal that would have killed most men. And now you’re volunteering to off on another dangerous adventure.”

     “And you think I’m crazy?”

     “Crazy? No. But I think it’s very admirable of you. And maybe a little heroic too. I know those guys are working hard to save this city, and I know they need all the help they can muster to get it. Good for you, for volunteering to help them.”

     “Doc didn’t tell me I’d be out of here in a couple of days. It seems the chief knows something I don’t.”

     “Doctor Joco left orders to remove your Foley tube and waste bag today. You’ll get your last bag of saline tomorrow. Once you’re peeing 300 milliliters a day and your waste is solid, we’ll let you go home. But I have to warn you, that won’t happen unless you eat all the food we’re giving you and drink plenty of water on your own. You’ve been leaving some of the food on your tray. That’s a no no if you want to get out of here.”

     “How come?”

     “Two ways, actually. Your body is a lot smarter than you give it credit for. If it thinks you’re not getting enough nourishment, it’ll digest your food slower, so it can get as many nutrients from it as possible. That will make it longer before your waste is solid, and can lead to constipation. Secondly, the doctor won’t release you if he doesn’t think you’re strong enough to take care of yourself. And you’ll need nutrients to do that. Nutrients that come from food. The smart thing to do, from your perspective, is to eat whatever we bring you, whether you like it or not.

     “In fact, since you’re going to be a cop when you get out, you should ask for seconds. You’re going to need to be strong to do what those guys do.”

     “Oh, well in that case, please bring me extra of everything.”

     “Even the green Jell-O you’re always complaining about?”

     “Yes. Even that.”

     She finished making annotations on his chart and looked out the window.

     “It’s cold outside today, and a bit stormy. Do you want the shades open or closed?”

     “Open, please. I was watching the storm clouds roll by before everyone came in. I’ve always liked thunderstorms, and the way they wash away so much of the dirt and grime.”

     “Well, I guess from that perspective, you’re right. They’re a good thing. There’s a lot of ugliness out there now that I’d like to see washed away.”

     She headed toward the door, then had an afterthought and turned back toward him.

     “You asked if I thought it was crazy for you to accept a job as a policeman, after all you’ve been through. The truth is, I do. Think you’re a little bit crazy. But I’m glad you’re doing it. The chief was right. They do need more men like you. I’ll pray for your continued safety when you leave us and start your new journey.”

     “Thank you.”

-16-

     Robbie walked Chief Martinez back to his car and returned to Scott’s room. He walked in with a broad smile on his face and said, “All right! I’m looking forward to working with you, my new friend. I think you’ll love it!”

     “Robbie, are you in a hurry to go somewhere?”

     “Not really. I was heading over to John and Hannah’s house so I could call your people and give them their update. I can wait a little longer to tell your boys their old man’s gonna be a cop. What’s up?”

     “Sit down for a minute, will you? I want you to tell me a little about what we’ll be doing.”

     Robbie pulled a chair over to the side of the bed.

     “Well, it’s nothing like what you saw on the old reality shows like Cops. No high speed police chases and slapping the cuffs on people. I haven’t made an arrest in a month.”

     Scott must have looked surprised, so Robbie elaborated.

     “There are very few crimes of violence any more. There were when the blackout first happened. More than we could keep up with. People with old grudges were killing each other, thinking they could finally get away with it. And to be honest, most of them did. A lot of rapists took advantage of our depleted numbers and just went crazy, raping women they’d had their eyes on for awhile. A lot of people wanted to commit suicide but didn’t have the guts. So they just started attacking people one after another, until an angry husband or boyfriend blew them away. There was a lot of violence among the looters initially. They broke into houses, shot everybody inside, and then took whatever they wanted.

     “But gradually things changed. The victims started shooting back, and many of the looters found themselves dead on somebody’s front porch. The homeowners dragged the bodies into their front yards and left them there to rot, as a warning to other looters so stay away or suffer the same fate.

     “That’s how we got rid of a lot of the looters. Most of the others finally figured out it was safer to knock on the doors and ask if there was anyone left alive inside, than to just break in. They were able to determine which houses were abandoned, or which houses were now tombs for families who’d already committed suicide. And they figured out those houses were a lot safer to loot.

     “Little by little, most of the violence went away. I’m not saying there aren’t bad people out there. The sad fact is, there are a lot of people roaming the streets who have committed murders, assaults or rapes. But the acts themselves have mostly dissipated. And whatever crimes they’ve committed in the past, they’ll likely get away with. We don’t have enough officers to investigate homicides, or anything else for that matter. And even if we did, throwing bad guys in jail would accomplish nothing. The judicial system is no longer operating. Most of the judges are gone like everybody else. The courthouse sits abandoned, except for a bunch of homeless people who have taken up residence there because it’s the downtown drop point for the food trucks.”

     “So if I won’t be arresting bad guys, exactly what will I be doing?”

     “Mostly disgusting things that will turn your stomach. We’re trying to keep the citizens calm by making a visible presence. We stop by each of the block leaders’ houses daily, or at least every other day, just to ask if there are any problems we can quell for them. Then, in our spare time, we go from house to house, knocking on doors and hoping we don’t get shot.

     “Most of the houses no longer have survivors in them. Maybe one out of five do, at best. Some of the others are empty, and we mark those with a big checkmark on the front door with orange spray paint.

     “The remaining houses still have bodies inside. Suicide victims. Usually whole families who ran out of food and just couldn’t take it anymore. And sometimes murder victims, whole families just wiped out by marauders. That’s the worst part of the job. We have to drag the bodies out to the street and put them in a pile on the pavement. It’s a disgusting job, and you’ll vomit the first few times you do it. And the worst part of it is, many of the victims are children. And many of them are decayed to the point where the bodies fall apart, and you have to go back to pick up arms and legs that fall off as you drag them.”

     “Is the National Guard still coming by to pick them up?”

     “No, the National Guard’s numbers have dwindled too. Many of their members couldn’t handle the stress and just stopped reporting. Some of them committed suicide themselves. When their numbers dwindled to the point where they couldn’t keep up with the bodies, they just stopped doing it. Now they focus on food distribution only.”

     “Then who picks up the bodies?”

     “Nobody. We carry two five gallon Jerry cans in the trunks of our squad cars. We put the bodies in a pile in the street, douse it with diesel, and set it on fire. Then we move on.

     “The fires typically burn themselves out after a few hours, but the bodies don’t completely burn. So when we come to a pile that’s anything more than ashes and bones, we douse it and start it burning again. After the second or third burn, the flesh is pretty much gone and all that’s left is a pile of ashes and bones. The winds will eventually scatter the ashes, and some day I suppose there will be enough city employees with working vehicles to gather the bones and dispose of them.”

     Robbie looked at Scott and smiled.

     “You’re turning green, my friend. Should I call a nurse? I heard a rumor that there’s a few of them running around in here.”

     “No. I’m okay. It just seems… incredibly sad, that so many people had to end up in such a way.”

     “You won’t find anyone around here who disagrees with you, Scott. If it were up to me, I’d give every last one of them a funeral and a proper burial. But when the dead bodies outnumber the living two hundred to one, there’s no other way. And the CDC says the sooner the bodies are burned, the sooner the plague will run its course. And the less chance of a second plague taking hold. So it’s got to be done.

     “And to be honest, as bad as it is, it could have been much worse. FEMA has been taking its helicopters to every city in Texas trying to assess each city’s needs. They say that a lot of cities and towns have just ceased to exist at all. They’re just ghost towns.

     “San Antonio may be a city of ashes and bones. But at least we’re still here.”

     Scott didn’t know what to say. He hoped he was up to the challenge.

     It was as if Robbie could read his mind.

    “Don’t worry. You’re tough. After what you’ve just survived, you’ll do fine. And if you throw up occasionally, we won’t make fun of you too much. We all do from time to time. It’s just a reminder that we’re human, that’s all.

     “Now, I’m going to go call your people and give them a report, so that I can go home and get some sleep afterwards.”

     “Do you have family at home waiting for you?”

     Robbie grew melancholy.

     “No. My family’s dead.”

     He said it with sadness. But mostly just matter-of-factly. Like he’d long ago accepted that it was what it was, and there was nothing he could do about it.

     He saw the look of horror on Scott’s face.

     “I’ve learned to deal with it, Scott. It was the only thing I could do. Either deal with it or blow my brains out. Then I decided that the best way to honor the memory of my wife and our baby was to save as many others as I could. So other families wouldn’t have to suffer the same fate.”

     “I’m sorry, Robbie.”

     “Thank you, Scott. I appreciate that. Now, then. I’m going to tell your family that you can’t go home for awhile, so you’ve decided to become a cop instead. Anything else you want me to tell them?”

     “Yes, please. They’ll be worried that I’ll get shot again. Would you tell them what you told me about most of the violent bad guys being gone?”

     “Sure. Anything else?”

     “Yes. Tell them I love them and miss them.”

-17-

    Four days later Scott was suddenly mobile. All of the tubes had been removed from his body, and he was walking to and from the bathroom unassisted. He was still incredibly weak, but getting stronger by the day.

     He had Nurse Becky to thank for that. She was nagging him unmercifully to eat every last bite of whatever food they brought him, no matter how disgusting it was.

     “I’m sorry. There’s just something wrong about forcing humans to eat broccoli soup,” he’d protested.

     “You’ll either eat it or I’ll put it in a syringe, and inject it into your backside. And not only will you eat it, you’ll enjoy it and then ask for more.”

     She was making him walk to the end of the hallway and back, three times a day, always at his side to support him and catch him if he got dizzy or lost his balance.

     They were becoming fast friends, and he was learning a lot about her. Her name was Becky Tomlin. And she, like Robbie, had lost her entire family. She’d enlisted Robbie’s help, and the help of John Castro, to bury them all in a mass grave, in her back yard. In that regard they were luckier than most. At least they had three people to say prayers over their grave, instead of just being dragged into the street and set on fire.

     Becky said the hardest thing she ever had to do was to watch as John and Robbie shoveled dirt upon the body of her three year old son and nine year old daughter. They’d placed the body of her husband in the grave first, so that his body wouldn’t crush theirs. But that meant the children would suffer the indignity of having dirt thrown in their faces.

     Becky said she saw that vision in her mind for weeks following the burial, and it tormented her.

     She finally left the house. It was just too painful to walk through that doorway every day. And the two mile walk to and from the hospital every day was wearing her out.

     Now, she slept on an extra mattress on the floor of the hospital’s cafeteria.

     “It was once a bustling place to be,” she told Scott. “Full of laughter and conversation and gossip. Now, even though we have our generators working, we keep it dark in there on purpose. It’s become a place to sleep, no more and no less. There are twenty one of us in there now, and since we run three shifts, someone is always sleeping. The laughter and gossip is long gone. All that’s left is soft snoring and an occasional nightmare.”

     “Have you thought of moving into one of the vacant houses nearby, with some friends, so you can at least get away from this place and unwind?”

     “Actually, I have thought about it. Many of us have. But the sad fact is, we don’t know what we’d do away from the hospital. It’s all we have left. It has replaced our families, our homes, our very lives. Without the safety and security of this hospital, we’d be lost. And many of us would give up.”

     She’d paused in their walk down the hallway long enough to look Scott in the eyes.

     “The day I buried Eddie and Lisa and Johnny in my back yard was the worst day of my life. There were many days in the weeks that followed when I wanted to join them. To just take an overdose of something, or blow my brains out. I think the only way I got through that was knowing I could still do some good. I could still help save some of the others. It gave me a mission. A reason to go on.

     “I’m afraid if I ever tried to break away from the hospital, I’d remember how easy it would be to join my family and let someone else do this. And I’m afraid I’d just give up and stop, when there’s so much left to do. Like it or not, this damn hospital is the only thing keeping me alive. And the only thing keeping me from going insane. I know it sounds ridiculous, and you probably think I’m crazy, but in a way, this hospital and the people in it has become my new family. It’s now my support system, and patients like you are my new mission in life.

     “Instead of raising my children and then pushing them out of the nest to do some good in the world, I’m helping patients get better. Then I’m pushing them out into the world to help others. To grow crops, or burn bodies, or become cops. It’s become my new mission in life.”

     Scott almost asked her how her family died, but caught himself. It didn’t really matter, and might cause her additional pain. If she’d been able to accept it as it was, then he certainly could as well.

-18-

     Tony Pike was a scumbag by anybody’s standards. He’d grown up in Kerrville to a single mom who didn’t care if he ran the streets and got into trouble. In fact, she preferred it that way, because she felt safer when he was gone.

     By the time he was seven, he’d already learned he could bully others into getting the things he wanted.

     It was ridiculously easy. He already towered over every other one of his classmates. He simply demanded their lunch money, and threatened to beat them to a pulp if they refused.

     Early on, a couple of the kids told their teachers. After Tony waited for them after school and left them beaten and bloody in the streets, the other kids took note. After that they accepted it as an unfortunate inevitability. They’d avoid Tony as much as they could, but if they were one of the hapless few he’d stumble across when he made his daily rounds, they’d pay up without complaint.

     He graduated from that, of course, to shoplifting from retailers in the neighborhood. After he’d been banned from all the mom and pops, he stole a bicycle with saddlebag baskets to carry his spoils, then started biking to the big blue and red box stores half a mile away.

     It was a little bit of work, but the payoff was much better.

     By fourteen he’d been in and out of juvey three times. He’d heard it was hard. In reality, it was laughable. He was just as big a bully in juvey as he was on the outside. If anything, it just made him tougher.

     His mother made a cake for his fifteenth birthday. But he never saw it. He’d been on a drinking and terror binge for three days with his running buddies already, and wouldn’t come home for two more.

     His mom ate a piece of it herself, sitting alone at their small kitchen table, and gently placed the rest into the garbage.

     When he was seventeen, Tony stumbled across his father at a strip mall he was casing. His father didn’t recognize Tony, but Tony knew who he was. Even though he hadn’t laid eyes on the man in almost ten years.

     He beat his father into a bloody pulp, and probably would have beaten him to death if a patrol car hadn’t happened by and intervened. He was still pounding the unconscious man when three cops pulled him off.

     He was threatened with adult jail for the first time for the incident, but Tony had scoffed.

     “Ah, he’s my father. He won’t press charges against his own son.”

     But he was wrong. His father was only his father through happenstance. To hear the man tell it, “That bitch lied to me and said she was on the pill. If she hadn’t lied, Tony wouldn’t have ever been born.”

     That statement, more than any other, explained Tony’s miserable life quite nicely.

     And he did indeed press charges, but Tony got the last laugh. While serving a two year sentence for felony assault, Tony met some powerful people.

     One of them got out a few months before Tony and arranged for Tony’s father to disappear permanently. In several different pieces, in several different places.

     They never found the body, and even if they had, they couldn’t have pinned it on Tony. He was locked up at the time.

     To repay his debt, Tony ran drugs for the Castroville syndicate after he got out. It was low risk, because most of the local cops were paid off, and it paid well.

     But old habits die hard, and even with eight hundred dollars in his pocket, he still tried to walk out of Kohl’s wearing three new polo shirts underneath his jacket.

     He was out on bail when the power went out. He walked to his lawyer’s office to find it locked tight. So was the courthouse across the street. He took that to be a sign from God that he was permanently reprieved.

     In the days following the blackout, Tony was in his element. The whole world was stealing and plundering to get what they needed to survive. But he did it better than anyone else he knew. So while most of the neighbors were starving, Tony was eating well. He was even taking some home to his mom.

     At least, until the day he walked into her tiny apartment to find her dead on the couch.

     She’d found one of Tony’s guns and put into her mouth, then pulled the trigger. Her miserable life ended much as it began. For she too, was unloved and unwanted as a child. She too, like Tony, had stumbled through life needing guidance and support and never finding it.

     Tony didn’t try to bury the body. He didn’t even cover it. He merely pried the gun from her cold fingers and left her there to rot.

     Tony found himself stuck in Kerrville when the power went out. With no way to make it back to Castroville, he was out of the drug dealer business.

     But that was okay. He found an even more lucrative pursuit.

     Tony and a band of hoodlums took over a Walmart store and deemed it their very own. The Kerrville city cops were decimated by deserting officers, and the few cops left were way outgunned by Tony’s men. They were sworn to uphold the law, sure. But even they weren’t stupid enough to go up against illegal, fully automatic AK-47s with their service weapons. So instead they asked the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department for help.

     “Are you kidding me?” asked the sheriff with a sarcastic chuckle. “I’ve only got four deputies left. All the others have gone off to die with their families or lit out for Mexico.”

    So Tony Pike and his bunch went unchallenged.

     They knew the dollar was no longer worth anything. So they began a lucrative trade: food and bottled water for silver or gold.

     They stopped people as they walked into the front doors.

     “What do you have to trade?”

     “I brought my mom’s wedding band. And my grandfather’s gold pocket watch.”

     “I don’t know. Looks like it’s gold plated to me.”

     “No, it’s real gold, I promise. We had it appraised a couple of years ago. It was worth over two thousand dollars.”

     “Well… okay. Half a cart full of stuff, no more. I’ll be watching, and if you try to leave the store with more than half a cart, I’ll beat your ass and make you put it all back on the shelf.”

     “Yes, sir.”

     The Walmart was empty of anything edible within two weeks. Then Tony and his crew took over a truck stop on I-10 in Kerrville. Again, they claimed it was theirs, knowing full well that no one would challenge them.

     The truck stop itself didn’t mean much to them when the trucks stopped running. But the thirty trucks packed into its back lot sure did.

     Most of the truckers were gone now, either by suicide or because they simply walked away. Those left behind were given an offer they couldn’t refuse: either start walking and don’t look back, or die trying to protect somebody else’s truck.

     Once they owned the trucks as well as the truck stop, they again had a very lucrative business.

     “What did you bring me today?”

     “My silverware collection. I paid eight hundred dollars for it a year ago.”

     “How do I know it’s real silver?”

     “By the markings on the back of each piece.”

     “Okay. I’ll trust you. You have an honest face. I’ll give you a case of soup or a case of tuna fish. Since I’m in a damn good mood today, I’ll let you choose.”

     “Can’t I have both? This is the last thing we have of value.”

     “I don’t give a shit. That’s not my problem. You can have one or the other. If you have no more valuables, start breaking into the empty houses around you. They’re either dead or gone. They won’t need their stuff anymore. Now, you’re wasting my time. Which one do you want?”

     “But…”

     “Screw you. Here’s the tuna. Now get out of my sight.”

     It was while standing on the back of one of their trailers, waiting on a line of their customers, that Tony had an idea.

     “You know, if we had some damn wheels we’d be able to sell this stuff to the people on the other side of Kerrville, instead of just the ones close enough to walk over here.”

     His buddy Kevin laughed.

     “No doubt. Now the only problem is, where in hell are you going to find wheels?”

     “There was an old man up on Highway 83 that was driving an old beat up Ford awhile back.”

     “Seriously? How in hell did he get it running?”

     “I don’t know. But we saw him coming back from a dead truck west of there loaded down with boxes. We snuck over to his place that night and tried to hotwire it, but couldn’t get it started.”

     “Did you know what you were doing?”

     “No. We were trying to figure out which two wires to cross and he came out shooting so we took off.”

     “Hell, take me there. I can hotwire a car.”

     “No. We went back a week later to try again and he was gone. The place was deserted. And there was a big pile of dirt at the end of the road with a sign on it that said keep out or get shot.”

     Kevin wasn’t a rocket scientist. But he was infinitely smarter than Tony Pike.

     “Okay, Tony. Answer me these two questions. First of all, if he really left, why would he bother putting a big pile of dirt there to keep people out? If he wasn’t there any more, why would he care?

     “And secondly… how did he make the big pile of dirt if he didn’t have vehicles? I doubt if he carried it over a shovel full at a time. He must have figured out how to make things run again, and I’ll bet he’s still there, hiding somewhere.”

     Tony suddenly felt stupid.

     “Hell, I never thought about that.”

     And the two made a note to check out Tom Haskins’ place a bit more thoroughly.

-19-

     “I can walk. Just point me in the right direction, damnit.”

     Robbie was having none of it.

     “Hey, just because you’re now a duly sworn officer of the law doesn’t mean you can give me a hard time. To me you’re just a rookie. I’ve got seven years on the force and that means I outrank you. So just shut up and let me drive, rookie.”

     He pushed Scott’s wheelchair down the long eastern corridor of St. Mary’s Hospital.

     “Besides, you and Nurse Becky have only been taking short walks up and down the hallway in the ward. This long walk would be way too much for you.”

     When they passed the third set of elevators, Scott finally asked, “Aren’t we going upstairs? Why are we passing all of the elevators?”

     “Because most of them don’t work. Most of the electronics got fried during the blackout. The technicians were able to cannibalize enough working parts to get just one set of elevators working. And that’s where we’re headed.”

     They rounded a corner.

     “In fact, here we are now.”

     Robbie pushed the button and the elevator opened in front of them. In they went, and Scott noticed a rolling tray on one side of the elevator with several boxes of latex gloves and paper masks. Above the cart, a hand made sign was taped to the wall.

NOTICE:

Floors five, six and seven are

QUARANTINE AREAS

Masks and gloves are required.

NO EXCEPTIONS!

     Robbie had done this drill a hundred times in the past. For Scott it was new, but something he’d surely do many times in the future. He selected a pair of blue latex gloves from the box marked “large.” Just a guess, really. They seemed to be a bit loose. He supposed that was because he’d lost a lot of weight in the hospital. He wouldn’t waste these, but he made a mental note to try the mediums on for size the next time he came to visit John.

     They stepped off the elevator into a sea of people, all wearing similar masks and gloves. Even the patients who were ambulatory wore them. An added precaution, Scott presumed.

     Robbie wheeled him down the corridor to room 607. The white board next to the door said “Officer John Castro, SAPD. Medal of Honor Winner.”

     Apparently the hospital staff liked to recognize its heroes.

     John was sitting on the edge of his bed, in Sesame Street pajamas, of all things. He saw Scott break into laughter.

     “One of the nurses has a sense of humor,” he explained. “She said it was the only pajamas they had left. I found out later that wasn’t true, but by then I’d grown attached to them.”

     He held out a blue latex hand.

     “It’s nice to finally meet you, Scott. I understand you saved my life.”

     “Hardly,” Scott said as he shook John’s hand. “I was just a delivery boy. These people all around you saved your life, as well as mine.”

     “They’re good people, aren’t they?”

     “Yes indeed. Real heroes, in my book.”

     “I understand you’ve got a shiny new badge and police ID.”

     “Yes. The chief came by yesterday and had me take the oath. To be honest, the whole thing scares me just a little bit. I hope I’m up to the task.”

     John laughed.

     “Relax. It’s a piece of cake. Robbie does it, and Robbie can’t even tie his own shoes.”

     Robbie pretended to take offense.

     “Hey, watch it, pal. It’s a good thing you’re in the hospital, or I just might put you in the hospital.”

     “Listen to Captain Redundant Redundant over there. So, Scott, I heard a rumor you’re getting out tomorrow. What are your plans?”

     “The chief is having me shadow Robbie until you get out. To learn the ropes so I’m not such a burden when I have to start doing stuff for real.”

     “I hate to tell you this, my friend, but there is no probationary period. Not any more. No learning curve either. You’ll be learning as you go, doing real stuff from day one. Trial by fire, so to speak.”

     “Well, like I said, I hope I’m up to the task.”

     “Just follow instructions to the letter, without stopping to ask questions, and you’ll do fine. Stopping to ask why can get you killed in our line of work. And you’ve already been almost killed once. You don’t want to do that again.”

     “Nope. Not at all. When are you getting out?”

     ‘I wanted to go home today, but the doc says he wants to keep me for a few more days. He says the swelling in my brain hasn’t completely gone away yet, and that’s what’s causing my dizzy spells and headaches. He says another few days and I’ll be back to normal.”

     “Well, I’m looking forward to being your partner.”

     “Me too, my friend. Do you have a place to stay?”

     “Yes. I figured I’d stay at my old house. It’s furnished and I’m comfortable there.”

     “Can I give you another option?”

     “Sure.”

     “I finally talked Robbie into moving into my place until Hannah and the girls are able to come back. I’ve got four bedrooms, so there’s room for you too. We can be roommates. You can use my ham radio to talk to your family any time you want, and it’ll make transportation a lot easier. One of the hardest parts about running a police department with only eighty two patrol cars is getting everybody to and from work. If the three of us work the same shift, we can take one car home at night and leave the other two on the job with other officers.”

     “The other two? I thought I was going to partner with you.”

     “Yes, initially. But after you’re trained, they’ll split us up and you’ll carry a paramedic around with you. That’ll expand our police presence a bit more and keep the public calmer. But don’t worry. The chief said he’d leave it up to me when to cut you loose, and I’ll make sure you have all the tools you need to succeed. And we’ll work the same district so I’ll always be around to back you up if you need it.”

     “Okay. I’m in. I’ll be your roommate. And thanks for the offer.”

     “Did the chief explain the ‘Houses for Hours’ program that the mayor and city council dreamed up?”

     “He touched on it but he really didn’t explain it.”

     “It’s a great idea. The city now owns thousands of homes that used to belong to families which committed suicide or abandoned them. They can’t pay any city employees, including us, because money is worthless and the banks are out of business. So they are letting each of us choose a house, work for a year, and then own the house outright. It’s a great idea, in my humble opinion.

     “I know you’ve already got your place north of the city, Scott. But if you think about it, this would be a great way to provide homes for your family. You have three boys, right?”

     Scott laughed.

     “No. Two’s all I have, and that’s plenty enough for me. And it does sound like a great deal, but I don’t plan to spend two years down here working with you guys. No offense, but I don’t think I’ll be as great a cop as you guys. And as soon as the doctor gives me the all clear about the plague thing, I’ll rejoin my boys, and my girlfriend. But I certainly don’t mind helping you out in the meantime.”

     “I certainly understand. Family is everything. But don’t sell yourself short on your abilities as a cop. You’ve already shown your willingness to help others that you don’t even know. And that’s ninety percent of the job. I think you’ll make a fine officer. The chief thinks so too. He told me so.”

     Robbie said, “Tell him about the house you’ve picked out, John.”

     “I will, but you have to promise not to tell Hannah or the girls.”

     “Uh… okay. You have my word.”

     “I’m getting Otis Morning’s mansion on the hill, on the west side of town.”

     “Otis Morning, the basketball player?”

     “Yes. He and his family were found by his security guards huddled together in their living room. It was a mass suicide, some kind of overdose, and it looked like they went peacefully. They were all dressed up in their Sunday best and died in each other’s arms. All in all, not a bad way to go, I suppose. At least they didn’t starve to death like a lot of others did.

     “Anyway, Hannah used to drive past that mansion on the hill sometimes and daydream about living there. She said it looked like a fairy tale castle to her. That’s why I’ve chosen that particular house. On a military pension, and now a cop’s income, I’d never have been able to give her the fairy tale castle she’s always wanted. This way I finally can. She’s my princess, and if anyone deserves a fairy tale castle it’s her. Especially after everything she’s gone through lately.

     “But don’t you dare tell her. I want to take her up there myself someday and surprise her by handing her the keys.”

     “I won’t breathe a word of it, I promise.”

-20-

     Robbie and Scott said their goodbyes and left the hospital in an SAPD patrol car.

     “Some cities have vehicle programs that allow officers to take their patrol cars home with them at night. The idea is to deter crime by giving the officers a greater presence in their own neighborhoods.

     “San Antonio never had such a program before the blackout, but we do it now out of necessity. We have the only cars running, and if we didn’t take our patrol cars home we’d have to pull other officers off the streets to take us home at the end of each shift and then pick us up again a few hours later. We’d be cab drivers more than police officers.

     “Since the three of us will be roommates for the foreseeable future, we’ve made arrangements to work the same shift schedule. That way we can use the same car to come and go, and free up two other units for other officers.”

     “Makes sense. How come you only have eighty two cars?”

     “Actually, we’ve got a lot more than that, but most of them still sit where they were when the lights went out. Smack dab in the middle of the highways, or on residential streets where they were on patrol when they went dead. We only scrounged enough replacement parts and batteries to get eighty two running, but we could use a lot more.”

     “How many officers are on the job?”

     “Last I heard we had 133. That’s down from over eleven hundred before the blackout. Some might say that should be enough, since there are a lot fewer people in San Antonio now. And I suppose that would be true, if it weren’t for all the additional things we have to do now. Like search abandoned buildings and homes, and gathering and burning the bodies.”

     They went first to Scott’s house on Royal Valley Drive, so he could gather up some of the clothes he’d left behind during the evacuation.

     Then they went to John and Hannah’s house a couple of miles away.

     “John’s got the master bedroom, of course. There are three others. Take your pick, Scott, and I’ll sleep wherever’s left over. I’m not picky. Shoot, I spent a lot of years in the military, being deployed from here to there to everywhere. I’ve slept on more airport floors than I can count. Bus station bathroom stalls, park benches. I slept underneath the wing of a C-130 once during a heavy rainstorm. Three long nights in a crashed helicopter another time. I can sleep pretty much anywhere.”

     “Is that where you met John, in the military?”

     “No. He was a Marine. I was in the Army. We never crossed paths, but we damn sure chewed some of the same sand. He’s a good man. I wish we had a lot more like him.”

     “So I’ve heard.”

     “You ready to call your family?”

     “Damn right I am.”

     Robbie took Scott to the two car garage, and showed him the three thousand watt generator. John had protected it from the EMP by building a Faraday cage around it.

     “John was into prepping. Not a lot of people saw the blackout coming, but he did. He was able to save this, a microwave oven, a hotplate, a Mr. Coffee and the ham radio. The generator’s big enough to run all four of them at the same time.”

     He showed Scott where the spark plug wire for the generator was hidden, underneath the driver’s seat of a Chevy Cobalt which was also parked in the garage.

     “This was Hannah’s car. He keeps the plug wire hidden in case anybody breaks in when nobody’s around. He hopes they won’t take the generator if they can’t start it up and use it. So far the house has been broken into twice, and it’s been left behind both times. So I guess his plan’s working.”

     He pulled aside a large, nondescript bookcase that covered a good portion of one wall in the garage. Behind it, several pieces of sheetrock had been carefully cut away. In the compartments were stacked canned goods and dry goods. Scott saw several boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and his mouth watered.

     “Like I said, John and Hannah were preppers. There are stashes like this all over the house, hidden behind furniture, in the mattresses, in the attic. We’ve been using it sparingly, but combined with the MREs we get from the National Guard, it’s enough to keep us going.”

     Scott was impressed.

     “I’ll tell you what. Let’s get the generator started and you can go call the family while I’m heating us up a couple of cans of Ravioli. It’s not gourmet, but it’s much tastier than those damn MREs. I’m sure you’d like some privacy while you talk to your girlfriend and kids. So I’ll stay in the kitchen and cook while you’re enjoying your reunion.”

     Scott was relieved. He thought there was a good chance he’d shed a tear when he heard Zachary’s voice again. And he didn’t want Robbie to see his weakness.

     “This thing’s kind of old and temperamental, so be sure you prime it three pumps before you crank it. Four is too much, it’ll flood the carburetor. If it doesn’t crank right away after three pumps of the primer, wait a couple of minutes and then repeat the process. It almost always starts on the second attempt.

     He took an old coffee cup and filled it from one of several gas cans in the corner of the garage.

     “We only run one cup of fuel at a time. It’s not so much to conserve fuel, because fuel is plentiful. All of the abandoned cars have tanks full of it. It’s so that we don’t have to come back out to the garage to turn the generator off. If we did that, we might be overcome by the carbon dioxide fumes, pass out and die.

     One cup of gas runs the generator for about an hour or so, which is plenty of time to do what we need to do. Once it runs out of gas, it dies on its own and the carbon dioxide in the garage slowly dissipates through the cracks around the garage door”

     He depressed the primer three times and it started right up.

     “Okay. Now we’re good to go.”

     They walked from the garage into the house.

     “Be sure you close this door tightly so that the fumes don’t seep into the house. And now you have about an hour or so to talk to your loved ones, eat a hot meal, and drink some hot coffee. A whole hour to pretend the world is normal again before the generator dies and brings us back to reality.”

     Robbie headed for the kitchen with the two cans of Ravioli.

     “Enjoy your chat with the family.”

-21-

     “Joyce, Linda… whoever’s at the security desk, come in. This is Scott.”

     Sara was pulling her normal shift when the familiar voice came over the radio.

     “Oh, my God! Joyce! Linda! Come quick!”

     Joyce and Linda, and pretty much everyone else, came running at Sara’s sudden cry. They all thought something was wrong.

     Then Joyce heard Scott’s words again.

     “Joyce, Linda… this is Scott. Come in.”

     Joyce grabbed the microphone, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Linda said, “Oh, my…” and then placed her hand over her mouth.

     “Scott, this is Joyce. How are you, honey?”

     “I’m fine, babe. Much better now that I can hear your sweet voice. How is everyone there?”

     “We’re all okay. We miss you, but we’re getting along. Everyone, Jordan especially, has stepped up to fill in for you while you’re gone. It’s so good to finally hear you again.”

     “Please give everyone my love, okay? And a hug for the boys too. I miss all of you. Did Robbie tell you what was going on here?”

     “Yes. He’s been calling every other day, like clockwork. He said you went and got yourself shot. Now why in the world would you go and do something like that? Is my cooking so bad that you wanted hospital food instead? Should I feel insulted?”

     “You know better than that. I sure would like to have some of your good cooking right now.”

     “And what’s this about you becoming a cop?”

     “Just to pass the time and help out until I can come back. They need all the help they can get down here. The policemen are trying to keep the city together and they’re being run ragged. It’s the least I can do for them saving my life.”

     “Do you know how long you’ll be there?”

     “No idea. FEMA is giving the mayor and police chief a briefing every third day. They say it’ll be the CDC’s call to decide when the plague has finally run its course. Once they give the all clear, I’ll be able to come back home. They’re estimating anywhere from several months to a year.”

     “That’s a long time to stay away.”

     “I know, honey. But if I came back before then I would risk infecting all of you. And it’s not worth taking the chance.”

     “I agree. But that won’t make it any easier.”

     “How’s Sara? Is she getting as big as a house yet?”

     Sara, standing next to Linda, made a pouty look. Joyce took notice.

     “Scott Harter, you should know better than to make such comments about a pregnant woman. You’re lucky you’re not here, or Sara would kick your ass. And I’d help her.”

     “Oh, Sara knows I’m teasing. She knows I love her and that she is absolutely beautiful.”

     Sara’s pouty face turned to a smile.

     “Hannah’s standing here chomping at the bits about news from John. Anything to tell her?”

     “Yes. I finally got a chance to meet him. He’s a great guy. We’re already good friends. Tell Hannah that Robbie and I are going to crash at her house for awhile. It was John’s idea. That’ll make it easier to get to and from work every day. And we can talk to you guys daily instead of every other day.”

     “Oh, baby! That’ll be great!”

     “Also, tell Hannah that John should be home in a few days, so he can talk to her himself.”

     “Hannah took the mike and said, “That’s wonderful news! Thank you so much, Scott!”

     “You’re welcome, dear. I’m going to see him again the day after tomorrow. Is there anything you want me to tell him?”

     “Not unless you want to give him a big sloppy kiss from me.”

     She smiled and winked at Joyce.

     “Uh, no. I’ll pass on that. How about if I shake his hand for you?”

     Hannah laughed.

     “Oh, never mind. I’ll wait until I come back home and kiss him myself.”

     “Great idea.”

     “How’s Robbie doing?”

     “He’s fine. He’s in the kitchen cooking supper.”

     Joyce got back on.

     “Scott, please tell Robbie thanks again for saving you and getting you to the hospital. Tell him I’ll be forever grateful and that I’m looking forward to cooking him a real meal as soon as we can arrange it.”

     “Okay. I’ll tell him. I’m pretty sure he’s getting tired of canned goods and MREs.”

     “Now, back to you being a police officer… is it still dangerous down there?”

     “Well, they tell me that most of the bad guys are gone. Either dead or moved elsewhere. Most of the police work these days is just helping people.”

     “Good. So I shouldn’t worry about you then?”

     “Nope. I’m a tough old guy. I survived getting shot, remember? I’ll even show you my scars when I get back home to prove it. They’re pretty impressive, if I say so myself.”

     “I don’t want to see any stupid old scars. All I want is for this plague to go away, and for you to come back home again.”

     “I won’t stay a day longer than I have to, I promise. Hey, are the boys around?”

     “Would you settle for a boy and a man?”

     “Sure.”

     Jordan beamed with pride at Joyce’s correction.

     “They’re right here.”

     “Jordan? Zachary? How are you guys?”

     Joyce handed Zach the mike.

     “We’re fine, Dad. Jordan is still a butthead, though.”

     “Well, of course, he is, son. That’s never gonna change, no matter how old he gets.”

     “Hey Dad?”

     “Yes?”

     “I love you.”

     “I love you too, son. I love both of you. And I’m very proud of you both too. You guys keep up the good work until I get home again, okay?”

     Jordan said, “We will, Dad. You be safe, okay?”

     “I will. I promise.”

-22-

      As fall turned to winter, Scott settled into a routine, as did the people in the compound.

     The cattle were penned up full time now in the back of the compound. No longer allowed out to graze outside the wall because the grass was more sparse, they were fed a full-time diet of hay and cattle feed. They were getting fatter and were blissfully happy, totally unaware of their eventual fate.

     Even when Tom and Jordan culled three head from the herd, one at a time, and slaughtered them to fill their freezers with meat and to make jerky to send to San Antonio, the cows didn’t seem to notice their ranks were thinning.

     Or maybe they were just happy that the thinning herd meant they had more hay to eat.

     In San Antonio, the cold nights were a godsend.

     The Alamo city never had really harsh winters. But this one was marked by an early freeze. The decomposing bodies froze solid and their awful stench largely, but not completely, went away temporarily.

     Since nearly all of the bodies had been collected from the outdoor areas by this time, virtually all that remained were in private homes or office buildings.

     Shaded from the daytime sun.

     Even though the daytime temperatures rose above freezing, the bodies’ location in the dark shade of unheated houses kept them cool enough to reduce the stench and to slow their decomposition.

     And that made body collection a lot easier to handle.

     There was a downside, of course. The cooler air made the fires go out a lot faster, and each pile of bodies had to be relit four to five times to burn completely to bones, instead of the twice to three times during the warmer months.

     But that was a small price to pay, considering. After all, fuel was plentiful and restarting the fires was easy.

     At first, Scott had nightmares, seeing the bodies of the children he collected in his sleep. He started praying each night that God watch over the littlest victims, and expressed his hope that they hadn’t suffered greatly.

     He also developed a habit of wrapping the children’s bodies in sheets before he placed them gently on the burn piles. His paramedic assistant was puzzled by the habit, until Scott explained. He just couldn’t bear to see their little faces as he struck a match to their bodies.

     “I know they can’t feel the fire,” he’d explained. “I don’t do it for them. I do it for me. It just makes it a little easier to deal with.”

     Word got around, and before long the other teams were doing the same thing. As it turned out, every one of them was troubled by burning the bodies of the children. And wrapping them in linen made it easier for all the men to deal with. Even men hardened by the harsh realities of massive loss of life were loving fathers and husbands at their core. And none of them liked looking into the faces of small children under such circumstances.

     Scott was able to help in other ways as well. Having helped harvest his own crops of corn and wheat the previous spring, he was able to show the residents how to beat the wheat stalks against the inside of a cardboard box to free the edible kernels.

     And also to leave some ears of corn on the stalks to dry out naturally, so they could be used as seed for the next growing season.

     He learned that very little of his time was spent doing actual police work. An occasional thief he had to put in handcuffs and hold in the city jail for a few days before setting free. Sometimes a domestic dispute. The domestic disputes were almost always neighbors pitted against neighbors. And they almost always involved one party claiming the other was eating more than his share of the community crops.

     Once, Scott came racing to back up John, as John was pursuing an attempted rape suspect. They caught the man after a struggle and placed him in cuffs.

     Then they were unsure what to do with him. There was no court system to deal with him. No judges they knew of to try him. No prisons to care for him.

     They finally drove him a hundred miles south of San Antonio and made him walk back with a stern warning.

     John told him, “It’s going to take you at least a week to walk back. During that time, you need to reflect on your behavior and figure out a way to control your urges. And by the time you get back to San Antonio, you’d best have a way to control yourself. Because if we ever bring you out here and drop you off again, you’ll be walking back home with a few less body parts.”

     Scott could tell that John meant it, too. It occurred to him that this was a life not too different than the days of the old west. Once again, lawmen had wide latitude to apply justice as they saw fit.

-23-

     Tony Pike and his friend Kevin finally got the full moon they’d been waiting for. They could see it in the eastern sky in the late afternoon, long before the sky  started to darken. Tonight would be the night they’d go check out the old man’s place.

     They’d gotten two horses and tack from an old couple outside of Kerrville. They could have just shot them, but the woman reminded Tony of a kindly old teacher he once had in grade school. She’d been one of the few adults who treated him well during his early years, so he cut them a break. He traded a case of spaghetti noodles and a case of macaroni and cheese from an HEB supermarket truck for the two horses and the riding gear.

     It wasn’t much of a trade. But the old couple had no reason to ride anymore and were worried about the horses dying during the coming winter, when food became scarce. So they accepted the offer without hesitation.

     Kevin was an experienced rider. Tony, not so much. He was able to stay on the horse until it started to run at a fast gallop. Then he pulled back on the reins to slow it down. Kevin laughed, but not too much. Tony had a vicious temper, even toward his friends, and Kevin knew not to push him too far.

     They arrived at Tom Haskins’ old ranch house with a little less than an hour of daylight left, and approached the house slowly. If they encountered Tom, they’d have claimed they were just out hunting and stopped by to give their horses a drink of water. No rancher worth his mettle would deny a horse a drink, whether he liked the man on the horse’s back or not.

     The house was empty, of course. The only things Tom had left behind were a few pieces of furniture that wouldn’t fit in his new bachelor pad, and some old clothes and dishes he didn’t expect to use again. Around back were a shovel, an old wooden ladder, and a generator with the spark plugs missing.

     Tony was disappointed, and about ready to count the mission as a failure, when he remembered the dirt berm blocking the end of the roadway.

     “Come on. There’s got to be a front end loader or a bulldozer out back, for him to build that pile of dirt. Maybe we can steal the battery and some other parts and use them to get one of the cars in town running.”

     Once again, though, they struck out. The field in back of the house was as empty as the house itself.

     But Tony noticed a couple of things in the waning hours of daylight.

     The field of hay had been mowed.

     Tony knew that the hay had to have grown during the spring and summer, after the world went dark. It couldn’t have been mowed unless a mower, or a tractor with a cutting blade, had survived the blackout.

     And Tony also knew that a mower or a tractor could not build a wall of dirt. That meant there were at least two vehicles that had survived.

     But where the hell were they?

     Kevin noticed a set of tire tracks headed toward the back fence of the property, and the pair followed them.

     They came to an old cattle fence, three strands of barbed wire evenly spaced twelve inches apart on a fence that rose to a height of four feet or so.

     The funny thing about this fence, though, was that one of the posts had been removed. The wire had been cut and wrapped around the posts left behind, creating what was in essence a passageway about sixteen feet wide.

     In the middle of the gap was a downed mesquite tree, laying on its side, with what had been the top of the thorny tree facing the two men.

     They couldn’t go through the tree without getting torn to shreds by the thorns. And they couldn’t go around it, because there were a long line of similar trees laid down in the same manner on either side of it.

     The vehicle tracks disappeared under the tree.

     They sat on the ground and pondered the clues they’d found, and what they meant.

     “The hay in this field didn’t grow until after the blackout. If it’s cut, then they have to have a means of cutting it. That means at least two vehicles. And if they have the smarts and the parts to get two vehicles running, then it’s my guess they have more. That guy with the old car we tried to hotwire didn’t leave. He’s on the other side of these trees, hiding.”

     “But here’s what I want to know. Why in hell would they cut hay? They’ve got livestock over there as well as vehicles. And if they’ve got livestock and vehicles, than what else might they have?”

     Tony had an idea.

     “Did you bring your knife?”

     Kevin took a large Bowie knife from its sheath on his belt and held it up.

     “There was an old fashioned clothesline out behind the old man’s house. Go cut off about twenty feet or so and bring it back.”

     It was dark by the time Kevin returned, but the moon in the sky gave them enough light to work by.

     Tony tied each end of the clothesline into a loop, held in place by a slip knot. Then he carefully placed each loop around the tops of several branches on each end of the mesquite tree. He was careful to move slowly. The inch-long thorns were difficult to see in the darkness, and could cause a painful infection if one of them broke off and became embedded in their skin.

     He pulled each loop tightly around the branches, and they pulled the center of the rope together, dragging the tree slowly out of the way.

     They had just enough moonlight to see the darkened field in front of them. With no city lights to blind them, the night sky was the darkest of blue, the stars a sight to behold. Many would have called it beautiful. But these hardened men, on a nefarious mission, saw it only as an aid in their quest.

     They slowly walked across the field before they noticed that the horizon in front of them was slowly disappearing. The stars and tree line they’d seen in the distance was replaced by an unbroken blackness. The blackness seemed to rise up from the ground and get higher as they drew nearer to it.

     They were coming up on a wall.

     But what was on the other side of it?

     Twenty feet from the wall, they sat down and pondered their next move, careful to speak only in whispers. They couldn’t hear any voices or noise coming from the other side of the wall, but it was only prudent to take no chances. They didn’t want to alert anyone on the other side of their presence.

     They had no idea they were already being watched.

-24-

     Jordan, sitting at the security console, had seen Tony and Kevin not long after they came onto the property. Each corner of the high fence was equipped with two state of the art security cameras, aimed down the fence line in each direction, and capturing everything within a ninety degree field of vision.

     The cameras were equipped with night vision as well. It wasn’t as sharp and clear as the daytime view, of course, and it cast the pair in an eerie gray glow. But they could be seen clearly as they came out of the vast darkness of the corn field and crept slowly toward the fence.

     Jordan knew the drill. As soon as they came into view he called for reinforcements on the radio. Joyce, Tom and Linda came running immediately. Hannah gathered the children, as well as Sara, and herded them toward the safety of the basement.

     When Tony and Kevin stopped outside the fence to confer about the next move, the group inside the house were having their own discussion.

     Linda asked, “Who do you think they are?”

     Tom answered, “I don’t know. But they came from the direction of my old place. I’m guessing it’s the same thugs who tried to steal my old Ford a few months ago. Probably came back to try again.”

     “I wonder how they got through the line of mesquite trees.”

     “We’ll ask them if they survive the night.”

     At that point, almost as though they’d heard Tom’s words, Tony and Kevin turned and crept away again, back toward Tom’s ranch house.

     “Look. They’re leaving. Do you think they’ve given up?”

     Tom scratched his head.

     “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe they’re just a scout team and they’re going back for reinforcements.”

     “Honey, I don’t see any rifles. I don’t think they’re armed.”

     Linda was right. Tony and Kevin had left their rifles in sheaths on their horses. They weren’t expecting to be challenged in the darkness, and didn’t see the need in carrying rifles when all they were doing at this point was looking around. They both had handguns and thought they would be sufficient.

     Unfortunately, the holsters the men wore were not picked up by the night vision camera.

     “Well, armed or not, they’ve broken onto private property. If they come back, it’ll be the last mistake they’ll ever make.”

     Joyce went to the kitchen and poured coffee for herself and for Linda. Neither expected to sleep much on this particular night in light of the circumstances. Tom, Jordan and Zachary stayed at the security console, monitoring the situation.

     All five of them hoped that this situation was over. That the two men had simply given up when faced with the ten foot high wall they couldn’t climb over and couldn’t see through.

     Tom would go out at first light and examine the tree line to determine how they’d made it through the toppled mesquite trees, and would reseal the break so it wouldn’t happen again.

     Then, once again, Tony and Kevin came into the camera’s view.

     This time, they appeared to be carrying something. It was the old six foot folding ladder that had been leaning against the back wall of Tom’s ranch house. The one he’d used to clean out the rain gutters the day before the EMP hit and the power had gone out.

     “Dammit!” he muttered under his breath.

     Jordan called out once again to the women, who were sitting at the dining room table conferring.

     “Mom! Joyce! They’re back.”

     Tom grabbed an AR-15 from its nest at the side of the console and headed for the stairs. He knew that he’d have a great view of the north wall from Jordan’s bedroom window.

     Linda called behind him, “Tom, what are you going to do?”

     “I’m going to put a bullet through the first head that peeks over that wall. Then I’ll take a bead on the tree line in the distance. When the second one breaks free from the cover of the wall and is in the open, I’ll take him out too.”

     Linda followed him up the stairs.

     “Tom, you can’t. They don’t appear to be armed. Maybe they’re just people out scavenging for food or water. Maybe they mean us no harm.”

     “Scavengers don’t break into the property of others. They had to have intentionally broken through the tree line in order to get this far. They couldn’t have just wandered onto the property by accident.

     “And the fact that they’ve stolen my ladder to come back for a second look also proves they’re up to no good.  If they were just looking for food, they wouldn’t steal a ladder to do so.”

     “Well, then, what do you suppose they’re doing?”

     “I think they’re checking out what’s in the compound to see if we have anything worth stealing. And when they see that we do, I think they’ll come back in force, with others, and try to take it.”

     The two were at Jordan’s bedroom window now, the bedroom light off. All of the upstairs lights were off, to prevent the room lights from slipping through the windows and serving as a beacon to those looking from nearby hilltops. It was a precaution they’d always taken.

     Linda moved aside the curtains and she and Tom looked down into the compound below.

     They could hear Jordan’s update over the radio.

     “They’re nearing the wall now, about fifty yards or so from the northeast corner.”

     Joyce cut in.

     “Tom, they don’t appear to be armed. If you shoot them down, that’s tantamount to murder. Let’s just wait and see what they do.”

     Even Tom was conflicted. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t let these men get away to tell others what they saw. But what if the women were right? What if they were just two hungry men who meant no one harm and were just desperately searching for food?

     Then he saw something that concerned him even more.

     “Honey, did you leave the porch light on to the Butler building?”

     “Yes. I knew it would be dark when we went back to go to bed. Why?”

     “Because the men will see that we’ve not only got livestock and crops, but power as well. They’ll have even more reason to want to break in and take everything over.”

     Linda immediately got on the radio.

     “Hannah, are you still in the basement?”

     “Yes. Go ahead, Linda.”

     “Hannah, can you cut the power at the main breaker box?”

     Tom followed.

     “No. Hannah, don’t. If you cut power, we lose video also. We need to know what those two are doing.”

     Hannah went to the panel and waited there, unsure what to do.

     Jordan provided another update.

     “Okay, they’re at the wall now. They’re setting up the folding ladder. Now one of them is climbing up the ladder. The other appears to be holding the ladder to make it steady.”

     Tom had the window open now, the front hand guard of the AR-15 resting in the palm of his left hand as his hand rested on the window sill. He scanned the top of the fence, and drew a bead on Tony’s head as soon as it came into view.

     Linda was beside herself.

     She got on the radio.

     “Jordan, Joyce… do you see any indication at all that those men are armed?”

     “Negative. They’re definitely not carrying rifles or shotguns. Can’t tell if they have handguns or not. The images are too grainy. Tell Tom that they may be innocent people.”

     Tom restrained himself. At least for the time being.

-25-

     Outside the fence, Tony said, “Holy shit. You’re not gonna believe this.”

     Between the full moon and the starlight on this crystal clear night, Tony was able to make out images of cattle grazing on the far end of the compound. A bit closer, he saw what appeared to be pigs rooting around in the mud of their pen.

     And the porch light on the front of the Butler building where Tom and Linda lived illuminated the vegetable garden quite nicely.

     “They’ve got beef, and I think pigs too. And a big freakin’ garden. And power! Holy shit, they’ve got power!”

     Tony took it all in with the wild-eyed gaze of a kid at Christmas time. Then he climbed back down the ladder so his friend and accomplice could get a look as well.

     But Tony and Kevin weren’t the only ones watching. Kevin never knew that Tom had his sights on the center of Kevin’s forehead, his finger hard on the trigger, and ready to fire. Kevin never knew that his brain was half a second from getting blown out the back of his head. And Tony never knew how close he was to being knocked to the ground by Kevin’s lifeless, falling body.

     They never knew because Tom never pulled the trigger. Standing to his left was Linda, telling him he might be making a dreadful mistake. To his right, on his hip, was his two way radio. Joyce’s voice was pleading with him, saying, “Tom, you’re not a murderer. You can’t just shoot down unarmed men for peeking over a fence.”

     So Tom caved. It went against everything he’d ever stood for. He was an old school Texan. He took no crap from anyone. And he defended what was his, be it liberty or property.

     But not this time. This time he backed down. He hoped that none of them lived to regret it.

     Kevin scampered back down the ladder and the two men huddled at the base of the tall black wall. They were out of Tom’s view now, but still in full view on Monitor 8.

     Tom got on the radio and said, “Okay. I’ve held my fire for now. But if they come over the fence, they’ve elevated it to a new level, and I’m taking them out. Hate me if you want, but that’s the way it is.”

     He’d drawn a line in the sand. A line that Tony or Kevin would never be able to consider. They’d never even know it existed, yet their lives depended on their making the right choice. Either to proceed farther or to withdraw.

     If they proceeded, Tom would wait until both of them were in the compound and then shoot them down like dogs. He wouldn’t risk one of them getting away and gathering reinforcements. He’d shoot them down and bury their bodies and feel no grief.

     It was the way of old Texas. Defend one’s property as you’d defend one’s honor: without hesitation or quarter.

     They never realized it, and in fact never even realized they’d had an option, but Tony and Kevin made the right choice. They took the ladder down and laid it on the ground beside them.

     Then, in whispered tones, they discussed their next move.

     Kevin said, “We’re probably gonna need a couple more guys before we go in.”

     “My guess is we’ll need more than a couple. To run an operation this size, they’ve probably got a dozen men, maybe more.”

     “Yeah, maybe. But let’s be careful not to bring too many. The more we bring, the more we’ll have to share. And it looks like they’ve only got the one house. I plan to move in there, and I don’t want to be sharing it with a dozen other men.”

     “Do you think there’s some women in there?”

     “I sure hope so. And I hope they’re friendly, too.”

     Kevin laughed.

     “Since when is that a requirement? I kinda like it when they put up a fight and I get to slap them around a little. Bloody them up a little bit and they’ll do exactly what you tell them to do.”

     Tony smiled.

     “Yeah. And after we’re done with them they can cook us up some great big juicy steaks.”

     “We have to be careful who we let in on this. If the word gets out we have beef, and fresh food, it won’t last long. We have to make sure whoever gets involved in this can keep their freakin’ mouths shut.

     “We don’t want to go through the trouble of taking this place just to let it slip through our fingers.”

     “How about this… instead of bringing a whole crew, we just bring two or three more guys? We can hit ‘em until things get hot, then back out again. Come back the next night and then maybe the night after that. They’re not gonna go anywhere. We’ll use their own damn roadblock against them. If they try to leave for reinforcements we’ll stop them at the roadblock and blow them away.”

     “I like it. We can take them out a few at a time, until there’s nobody left but the women. Then we can give them the choice. They either play nice and live under our rules. Or they can die like the others.”

     As they watched the monitor and saw Tony and Kevin retreating with the ladder, Joyce and Jordan breathed a sigh of relief.

     So did Linda, after Jordan updated her and Tom on the two-way radio.

     But Tom wasn’t so sure.

     “I’m afraid this isn’t over.”

     “Why do you say that? They’re leaving.”

     “Yes. They’re leaving for now. But now they know what we have. And you can damn sure bet they want it.”

     He looked at her intently.

     “And you can also bet they’ll be back to get it. And there will be more than two of them.”

-26-

     After he rode with John for three weeks and learned the ropes, Scott had been given his own squad car and a new partner of sorts.

     The SAPD had long before recognized that many of its calls after the blackout would be for medical emergencies. After all, only three ambulances were operational now for a city that encompassed four hundred square miles.

     In addition, the SAPD was way understaffed. It had made sense to combine the two functions – the policemen and the paramedics, so they could work together to help each other out.

     At least it worked well in theory. Over time, the SAPD became discouraged that some of the paramedics were unwilling to get their hands dirty and help with things like body collection and burning.

     The fire chief, on the other hand, was constantly complaining about police officers who were too timid to be of much use in emergency medical situations. Although trained in the basics of lifesaving techniques, many of the officers simply panicked and froze in place, leaving the paramedics to do everything themselves.

     Still, it was the best option they had to deal with in an extremely difficult situation, so they tried their best to make it work.

     Scott wasn’t an officer who panicked easily. He had no qualms about giving an old man mouth to mouth resuscitation when there was a chance of saving his life. And he wasn’t so squeamish that it bothered him to get another human’s blood all over him while he worked to stop a badly bleeding bullet wound.

     He was a team player, above all, and was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

     Scott’s biggest problem was that his partner, Randy Rhodes, lacked a similar gung-ho attitude.

     Laid back to an almost impossible degree, Randy’s philosophy in life was that most things will take care of themselves when left alone.

     When Scott did his house to house searches looking for decaying bodies to drag out to the street and burn, Randy typically sat in the patrol car, leaned back, and took a nap.

     “Just leave them where they are. Mother Nature has been taking care of corpses for millions of years. They’ll eventually get picked clean by the insects, or they’ll rot away to bones. And even the bones will turn to dust in time. All you’re doing by gathering them up and burning them is speeding up a process that Mother Nature already has a handle on.”

     “Randy, we have a civic duty to clean up the city as best we can so it can get back to normal again.”

     “Hey, that’s an SAPD policy that has you guys gathering bodies between calls. I don’t work for the SAPD. I work for the fire department. And we have no such policy. So if you want to fulfill that particular ‘civic duty,’ I admire you for it. But I want no part of it. I’ll save my energy for saving lives.”

     “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Randy. You can do both, you know.”

     “I suppose. But ‘can’ represents an option, not a directive. And I simply choose not to. Sorry. I’ll sit in the car and monitor the radio for our next call. Listen for the horn while you’re dragging your bodies. I’ll blow it three times when we have somewhere to go.”

     Scott was quickly learning to despise Randy, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He’d learned when talking with other firefighters and paramedics that Randy had always been that way, even before the blackout. In an organization of heroes, he’d somehow slipped through the cracks. Had made it through paramedic school and his subsequent fire department training without anyone discovering his tendency to be incredibly lazy.

     “So how come I have to partner up with Randy?” Scott once complained to John and Robbie as they sat in their kitchen eating Ramen noodles and red beans.

     John laughed and looked at Robbie.

     “You wanna tell him, or should I?”

     “Go ahead.”

     “You see, Scott, a police department is a brotherhood. I know you’re learning that now. It’s a profession that relies heavily on trust. You have to know that your brothers have your back. That they’ll be there for you when things turn ugly.

     “And as part of that process, of becoming brothers in blue, we have traditions that go back for centuries. Probably as far back as that first caveman who picked up a stick and went to punish the scoundrel who was stealing from his neighbors.”

     Scott rolled his eyes. This was becoming tedious, and he almost regretted asking the question.

     John didn’t care. He was having fun at Scott’s expense, and droned on.

     “One of the biggest traditions, and this is true of every police force everywhere, is that rookies get dealt a crummy hand. Rooks are the poor saps who have to keep the chief’s car sparkling clean, and who get the details and shifts that nobody else wants.

     “A rook gets to do the paperwork after a long shift and a very complicated arrest, while his partner drinks coffee and talks sports with the other senior officers.

     “And, yes, like it or not, rooks have to partner with people like Randy Rhodes, so the real officers, the more experienced cops, don’t have to. It’s simple, really. It’s the way of the world.”

     “I see. You guys are the real cops, simply because you’ve been around longer.”

     John looked at Robbie and chuckled.

     “By Jove, my dear Watson, I think the old chap finally has it.”

     Then he turned back to Scott.

     “You see, my friend, rookies like yourself are barely cops. Shoot, some of you are barely human. Now don’t get me wrong. We like having you around. You come in handy for making coffee in the squad room and pumping gas at the gas station while I stretch my legs and hit the john.

     “But in the world of the police brotherhood, you’re still a cop with training wheels. A cop lite, as it were. If I were to reach behind your ears, my fingers would come back a bit damp.

     “So all that being said, why would my fellow experienced officer here, Robbie, or I, ride around with somebody like Randy Rhodes? When we have a bright-eyed young rook like yourself to do that for us? Why should we have the stress and grief of working with someone who’d rather sleep his way through his shift, when we can pawn that off on you?

     “No hard feelings, little buddy. It’s just a tradition among the brotherhood of blue. It’s not that we like doing it, necessarily. I myself cringe just thinking about spending my days cooped up in a car with Randy Rhodes. And since you’re my friend, I hate to do that to you.

     “But traditions are traditions. They go back a long way, and they must continue. It’s the way of the blue. You do understand, don’t you?”

     Scott looked at John, and then at Robbie. Both were grinning like possums.

     “Okay, I get it. So when do I stop being a rookie, so I can dump Randy on someone else?”

     Robbie moved over to Scott and put his arm around Scott’s shoulders, in the manner of a father getting ready to pass bad news to his son.

     “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, buddy, but you don’t officially become a veteran until you complete your first year on the force. And you’ve already said that you don’t want to be with us for that long.

     “So unfortunately, my friend, Randy Rhodes is yours to keep, as long as you’re here. We now pronounce you rookie and wife.”

     Scott said, “You guys can be real buttheads, you know that?”

     John and Robbie looked at each other, smiled broadly, and then said in unison, “Yep!” It was as though they were proud to be buttheads.

     Then John changed to a more conciliatory tone.

     “There’s another tradition, Scott, that you should know about. Cops come under a lot of stress. It’s always been that way. And to relieve that stress, every good cop had little ways to cope. Sometimes they’re sneaky, and sometimes they’re funny. That’s why every police precinct is home to a lot of practical jokers and pranksters. It’s one of the ways we cope with stress and keep from going mad.

     “Sometimes, when you have a partner that you don’t particularly like, you find ways of getting under his skin. You do it in a subtle way, so you don’t piss him off too much. But you do it as a stress reliever for yourself, to help you get through your shift without strangling the guy.”

     It was Scott’s turn to grin.

     “I like it. Tell me how.”

     “Nope, sorry, can’t do that. It’s another tradition. You have to figure it out on your own. But you’re a bright guy, so I’ve got faith in you.”

     John saw a tinge of disappointment on Scott’s face and took pity on him.

     “However, since you saved my life once upon a time on a planet far, far away, I’ll give you a hint.”

     John got up and walked out of the room.

     Scott, confused, looked to Robbie for answers.

     Robbie merely held up his index finger to indicate that Scott should be patient, and that John would return in a moment.

     And John did. He’d retrieved a bottle of blue Aqua Velva after shave from the master bathroom.

     “Here. Start wearing this to work every day. Not a lot. We don’t want you to smell like a French hooker. Rumor is that Randy Rhodes likes French hookers and you certainly don’t want to give him the wrong idea. Just wear a hint of this to work tomorrow and watch what happens.”

     Scott was puzzled. He looked over at Robbie, who vigorously nodded his head yes.

     They obviously knew something he didn’t.

-27-

     The next morning as Scott shaved, he wondered whether he was the butt of some evil prank being perpetrated by John and Robbie. They were all good friends now and got along great. But Scott knew they were pranksters of the highest order, and therefore didn’t trust them. Not completely.

     He’d poured some of the Aqua Velva into his hands and then rubbed it in, to see if it stained his hands. His thinking was that they’d mixed a permanent blue dye into it that would color his face blue.

     But that wasn’t it.

     He examined the liquid closely, thinking maybe it was blue tinted horse urine or something equally disgusting that they were trying to get him to slosh all over his cheeks.

     But he was convinced it was the real deal.

     So, although he didn’t understand the whole purpose of the exercise, he took their advice and dabbed a little on his cheeks after he finished shaving.

     By the time the three of them drove to the District 2 substation and he got into his own squad car with Randy, he’d forgotten all about it.

     Then Randy sneezed.

     “God bless you.”

     “Thank you.”

     Then he sneezed three more times in rapid succession.

     And Scott finally got the joke.

     “Are you coming down with something, Randy?”

     “No,” Randy muttered, sniffling through a now runny nose. “I’m just allergic to so many things I can’t keep track of them all.”

     But John and Robbie obviously could.

     Scott smiled.

     “Why don’t you roll down the window? Maybe some fresh air will help.”

     “No, that’ll make it worse. Then the pollen, or whatever is making me sneeze, will get in the car and make me sneeze worse.”

     “Oh. Right. I wasn’t thinking.”

     And so it was that the pair went through their normal routine of patrolling the streets of San Antonio, Randy held captive in a self-imposed prison, trapped with a vague scent that made him sneeze uncontrollably every few minutes.

     And he didn’t have a clue.

     Scott found other ways to get under Randy’s skin as well.

     Randy continued to refuse to help Scott when it came to gathering and burning bodies.

     “That’s an SAPD thing. I’m a medic. I heal people. I don’t incinerate them.”

     Randy’s conviction didn’t bother Scott that much, really. He was lazy and slow and wouldn’t have been that much help anyway.

     No, what bothered Scott the most was how Randy seemed to shove it in Scott’s face. That body burning was a part of Scott’s job, but not his. On cool or damp days, Randy would nap in the squad car while Scott went about the gruesome business.

     And on nice days, when the temperatures were moderate and the sun was shining, he’d take a bed pillow from the trunk of the squad car and actually nap under a nearby tree.

     Scott let him get away with it the first few times. Then one day he got a great idea. He scouted the first few houses on the block he was checking, just to see where the bodies were located. But he didn’t pull any of them out.

     Not until Randy got settled in and comfortable at the base of a huge shady oak tree.

     Then Scott determined the wind’s direction and piled the bodies so that the smoke would drift over in the direction of the old oak.

     Randy woke up coughing, his nose full of ash and the sickening smell of burning flesh.

     “Oh, sorry,” Scott called out. “I guess the wind changed direction on me.”

     The next day, as they cruised through one of the adjacent neighborhoods, they came upon a couple of old women harvesting their wheat crop.

     Scott was perturbed at the sight of the women, in their seventies at least, doing such backbreaking work.

     So he stopped to ask where the men were.

     “They took them away yesterday. They both had the fever. They’re at the hospital now, in quarantine.”

     “And there’s no one else here to help you do the harvest?”

     “Only Billy, my great grandson.”

     The woman nodded to a boy about seven, who was struggling trying to separate the wheat kernels from the chaff.

     “Here, let me help you.”

     Scott grabbed a cardboard box and started down the nearest row of wheat.

     He paused long enough to yell at his partner.

     “Hey, Randy, we sure could use some help out here.”

     Randy ignored him, reclined his seat, and closed his eyes to nap.

     Scott resisted the urge to utter a few choice phrases in randy’s direction, since there were women and small children present.

     Instead, he had another idea.

     “Hey, Billy, do you know how to tell time?”

     “Sure.”

     Scott pulled the gold wind-up watch off of his wrist and said to Billy, “Now, I’m just loaning this to you. I need it, so you have to give it back when I leave, okay?”

     Billy gave him a puzzled look and said, “Okay.”

     “Now, then. I’ll help your great grandmother here if you’ll do something for me, okay?”

     “Okay. What?”

     “I want you to keep an eye on that watch, and every ten minutes I want you to go over to that police car. Knock on the window very loud and say, ‘Hey mister’ over and over again until that other man answers you and asks what you want.”

     “Okay.”

     “And then I want you to ask him what time it is. Okay?”

     “And every ten minutes after that, I want you to do exactly the same thing again, okay?”

     Billy grinned.

     “Okay!”

     He gave Scott his best military salute and marched off to complete his assignment.

     The two women weren’t very talkative, so Scott had a lot of time over the next two hours to reflect on the whole Randy Rhodes situation.

     A small part of him felt guilty for giving Randy such grief. But every ten minutes, when he heard Billy rapping noisily on the squad car’s window and heard the muted curses of Randy coming from inside the car, he laughed. What little guilt he had dissolved and he decided that Randy deserved what he got.

     And he remembered what John and Robbie had said about police officers using practical jokes and humor as a way of dealing with a very stressful job.

     Over the weeks that followed, Scott found other ways to get under Randy’s skin. Nothing too serious, and never anything that would put Randy in danger. But rather enough to give Scott something funny to chuckle about, and another story to tell the other officers at the end of their shift.

     As for Randy, he never complained at all. He had to have figured out at some point that he’d become Scott’s patsy. But he never said anything about it.

     Scott wasn’t sure why. Perhaps Randy was a better man than anyone gave him credit for.

     Or maybe Randy accepted the abuse because of Scott’s easygoing nature. Scott never cursed Randy out or threatened him with bodily harm as some of his previous partners had done. Maybe Randy figured that despite the pranks, staying with Scott was a good move for him, instead of requesting reassignment to another officer.

     After a couple of additional rookie officers joined the force, Lieutenant Thomas told Scott he was no longer low man on the totem pole.

     “You can pass Rhodes on to one of the new snotty-nosed rooks if you want. Get you a new partner that will help instead of hinder you.”

     “That’s okay, lieutenant. Randy’s kind of grown on me. Besides, if I didn’t ride with him every day, what would I do for entertainment?”

-28-

     Back at the compound, winter had blown in with a vengeance. It was almost a full mile higher in elevation than the city of San Antonio to its south, and that mile made a world of difference.

     Temperatures averaged ten degrees colder on the mountain than in San Antonio. It was nice during the summer months, but winters could be brutal.

     It was two days before Christmas. Tom had left the compound a couple of days before, just long enough to find a six foot tall fir tree and bring it home.

     They had no Christmas lights. It hadn’t occurred to anyone to include any in the supplies they’d stocked in the compound.

     So they decorated the tree the old fashioned way. Linda cut strips of colored construction paper and Hannah’s girls fashioned the strips into interlocking loops. The result was a paper chain garland that wrapped several times around the tree.  

     Linda popped two bags of microwave popcorn and showed Jordan and Sara how to use needle and thread to make more garland out of popcorn. Zachary used spray paint to paint one such garland silver, another one gold.

     Joyce made lightweight balls from paper mache and painted them with water colors. She also fashioned an angel for the top of the tree. It leaned just a bit to the left, but no one mentioned it.

     After the tree was decorated, each of the compound’s residents, one at a time, went to the feed barn where they’d stashed the luxury items from the Walmart trailer a few months before. It was an odd way to do Christmas shopping, to be sure, but it ensured that everyone, including Scott, had gifts from loved ones under the Christmas tree.

     After they’d finished, they all gathered around the tree to admire their work.

     Old Tom had a tear in his eye.

     “This reminds me of the Christmases of my youth. They were so much more pleasant back then.”

     Joyce said, “I want to leave this up until Scott comes back, if no one minds. I want him to be able to enjoy it too, even if it’s late for him.”

     Tom laughed.

     “Well, he’d better hurry. The needles will start falling off soon, and it’ll be downright naked in a few weeks.”

     “Oh, he won’t mind, Tom. He’ll still say it’s the best tree he’s ever seen. It’s the love that makes it beautiful.”

     The group said a prayer, thanking God that they were all going into the Christmas season healthy and happy. Scott was still not with them, but he’d survived a terrible ordeal and was still kicking. They all knew it could have been much worse.

     Linda looked around the room and noticed that young Sara had a bead of sweat rolling slowly down her forehead. She was slightly stooped and holding her midsection.

     She rushed to Sara’s side and asked, “Honey, are you okay?”

     “Yes. I’m just cramping again.”

     “Cramping? Again? Has this happened before?”

     Sara managed a smile.

     “Oh, yes. About every hour or so, for the past few hours.”

     “Why didn’t you say anything, honey?”

     “I wanted to wait until the tree was done. Everybody was having such a great time, I just didn’t want it to stop until we were finished.”

     Hannah said, “It may be false labor, but let’s get you on your back where we can regulate your breathing and body temperature. You’ll be a lot more comfortable until we find out whether it’s time or just a tease.”

     Sara missed dinner that night, but she wasn’t alone. Hannah never left her side, not even once. Neither did Jordan, who dabbed her face for hours to help keep her cool. He also offered his hand for the rough parts, and she squeezed it until it turned purple. But he never complained, because he understood his role was the easy one.

     At 4:55 a.m., on that cold Christmas Eve, the newest member of their family came out to say hello. The birth went smoothly and neither mother nor child was ever in any danger.

     They got the boy they’d been hoping for, and in honor of the Christmas season, they bequeathed upon him the name Chris Wayne Harter.

     And all was right with the world.

-29-

     It wasn’t easy, but they managed to wait until Christmas day to tell Scott. They thought it would be cool to present the news to him as a Christmas gift, since it was impossible to get anything else to him.

     As promised, Scott called bright and early on Christmas morning.

     “Joyce, Linda, whoever’s listening, this is Scott. Come in.”

     Linda was on security duty, but she gave the honors to Jordan.

     “Go ahead, Dad. We read you loud and clear.”

     “Merry Christmas, son. How is everybody doing?”

     “Oh, we’re doing okay, Dad. All ten of us. How are you?”

     Jordan’s hint flew right over Scott’s head.

     “We’re fine, son. Did Santa Claus drop in and visit you guys?”

     “Oh, yes. He brought toys and clothes and diapers, and Sara got a new watch.”

     “Well, I sure do wish I was there with you guys. Not having you this time of year makes me realize what’s truly important in life…

     “Wait a minute. Did you say Santa brought you diapers?”

     “Yes. We thought for Christmas we’d give you a grandson. His name is Chris. He’s healthy and looks just like me. He asked me to tell his grandpa to hurry home.”

     For a moment, the radio fell silent and Jordan thought they’d lost the signal. But Scott was just too moved to speak. After a few seconds he regained his composure, but was glad that Jordan couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

     “That’s great news, son. Being a father will be the greatest thing you’ve ever done. How’s Sara doing?”

     Sara leaned over Jordan’s shoulder and he keyed the mike for her. She shouted, “I’m fine, Dad! I love you!”

     “I love you too, sweetheart. I can’t wait to see you both again, and to hold my first grandson. Congratulations.”

     Jordan said, “Here. Your other son, the freakazoid, is driving me crazy wanting to talk to you.”

     “Well, then, put him on.”

     Zachary took the mike and said, “Baby, schmaby… you people act like having a baby has never been done before.”

     Even as he feigned jealousy, he was grinning ear to ear.

     “A new child is a wonderful thing, Zach. It’s a special kind of magic.”

     “I know that, Dad. And I’m gonna be the best uncle ever. I’ll teach Chris to swear, and when he’s old enough I’ll even show him that stack of Playboy magazines that Jordan has hidden in his mattress.”

     Everyone in the room laughed, except for Jordan and Sara. Sara looked at him, raised an eyebrow and said, “Really?”

     Jordan stood silently with a sheepish look on his face.

     Zachary went on.

     “Dad, when do you think you’ll be back?”

     “Soon, I hope. The CDC is saying that the cold weather has helped to control the plague. They’re expecting it to run its course over the next few weeks. But they’re not going to consider it gone unless there are no signs of it when spring gets here.”

     “I wish you could come back now.”

     “I know, son. So do I. But if I did, I would be putting all of you in danger. Especially that brand new nephew of yours. So just tough it out and trust me when I say I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

     “I know, I know…”

     “Merry Christmas, son. I love you. I love all of you. Now, is there anything else you want to tell me before you put Joyce on the line?”

     Joyce, standing behind Zachary, poked him in the shoulder and said, “That, young man, was a subtle hint.”

     “No, Dad, that’s it. Just be careful and I love you. And, oh, have somebody take your picture in your cop uniform for me to keep.”

     Scott laughed.

     “I don’t know if any of the digital cameras survived. I’ll see if I can find one. I love you too.”

     Joyce was now on.

     “Hi, Baby. I love you.”

     Everyone else in the room wandered off and found something to do, in order to give Joyce and Scott a little bit of privacy.

     Scott said, “I love you too, sweetheart. I miss having you near me. Especially at night. Sleeping alone really sucks.”

     “Yeah, tell me about it. Are you being safe and extra cautious?”

     “Yes, but you’ll have to trust me. There isn’t a lot of violence left anymore. Most of the bad guys are dead or gone. Ninety percent of what we do isn’t related to crime at all. It’s just trying to find various ways to help people and help the community recover.”

     “Good. Because if I ever lost you I wouldn’t be able to go on.”

     “Stop saying things like that. You’re not going to lose me. I’m too tough and too stubborn to die. I proved that once, remember?”

     “Yes, unfortunately I do remember. Those days, and especially the nights, were the worst of my life. I don’t want to go through that again. And even though most of the bad guys are gone, I won’t be happy until all of them are. Do you have body armor you can wear?”

     “Yes. It’s a required part of the uniform. Where did all of this gloom and doom come from?”

     “Oh, I don’t know. You know I’ve always had a very keen intuition. I just have a bad feeling that there may be something dreadful on the horizon.”

     “Well, I think it’s silly and you’re just being a worry wart. But if it’ll make you feel better, I promise to be extra cautious and to always call for backup if things look like they may get ugly. Will that help?”

     “Yes, lots. Thank you, Scott. I love you so much.”

     “I love you too, Doll. I need to give the microphone over to John now, so he can talk to Hannah and the girls. That’s fair, after all, since it’s his radio. He just let me talk first as my Christmas present, but he needs a Hannah fix just as badly as I needed one from you.”

     “I understand. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, okay?”

     “Count on it, Doll. I love you.”

     “I love you too.”

     Joyce called for Hannah and handed her the microphone.

     “Scott says there’s some handsome cop on the other end named John. He said he wants to arrest you for being too beautiful or something. At least that’s the way I understood it.”

     Hannah took the mike and her girls giggled in anticipation that they’d soon be able to tell their Daddy what they got for Christmas.

     Joyce left the room, somehow sad but not knowing why. She just had a sense that there was trouble on the horizon.

-30-

     Hannah and John were only able to talk for a couple of minutes before their daughters fairly wrestled the microphone away from her. She didn’t mind. For so long while he was in the hospital, they’d cried themselves to sleep each night. Now, hearing his voice every day or two was a special treat. For all three of them, really.

     “You guys tell your daddy everything, because when I get back with my cup of coffee I want the radio back.”

     “Aw, Mom…”

     “Aw, nothing. Why are you wasting time complaining to me? Talk to your father, silly.”

     John got to hear all about the girls’ hopes and dreams, was promised all their love a thousand times, and asked at least eight times what he wanted for Christmas.

     He gave them the same answer each time: “I want you guys and Mommy to be safe so when you come back here someday we can all be healthy and happy again.”

     It was a great conversation and the best Christmas present John could have hoped for, under the circumstances.

     But like everything else in life, it eventually came to an end. After all the “I love yous” were said and the kisses blown, he signed off the radio with a smile on his face.

     Robbie came up behind him in a Santa Claus outfit.

     “Better hurry up, smiley, or we’re gonna be late. And I’m gonna tell the chief it’s all your fault.”

     John looked at the clock above his radio console.

     “Oh, crap!” he shouted and ran off to his bedroom to get dressed.

     It had been the police chief’s idea, although he blamed it on the mayor so his officers didn’t give him as much grief.

     “Hey, fellas, I tried my best to talk him out of it. But I got absolutely nowhere. We have to do it. After all, he’s the boss, so what can I do?”

     He threw his hands up in exasperation, and his officers bought it hook, line and sinker. They thought their chief fought the good fight on their behalf and lost to a higher authority.

     The truth was, Chief Martinez had pitched the idea to the mayor a few days prior.

     “There’s a Toys ‘R’ Us trailer parked in the middle of South Flores Street that’s chock full of toys. Two blocks away from it is a Kohl’s truck chock full of shoes and clothes.”

     “Okay. So what? What good does that information do me?”

     “It helps you brighten the Christmas spirits of all the survivors out there, that’s what. And God knows, after the last few months they can sure use some.”

     He had the mayor’s attention.

     “Okay, Chief. I’m listening. I have the feeling this is gonna be really good.”

     “Here’s what we do. You have your secretary use that raggedy ass antique typewriter she found to type up two letters.

     “One will be addressed to the general manager of the local Kohl’s store. It will say that you needed the truck full of clothes and shoes to pass out to the survivors of the disaster. You’ll give him the license number of the truck and the registration number from the trailer. You’ll say that the city of San Antonio will pay for the items if the manager will prepare a bill and attach your original letter to it.

     “She’ll prepare a similar letter to the general manager at the local Toys ‘R’ Us.”

     “Okay, then what?”

     “Then you sign both letters and give them to me. Both of the stores have already been broken into and looted, so I won’t have to break into either one. I’ll just walk into each of them, find the managers’ offices, and place their letters on each of their desks.”

     “But the managers may be dead. They may never come back. Shoot, for all we know the companies no longer exist.”

     The chief winked and smiled.

     “That’s my guess. But as long as we offer to pay, our conscience is clear. And if they do come back and give us a bill, I’m sure there’s enough money left in the city coffers. Hell, I’m still authorized to sign checks from the SAPD budget. I’ll write them each a check and let them figure out how to cash them.”

     “You’re a sneaky son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

     “You’ve been in politics a lot longer than I’ve been a police chief. Are you telling me you’re not?”

     “Nope. I never said that.”

     The mayor smiled.

     “And after you get the goods, then what?”

     “Our officers are assigned to individual neighborhood patrols now. They’ve gotten to know the survivors. They have a pretty good idea how many people are living on each block and how old the children are. They can load down their trunks and back seats and make deliveries on Christmas Day.”

     The mayor nodded his approval.

     “I like it. It’s a great idea.”

     “Then it’s a go?”

     “Yes. Under one condition.”

     Chief Martinez rolled his eyes and held his breath. With Mayor Alonzo there were always conditions.

     “What would that be?”

     “I want your officers to dress like Santa Claus. It’ll make more of an impression, and might give the kids the first smile they’ve had in months.”

     “Pardon my stupidity, sir, but where in the bloody hell are we going to get all those Santa Claus costumes?”

     “When’s the last time you were at Toys ‘R’ Us, Chief?”

     “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Toys ‘R’ Us. I don’t have kids, remember? In fact, I hate the little buckets of snot.”

     “Then how come you want to take them Christmas gifts?”

     “I’m a single man, your honor. And sometimes I get lonely. There are a lot of single moms out there who will be appreciative if I make their kids happy.”

     He paused just a moment for dramatic effect.

     “Very appreciative.”    

     “Okay, I catch your drift. I go to Toys ‘R’ Us all the time with my grandsons. At least I used to, before all this crap happened. Do you even know where it’s at?”

     “No, but one of the guys will know.”

     “Let me save you the trouble. It’s in Potranco Mall. Right next to Costume City.”

     The mayor placed emphasis on the words “Costume City.”

     Chief Martinez got the hint.

     “So, you think Costume City would have ninety four Santa Suits in stock, even though the lights went out last spring?”

     “From what I know of places like that, they have huge warehouses in the back. After Christmas season is over, they take everything left over and just shove it into their warehouse until the following season. It’s not like Santa costumes go bad or anything.”

     “Okay. We’ll give it a shot.”

     “Good. While my secretary is banging away on that old manual typewriter and cursing up a blue streak, I’ll have her type a third letter for Costume City. Just in case I’m right, which I almost always am.”

     “Oh, brother.”

     Chief Martinez turned to leave.

     “Hey, Chief?”

     “When the survivors start telling your officers how grateful they are for the gifts, have your officers tell them it was all the mayor’s idea.”

     Martinez chuckled.

     “Sure. You can count on that. Trust me.”

-31-

     And so it was that at 10:35 a.m. on Christmas morning, SAPD unit Twelve Charlie Four turned onto Bane Street SW, parked halfway down the block, and let out four loud blasts from its siren.

     The houses all emptied so the residents could see what the commotion was all about.

     It was a spectacle for them to see Scott Harter and Randy Rhodes, in full Santa Claus regalia, step out of the police car and open the trunk. They passed toys and new coats to each of the children, then coats, sweaters and blankets to each of the adults.

     Just as Chief Martinez had predicted, some of the children smiled for the first time in months.

     Most of the women hugged the pair. Most of the men shook their hands. A few of each gender cried.

     For the first time in a long time, Scott felt a bit of hope in the air. Hope that someday the world would be normal again. Someday people would be happy again. All of the bodies would be burned, the bones disposed of, and the survivors would press on.

     And he hoped that one of the first things mankind would do in the new world was work to find a way to protect the planet’s peoples from similar events in the future. Because he darn sure didn’t want to go through this again.

     Talking Randy Rhodes into participating had been a monumental task in itself. At first he flat refused to even go along.

     “You can make a fool out of yourself without my help. I have to sit in a car with you, but that doesn’t mean  I have to look stupid in an ugly red suit.”

     In the end, though, he relented, after two hours of negotiation.

     It cost Scott two MREs per week for three months, his agreeing to stop wearing Aqua Velva Blue, and Scott’s personal appeal to the other members of Charlie Squad to stop super gluing Randy’s locker shut.

     “And I refuse to wish anyone a Merry Christmas, under any circumstances.”

     He was adamant about the last part, but he did anyway. Wish people Merry Christmas, that is. Even a Grinch like Randy Rhodes gets caught up in the Christmas spirit after awhile.

     When a little girl of five hugged Randy’s leg and said “I love you, Santa,” Scott even thought he saw the hint of a tear in Randy’s eye.

     He decided to keep that little gem to himself. Nobody would have believed him anyway.

     At the end of the day, after all the hugs had been given and the presents passed out, Scott drove Randy to his apartment to drop him off.

     “Thanks for talking me into this, Scott. It was actually kind of fun.”

     “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I was hoping you would. And you’re welcome.”

     Randy started to say something else, then seemed to think better of it. He opened the car door.

     “Hey, Randy…”

     “Yes?”

     “A couple of the guys are getting together tonight to play poker and do a little drinking. Would you like to join us?”

     “I don’t know how to play poker.”

     Scott suddenly felt a tinge of sadness for Randy. It occurred to him for the first time that Randy’s attitude and laziness had surely driven away others for a very long time. And that perhaps Randy had no close friends or social contact outside the job.

     “Oh, it’s easy. Even Robbie knows how to play, and he’s an idiot. I’ll tell you what. I’ll sit out for a few hands and sit behind you to coach you until you get the hang of it.”

     “Are you sure you don’t just want me to come so you can beat me out of my money?”

     “What money? We play for pennies and nickels, just to keep it interesting. And money has no value anymore anyway, so we might as well be playing for nails and toothpicks.”

     Randy put one foot outside the door, then hesitated. He seemed to be struggling with a mighty decision.

     Scott was patient, never saying a word. After a full minute, Randy put his foot back into the car and closed the door.

     Of all the gifts Scott passed out that day, the one that seemed to matter the most was when he gave Randy Rhodes back his dignity.

-32-

     On the first Tuesday after Christmas, San Antonio had a major windstorm. In previous years it would have created chaos by blowing trees over onto power lines and shorting them out. It would have left thousands without power.

     In a city already without power, the storm damage wasn’t as deeply felt.

     But to some neighborhoods, which hasn’t yet finished bringing in their crops of wheat and corn, it created a different kind of problem.

     Scott turned onto Misty Plain Drive, the street which recently lost all of its men to the ravages of the plague.

     He’d been coming by here a lot lately, a few hours here and a few hours there, to help the women and little Billy wander up and down their rows of wheat, harvesting it a little at a time.

     It had been a slow and disheartening process, made harder by the fact that the women were elderly and had to stop for frequent breaks. And that little Billy was easily bored and frequently ran off in search of other pursuits.

     What caught Scott’s eye and broke his heart as he turned the corner onto the street was the sight of both of the women, standing at the curb and forlornly looking at what was left of their wheat crop.

     The wind had taken its toll. The wheat had ripened long before, and the stalks laid limp and dried out. It didn’t take much wind to shake the stalks and free the wheat kernels to fall to the ground.

     Their efforts to that point, all the hours they’d spent harvesting, had cleared only a third of their crop.

     From the looks of it, the wind had destroyed another third.

     Scott parked the cruiser and tried his best to console them.

     “Look, with the men in the hospital for the next few weeks, you won’t need as much. You should still have plenty to get you through until the next crop comes in. But if you run short, I will make you a solemn promise, with God as my witness, that I will not let you go hungry. Okay?”

     The women looked at him. One of them said, “God bless you, sir. But you’ve done so much for us already, with your hard work, and the coat and toys for Billy…”

     “Nonsense. The way to survive this ordeal is to all work together. And we’ve still got a lot more to do. Let’s see if we can get the rest of the crop in before the weather turns bad again.”

     Scott grabbed the cardboard box he’d been using off and on over the previous few weeks, and started work.

     Randy, as usual, turned and went to the car to take a nap and ignore the work that was going on outside.

     But then the most curious thing happened.

     Scott heard Randy start the engine of the squad car. He wasn’t too surprised, though. It was a chilly day, after all, and Randy liked to be warm when he napped. He didn’t mind wasting gas to run the heater to make himself that way.

     What did surprise Scott was when Randy put the car into gear and drove away, without telling Scott or anyone else where he was going and why.

     Scott was left without a radio and a vehicle, and only hoped that wherever Randy went, he came back before they got their next call.

     Then he wondered if he could legally arrest a paramedic for stealing a police car.

     He needn’t have worried. Randy was back within twenty minutes, with two twenty-something men from a couple of blocks over.

     The two stepped out of the back of the squad car, picked up empty cardboard boxes, and each took a row of wheat. As Scott had shown them weeks before, they plucked off a handful of stalks, then beat them against the inside of the box until the wheat kernels fell out into the box. Then they discarded the empty husks and repeated the process.

     Scott asked no questions, but he appreciated the help the men were offering.

     He got a much bigger surprise when he saw Randy pick up his own box and start down his own aisle. Scott was floored, thought for a moment he was hallucinating, but again said nothing.

-33-

     After an hour the crew took a break and the women went into the house to boil some water and make them some tea.

     Randy walked over to the squad car to retrieve his cigarettes, and one of the men asked Scott if Randy could be trusted to keep his word.

     “I believe so. He’s not the nicest guy in the world, but as far as I know he’s never lied to me. What did he promise you?”

     “He said if we helped bring in the crop for these women, he’d bring us each an MRE every week for three months.

     “That ain’t much work, and to be honest it’s kind of boring over at our place. We’ve already brought in our own crops, and with the weather turning cold there’s not much to do. Shoot, I’d have come over and worked for free just to have something to do if he’d asked. But the MREs are a nice incentive.”

     Then it all made sense. Randy Rhodes had a heart after all. It probably wasn’t a very big one, since it obviously rarely got any exercise. But it was there.

     The taller of the men reached over to shake Scott’s hand.

     “I’m John Kolinec. This is my brother David. The women were telling us they’ve lost their men to the plague.”

     “Yes. They’re still alive, and at St. Mary’s in quarantine. Hopefully they’ll survive.”

     “I wish we’d known. We’d have come over on our own to help. Now that we’re aware of their situation, I’ll have our wives come over every couple of days to check up on them. We were lucky in that we got a great crop of corn as well as wheat. We’ll share what we have with them if they run short.”

     David spoke up for the first time.

     “And we’ll make sure they have plenty of drinking water and firewood. If they start to struggle, we’ll bring them over to stay with our group for the winter.”

     “That’s nice of you, guys, and thanks.”

     “No thanks are needed. Helping each other through this mess will make us all stronger as a community.”

     By the time they’d finished that evening, it was dark and Scott and Randy were exhausted.

     “I’ll tell you what, Randy. I’m too exhausted to drive you all the way across town to drop you off. We’re only a few blocks from John’s. We’re all off tomorrow, so there’s no need to get up early. How about if you just crash on John’s couch tonight and I’ll take you home in the morning. And if the other guys start giving you a hard time about anything, I’ll kick their butts. It’s the least I can do for you, for what you did today.”

     Randy’s first impulse was to object. But then he thought about it. He was exhausted too. He just wanted to lay down somewhere… anywhere, and crash. After all, he wasn’t used to doing hard labor, and the work he’d done that day wore him down.

     Plus, he knew Scott. The half hour drive back to Randy’s house could easily turn into an hour and a half. Scott was a hard core Good Samaritan. Randy knew that if they passed anyone along the way that looked like they needed assistance… an old lady struggling to keep from falling… a kid with a broken bicycle… anyone carrying heavy boxes… Scott would stop to help. He’d done it many times in the past and it had always driven Randy crazy.

     But perhaps not anymore.

     “Sure,” Randy found himself saying. Even he seemed a bit surprised. “Why not?”

     Randy was still a bit apprehensive when they walked into John’s house that night and Scott announced that he’d be crashing on the couch.

     But Scott took John aside, and then Robbie, and asked each of them to play nice and dispense with the usual pranks and jokes at Randy’s expense.

     “This is the closest I’ve ever seen him to being human. I don’t want to spoil it.”

     Randy did indeed crash on John’s couch while the others drank tequila and played poker in John’s den.

     About three a.m., Randy awoke and wandered in to join them.

     “I’m sorry, Randy,” John quickly said. “We were trying to keep the noise down. We didn’t mean to wake you.”

     “You didn’t. I had to get up to go to the bathroom, and it sounded like you all were having fun in here.”

     “Fun? No. These guys cheat like used car salesmen. They’ve taken almost two bucks in nickels from me and now they’re working on my pennies.”

     Robbie spoke up.

     “Oh, quit your whining, you big baby. You should have stuck to something you know, like Old Maid.”

     John continued, “Why don’t you join us, Randy? With four, we can play spades instead of poker. You and I will partner up, and we’ll kick these punks’ butts.”

     Randy hesitated, a bit suspicious. John had never offered an olive branch before. Randy had always been the odd man out, the butt of everyone’s jokes. But then, Randy had to admit to himself, he probably deserved it.

     What Randy didn’t know was that while he slept, Scott filled the others in on what Randy had done that day, helping the women directly and giving up his MREs to pay others to help as well. They hadn’t finished bringing in the crop before the darkness made them quit, but the two men Randy had hired to help agreed to come back the next day to finish it up.

     Thanks largely to Randy’s help, the two old women and the boy would have enough to eat to get them through the winter. And two neighbors who agreed to watch out for their other needs.

     Randy’s good deed would not go unrewarded. Despite Randy’s initial apprehension, John was sincere. He was willing to bury the hatchet and welcome Randy as one of their own.

     Randy took the olive branch and sat down to play cards. He and John trounced the others, but it wasn’t because karma stepped in to punish the poker cheats.

     Rather, it was because Randy had the only sober head in the room. The others had been plying themselves with tequila and whisky shots for hours and were feeling no pain. And Randy had been playing internet spades for years before the blackout. He was darned good at it.

     The group played six games of spades that night and didn’t stop until the sun started peeking into the eastern windows. As John blew out the candles that had been lighting the table all night, they finished their very last hand and called it quits.

     By the time that happened, they’d accomplished much more than a drunken night of playing cards. They’d gotten to know Randy and bonded with him.

     And John had gotten Randy to agree that it was stupid to live so far away from the men he worked with, and really the only ones he ever associated with.

     Before dawn broke, John convinced Randy to move into the fourth unused bedroom and join the group permanently. Or, at least until Hannah came back and John kicked the others out.

     And the three musketeers had become the band of four brothers.

-34-

     The morning after the two men had scouted out the compound, Tom had gone out to see how they managed to get in. He’d noticed the mesquite tree that had been dragged out of the way between his property and Scott’s.

     He’d muttered to himself, “Now how in heck did they do that?”

     Then he went to the other side of the tree and saw how Tony and Kevin had used Tom’s clothesline to tie up bundles of branches and give themselves a way to drag the tree.

     Tom had to admit it was pretty genius.

     But genius or not, it was an intrusion that would not be tolerated.

     He used his pocket knife to cut the clothesline from the tree. Then he went to the back of his ranch house and cut the other three strings of line from the clothesline poles.

     If they were going to try this stunt again, he decided, they’d have to bring their own line.

     He searched the ranch house and the outbuildings for any other type of rope or wire that the pair might be able to use in place of the clothesline.

     Satisfied that there was none, he grabbed the ladder that the intruders had used to peek over the wall and returned to the compound, where he went to the workshop and fashioned a sign.

     Tom was a man of few words. His philosophy was old school: why use fifty words when four will do? So he kept his sign simple:

STAY OUT

OR DIE.

     He made the sign with black letters on a white background. Even without night vision goggles, the invaders would be able to make it out with a bare minimum of moonlight.

     Tom figured anyone smart enough to figure out how to move the thorny mesquite tree should be able to understand his short message.

     He didn’t expect it to keep them away, but at least they couldn’t say they weren’t warned.

     It would also give him an argument to use against Joyce and Linda next time they begged him not to shoot the men. He’d be able to say with conviction that they didn’t just wander onto the property by accident, or to shoot the breeze. If they were there, they were up to no good. And that they’d been warned of the risks.

     He threw the sign into the back of a Gator and then tossed in several wooden stakes, a sledge hammer, and two spools of sturdy rope.

     Jordan called on the radio.

     “Hey, Tom?”

     “Yeah, buddy, go ahead.”

     “Mom is relieving me at the security desk. I’m free to give you a hand now if you need it.”

     Tom and Jordan had been bonding quite well lately. In Scott’s absence, Jordan had stepped up to pull more than his share of the heavy lifting. It eased the burden on Tom, and Tom appreciated it.

     “Your father will be proud of you when he comes back,” Tom had told him a few days before. “His being gone is not a good thing, but some good did come out of it. It’s given you a chance to prove to everybody that you’re a man now.”

     “Sure thing, Jordan. I’d love some help. Bring a thermos of coffee out with you. We’re gonna be out there for a couple of hours.”

     Five minutes later the pair drove through the compound’s tall gate and out to the fence line where the intrusion had taken place. Tom selected a good spot for the sign, on his property just in front of the tree they’d dragged, and hammered it into place while Jordan kept watch with an AR-15.

     Once the sign was in place, they returned to the other side of the fence line and tied rope around the tree’s trunk. Then they used the Gator to drag it back into its original position.

     But they weren’t done. Not by a long shot.

     “Let’s go back and get the Bobcat. I need you to help me take the tree cutting attachment off and put the bucket on.”

     The bucket weighed over three hundred pounds, and would essentially turn the Bobcat into a miniature excavator. It would allow the Bobcat to dig a trench about two feet wide and five feet deep.

     It wasn’t quite deep enough to trap a man who might fall into it in the darkness. But that was okay. Tom didn’t necessarily want to capture the invaders.

     He mostly wanted to send them a message.

     It took them half an hour to manhandle the heavy bucket into place and bolt it onto the Bobcat.

     Then Tom gave Jordan his choice.

     “Would you rather use the Bobcat or hammer stakes?”

     “If you don’t mind, I’ll drive the Bobcat. I’ve never used the bucket attachment, and I’d like to learn.”

     “It’s easy. Drive it out to the fence line and I’ll get you started.”

     Tom drove the Gator back to the row of dead mesquites laying on their side next to the fence. It took Jordan, in the slower moving Bobcat, a couple of minutes longer to arrive. Once Jordan got there, Tom had already figured out where he wanted the trench to go.

     “Okay, start here. I want you to dig a trench about fifty feet long and as deep as the attachment will go. It should be about five feet or so. All you do is reach the attachment out and place the bucket on the ground. Then drag it toward you. The teeth on the bucket’s edge and its weight will work together to scrape up the ground and fill up the bucket. Then you just lift it, swivel to your left, and dump it.”

     It seemed like an easy concept.

     “Okay. Got it. What are you going to be doing?”

     “I’m going to stake some of these trees down. Next time they try to drag one, they’ll find out it ain’t gonna be so easy.”

     “When you get tired, holler and we’ll switch off.”

     “Okay, sounds good.”

     Tom didn’t expect to get tired. He was in his sixties, but still quite capable of a day’s worth of hard labor. And there was nothing really hard about pounding stakes into the ground with a sledge hammer.

     Still, he was impressed that Jordan made the offer to trade out at some point. It told him that Jordan wasn’t afraid of hard labor either. And even more, he was watching out for the well being of the others in the group.

     He had Tom’s back. Yet another sign that Jordan had become more a man than a boy.

-35-

     While Jordan was digging, Tom hammered a long line of wooden stakes into the ground. One stake on each side of each trunk. Then he cut sections of rope, tied one end to one of the stakes, ran the rope through a lower branch of the tree, and then tied the other end tightly to the second stake.

     When finished, he stood back and admired his work.

     “Now try to drag these trees, you sons of bitches.”

     Once finished, Tom went back to the trench line to check on Jordan’s progress.

     The trench was looking pretty good. Jordan was a fast learner. He had a tendency to bump the sides of the trench with the bucket occasionally and knock some extra dirt into the bottom, but neatness didn’t count for this operation. As he got more practice and was better at finessing the touchy controls, he’d get much better at digging trenches.

     For now, his work as good enough.

     Tom looked into the cab to get Jordan’s attention and slashed his hand across his throat.

     Jordan set the bucket on the ground, killed the engine, and climbed out of the cab while Tom opened the thermos and poured them each a cup of coffee.

     “How does it look, Tom?”

     “It looks darn good. You’re doing it like you’ve been driving that thing for years.”

     “Well, I know it’s a little bit sloppy, but I’m getting better as I go.”

     “It looks fine. This trench don’t have to be perfect to serve our needs.”

     “Are you tired of driving stakes yet? Want to switch off?”

     “Nope. The stakes are all done. I used all I had. If I had another five hundred, I’d stake every damn tree, all the way around the property. But we don’t have that many. This is the place where they came in last time. It’s likely the place where they’ll return. So this was the logical place to use the stakes we had.”

     “Do you think it’ll keep them out?”

     “Nope. They’ve seen what we have in the compound, and you can bet they’re chomping at the bits to get it for themselves. They’ll come back, and the stakes won’t stop ‘em, just like the sign won’t. But hopefully it’ll slow them down and give us just a little bit more advantage.

     “I need to run back to the workshop for a little while. I don’t expect any trouble while I’m gone, because these men are cowards. They’re the type who’ll attack only at night when they think they have the advantage. But keep an eye out anyway. If you see or hear anything that don’t look or feel right, you get on that radio and I’ll come running. Okay?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “You’re a good man, Jordan. And you’re getting better every day. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.”

     “Okay. If we’re gonna be out here awhile, bring some lunch back, will you?”

     “You got it, buddy.”

     Back inside the fence, Tom headed to the workshop and Linda came out to check on their progress.

     “You can be proud of that son of yours,” Tom told her. “He’s left his boyhood behind him. He’s a man now, and a darn good one at that.”

     “Yep. I am proud of him. His father will be too. He’s come a long way in the last few months. Now, then, what can I do to help?”

     “Well, I’m not one of those men who’s gonna jeopardize his own life by asking his woman to go into the kitchen and make him some sandwiches. I’m too smart for that. So instead, I’ll give you a choice. I need to cut these two by twos into some spikes. I also need four sandwiches made. Do you have a preference?”

     “You’re not quite as slick as you think you are, Tom Haskins. If I knew how to make a spike out of a two by two, I’d send you in that kitchen in a heartbeat.

     “But what you fail to realize is, I don’t mind making sandwiches for you and Jordan. One of the things that’s kept us all going is everybody’s willingness to jump in and help wherever they’re needed, with no hurt feelings or egos to get in the way.

     “It’s worked well so far, and I suspect it’ll continue to work. What kind of sandwiches?”

     “Do we still have that chicken salad Joyce made a couple of days ago? That sounds good.”

     “Yep. We still have some. Four chicken salad sandwiches coming up. I’ll put them in a bag with some cookies and apples. Gotta keep your strength up, for all that spike making and tree dragging, and whatever else you two are doing out there.”

     “Thank you, dear. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

     She kissed him.

     “That’s good. Because I’m never gonna give you a chance to find out.”

     Half an hour later, Tom returned to the work site to find Jordan almost finished with the ditch.

     On the back of the Gator were forty two by twos, each about four feet long. They were originally eight footers, but Tom used a power saw to cut each of them in half.

     He made the cuts at severe angles, so one side of each piece ended in a very sharp spike.

     He also brought his six foot ladder.

     Jordan killed the engine and stepped out of the Bobcat’s cab. The two had lunch together and Tom explained the rest of his plan.

     “The ladder is so I can get my old tired ass in and out of the trench. I’m telling you that so you can go ahead and start making fun of me.”

     “I could never make fun of you, Tom. I respect you too much for that.”

     Tom smiled, until Jordan continued.

     “In fact, I respect all of my elders. The older they are, the more I respect them. And I have a lot of respect for you, Tom.”

     He said it with a smile and Tom knew he was kidding. It was another way of showing he’d become a man. He was no longer afraid to rib the other adults. He now considered himself a peer.

     “Smart ass.”

     Jordan grinned, then asked, “What are the pointed sticks for?”

     “This is a trick I picked up from the Viet Cong many years ago. We’re going to put these in the bottom of the trench. These are night cowards who will only attack us when it’s dark. We can use that to our advantage by setting this little trap for them.

     “We’re going to put these in the bottom of the trench, pointy side up. If they figure out a way to get through the mesquite trees again, they’ll have to cross this field in the dark.

     “Hopefully, a couple of them won’t be able to see the trench in the dark and will fall into it. If we’re lucky, they’ll fall on one of the spikes and impale themselves through the heart. Or, at least hurt themselves enough to prevent them from going any further.”

     “Cool. You said this idea was created by who?”

     “Gee whiz, Jordan. Don’t they teach history in the high schools anymore?”

     Jordan smiled.

     “History, yes. But not ancient history.”

     “The Viet Cong were our enemies during the Vietnam war. They used a wide variety of jungle warfare strategies and guerrilla tactics to cause casualties among our troops. This was just one of the tactics they used.”

     “And did it work?”

     “Oh, yes. It worked quite well. For them, anyway. It was hell for the good guys. A lot of our guys got killed outright. They’d fall in the pits and take a spiked stick through the heart or head and die quickly. Others might get poisoned and die in a field hospital later on, or get an infection serious enough to keep them laid up and off the battlefield for awhile.”

     Jordan looked at him for more explanation.

     “They used to make their spikes out of bamboo shoots and other sticks. They’d sharpen them to points like pencils so they’d tear right through flesh, and sometimes even bone. Then they’d dip the points in all kinds of nasty stuff. Poisons, the waste from water buffalo, even human waste sometimes.”

     “Wow. Do you think it’ll work against our intruders?”

     “Well, we’re not going to poison the spikes or put animal waste on them. Hopefully one of them will fall into the hole, and the others will decide this is just too much for them to chew off and try to swallow, and they leave again. And even if they don’t fall in the hole, maybe it’ll make them stop and think. Maybe they’ll decide that we’ve got nothing worth them dying for.”

     Jordan was impressed. He saw a side of Tom he’d never seen before. A man of ingenuity. A man who was willing to do anything he had to do to protect his family. And it occurred to Jordan at that point that Tom was indeed part of their family. He wasn’t related to any of them by blood, but that didn’t matter. He was related to them by desperate circumstance, and in a way that was more of a bond than mere blood.

     “Why don’t you finish up the ends of the trench while I bury the spikes? Try to get rid of the loose dirt at each end so they can’t use it as a ramp to walk out on. It’s only five feet deep, so it won’t hold em for long, but we don’t want to make it easy for them to get out, either.”

     Jordan climbed back in the cab of the Bobcat and followed his instructions. Tom took the first of his spikes, placed it point down on the ground at the bottom of the trench, and hit it three times with his sledge hammer. It was buried about a foot deep. Then he placed the sledge hammer aside and carefully moved the spike back and forth until it was loose enough to pull back out of the ground.

     Then he turned the spike over so the pointed side was up and shoved the blunt end back into the hole. It was upright, sturdy and dangerous.

     When they went back to the compound that day, Tom personally sought out every single person in the group and told them, “Jordan and I built some booby traps in the north field, close to the fence line. Do not go out there unless Jordan or I are with you, so we can show you what to watch out for.”

-36-

     That wasn’t the only surprise Tom wanted to leave for any intruders who were bold enough to break into the compound.

     The day after they’d dug the trench and buried the deadly spikes in the ground, Joyce went outside to find Tom and Jordan atop two wooden ladders, twelve feet apart, drilling small holes in the top of the wall.

     “Good morning, you two. After you spent all day long together yesterday, I’d have thought you were getting tired of each other by now.”

     Tom laughed his easy going laugh.

     “Oh, hell, no. Jordan’s my little buddy. That’s why we put the ladders close enough for us to talk while we work. If we didn’t like each other we’d be working on different sides of the wall.”

     “What kind of work are you doing, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking, of course?”

     “Oh, we don’t mind at all. You tell, her, Jordan, while I go get another battery for my drill.”

     Tom scrambled down off the ladder and walked off to the workshop.

     “Do you remember when we emptied out that Walmart trailer, and we came across several cases of screws?”

     “No.”

     “Well, you may have been in the feed barn at the time, organizing what we were putting in there. Anyway, we found four cases of three inch screws on one of the pallets. We weren’t sure what to do with them, since at the time we couldn’t think of any reason we’d ever need thousands of screws. In fact, we almost threw them in the trash pit with the cardboard boxes and wooden pallets.

     “But it turns out that Tom had a better idea. So I’m glad we kept them.”

     “So, what was Tom’s idea?”

     “We’re drilling holes along the top of the fence, every six inches, all the way around the compound. Then we’re going to screw all of those screws into the holes, with the pointy ends on the outside of the top of the fence.”

     “I see. And just what is the point of all this?”

     Tom walked up behind her at that point, a freshly charged battery attached to his drill. He took over.

     “The guys that came the other night had my six foot ladder. It was tall enough for them to look over the fence, but didn’t go all the way to the top.

     “They no longer have access to my ladder. I brought it back over here and put it in the workshop. But once they discover it’s missing, they’ll likely go back and find another one that will enable them to scale the fence.

     “But here’s the deal. The fence is ten feet high. Whether they bring a six footer or an eight footer, they’ll still have to climb from the top of the ladder and over the fence. Then they’ll have to drop ten feet to the ground below.

     “We plan to make that experience as painful for them as possible. I’m sure they’ll attack at night again and it’ll be dark. Hopefully they won’t see the black screws protruding from the black fence until they scramble over the top of it.

     “Hopefully the first one will take three inches of screw right in his abdomen. It won’t kill him, but it’ll damn sure start him bleeding real good. Hopefully it’ll make him cry for his mommy and make the men behind him think it’s not such a good idea.”

     “Do you think it’ll stop them and make them go away?”

     “No, I don’t, unfortunately. But I think it’ll help us out in two other ways. First of all, it’ll slow them down by giving them something else to worry about. Instead of scrambling quickly over the fence to avoid getting shot, they’ll have to take their time and climb over it deliberately. That means they’ll be in my sights a little bit longer.

     “The second thing I’m banking on is reducing their numbers. Say they attack with six men. If we can injure two of them going over the wall, that’s two fewer men they’ll have shooting back at us.

     “Plus, have you ever heard the saying, ‘a bad wound is better than a kill?’”

     Joyce shook her head no.

     “It was one of the basic philosophies of the German Army during World War II. Many of the traps they left for the allied armies weren’t lethal. Mines with small amounts of explosives to weaken their blasts, and things like that. The Viet Cong used some of the same methods during the Vietnam War.

     “The principle was that in the heat of a battle, you can tie up more of the enemy troops by wounding them instead of killing them. If you kill a soldier outright, he falls dead to the ground and his comrades leave him there and keep advancing.

     “But if you can just wound him, by blowing off his leg or filling his gut with shrapnel, then two or three of his buddies will stop to help him. They’ll administer first aid to him, try to stop the bleeding, and try to drag him back so he can be evacuated to a field hospital. And all the time the guy’s buddies are doing that, they’re unable to advance, or defend themselves. In fact, they are often times sitting ducks. Medics have always incurred heavy casualties in wartime. Even though the Geneva Convention says they are noncombatants, you can damn sure bet that the enemy doesn’t care. While they’re treating the wounded with no weapon in their hands, the enemy sees the red cross on their arm or their helmet and shoots them anyway.

     “Anyway, my point is, that if we hurt some of them, it’ll slow the others down too, because somebody will have to help their wounded. But these guys won’t be medics. And they won’t be covered by the Geneva Convention. And I’ll have no qualms about sending them straight to hell.”

     “It’s going to take an awful lot of screws to go all the way around the fence. And an awful lot of time.”

     “I know. But we’ve got plenty of both screws and time. This time of year, there aren’t any crops to tend for. Typically on a ranch or farm, winter is the time of year when you keep yourself busy repairing equipment and caring for the livestock. And that’s really all you have to do, so you have a lot of free time on your hands. This is actually a good time to do this, and even if those yahoos never come back, it’s probably a good idea to do it anyway.”

-37-

     It was a sight to see, for sure. It still resembled a police car in some respects, in that the light bar was still perched on its top, and the sides and hood were still painted in the black and white color scheme of the San Antonio Police Department.

     The blue, white and gold shield-shaped badge still adorned both front doors.

     But beyond that, the vehicle more resembled the 1921 Oldsmobile Roadster truck that the Clampett family took to the Hills of Beverly.

     Every inch of the rooftop of the squad car was covered with sections of rain gutter, tied precariously into place with hemp rope. Across the car’s trunk were eight Hefty brand plastic garbage cans, one placed inside the other, and also tied down with rope.

     Thrown across the back seat were locking lids for the trash cans, as well as several boxes of nails and four hammers.

     Since winter had come to San Antonio, the SAPD had another pet project they were undertaking. There were no crops to care for, and all the harvesting had been done. Most of the bodies had been collected and burned, and dedicated crews from the fire department had agreed to take care of the rest of them.

     San Antonio cops had suddenly found themselves with extra time on their hands.

     At about that same time, Chief Martinez met with the San Antonio Water Board, which asked the chief to help them spread the word. A lot of the equipment at the water plant was still running at partial capacity due to damage it had suffered from the EMP. They were only able to produce a fraction of the water the city needed, and it would probably get worse before it got better.

     “This past year, especially in the summer months when rainfall was limited, our citizens were using their tap water to irrigate their crops, and well as for cooking and drinking and bathing.

     “We’re worried that if any more of the equipment breaks, we won’t be able to keep up with the demand this year. That we won’t be able to process enough safe water to provide the city’s needs.”

     “Okay. Understood. So how can the SAPD help?”

     “You’re our only means of getting the word out now since none of the radio or television stations are working. Your officers see the citizens on a daily basis. We’d like for them to start spreading the word to the citizens to start conserving water now, so we can fill our towers and have enough to get us through the hot summer months.”

     “Summer’s still seven months away. Is it really imperative that we start conserving so early?”

     “We need to be prudent. If we have a mild summer, with moderate temperatures and an average amount of rainfall, then we can muddle through it.

     “But in our business it’s always a good idea to hope for the best and expect the worst. If this summer is extraordinarily hot and dry, and if we have drought conditions, we’ll be in big trouble. If we don’t conserve early and don’t have a reserve supply, the taps could run dry.

     “Every single neighborhood crop in the city would wither and die. And the people would be starving.”

     “Okay. Enough said. We’ll have our officers spread the word. Cut back on the showers and laundry. Use only the water you need for drinking and for cooking. Once we explain to them the reason why, I think they’ll willingly comply.

     “After all, these are the survivors. The toughest of the tough. After all they’ve been through already, this shouldn’t be too bitter a pill for them to swallow.”

     “Thank you, Chief.”

     After the meeting, as he was walking back to his office, Chief Martinez had struggled with his thoughts.

     There must be something more the SAPD could do to help with the situation.

     Then it dawned on him. If the San Antonio Water Board could hoard water over the coming months, perhaps the residents could too.

     But first, he had to make sure his plan would work. So he told no one. Instead, he quietly took his assigned police car to a Home Depot near his home. He went to the outdoor section first and loaded down as many rain gutter sections as he could across the roof. He tied the pieces down by using rope to fasten then to the light bar.

     Next came the trash cans, which he tied across the trunk of the car.

     Luckily, he didn’t stumble across any of his patrol units as he drove from the Home Depot to a neighborhood garden a few blocks away. They likely would have thought him quite mad.

     He’d driven onto the street, loaded down like a ridiculous moving van crossed with a cop car, and the street’s residents were quickly intrigued.

     He introduced himself to the man who appeared to be the block leader.

     “I’m Tony Martinez, the Chief of Police.”

     They looked at him strangely, probably thinking he was actually an escaped lunatic who stole the police chief’s uniform.

     But fortunately, they listened.

     “The city water board says we need to conserve water for the coming summer months. They are expecting there to be a drought, and saying water will be too scarce to keep the crops alive.”

     “So what’s your plan, Chief?”

     “I want to hang gutters on four of your houses. We’ll have them drain into the trash cans every time it rains. Your people can keep the lids on them when it’s not raining, to keep the water from evaporating.

     “Once we get the gutters up, we’ll position all eight of the trash cans underneath the down spouts. And we’ll have several months to fill them with water, before you start needing the water for your crops.

     “All you have to do is remove the lids every time it starts to rain, and then put them back on when the rain stops.

     “In the spring, when you plant the crops, use buckets or water pitchers to dip into the trash cans. Use that water to water your crops. Any time you water your crops, use the rain water first. Only use city water when the rain water is gone.

     “And if you keep collecting rainwater every time it rains all year around, it’ll help the city tremendously.”

     A woman in the crowd was skeptical.

     “Will eight trash cans full of water really make a difference?”

     “Just your eight trash cans? No. But we’re going to do the same thing on every street until we can’t find any more gutter or trash cans. And then we’ll figure out another plan.

     “And when every street is doing their part to reduce their water needs, then it’ll start making a difference. And if we do have a drought this summer, this just might make the difference between saving our crops or starving to death.”

     The Chief spent that afternoon hammering rain gutter sections onto four of the houses on the street. Assisted by the man who appeared to be the block leader, and two other men, they made quick work of the project.

     In the end, each of the four houses had shiny new gutters, sparkling in the sunlight, and two trash cans, one on each front corner of the house, standing by to catch water from the first rain.

     “Okay, Chief. That’s done. What else can we do?”

     “The rain in the spring comes in torrents. You already know that, I’m sure. It may rain so heavily that the trash cans become full, and the water starts overflowing.

     “If that happens, it would be helpful if you could have your people use buckets and water pitchers to move some of the water to other storage vessels. The bathtubs in your abandoned houses, for example. That way, as the water in the trash cans gets used for crops, the excess water from the tubs could be transferred back to the trash cans for later use.

     “Also, the water board told me they saw a lot of people overwatering their crops last season. They wanted me to spread the word that any time we have a significant rainfall, we can take a few days off from watering the crops. They said don’t start watering them again until the leaves start to droop.”

     “Okay. You have my word. We’ll do our share. And we’ll try to spread the word to our friends on the other streets.”

     The man reached out his hand to Chief Martinez and said, “Thank you, Chief. My name is John Luna. You probably don’t remember me, do you?”

     Martinez was slightly taken aback.

     “Well, I thought you looked familiar, but I’m sorry. I don’t remember you. Should I?”

     “Years ago, when you were a beat cop, you arrested me for dealing drugs on a street corner not far from here. For years I hated you and swore my revenge on you and on the system that sent me away. I joined a gang, and I’m still a member to this day.”

     “Should I worry?”

     “No. Most of my gang brothers are dead now. Some killed by wars with rivals. Some killed by the plague or suicide. There are only a few of us left. And we’ve mellowed. We spend our time helping our homies now. Trying to keep what’s left of our families alive.”

     “That’s how I spend my days too, John. In that way, we are the same. Perhaps it’s best we put the past in the past and leave it there. What happened then was part of a whole world that doesn’t exist anymore. We’re better off focusing on the here and now. That’s tough enough without renewing old grudges from long ago.

     The man nodded his head in agreement.

     But then the chief went one step further.

     “I can only imagine the hatred you felt for me for putting you in jail. I hope your heart is strong enough to understand it was nothing personal. Perhaps one day we can consider ourselves friends. For now I’d settle for knowing that we are both soldiers on the same side of the war. And that we’re fighting for the same thing. So those who are left can have an easier and safer time of it.”

     Luna held his hand out again, and Martinez took it.

     “Agreed.”

-38-

     The very next day Chief Martinez had another light day on his calendar, so he made a second trip to the Home Depot. This time he took two of his lieutenants with him. They returned to the same neighborhood, this time two streets farther south.

     And they made some more new friends.

     The following day each of the lieutenants went out with one of their sergeants.

     Within a week, every patrol car in the SAPD fleet was involved in the project.

     It created some ridiculous situations, of course. On the rare occasions when an officer had to arrest someone, the perp had to share the back seat with trash can lids. And the neighborhood kids took to yelling out “Uncle Jed and Jethro!” whenever one of the loaded cars passed them on the streets.

     That part puzzled Scott, because he seriously doubted any of the kids had ever seen an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. He supposed their parents had put them up to it, but it didn’t matter. It was all in good fun.

     Whatever animosity that still persisted between the policemen and civilians evaporated with the project. The survivors, whatever they once felt about the police force, now saw the beat cops as saviors. The considered them men who were much more interested in helping them than in arresting them.

     There weren’t enough pieces of rain gutters or garbage cans in the city of San Antonio to provide for all the neighborhood streets. But those streets which didn’t get the rain collection system were enthused enough by the project to find other ways to participate. Two by fours were cannibalized from abandoned houses and hammered onto rooftops to help channel rainwater to the corners of the houses.

     Bathtubs were hauled out of the same abandoned houses and placed on the corners of the houses to catch the water falling from the roof.

     Ingenuity was indeed the mother of invention. At least on the desperate streets of San Antonio.

     The project brought something to do for the survivors, and that was important for a society which no longer had video games to play or televisions to watch. The best course of action for staying warm in the winter months was to keep moving.

     But Chief Martinez’ project helped in another way as well. A way he’d never intended.

     It gave the survivors a renewed hope. A hope that as the plague ran its course and the neighborhoods bonded, that they’d work together to help one another. That was much better than competing with one another for the meager food that was available.

     They no longer saw themselves as competitors. It made much more sense for them to work as a team to make sure there was enough food for everyone.

-39-

     It was just a matter of time before the band of brothers started talking about the future. For awhile now, they’d been afraid to. Because they still weren’t sure there even was a future.

     But lately, rumors had been flying that the plague was starting to dissipate. They could even see it for themselves, to a limited degree. The quarantine section of the hospital was down to two floors now, and one of them was only half full.

     FEMA was reporting similar stories from other cites, and the CDC was saying that they expected to announce in the spring that the plague had run its course.

     “We won’t do that until we have a full thirty day period with no new cases being reported. But things are looking good, and we expect that to happen by March or April.”

     “Oh, great!” Scott teased to Joyce over the radio. “That means I’ll be home just in time for planting season. My back hurts already.”

     The four men had developed a habit of sitting around a card table every Friday night. It was the evening before their only day off, and had evolved into a combination poker or spades night, and a night where they could drink a bit and relax.

     Toward the end of such nights, their tongues usually started to loosen a bit. That’s when they sometimes opened up about their personal lives.

     It was at one of these Friday night sessions a couple of weeks before that Scott learned the details of Robbie’s wife Keeley’s death.

     She’d been seven months pregnant and something was terribly wrong. She’d been in a car accident a few days before, when an idiot sending a text message ran a stop sign and hit her broadside.

     The paramedics at the scene said she was shaken but appeared to be okay. They said in light of the situation she should see her doctor, though. Just to be sure.

     Keeley couldn’t get an appointment that day or the following day. She settled on one for the morning of the third day after the accident. She felt fine, after all, so she wasn’t in that big of a hurry.

     Robbie was off duty that day and got up to take her. He loved seeing his daughter on the ultrasound monitor. The last time he’d gone along, a month before, he insisted the baby was waving at him with her tiny fingers. Keeley had said his face glowed, and that he’d be an awesome daddy.

     Shortly after they left the house that morning, Keeley started to have horrific cramps. She’d never been in labor before. She thought for sure that’s what it was.

     Robbie told the others how she’d pleaded with the baby.

     “Oh, God, don’t come now. It’s too early. You have to stay in there.”

     Then, in the middle of Highway 90, miles from either home or the nearest hospital, the car suddenly died.

     As did every other vehicle around them.

     He tried both of their cell phones, and neither of them worked.

     Then she started bleeding profusely.

     Robbie, the big tough cop who never panicked in even the most dire of circumstances, freaked out. This was his wife, and his baby. These types of things were supposed to happen to other people. Not to them.

     He tried to put his limited first aid skills to use. If the blood had been coming from an arm or a leg, he’d have applied direct pressure to the wound, or at the pressure point above it. If necessary, he’d have applied a tourniquet.

     But the blood wasn’t coming from a limb. It was coming from inside of her.

     He didn’t know what to do. He tried using direct pressure on one of the most tender places on her body, until she cried out.

     “Baby, you’re hurting me.”

     And the blood kept flowing anyway.

     He pulled her out of the car onto the concrete highway outside.

     He apologized for the hard concrete, and found a small pillow to place under her head. He put a blanket over her to keep her warm and prevent her from going into shock. He elevated her feet, hoping it would increase the blood flow to her brain. At the same time he knew it would also increase the blood flow to the wound, where the blood continued to pour out.

     He panicked. He knew that this, whatever it was, was beyond his limited capabilities.

     There were others around, out of their cars, trying to figure out why nothing seemed to be working.

     He found himself begging total strangers.

     “Please, call 911. Get someone out here. My wife… she’s dying!”

     He seemed to know, even then, that the situation was beyond hope.

     Because no one could call. No one had any medical expertise.

     No one could help them.

     “I’m going for help, Sugar. You hang on.”

     He brushed his fingers across her tear stained cheek as he said the last words he’d ever tell her. And then he left her there, holding the hand of a sympathetic old woman who’d stopped to help but couldn’t.

     Robbie had run for a mile, he said. Maybe two. Stopping anyone and everyone he thought might be able to help.

     But most of the others, caught up in their own problems of the moment, brushed him off or tried to avoid him.

     Desperate, not knowing what to do, he ran back to Keeley, who lay dead.

     Someone, perhaps the old woman, had the decency to cover her face.

     Robbie had knelt beside her and cried, and begged her to forgive him, for letting her die alone.

     The blackout had happened in late morning. At some point, day turned into night, and then into day again, before Robbie finally left her side.

     He knew by then that the world had changed. It would never be the same again. There would be no ambulance to come and whisk away the body of his young wife. No morgue, no autopsy, no funeral.

     He took a shovel from the back of a landscaping truck a few vehicles back on the now deserted highway. Forty yards off the highway, in a shaded area he thought might bring Keeley some peace, he buried her body in a shallow grave.

     “I still go back there sometimes when I’m in the area. I pick some of the nearby wildflowers and lay them on the grave, and apologize to her for not saving her.

     “The doctors at St. Mary’s have told me since that there was nothing I could have done. That something inside of her, probably weakened from the accident, just broke free during one of her cramps. They said that immediate surgery was the only thing that could have stopped the hemorrhaging. That there was nothing I could do.

     “But they weren’t there. They didn’t see the helplessness in her eyes. She was looking for me to save her and the baby. She was relying on me to stop the bleeding. And I just didn’t know how.

     “I let Keeley down. And I let little Haley down. I used to think it was so cool that Haley waved at me during that ultrasound. I thought she was saying hello to her daddy. And now, since then, I’ve had nightmares about it. Now I wonder if she was waving goodbye. That she somehow knew.”

     The card playing had stopped by that time. Even before Robbie’s words, the mood had turned somber. John wanted to stop Robbie a couple of times, but didn’t. He had the sense that Robbie’s words were somehow therapeutic for him. That he needed to get them out.

     There was little that John and Scott could do for their friend, other than comfort him.

     Scott saw the irony in it, and suspected that John did too. They both wanted desperately to stop the pain. To make their friend feel better. To make everything whole again. But there was absolutely nothing they could do but provide a temporary comfort.

     And they felt the same hopelessness and helplessness that Robbie himself felt all those months before.

     As for Randy, he curled up in a ball in the corner of the room, hearing Robbie’s words but thinking his own unknown thoughts. Randy had his own demons he was fighting. He had his own tragic story to tell. But he was a much more private person than Robbie. So his tale of woe would go unsaid on this night.

     All that John and Scott knew was that Randy had a family before the blackout happened. A lovely wife named Cinda and twin boys. Something had happened to them. Something terrible. Scott found himself wondering if that was what made Randy the way he was now. Aloof, distant, introspective.

     He and John had actually talked about it themselves at an earlier time. Perhaps at one time Randy was vibrant and alive, and enjoyed people. Perhaps it was the tragedy of losing his family that turned him surly and uncaring. Perhaps he no longer cared for people because he associated love and caring with loss and pain.

     In any event, they assumed that someday he’d tell his story. But not until he was ready, and they wouldn’t push him.

     They would comfort Robbie now, and let him know that they were there for him and loved him. Not in the same way women love each other. They wouldn’t hold him and rub his shoulders and do the things one woman does for another to ease pain.

     Instead, they’d be there to hear his words when he felt like talking, and give him his space when he needed it. They’d go out of their way to do things for him, like providing his meals and doing his chores, until he was back on his game. Perhaps it wasn’t as effective as the way women helped each other through difficult times, but it was all they had to give him.

     None of it worked, of course. Despite all of their efforts to bring back the happy Robbie, they all finally passed out that night as miserable as he was.

-40-

     The same night that Robbie finally opened up about Keeley’s death, Tony Pike and Kevin returned to the compound for round two.

     At least they tried. They never made it that far.

     They returned with six other men. They’d decided on that number because they thought that eight men would be sufficient to take the compound by force, without having to share the women or the booty with too many others.

     And truthfully, there were a couple of Kevin’s friends that Tony just didn’t like. He’d agreed to let them come because he knew they were brutal, and would take no prisoners other than the women.

     But they were other alpha males, and eventually Tony knew they’d challenge his authority. And that just wouldn’t do.

     Ideally, they would become the first casualties of Tony’s little war. And if they made it to the end, Tony might take them out himself. A preventive strike to avoid a coup later on.

     Their plan was simple. Go back to the ranch house, retrieve the ladder, and scale that high wall. Then find the men and children and kill them, and make the women their slaves.

     And they were fully prepared to drag that damn mesquite tree out of the way again if they needed to.

     But here they were, back at the ranch house, groping around in the darkness for the ladder that was no longer there.

     “Screw it,” Tony finally announced. “The front of the house was outside the high fence. We’ll just beat down the damn front door and go in that way. And they’ll pay a heavy price for taking our damn ladder.”

     Not that he was planning on showing them any mercy anyway.

     After they gave up on the ladder, they made their way across Tom’s hay field to the downed mesquite tree they’d dragged out of the way during their previous visit.

     They were aggravated to find it had been pulled back to its original location, back in line with the other mesquites.

     Moreover, the clothesline they’d used to tie the bundles of branches together was now gone.

     Tony sent one of the new troops back to the ranch house.

     “There are some clothesline poles in the yard behind the house. Cut one of the lines off of them and bring it back.”

     The rest of the group waited and stewed for a full twenty minutes before the man returned.

     “I found the poles. But all the lines were already cut, and were gone.”

     “Crap!”

     Tony knew at that point that he wasn’t dealing with a bunch of rube farmers. These were people who’d anticipated their next move, and who took steps to stop them.

     That meant they were aware of the original intrusion and were expecting another. Which meant that there were probably other surprises in store for them.

     Tony had never shrunk from a fight before. For him, it was a matter of pride. Raised the way he was, there wasn’t much for him to be proud of. But one thing he valued above all else was his reputation as a tough guy. He wouldn’t back down. Couldn’t back down. He needed for his circle of friends to see him as their fearless leader.

     That’s why he’d have to conquer this compound. And just to show his displeasure at their resistance, he’d make a point to kill every single person in the compound. Even the women.

     There were other women in Junction, after all, that they could steal away from their families and bring to the compound for their pleasure. They didn’t need the ones currently residing in the compound.

     It was much more important to show to his men and to the world that bad things happen to people who resist Tony Pike or screw up his plans.

     “Now what?” Spider muttered.

     Tony already had an answer.

     “Now, we let the bastards live another night. But only one more. Tomorrow, we come back, better prepared this time. And we’ll show them no mercy.

     “In fact, anybody who survives our assault will suffer my wrath. I’ll cut them to pieces while they’re still breathing.”

-41-

     In the compound, no one had any idea they’d almost been attacked again. There were no cameras set up at Tom’s old ranch. The camera on the northeast corner of the high fence was aimed at the fence itself. Had it been directed at the north field, it night have detected some movement through the dead mesquite trees. Enough to know there was someone out there.

     But the most logical place for the camera to be aimed was at the fence, and so it was.

     Tom Haskins left his bungalow at first light, kissing Linda’s cheek on his way out.

     His first stop, as was his usual habit, was at the security desk.

     “Good morning, sweet and lovely Sara. How’s stuff and things?”

     Sara giggled. Tom always had a way of making her smile, even when the baby kept her up half the night and her regularly scheduled shift on the security console kept her up the rest.

     “Fine, Tom, and good morning to you too.”

     He looked over her shoulder as she said, “Nothing going on out there at all. The highlight of my shift was watching two cows humping in the back field.”

     Tom laughed.

     “Funny, I never figured you to be the type to enjoy cow porn. I guess you never can tell about some people. You want some coffee?”

     “Sure, I’d love an espresso with double sugar. But don’t tell Jordan, okay?”

     “Why not? Is he still being a caffeine Nazi?”

     “Yes, and he will as long as I’m breastfeeding. He’s always right there to remind me that when I drink caffeine, the baby does too.

     “I have to give him credit, he’s trying his best to be a good father. And he’s succeeding. But darnit, I need my morning fix. And the baby was up most of the night, so I expect him to sleep most of the morning. Hopefully by the time he wakes up the caffeine will already be out of my system.

     “He was up last night? Is he feeling okay?”

     “Yes, I think so. Hannah and Joyce both got up and looked at him, and agreed that it’s probably just colic. And that it should pass within a day or two. It just tears me apart to see him in pain, you know? I feel like such a bad mommy.”

     “Oh, hush. You’re a great mommy. There are just some things you can’t control.”

     “Tom, do you think those men are coming back?”

     “Honestly? I think they will. Now that they know what we have, they’re going to want it. I mean, I’m sure they’ve been scavenging for food for nine long months now. Going to bed when the sun sets because they have no lights. No creature comforts they’ve become used to their entire lives. I think they saw what we have and want it badly. And I think that eventually they’ll come after it. Then what it boils down to is, are they better prepared to take it than we are to defend it?”

     “What can I do to help?”

     “The first thing you can do is to protect the next generation. If we lose any of our members, it’s imperative that someone survive to carry on. To tell the story of what happened here. As soon as it looks like trouble, I want you to take little Chris and go to the basement and stay there until it’s over. Take care of little Chris and Rachel and Misty. That’s going to be your job, and don’t sell yourself short. It’s a very important one.”

     Hannah walked into the room with a smile.

     “Who’s selling themselves short? Sara? Well, the little angel is only about five foot nothing, after all.”

     “I’ll have you know I’m five foot one, thank you very much. Good morning Hannah.”

     Hannah kissed Sara on the top of her head and said, “Five foot one of beautiful sweetness.”

     It occurred to Sara that these people had shown her more love in ten short months than her own parents had in many years. She felt at home here, and at peace.

     And she wanted to contribute more.

     “Tom, I didn’t mean when the men came back. I meant now. What can I do now to help prepare?”

     “Well, I’ve got some ideas for some more booby traps. Can you use an electric drill and hammer nails?”

     “I used to help my step father fix things around the house before… well, before he turned evil. I can’t hammer a nail as straight as you can, but I can do it.”

     Tom turned to Hannah and said, “There’s the helper you were looking for.”

     Sara was puzzled.

     “What did I miss? What did I volunteer for?”

     Hannah said, “I was going to spend all day today and all day tomorrow drilling holes in two by fours. Every four inches, all the way down the center. And then hammering nails into them. It’s going to be tedious and slow, and I asked Tom if he knew of anybody who was looking for something to do. So yes, in a way, you did volunteer to help.”

     Sara smiled, and held up her hand for a high five.

     “All right! Girl power.”

     Then she got a puzzled look again.

     “But why drill holes? Why not just hammer the nails in? Wouldn’t that be faster?”

     Hannah looked at Tom for the explanation. After all, it was his idea.

     “If you hammered that many nails in a line down the middle of a stud, it would crack and break in half. Drilling holes just a little bit smaller than the nail is a lot less stress on the wood. There’s much less chance of the wood breaking. And as a bonus, it’ll be a lot easier to hammer in the nails too. And when you’re talking several hundred nails, anything you can do to make it easier will help you out a lot.”

     “But what are we going to do with the wood when we finish?”

     “We’re going to line the fence line with them. We won’t have enough to go around the entire fence, of course, but we have enough to cover most of the north side. And we’ll focus on the areas they’re most likely to come over. Like the place where they set up the ladder last time. Behind the buildings and sheds where they’ll have cover. Places like that.”

     “Will the nails stop them?”

     “No, but they’ll likely slow them down. You see, they’ll likely have ladders to get them to the top of the fence, but won’t have a way to climb down on the other side. So they’ll have to jump down.

     “I don’t know if either of you ever jumped from a height of ten feet in gym class, but it’s pretty much impossible to land on your feet and stay there. Your body’s momentum keeps you going after your feet hit, and you roll.

     “The idea is this: these guys won’t be able to see the two by fours with the nails sticking up and won’t know they’re there until after they jump. Hopefully, they’ll land just right, and the nails will go through their shoes and into their feet.

     “If that doesn’t happen, the next best thing would be for them to fall onto the nails and get a deep puncture wound every four inches over their entire body. Even if they only get a couple of punctures, they’ll be casualties. They’ll be bloody and move slower, and we’ll have an advantage against them.

     “And if their buddies slow down to try to help them, well… even better for us.”

     “Are we going to have to kill them?”

     “I won’t sugar coat it, sweetheart. The answer is probably yes. Once they’re inside the fence, they won’t be able to get back out again. There won’t be any ladders they can use to retreat. And even when it becomes apparent that they’re going to get their asses kicked, they can’t run.

     “So they’ll do the same thing a caged animal will do. They’ll corner themselves up in the compound somewhere, probably hiding behind one of the sheds, and make us come after them. And at that point they’ll figure it’s kill or be killed. And they’re not likely to be very friendly.”

     “But what if they lay down their weapons and surrender?”

     “Then we’ll let them. But that will present its own dilemma. You see, there’s no longer a working justice system. Kerr County doesn’t have a sheriff anymore, and Kerrville and Junction no longer have police departments. If we captured any of them we wouldn’t have a place to take them.”

     For now, it was merely a hypothetical dilemma. None of them knew there would come a time when they would face a very real choice. They’d have to struggle with their consciences and make a dreadful decision: whether to let the men go, or shoot them down in cold blood.

-42-

     It wouldn’t be long now. Preparations for the battle they knew would be coming continued inside the compound. Hannah started her project alone while Sara took a short nap and then joined her. Tom and Jordan used the rest of a pallet of plywood in the workshop to shore up the bulletproof walls in the upstairs bedrooms. Then, for added measure, they went into the feed barn and removed the interior plywood sheets from the walls there.

     One by one the plywood sheets were carried into the house and put into place. The exterior walls in the entire structure were already lined with four extra sheets of half inch plywood. The extra protection stretched from floor to ceiling and had become a permanent, if not slightly ugly, feature of the house.

     Only the windows were uncovered. But they still had protection. Each window had a two inch wall of plywood, with a narrow shooting port cut out of the center of it. The wall was on rollers and off to the side of the window. It was kept from falling by tracks mounted on the ceiling and the floor, and could be rolled into place at the first sign of trouble.

     For Tom, the first sign of trouble had already passed. He’d already spent half an hour earlier this morning rolling the window fortifications into place in case they were needed in a hurry. Now, the only sunlight coming into the house was through the upstairs firing ports. The downstairs was pitch black save for a couple of lamps. The sparse sunshine coming into the upstairs rooms made it appear dingy.

     Joyce commented as she walked through the house that it resembled a dungeon. And in a way it did. But it also represented their best chance for survival in a firefight.

     The additional plywood Tom and Jordan carried into the house went to further fortify the upstairs bedrooms. They all hoped that the four sheets already there, in addition to the brick façade and exterior walls, would stop all bullets from penetrating to the inside of the house.

     And Tom and Scott had done firing tests earlier that year to see if it was so. The two inches of plywood sheets indeed stopped bullets from common hand guns and assault rifles.

     But common sense also dictated that the more bullets were fired into the plywood walls, the less effective they’d become.

     Tom subscribed to the philosophy that you can’t be too careful. So as long as additional plywood was available, they’d keep packing it on.

     In addition to an additional layer of plywood upstairs, they built a fortified firing point in the corner of the den downstairs. The downstairs doors and windows were heavily fortified, by the same four sheets of plywood, and by metal braces and heavy furniture. They didn’t expect their attackers to be able to breach the house. But if they did, they’d be ready.

     Their war plan was sound. At the first sign of trouble, Sara and the kids would evacuate to the basement. It was the safest place in the house once the bullets started flying.

     Sara would man the backup security system from the basement, and would tell everyone upstairs where all the bad guys were. Until they got smart enough to shoot out the cameras, at least. Tom hoped they were stupid enough not to notice them.

     Besides Sara and the children, everyone else would man the windows upstairs, shooting anything that moved from the firing ports on all four sides of the house. All lights would be extinguished on the first floor, and since the downstairs had no firing ports there would be no sunlight coming in. It would be pitch black.

     At the first sign that the first floor might be breached, someone would run downstairs and man the new fortification in the den, wearing night vision goggles. The hope was that intruders bursting through the doors would be blown away before their eyes adjusted to the pitch blackness.

     At least it sounded good in theory. No one wanted to find out if it was going to work in practice.

-43-

     In nearby Junction, Tony and Kevin were making their own plans and preparations.

     “This time we leave early enough so we have some daylight. We take our own damn ladder and rope. We’ll also take some bolt cutters and some pruning shears. If that fence has a gate with a padlock on the outside, we won’t even bother going over the damn fence.

     “And if it’s easier to cut our way through that mesquite tree than to drag it, then we’ll have that option too.

     “We’ll time it so we get there with at least an hour of daylight. We’ll try to pull the tree again, like we did last time. If we can’t, because they still have it attached to the tractor or whatever they pulled it back with, then we’ll see if we can cut our way through. The guys that aren’t doing the cutting and pulling can provide cover.

     Once it’s dark, we’ll send in a couple of guys to scout the area. They can walk the entire perimeter of the fence and see if there are any padlocks anywhere. If they can find one, they’ll use the bolt cutters and cut it off, and that’s how we’ll get in.

     If we can’t go through a gate, we’ll go over the fence.

     The eight of them gathered at a bar in Junction in mid afternoon. Most of the good stuff had been looted, but they managed to find two bottles of cheap whisky in a cabinet in the manager’s office.

     Tony poured each of them a shot.

     “This is just to calm everybody’s nerves. We’re gonna kill a lot of people tonight. Some of them will probably be kids and old people. I don’t want anybody backing down. If you back down, you’re no longer one of us. If you show them any mercy, you’ve become one of them. Anybody who shows them mercy will be shot dead along with them. If you can’t abide by those terms, now’s the time to walk.”

     No one walked. It didn’t necessarily mean they liked his demands. It mostly meant they were afraid to cross him. And that if they walked they might get a bullet in the back.

     The group’s hesitance to cross Tony or to dispute his instructions meant something else, too. If they were able to successfully breach the compound and take it over, everyone inside of it would die.

     Tony put the two bottles of rotgut into his saddlebag. The reason they’d chosen this particular bar as their rendezvous point was the six foot aluminum ladder Tony had seen not long before, standing in the back corner of the store. Once upon a time, it was used to put Budweiser Styrofoam coolers and Miller Lite blow-up easy chairs on a high shelf for display.

     These days, it just collected dust.

     Getting it on horseback was an adventure unto itself. Tony had one of the more experienced riders mount up first, and then tried to hand the ladder to him.

     The horse, of course, wanted nothing to do with the ladder and bolted. The horse was terrified, and the rider was almost knocked off his back by the ladder.

     They tried the same thing with a different horse. This one didn’t bolt, but was very uneasy. As soon as she knew the ladder was aboard her, she lowered her head and moved it from side to side, fighting the reigns. They removed the ladder and the rider got off to calm her.

     The rider waited a few minutes and mounted up again.

     This time they brought the ladder up from the rear and were in the process of handing it to the rider to lay across the front of the saddle. They almost succeeded when the horse sensed something was amiss and kicked. Her left hind hoof caught one of the men square in the shoulder and sent him flying.

     Tony went over to the man and said, with not a hint of sympathy, “If your shoulder is broken, you’re staying behind. I don’t want no damn cripples on this trip.”

     The man stood up and was able to work his arm. Although he was in agonizing pain, he said, “Screw that. It ain’t broken. I’m going.”

     For almost an hour the group more resembled the Keystone Kops than vicious marauders.

     In the back of a nearby stable they finally found Betsy. Betsy was an old Bay that had been turned into a pack horse when she started to go blind. She was used to being led instead of ridden, and didn’t much mind what was strapped across her back.

     Not even a six foot aluminum ladder.

     Betsy was slow, but they weren’t in any hurry. Most of their crew was more comfortable on a Harley than a horse’s back, and two had never been on a horse at all.

    Tony was aware of this going in, and it was the reason he’d insisted on meeting so early. Even with the delay and their slow pace, they’d still be back at the old man’s ranch with an hour of daylight to spare.

     The ladder securely in place, Tony told the rest of them to mount up, and they set off.

-44-

     When they arrived at the end of the county road a hundred yards from Tom’s ranch, Tony told the others to stay put. He and Kevin went ahead to scout the ranch and make sure it was unoccupied.

     Tony sent Kevin back fifteen minutes later to get the rest of the crew.

     While he was waiting, Tony found the sign that Tom had left to scare them off.

STAY OUT

OR DIE.

     It didn’t work. Tony wasn’t afraid of much of anything. In fact, he loved a good challenge, and he viewed the sign as an invitation.

     But there were others in his group who were more easily intimidated.

     Before the others arrived, he pulled up the sign and tossed it aside.

     In the daylight, Tony could see through the dead branches of the mesquite tree and make out the rope that was tied across its trunk and which staked it to the ground.

     He cursed under his breath and walked fifty yards on each side of the fallen tree. He could see that the other dead mesquites were anchored down in a similar fashion.

     Now he was getting angry. He seemed to take the residents’ efforts to protect their property as a personal affront. In Tony’s twisted world, it was a personal insult to him.

     And it wouldn’t go unanswered, or unpunished.

     “All right, this just slows us down a little bit, but it doesn’t stop us. I’m a lot smarter than these sons of bitches think I am.”

     He took a section of rope and wrapped it around several of the branches at the top of the fallen tree, careful not to get stabbed by any of the inch long thorns. Then he had one of his men stand off to the side and pull the rope, to draw the branches out of the way.

     He did the same thing to another set of branches, and had another man pull them aside in the other direction.

     He chuckled at his ingenuity.

     “Just like Moses parting the sea.” he muttered.

     It took a little bit of work, but with the tree’s top branches pulled out of the way, Tony had a tunnel of sorts to walk into. He entered the tunnel with the pruning shears he’d brought along and snipped each of the branches as close to the base of the tree as he could. One by one they fell away, until the tension on the two ropes was completely gone.

     Tony had successfully created a passageway, free of the thorny branches, that extended all the way to the center of the tree.

     Then he stepped back and found Lolo, the youngest and smallest member of their group.

     Lolo was technically still a kid. Barely fifteen, he wasn’t much to look at. Short and skinny, with buck teeth, he didn’t look intimidating at all.

     But in the harsh world of street gangs, looks could be deceiving. Often, the smallest members of his gang were the most vicious. Lolo had street cred. He’d earned it through brutality, and his weapons of choice were a four inch blade and a four foot chain.

     He’d bring his victim down with the knife and then beat them bloody with the chain.

     And he needed very little reason to do so. Sometimes he used this method to rob innocent bystanders of their money. Sometimes all someone had to do was look at him the wrong way.

     His biggest claim to fame was beating a man to death at a bar. Just for questioning the authenticity of the Mexican Mafia tattoo on Lolo’s forearm.

     The fact was that Lolo wasn’t a member of the Mexican Mafia. He was a wannabe who just claimed to be.

     And the penalty for calling him on it was death.

     But as vicious as he was, Lolo knew Tony was the boss. This was Tony’s operation, and Lolo was a good soldier.

     So he’d follow directions, as long as it wasn’t a suicide mission.

     “Lolo, you’re small enough to crawl through there. Crawl through and untie this bastard so we can pull it out of the way.”

     Lolo did as instructed while the others were retying the ropes to the remaining branches at the top of the tree.

     And twenty minutes later the tree was pulled out of the way and off to the side, and the group was in the north field.

     There was just enough daylight left to make out the trench. It took Tom and Jordan half a day to make it, and it would have worked well had the marauders come in the darkness. But in the waning hours of the day, they could see it, and simply went around it.

     It was much like the famous Maginot Line the French had built to protect themselves from the Germans in the buildup for World War II. The line itself was impressive, but too short. The Germans simply went around it.

     But the trench served a psychological purpose if not a practical one. As they passed by the end of the trench, one by one the men looked into it to see how deep it was.

     And one by one, the men saw the pointed spikes that would have impaled them had they fallen in.

     And one by one the men came to the realization that they were facing a formidable enemy. Tony had played this off as a camp of old women and children, with maybe a couple of old men to help out with the chores.

     Several of the men started to worry, and started to wonder if Tony was leading them into something they might not be able to handle.

-45-

     They stayed at the trench, unwilling to move any closer to the compound until darkness fell. The field was almost two acres in size, and had been cleared for farming. There were no trees or shrubs to hide behind, and if they crossed it in the daytime they’d be sitting ducks for any good rifleman.

     Of course, staying put until darkness also worked against them. They hadn’t noticed the surveillance cameras during their previous excursion to the fence, because it had been too dark to see them. Had they decided to attack in the daytime, they would have seen the cameras and taken them out.

    Waiting until darkness almost certainly ensured that they’d overlook them again. And that gave the people in the compound the advantage of being able to see their enemy without being seen.

     As darkness fell, Tony kept a close eye on the moon. He waited until a large bank of dark gray clouds flew in front of it before he dispatched Lolo and Kevin to scout the place out.

     “Stay together and stay low. Take the bolt cutters with you. Walk completely around the fence if you need to. See if you can find a gate that’s secured by a padlock. If you can find one, cut the padlock off, but don’t go inside. Do it quietly.

     I also want you to look for cameras. They have electricity, so they might have a surveillance system. It’ll be too dark for you to see the cameras themselves, so look for little red lights. They might be flashing or solid. But all security cameras have a little red light to tell you they’re on.

     If you find any cameras, see if you can disable them without firing any shots. Pull the wires loose from them, or turn them to where they’re pointing toward the ground. Whatever you do, though, don’t shoot them. We want to surprise these fools and catch them all in their beds.

     We’ll wait here. After you do all that, come back and tell us what you found and we’ll plan our best move.

     Tony, unfortunately, wasn’t as smart as he believed himself to be.

     All video cameras did not have little red lights. Only the ones he’d encountered during the home and business burglaries he’d been on. The ones at the compound did in fact, have such lights until Scott disabled them.

     Lolo and Kevin left the others without comment or argument, and low crawled in the general direction of the fence. They knew it was out there somewhere, but in almost total darkness it was hard for them to see. Finally, forty yards away from it, they noticed that the bottom of their horizon was darker than the sky above it. They’d made it almost to the fence without incident.

     Then two things happened almost simultaneously.

     A pair of dogs inside the fence started barking furiously.

     And Hannah, sitting at the security console, yelled at the top of her lungs, “There are two men just outside the fence.”

     Suddenly pandemonium reigned on both sides of the fence. Inside the house, Sara ran from room to room, waking the children and prodding them to the basement in their pajamas and slippers. Once there, she told them to turn on the television and put a movie in, and try not to be afraid. The adults had everything under control upstairs, she said.

     Secretly, she prayed she wasn’t misleading them.

     Once down in the basement, she turned on the auxiliary surveillance console and sat in front of it.

     “Okay, Hannah,” she said into her radio. All the monitors are on and working. I’ve got control now.”

     Hannah scampered up the stairs and took her assigned place at the east window. Her job was to feed ammunition to Joyce, and to serve as a second shooter if here were too many targets for Joyce to handle.

     Hannah was an adequate shot with a handgun, but less proficient with a rifle. There was an extra 30.06 standing by, but the group had decided she’d use it only if she had to. They didn’t want to waste any ammunition in case it was a long siege.

     Tom and Linda were already in place on the north side of the house, in two different windows. Both had their AR-15s loaded and charged.

     Jordan and Zachary covered the south side of the house. It was the side of the house farthest away from Tom’s ranch, and therefore the least likely to come under assault.

     The west side of the house, which looked out over the compound, was unmanned. The plan was for Tom and Linda to shoot as many of the intruders coming over the wall as they could. If any of them made it into the compound, Tom would quickly move to the west windows and try to get a bead on them.

     Tom immediately noticed a major flaw in their security system. Their shooting positions weren’t high enough to see the men on the other side of the fence. The tall security fence, as great as it was, simply blocked their view. And they couldn’t take any shots if they couldn’t see their targets.

     “Sara, this is Tom. Can you read me okay?”

     “Loud and clear, Tom.”

     “Have you seen any others besides the two?”

     “Nope. Just the two that came out of the wheat field. They’re on the outside of the north side of the fence, heading toward the front of the house.”

     “Okay, you’re the only one who can see them, so keep talking to us.”

     “Okay. They’re nearing the corner of the fence now, getting ready to make the turn. One of them is holding something. I thought it was a rifle, but now I’m not so sure.”

     “Jordan, this is Tom. Any activity over there?”

     “No, sir. Nothing.”

     “Keep an eye out. If they have enough men, they’ll probably try to attack us from two sides.”

     “Got it.”

     Jordan was surprised. He’d always thought he would be terrified when this moment came. But he wasn’t shaking. He wasn’t even nervous. He felt excitement more than anything else.

     “Okay, Tom. They’ve gone around the side of the fence and are at the gate now. They’re shaking it, and appear to be trying to figure out how to get it open. I can get a clear view of what he’s carrying now. It’s not a rifle. It looks like a pair of bolt cutters.”

     Tom smiled. He knew that bolt cutters would do the marauders no good. All of the gates were padlocked from the inside.

     “Okay, they’re moving on now. They’re trying the front door and trying to look into the front windows.”

     “You’re doing fine, Sara. Keep it up. You’re a big help.”

-46-

     Back at the trench, Tony was fit to be tied.

     “Where the hell did the dogs come from?” he demanded of no one in particular. During their first visit there had been no barking dogs. This was something he hadn’t counted on. And he’d been dog bit before. He had no desire to go over a wall blind into the jaws of a pack of pit bulls.

     In fact, on the night they’d peeked over the wall before, Duke and Duchess had been in the house, laying on the floor together in the den. Their pups, Prince and Princess, were in Hannah’s room playing tug of war with an old chew toy, much to Rachel’s amusement.

     Moving them outside to help guard the compound had been Linda’s idea.

     “As long as it’s not too cold, let’s put them out there two by two. Switch them out every night. They’ll sense an invasion before we can probably even see anything on camera. And if they don’t scare the intruders away, they’ll at least let us know they’re out there.”

     So they did just that. All of the dogs spent their days in the house. That first night, Duke and Duchess were left outside. Duchess sat on the back porch most of the night, whimpering. She thought she’d done something wrong.

     The next night Prince and Princess pulled guard duty. And the dog teams switched off every night thereafter.

     By the fourth night, Tom had provided a little bit of comfort, by finishing up a large doghouse. In the back of the doghouse was a small space heater that was turned on each night and allowed to run through the night. Most of the heat went right out the doghouse door, of course, but when the dogs weren’t investigating strange noises they were able to lay in front of it to keep warm.

     “Okay, they’ve given up on getting in the house, and they’re working their way along the east side of the fence.”

     Then five minutes later, “They’ve turned the corner and are working their way along the south side. I think they’re going to go all the way around looking for a way in.”

     Sara had figured out their strategy, but by that time it was pretty apparent to Tom and the others upstairs.

     Tony was getting anxious, pacing back and forth not far from the trench. He knew there hadn’t been any trouble, since he’d heard no gunshots. But surely the barking dogs had awakened the residents. Even if Lolo and Kevin were able to cut open the gate, their invasion would be a lot tougher now.

     Half an hour later, Sara made her final update.

     “Okay, they’re back where they started now. They’re huddled at the north fence talking.”

     Tom was speaking directly to Linda, but everyone in the house could hear his words.

     “Okay, sweetheart. We’ve talked about this. You know what we need to do, right?”

     “Yes. I know.”

     “Just tell yourself you’re doing it for the children. You know damn well they’ll be back, and in greater force. And they’ll come back shooting next time.”

     “I know. I’m ready.”

     Everyone knew what they were talking about. They’d discussed it several times. Tom finally convinced Linda and Joyce that it was a mistake to let the intruders leave the night they peeked over the wall.

     He told them that they were at war now. In war you have to take advantage of the enemy’s mistakes to cull their numbers. Wars were really just battles of attrition. They had to take out the enemy before they themselves were taken out.

     The women knew that now.

     They didn’t like it. But they knew what had to be done.

     Sara was suddenly back on the radio.

     “Okay, they’re leaving the fence now. They are working their way back toward the wheat field. Back toward where they came from.”

     At that point, Tom took over.

     “Okay, sweetheart. Let me know when they come into view.”

     Ten seconds later, “Okay. I can see them both.”

     “I’ve got the one on the left. You take the one on the right. They’re moving slow, so lead them just a hair but not too much. Let me know when you’re sighted in.”

     The rest of the house braced themselves for what they knew was coming.

     “Okay, Tom. I’m ready.”

     “Okay, take a deep breath and slowly let it out. Pad of your finger on the trigger. On my count… three, two… one… fire.”

     The sound of almost simultaneous shots ringing through the house was deafening. Much louder than Linda thought it would be. For a brief instant, she forgot what she’d just done and her concern shifted to her children. She hoped they’d remembered to cover their ears.

     Through her night scope she saw the two figures, laying on the ground. One of them appeared to be moving.

     Lolo had gone down instantly, Tom’s bullet clean through the heart. He’d never heard or felt a thing, and he never would again, since he was dead before his face hit the dirt.

     Linda’s aim was off just a bit, but Tom couldn’t blame her. Under the circumstances, it was extremely hard for her to pull that trigger. He was proud of her.

     Kevin squirmed on the ground, still dazed and trying to figure out what hit him. The bullet missed his heart by half an inch but tore through his left lung and took some of a rib bone with it when it exited the front of his body.

     Kevin didn’t know he was dying. He just knew he was in an enormous amount of pain and couldn’t catch his breath. It never occurred to him that his final breath was only a few seconds away.

     Tom came back on the radio with a terse command.

     “Cover your ears again.”

     Tom’s second shot was as clean as the first. Kevin’s face went right into the dirt and he would never move again.

     Tony was unsure of what happened, and equally unsure of his next move. For a few seconds he thought he heard someone moaning, and he called out “Kevin, what’s happening?”

     Then the third shot came. And the moaning instantly stopped.

     He waited another thirty seconds. Nothing. By then he knew his men were gone. If they were under fire, they had plenty of time to either return fire or make it back across the field by now.

     They weren’t coming.

     They were dead.

     He felt no sadness or remorse. He simply cursed his own bad luck under his breath.

     He told the others to head out. They were done for the night.

     But they’d be back.

-47-

    Tony and his gang stopped at the darkened ranch house just long enough to regroup.

     One of the new men had the nerve to challenge Tony and was quickly put in his place.

     “Hey, man! That was Lolo! He was one of us! Shouldn’t we go back after him? He might still be alive.”

     “Are you a special kind of stupid, or what? If he was alive he’d have run across that field. And if he’s shot so damn bad he can’t run, then what in hell are we gonna do for him? Do you know how to do surgery, fool?

     “But if you want to go get him so damn bad, then go. I won’t stop you.”

     Tony suddenly grabbed the man by the shirt collar and pinned him up against the side of the ranch house. Every bit of Tony’s fury at the failed operation was now directed at this one man.

     “But I’ll tell you what, you son of a bitch. If you ever question my decisions again you’ll join Lolo in hell. Do you understand?”

     The man meekly nodded his head yes as best he could with Tony’s fist in his throat.

     Tony released him, and as the man tried to catch his breath Tony added, “I hope like hell you understand. Because that’s the only warning you’re gonna get.”

     He looked around to the others, gathered around in a tight circle in the moonlight.

     “Anybody else got any comments to make?”

     No one did.

     “Okay, we’re backing off for now. We’ll go back and lick our wounds. We’ll find two more men, and when we come back we’ll have a better plan. And we’ll come back in the daylight, when we can see.”

     In the compound, Linda was beside herself and Joyce was trying her best to comfort her.

     Joyce sat next to her on the couch and held her in her arms, rocking back and forth. Jordan looked on at his mother’s state, wanting to help but not knowing how.

     “I killed a human being. How could I have done that?”

     Tom tried his best to take the blame from off her shoulders.

     “No, honey. You just slowed him down. I took his life, as well as the other one. I’m the one who will answer for it to St. Peter someday. And my conscience is clear. Yours should be too. You did what you had to do to protect your family. You should feel proud, not guilty.”

     “Tom, do you think they’ll come back?”

     “I don’t know, Sugar. It depends on what kind of men they are. We sent them a very strong message. If they have any intelligence at all, they’ll get the message and go find an easier target.

     “But if we have the only beef and pork left alive in the area, they may see us as their only option. If they want it bad enough, they may see a few more dead men as an acceptable price to pay.

     “So, I just don’t know. The next move is up to them. We’ll pray they don’t take it. But we’ll be ready if they do.”

     Joyce said, “Scott and John are due to call in this morning. We have to decide whether or not to tell them what’s happened.”

     Hannah looked puzzled.

     “Why would we keep it a secret?”

     “I know Scott. His first impulse would be to run to help. John’s might be as well. And what will they do when they get here? Scott can’t even come into the compound without endangering the baby and maybe others too. They’d be stuck on the outside, and would be of limited help. John could come in, but what if he got caught out in the open field between their men here and their men at Tom’s?”

     Hannah paused to think.

     Tom said, “I think she’s right. And Scott and John have enough on their plate to deal with now, without having to worry about us. They’ve been here twice and gone away empty handed. I think there’s at least an even chance they won’t be back. If Scott finds out what happened, he’ll be up here, and the baby could pay a very heavy price. I say we don’t tell them. Not just yet.”

     Hannah was unconvinced. She looked to Linda for her opinion, but Linda was in a daze.

     “Okay. I know in my heart that John could help, but I’ll admit I don’t like the possibility of him getting caught out there in the open. I won’t tell him.”

     Joyce looked at Tom and asked, “Now what?”

     Tom keyed his microphone and said, “Sara, is there any activity out there yet?”

     “No, none.”

     Then he turned back to the others.

     “At first light, I’ll go out to the field in the Bobcat. I want to see how they made the breach, and see if there’s anything I can do to patch the hole.

     “I also want to check our trench, to see if there are any more dead or wounded in it.

     “I’ll check those two men to make sure they’re dead. If they’re still alive and in pain, I’ll take away their pain. Then I’ll bring them back into the compound and bury them. Their souls may be in hell, but the Christian thing to do is to give their bodies a proper burial.”

     “Do you think it’s safe to go out there?”

     “That’s why I’m taking the Bobcat. Its body is made of half inch plate steel. If I need to I can take cover behind it. I also want two of you in the north windows when I go out. If I come under fire I want both of you to return fire, while I make my escape.”

     “What if someone is in the trench, and they’re still alive? You wouldn’t shoot them in cold blood, would you?”

     “If he’s armed and resists, I will shoot him dead. If he’s unarmed and helpless, I’ll try to deal with him. If he’ll let me get him out without putting up a fight, I’ll get him here and we’ll try to treat him the best we can. We can tie him to the bed in my hooch outside and treat him there.”

     Jordan said, “I’m coming with you, Tom. That’s too much to handle.”

     “No, you’re not, my young friend. For a couple of reasons. If I get shot, they’re going to need you here. And if we both get shot, they don’t have anybody strong enough to drag us to safety. You’re a good shot. You’ll do me more good at the window, providing cover fire for me.”

     He looked at Joyce.

     “If something happens to me out there, you’ve lost yourselves a good shot. I’ll try to avoid that as much as I can. But if it does happen, it changes things. Tell John to get up here with reinforcements, but to leave Scott behind. It’ll destroy him, but it’s safer for little Chris that way.”

-48-

     Tom was able to retrieve the bodies without incident, and he buried them both in a single grave, one atop the other, in the cattle pasture at the back of the compound.

     He even said a brief prayer over them, before commenting, “You weren’t much in life, but you can do something worthwhile in death. You can be good fertilizer, and make the grass grow for these cattle.”

     Then he realized he was being disrespectful of the dead and looked skyward.

     “Sorry, Lord.”

     Jordan and Joyce stood ready to lay down cover fire for Tom had he come under attack. But nothing happened that morning. Tony and his band of hoodlums were back in Junction, somehow blaming the people in the compound for their ills. And vowing revenge.

     But the revenge wouldn’t come on this day. They had to replace their lost members, and possibly beef up their crew a little. Tony was opposed to this in principle. Additional fighters would mean the booty would have to be split more ways. And he wanted the compound to be his and his alone. He didn’t want any other alpha males to challenge his right to it.

     Tony also had to do some damage control. They’d lost two of their men, and hadn’t taken out any of the occupants of the compound. That didn’t enhance Tony’s reputation as a leader of men, and the men were starting to doubt the abilities of their captain.

     Mere words would do little to win their confidence back. He understood that he’d have to make bold moves in the future to keep the men from organizing a mutiny and leaving him out in the cold.

     Part of his efforts to win back their confidence was to show them he wasn’t shaken. That he wasn’t afraid to go back and try again. And that this time he was willing to make some bold adjustments.

     “Okay, since they never made it back, we don’t know what happened. Maybe they walked up on a couple of sentries. Maybe they cut the lock on a gate and then disobeyed my orders not to go in. Maybe there were snipers on the rooftop or in the trees.

     “Whatever it was, we’re changing tactics. We’ll give them two or three days to get complacent. They’ll think they scared us off, and then we’ll hit them hard.

     “We’ll go back in the daytime this time. If they think we’re nighttime raiders, we’ll catch them off guard.

     “And finally, I’m no longer gonna trust a couple of chumps like Lolo and Kevin to go on a mission without screwing it up. We’re gonna let ‘em get lazy. Then we’re gonna hit ‘em hard, and fast, and I’ll be leading the charge. All you guys have to do is follow my lead.”

     His men nodded their heads in enthused agreement. Tony wasn’t sure, though, whether he’d regained their confidence. Maybe they just liked the idea of him being in front to take the first bullet.

     In any event, they had their plan. Now all they needed was some more men.

     Inside the house, the children were warned ahead of time not to mention what happened the previous night to John or Scott. They didn’t quite understand why. From their point of view in the basement, it was a great adventure and a story worth telling. Hannah’s girls didn’t know anyone had died. If they had, they wouldn’t have been so enthused.

     Despite their being frazzled, Jordan, Zachary and Hannah kept their composure and their tongues. They had a pleasant conversation with the men back in San Antonio, and their secret remained unstated. Scott and John signed off not having a clue that their loved ones had come very close to being murdered, or worse.

    The rest of the day was tense. Linda stayed in bed most of the day. Joyce and Hannah were in and out to see her a couple of times, as were her boys.

     None of them could find the words to comfort her. They finally decided that Tom was the only one who could keep her from sinking into depression.

     And he was trying his best. After he finished burying Lolo and Kevin, he locked himself in the room and held her as she cried for almost an hour.

     “What I did violated everything I’ve always stood for. The Bible. The law. The example I’ve always tried to set for my children. I’ve told them, in essence, that it’s okay to kill others if you think they might do harm to you.

     “I didn’t even see any weapons on them, Tom. Bolt cutters. That’s it. What if they meant us no harm? What if they were just homeless and hungry and looking for food?

     “Hungry people don’t ignore signs that threaten them with death if they trespass. Hungry people don’t go through so much trouble breaking into a place when there are hundreds of other homes in the area. And they were armed. I took side arms and ammo off of both of them. They’re downstairs, and you can see them when you go down.

     “The fact is, these men were scouting the area for an assault. I can see it clearly even if you can’t. Yes, we could have let them go. And then when the assault came they would have been two men stronger.

     “Like it or not, we are in an undeclared war. You’re still a mother and a compassionate woman. But you’re also a combatant now. It is your responsibility now to protect your loved ones from harm. And sometimes you may have to do ugly things.

     “What we did was a preemptive strike. We reduced the size of their force so they’ll be weaker when the attack comes. It was a common sense move, and one you’ll do again if the same opportunity presents itself. Because in the end, you love your sons more than you feel sympathy for strangers. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of.”

     “But…”

     He put a finger on her lips to shush her.

     “Besides, and this is important… it wasn’t you that killed him. You’re a great shot. I know that. That’s why I wanted you in the other north side window. But your conscience caused you to twitch just a hair. I saw the body, sweetheart. Your bullet missed his heart. It went through his lung. It was painful, yes, and serious, yes. But if his gang wanted to save him they could have.

     “Hell, we could have saved him. I could have loaded him into my old Ford, or on a Gator, and hauled ass with him down to San Antonio.

     “I made the decision not to do that. Not you. I did. I had that option, but I chose to put a second bullet in his heart instead. So you did not kill him. I know it, you know it, and God knows it. And I’m going to tell everyone when I walk out of here so they know it too.

     “So you’re saying I screwed up?”

     “No. I’m saying that it was a very tough choice for you to make, and a difficult shot. And that I know you were struggling with it. I know the next time the same circumstance presents itself you’ll struggle again. But again, you’ll do what has to be done.”

     “Even if it means killing another human being?”

     He kissed her on the forehead and rocked her gently back and forth, like a babe in his arms.

     “Did you know that despite their bad reputation, grizzly bears very rarely attack humans?”

     She couldn’t help but chuckle.

     “How in heck did we get on grizzly bears?”

     He ignored the question and went on.

     “Male grizzly bears almost never attack man. Almost all grizzly attacks are from females. And they almost never attack unless their cubs are in danger. Or the mama grizzly perceives them to be in danger. Did you know that?”

     “So now you’re calling me an old bear.”

     Now it was his turn to smile.

     “If the shoe fits.”

     She feigned a look of shock.

     “What I’m saying is that a mama grizzly is relatively docile and afraid of humans until someone threatens her loved ones. In a way, you’re the same. I know in my heart and my soul that you will do whatever you need to do to keep anyone from harming your sons. That doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with it. It just means you’ll do what you have to do and then struggle with it afterwards.”

     “Thank you, Tom. I so love you.”

     He smiled.

     “I so love you too. Are you ready to come out of hibernation now, mama grizzly?”

     “Give me a little longer. But tell everybody out there I’m okay.”

     “Okay, sure thing.”

     He turned to leave, but she stopped him.

     “Tom?”

     “Yes, dear.”

     “You’re not a doctor, or a medical examiner. How do you know it wasn’t my shot that went through his heart instead of yours?”

     “Because the clothing around the lung shot was very bloody. The heart was still pumping after the lung shot. The shot through the heart was just a hole. It tore the heart up so it couldn’t pump anymore.

     “Also, remember that you saw him moving after the first shot. The shot through the heart was the kill shot. He died instantly. From my shot, not yours.”

-49-

     The second day after the shooting was a little easier on Linda. She seemed to accept her new role as a protector of the compound. Tom opened his mouth to the others about the “Mama Grizzly” analogy, and she suddenly acquired a new nickname.

     And Joyce couldn’t swear to it, and would certainly never mention it, but it seemed to her that the incident hardened Linda just a bit.

     Everyone in the compound was on edge. The fortifications went on. Jordan and Zachary emptied out the extra storage shed and dismantled it. They carried the sheets of plywood into the house to help strengthen the walls, and gave the two by four studs to Hannah and Rachel for more booby traps.

     No one talked much, but Tom got the sense they were all praying that the assault was over. That the men who came in the night had suddenly decided it wasn’t worth their effort and had gone elsewhere to conduct their evil deeds.

     Or that they’d suddenly found Jesus after the loss of their friends, and decided to change their ways.

     And indeed, that’s what everyone was hoping for.

     But only the naivety of the youngest in the group really believed it to be.

     Everyone else assumed that nightfall would bring with it another attack.

     So they did what they could to prepare.

     Joyce told the boys to save her one sheet of plywood, and to put it in the workshop. She emerged an hour later with several pieces of wood, thirty inches long and ten inches wide. She carried them upstairs, to the shooting windows, and used screws to fasten each one at the bottom of the windows.

     No one could figure out what they were for, but no one wanted to ask the question.

     Finally, Sara’s curiosity got the best of her.

     “I had a bad dream last night,” Joyce explained. “I dreamed that the men outside grew so desperate that they threw Molotov cocktails through the windows to burn us out. I dreamed that the house was on fire and we had no way to put it out so we all had to run outside. And they shot us all down as we came out the doors.”

     “And you think this will prevent that?”

     “I think so. If they throw one, the four sheets of plywood will keep it from coming into the house, but it might get stuck on the window sill and set the plywood ablaze. I’ve attached these at an angle just inside the window to prevent that. After they come through the window and bounce against the plywood, they should hit this and roll out the window again. They’ll still burn at the base of the house, but they won’t catch the brick on fire.”

     “Wow, that’s pretty ingenious.”

     “Thank you. I can get creative when I’m pissed off. I still have to do the downstairs. Would you like to help?”

     “Sure. Chris will be laying down for a nap in a little while. I’ll help you until he wakes back up again.”

     Tom parked vehicles against all of the compound’s gates, to prevent the raiders from trying to force their way through with battering rams. And from that moment on, every night all four of the labs would roam freely around the property. Two on the inside of the fence and two on the outside.

     Even old Blue, Tom’s old hunting dog, would be let outside during the daytime when the weather was warm enough. Blue was up in years, although Tom couldn’t remember exactly how old he was.

     “He loves to be outside, and he can bark better than any of them. And if he could speak I think he’d offer to help. So we’ll keep the labs in the house during the day so they can pull night duty. Old Blue can let us know if there’s trouble during the day.”

     The whole group slept fitfully that night. Everyone was sure an attack was coming.

     But by daybreak they’d pretty much convinced themselves the siege was over.

     “Looks like God has answered our prayers,” Sara said.

     Tom swallowed a mouthful of pancakes and said, “Let’s hope so. But let’s not let our guard down just yet.”

     Hannah had insisted on making breakfast for all of them.

     “It’s my grandmother’s recipe. The fluffiest pancakes you ever had, with thin sliced strawberries in the batter. These pancakes will be so light and fluffy, they’ll float off your plate if you don’t watch them close. They’ll go right up to the ceiling, and you’ll have to get a ladder to get them down.”

     Rachel rolled her eyes and asked Hannah, “Exaggerate much, Mom?”

     “Nope.” She giggled. “Well, maybe just a little.”

     Jordan called from the security console.

     “Mom, it’s almost eight o’clock. Are you okay to relieve me? I can pull your shift too if you want me to.”

     “That’s sweet of you, dear. But I’m much better today. I know I was a mess yesterday, but it’s behind me now. Let me finish my breakfast and I’ll be right there.”

     Jordan watched the monitors closely. There was absolutely nothing going on outside that he could see. He knew it was too early to declare victory, but he was breathing easier now. It looked like the marauders had decided they’d had enough.

     In San Antonio, the band of four brothers were waking up from a night of cards and whisky. It was becoming a routine thing with them on Friday nights. None of them had to work on Saturday and it was the only chance they had each week to cut back, have some fun, and unwind.

     That would have been good enough, but the chance to sleep late on Saturday mornings was the icing on the cake.

     John stumbled into the dining room, slightly hung over from the row of five shots Scott had dared him to down one after another the night before.

     “What? No coffee? What kind of people are you, to not make coffee when you get up? You heathens!”

     “Well, listen to King John, over there. I’m so sorry we’ve fallen down on the job, your highness. We’ll try to do better in the future, if you wouldn’t mind kissing my big ole butt.”

     “You had one thing… just one thing,” John nagged. “All you had to do was make coffee when you got up. And could the three of you handle that? Noooooooo…”

     “Oh, shut up, you big baby. You know we prefer your coffee. And you brag about how much better yours is than ours. So why are you gonna whine when we finally concede that yours is better and wait for it? Nobody wants to drink sewer water when grade A coffee is right around the corner.”

     “Damn right!”

     John put a new filter in the Mr. Coffee and filled it with his top secret blend of coffees. The truth was, everybody in the house knew his recipe. It was just two scoops of Folgers dark roast and a scoop of Hill Brothers hazelnut. Any of them could have made the same recipe, but they liked having John do it for them. Like most men, they only did things when they had to.

     “Can one of you at least go crank up the generator?”

     Robbie made a big show of crawling off the couch and slowly making his way to the garage. He had a sensitive brain, he liked to say. That’s why he always had the worst hangover of the bunch.

     “Hurry up, Robbie. You look like my Grandma.”

     “Your Grandma would be lucky to be as good looking as I am. And if she was, you wouldn’t be quite as ugly as you are today.”

     It was a pretty good comeback for a man whose head was pounding like a bass drum.

     “You know, John, when Hannah comes back home you’re gonna miss all that I do for you. You’ll be begging me to come back, I swear.”

     “Shoot. I know better than that. You won’t leave until I get Randy and Scott over here to help me shove you out the door.”

     Randy said, “Hey Robbie, you still want to get a place together when Hannah comes back and we have to move out?”

     “Yeah, sure. But don’t be thinking I’m gonna put out for you just because these guys aren’t around.”

    “Trust me, you’re not my type.

     “It would be nice, though, if you wore a skirt and high heels occasionally, just so I can remember what a woman looks like.”

     “Uh, no. Not happening. You can just do what I do. Come over and visit John and Hannah. Hannah’s gorgeous. John thinks I come over to visit him because we’re friends. The truth is I just come over to check out Hannah ‘cause she’s hot.”

     John yelled from the kitchen, “I heard that!”

     “Well, thank God for that. Now I don’t have to keep it a secret anymore. Hey, Scott, since the generator’s running anyway, why don’t you see if you can raise your people up north? Ask Hannah if she wants to leave John and run away with me instead.”

     John laughed.

     “Sorry, Robbie. My Hannah prefers men.”

     Scott laughed out loud, then regretted it when it made his head hurt.

     “Oh, my God,” he said, but never finished the sentence.

     Robbie asked, “What?”

     “You suggested calling on the radio while the generator was running. I think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

     “Don’t compliment him, Scott. He might get the idea he can do this thinking thing on a regular basis. That would be bad for all of us.”

     Scott sat down in front of the ham radio and turned it on.

     “Joyce… Linda… whoever’s on duty, this is Scott. Come in.”

     “Hi, Scott. This is Linda. How’s stuff and things there?”

     “Stuff is okay. Things are a bit under the weather. How about on your end?”

     “Everybody’s well here. Who do you want to talk to first?”

     “How about Zachary? Our conversation got cut short last time when our generator cut out.”

     “Okay, he’s right here.”

     “Hi, Dad. How are you?”

     “I’m fine, son. How’s the reading coming?”

     “Oh, man… I get so tired of reading about biology.”

     “I know, son. But since we have the books anyway you might as well make use of them. An education is something that’ll always come in handy.”

     “I know, Dad. It’s just that…”

     Zachary stopped talking momentarily, and Scott thought he’d lost the signal.

     But Zachary merely got distracted, his finger still on the microphone key.

     And simultaneously, Scott heard several things come over the radio’s speakers.

     He heard Joyce yelling, “Oh, my God! We’re being attacked!”

     He heard Linda say, “They’re coming in through the corn field. Sarah, get the kids to the basement.”

     And, most ominously, he heard the sound of automatic gunfire, just before Zachary released the microphone key.

     Then, nothing but dead air.

     The war had begun.   

Thank you for reading

RISE FROM THE ASHES

THE REBIRTH OF SAN ANTONIO

Please enjoy this preview of the next installment in the series,

COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, BOOK 4

AN UNDECLARED WAR

     The group had planned for a lot of things when they built the compound. They’d provided for electrical power from more than one source. They’d provided for multiple sources of food to nourish them, and clean water to sustain them.

     The one thing they didn’t plan for was the need to bury any of their own.

     Perhaps subconsciously they just didn’t want to think about the possibility. Or maybe it was just an oversight. The one thing for sure was that everyone was hurting.

     It just wasn’t supposed to be this way.

     Tom said nothing as he dug the grave in the back corner of the compound. It was just his way.

     He’d always done his mourning in silence. When he lost his father, as a teenager. Then a few years later when his mother gave up and passed on as well. In both cases, Tom retreated within himself and sobbed tears that only he could hear. Tom also lost a brother to the ravages of war in Vietnam. He attended a funeral service without shedding a single tear, or saying a single word. When it was over, he walked away and never looked back. He’d never been to his brother’s grave since.

     It was a peculiar way of grieving, but it was what it was. It was just his way.

     The body was wrapped in pure white linen sheets and gently laid on the living room couch. The others gathered around, sometimes one at a time, and sometimes in small groups, weeping and asking why.

     They had no answers.

     Halfway through the grave digging detail, Jordan appeared at the top of the hole and called down to Tom.

     “I’ll take over now, Tom, if you’ll build a casket. You’re better than I am at that sort of thing.

     “I’ll dig the other grave too when I’m done. I got a lot more sleep than you did."

     Tom looked up at Jordan and it occurred to him that this would be a fine man. Was in fact already turning into one. And he admired Jordan for putting his own grief aside to help do the distasteful things that no one wanted to do, but which had to be done.

     So Tom climbed out of the hole and shared a brief hug, but nary a word, with the man-child. He handed him the shovel and plodded off to the workshop.

     The casket was nothing remarkable, made of mere plywood over a two by four frame. He’d stained it to give it some color, and used a soldering iron to burn a simple cross on the lid. All in all, it was a pitiful tribute to honor such a magnificent life. But it would have to do.

     The finished product, exactly six and a half feet long and thirty inches wide, would fit snugly into the grave. God’s earth itself would hug the soul as the body very slowly turned to dust.

     Hannah searched through the computer files that Joyce and Linda had saved from the internet before the world went black, until she found what she was searching for. A file full of old church hymns.

     She printed out several copies of Amazing Grace and Shall We Gather at the River, and the group sang the hymns together at the graveside ceremony. All except for Hannah, who stood watch at the monitors in case the evil came back to do more damage.

     In the end, it was a fitting, if not fancy, tribute to a wonderful human being. One the group would miss horribly.

     But life marches on. As she stood at the graveside trying her best to suppress her tears, young Sara held her sleeping baby, hoping he wouldn’t wake up and disrupt the tender moment.

     And Sara couldn’t help but wonder how many more of their own they would bury before the world became a safe place again. Before man stopped thinking he had the right to take what belonged to others, at the end of a gun.

COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, BOOK 4

AN UNDECLARED WAR

will be available on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers in August 2014.

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If you enjoyed

RISE FROM THE ASHES

THE REBIRTH OF SAN ANTONIO

You might also enjoy

FINAL DAWN

Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

*************************

     What would you do if you finally found the love of your life, and were making plans to spend eternity together - and then found out that eternity was only two years? Mark is a romantic and carefree young engineer, and a bit of a cornball. His beloved Hannah is a beautiful scientist. Pragmatic, intelligent and analytical, she longs for the family she never had, and a change from her horrific childhood. Mark offers that change, and her life is finally complete.

     Then Hannah discovers that mankind is doomed. Suddenly their lives become a mad scramble, to find a way to save themselves and everyone they love.

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An excerpt from “Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon”…

    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 finished the breaker box tie in just before losing his daylight. He’d been working in an empty house for days, all alone in his thoughts. He hated jobs like this. No one to talk to, no other voices to listen to, other than the ones in his head. The house was only about eighty percent complete. Not far enough along yet to have power.

     The electricians were supposed to button everything up by the end of the week. And yes, he could have waited until then to start installing the security system. But he had several other jobs going on at once, and he was trying to maintain his good reputation for coming in on time. So while most people would have taken Sunday off to watch the ball game and relax, he was here instead installing security cameras.

     He’d come back on Saturday and check all the cameras to make sure they were working, then install the operations console.

     But for now, he’d done everything he could do without electricity. He loaded his tools back into his Explorer and headed home. Enough is enough.

     Mark picked up his cell and called Hannah.

     “Hey, Babe. I’m on my way. Is the game still on?”

     “Hi, honey,” she said. “No, it’s over, but you’ll be proud of me. I recorded it for you so you can watch it when you get home. The Cowboys lost at the last second when Washington kicked a field goal.”

     Mark winced and bit his lip. He resisted the urge to tell her it’s not so much fun watching a close game when you know how it turns out.

     Instead, he praised her. Because after all, she was the light of his life and the best thing that ever happened to him.

     “Well, thank you, my love.” He said. “Are you trying to out-sweet me again?”

     Hannah replied “Nope. Not trying. I won that contest a long time ago. I just wanted to show you how much I love you.”

     She went on. “If you want some beer you’ll have to stop and get some. Bryan came by to watch the game with you. I told him you were working and he asked if we had some beer. I told him to check the fridge. He took all we had and left. Said if we weren’t going to watch the game, then we wouldn’t need it. He said he’d take it to someone who had the game on.

     “How did you manage to grow up with him without ever killing him?”

     Mark laughed. “Because he was the baby of the family and Mom always took his side. If I had killed him she’d have grounded me for at least a week, maybe two. But I thought about it many times.”

     He made a mental note to find a way to get back at his brother. And yes, he’d have to stop for beer. The last hour of the job tonight, the only thing that kept him going was the thought of downing a cold Corona or two.

     Mark walked into the Exxon convenience store and waved at Joe Kenney, the assistant manager.

     Mark shouted across the store as he pulled a six-pack of Corona from the cooler. “Hey, Joe! All that I have are these, to remember you.”

     A couple of the other customers gave Mark the strangest look. A “better stay away from this guy” kind of look.

     Joe yelled back from behind the counter, where he was inventorying cigarettes. “Jim Croce. Photographs and Memories.”

     They’d known each other since high school, where Joe was one of the coolest guys Mark knew. Joe knew everything about music from the good old days. The music from the 60s and 70s. Back when music was good, and you could understand the lyrics. And every other word wasn’t profane.

     They’d played this game almost as long as they’d been friends. Mark would find an obscure song lyric and try to stump Joe. But he seldom succeeded. Joe played five instruments, and had been in various garage bands since he was ten. Music was pretty much his life. At least when he wasn’t at Exxon counting cigarettes.

     The line was a lot longer than usual. A rolling marquee above the cash register said the Powerball jackpot was at $310 million. Mark let out a slow whistle. That was a good chunk of change.

     He seldom played the lottery himself, but Hannah did all the time. Poor sweet thing. She’d been stuck at home with the flu for the last week and hadn’t been able to get out. But he knew she’d have gotten herself a ticket if she hadn’t been sick.

     So as a last-second lark, he told the clerk to throw in a quick pick for the lottery, cash option, and paid two extra bucks. It was worth two dollars to make Hannah smile that beautiful smile. And it was the least he could do for her, for thinking enough to record the game for him.

     But Mark forgot to give her the ticket. Forgot to even take it into the house. He laid it on the passenger seat of his Explorer and it sailed down to the floorboard when a dog ran in front of him and he had to hit the brakes hard. And he pulled into the driveway, took his beer and watched the game, and never gave it another thought.

     On Thursday, Mark was doing a sales pitch to a banker who was worried because his neighbor three doors down had been a recent victim of a home invasion. The banker’s community was gated and a private security company made their rounds occasionally, but none of that had stopped the brazen thieves from posing as utility workers.

     In broad daylight, they knocked on his neighbor’s door, and flashed fake IDs to gain access to the back yard “to check the power lines.” From there, they cut the phone cable, kicked in the back door, and tied up the occupants before leisurely looting the place of all its valuables. They even stopped long enough to make themselves a sandwich before leaving.

     Thievery, it seems, works up one’s appetite.

     The banker decided he needed a better security system, and Mark was trying to convince him that he was the man for the job.

     Mark’s cell phone went off. A little bird whistling “I’ve Got Sunshine” told him he had a text message from Hannah. He hit the mute button and went on with his presentation.

     Half an hour later he’d sealed the deal and was returning to his Explorer when he remembered the text. It said “Call me ASAP.”

     Oops.

     But luckily Hannah wasn’t mad. She was way too excited.

     “Did you hear about Joe’s store?” she asked him.

     He answered with a bit of apprehension. “No. Did they get robbed again? Is he okay?”

     “Oh, yeah, I’d say so! I heard on the news that they sold the winning ticket to the Powerball drawing. Somebody won over two hundred million dollars after taxes. And it’s somebody that lives right here in San Angelo. Wouldn’t it be cool if it’s somebody we know?”

     “Baby, hold on a minute.”

     Mark put the phone down and took out his wallet. The ticket he had purchased on Sunday night wasn’t there. Crap! Did he leave it on the counter at the store? Did some cretin come up behind him and pick it up?

     He instinctively felt his pants pockets, even though he knew he wasn’t wearing the same jeans he had on Sunday night.

     Then, on the floorboard of the passenger side of his ride, he saw a lonely piece of paper. And he remembered that damn dog.

     He picked up the ticket, then the phone.

     “Honey, don’t freak out,” he said. “But I bought you a ticket on Sunday night and forgot to give it to you. Would you go on line and see what the winning numbers are and read them to me?”

     The next thirty seconds lasted twenty years.

     Hannah came back on the line and said “Okay, here goes. 13, 25, 26, 44, 57, and the Powerball is 18.”

     Mark’s chest actually started to hurt, and he felt faint. In his mind’s eye, he saw Redd Foxx playing Fred Sanford, holding his chest and saying “This is it. It’s the big one…”

     But Mark wasn’t having a heart attack. Mark was experiencing how it felt to find out that you were suddenly a multi-millionaire.

     Hannah didn’t believe him, of course. She thought he was playing one of his dumb practical jokes. She met him at the door as he walked in and presented her the ticket as a new father might present his first born to a hospital nursery visitor.

     “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t damage it or tear it or sneeze on it.”

     The next day was Friday, and Hannah insisted on getting up and going to work. Even though she only got an hour’s worth of sleep. Mark stayed behind in bed, telling her just to call in and say “Go to hell, you bastards. I’m rich!”

     But Hannah was a scientist and an honorable one at that. She was above doing such a thing. She’d wait until her boss pissed her off. Then she’d tell the bastards to go to hell.

     When they parted that morning, both of them were on cloud nine. They’d spent most of the night talking about all the great things they’d do with their new fortune. They laughed when they thought of sour old Reverend Samuels, and how he might actually crack a smile when they presented him with a tithe check for ten percent of their winnings.

     They talked about which European countries they’d visit first, and even considered buying their own Caribbean Island.

     Yes, when they parted that morning, neither had a care in the world.

     What a difference a day makes.