This Changes Everything

by Darrell Maloney

  “And what do you want?”

  The group at the SCC looked at one another, each face concerned.

  Given a hundred guesses as to how they expected Bryan to be greeted, they’d have been wrong one hundred times.

  -19-

  It was as though a very angry bear had been awakened from a long winter nap and was none too pleased about being disturbed.

  There was absolutely no reason anyone could think of for anyone at Eden to sound so openly hostile. They were, after all, all good friends. They’d helped one another prepare for the coming freeze. And as far as anyone in the Salt Mountain mine knew, there was no animosity between anyone.

  Yes, the people of Eden had been through a lot lately. They’d lost three of their own.

  But this open hostility was uncalled for.

  Bryan didn’t answer right away.

  He recognized the possibility the old prison had been overrun again; perhaps was under the control of very bad men once again.

  If that were the case, he had to be careful what information he gave away.

  If there was a chance another battle was imminent he couldn’t give away any details.

  Or let the bad guys know the people of Eden had friends on the outside who’d come to their rescue.

  “Do you think they’re under duress?” Mark asked Hannah.

  She didn’t answer. Not directly, anyway.

  Instead, she addressed Bryan.

  “Bryan, use their duress code. See if they respond.”

  Bryan answered the mysterious voice on the radio with his own question.

  “We’re looking for a friend of ours. His name is Marty Haskins. We heard he might have a semi-trailer full of beer stashed somewhere he might be willing to share with us.”

  One of the things Frank Woodard initiated at the mine, then adopted at Eden South, was a system of duress codes.

  It was a means of letting allies know, without risking one’s life by outright saying so, that their operation had been taken over by bad men.

  It was simple, really.

  If a truck had been hijacked on its way back to the mine or to the prison, the driver would mention the term “truckload of beer.”

  Such a term would indicate the driver was under duress, likely with a gun being held to the back of his head.

  Say a driver was flagged over by another motorist who appeared to be in distress. Perhaps a person changing a tire in a brutally cold environment.

  Perhaps the distressed driver pulled the trucker over to ask for help. He might say his jack was broken or his spare tire was also flat.

  Maybe the trucker would help, only to find he was lied to and betrayed.

  Maybe the driver in distress got the drop on the trucker and held him at gunpoint.

  Maybe he and his cohorts climbed into the trucker’s sleeper cab. Perhaps hid behind the curtain, holding a gun on the driver.

  Maybe their ultimate plan wasn’t to get help changing a flat tire. Maybe instead it was to gain access to the mine, or to the converted prison, so they could start a bloodbath, take over the facility, and keep it for their very own.

  In this particular case, Frank’s instructions to the driver were easy.

  Simply claim he was hauling back a truckload of beer to whoever was manning the entry gate.

  The person who was manning the gate would express no alarm. He or she would give no indication the bad guys might interpret as affirmation the gig was up.

  No, he or she would merely trap the rig between the inner and outer delivery gates.

  Then the rig would be surrounded by heavily armed good guys.

  The so called “duress code” had never been used in a real world situation.

  In this case though, should the gruff man on the other end make a comment confirming that the “load of beer” existed, the people in the mine would have immediately started planning a rescue mission.

  But that didn’t happen.

  The gruff voice said, “There ain’t no damn beer. We ain’t in no damn duress.”

  Now the people in the mine were even more confused.

  -20-

  Something in the mysterious voice finally registered.

  Not to Rachel, and certainly not to Bryan, but rather to Hannah.

  “I recognize that voice,” she whispered loudly. “That’s Al, the mayor.”

  Bryan went with Hannah’s hunch.

  “Mayor Al, is that you?”

  The other end went silent once again.

  “It is you, isn’t it, Mayor Al? What in hell is going on there?”

  The silence extended.

  They didn’t appear to be in trouble, yet they seemed to be avoiding answering the simplest of questions which would confirm that they were okay.

  It made absolutely no sense.

  On the other end, in Eden South, half a dozen people huddled around a rather portly man occupying chair space directly in front of the radio.

  Each of the half dozen had his or her own opinion on what the mayor should say next; how he should respond. And none were any too shy about sharing their opinions.

  “Al, you’ve got to acknowledge him before they rush over here with guns blazing.”

  “Careful, Al. It could be an imposter. I don’t recognize that voice. It could be someone fishing for intelligence.”

  “Don’t fall for their tricks, Mayor Al. We’ve already lost some good people. We can’t afford to lose any more.”

  On the mine end, still not having a clue what was going on, they tried a new tactic.

  Hannah stepped up and volunteered, “Let me give it a shot, Bryan.”

  Bryan was stupefied but wasn’t quite willing to go “John Wayne” on the tiny prison ninety three miles away from them.

  He backed away from the radio and Hannah took his place.

  “Eden South, this is Hannah Snyder. Can you give us some assurance you haven’t been overrun and are still safe? Over.”

  There it was. A calm voice of reason.

  And even more importantly, a voice everyone in Eden had spoken to many times in the past. A voice they all recognized.

  Mayor Al suddenly relaxed.

  “Hannah, this is Al. We copy your request but cannot answer.”

  Now Hannah was just as flummoxed as Bryan.

  “What do you mean, you cannot answer, Al?”

  “I just can’t, Hannah. I wish I could explain why, but Mar… but someone we both know would have my ass if I did.”

  Many would have stopped talking calmly to Al at that point and started yelling instead.

  Many would have told him he was a moron. They might have said he’d better start explaining and explaining promptly. That he was worrying a lot of people who cared about him and the others. And that he didn’t have to worry about Marty “having his ass.”

  That if he didn’t start making sense the people in Junction would insist on taking Al’s somewhat generous posterior, slicing it into pieces and dividing it evenly between them.

  Hannah, quite honestly, wanted to yell. She was fuming. But she also recognized that Al must have a reason for his odd behavior.

  She had to be calm to determine what that was.

  “Al, do you still have that cipher code sheet we gave you?”

  This time there was absolutely no hesitation, for Al wasn’t a stupid man.

  He knew instantly what she had planned.

  He reached into a file drawer on the raised platform-turned control center and took out a single sheet of paper.

  It was a simple list of cipher codes, with instructions written across the top:

  USE AS FEW WORDS AS POSSIBLE TO GET YOUR MEANING ACROSS. SPELL OUT YOUR CODED MESSAGE ONE LETTER AT A TIME. WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED, SAY SO.

  Al began the tedious task of spelling out a message one letter at a time.

  On the other end, in the mine, Hannah used an identical cipher sheet to translate his letters into words everyone around her could understand.

  It was ve
ry slow going for Al, who’d never used a cipher sheet to send out a coded message before.

  He had, however, used a cereal box decoder ring once when he was a very small boy. So he understood the concept.

  He spelled out in code:

  MARTY FORBIDS ANY USE OF NAMES OR PLACES ON RADIO. NEW SECURITY PROCEDURES.

  After he very painstakingly spelled out his message he said aloud, “Finished.”

  Hannah didn’t bother encrypting her return message.

  It was just ludicrous to bother.

  “Please tell Marty that number one, he’s an idiot and this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

  “And number two, when he figures out how in hell to communicate with somebody over the radio without using names or places, to please let us know.

  “Because we’d sure love to know how to do such a thing.”

  Marty had been watching from afar, mixed in as he was with the group of spectators watching the show on the security platform.

  He figured enough was enough and stepped forward.

  He took a seat next to Al and said sheepishly, “Maybe this wasn’t one of my best ideas after all.”

  The proverbial piece of sticky spaghetti lost its grip at that point and fell from the wall.

  -21-

  Marty took control of the microphone and admitted to Hannah on the other end, “Okay, Hannah. You’re right, I’m an idiot. No more restrictions on names and places. How are you guys?”

  Hannah said, “We’re pretty good, Marty, and you soon will be too. I’m gonna turn you back over to Rachel, since it was her idea to call you to begin with.”

  “Oh, goody. I’d much rather talk to Rachel than to you anyway,” he chided.

  But Hannah, as usual, insisted on having the last word.

  “Oh, shut up, you decrepit old turd. Here’s Rachel.”

  Rachel got on with unbridled excitement in her voice.

  “Hi Marty.”

  “Hello, sweetie. How you doin’?”

  “I’m doing very well, Marty. Have you guys been monitoring the outside temperatures lately?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It went above freezing yesterday. It made it up to thirty four degrees.”

  “What? You mean the thaw has begun already?”

  Rachel wisely scooted the microphone over to Hannah, so she could clarify things without getting anyone’s hopes up.

  “Don’t get too excited,” she told Marty. “It was statistically the hottest day of the year, and it only went above freezing for a couple of hours. Then it all froze again.

  “But yes, technically you can say the thaw has officially begun.”

  A buzz went through the crowd at Eden South.

  They knew the snow and ice would melt slowly over the next year or two.

  But they also knew something spectacular had started to happen.

  What took six and a half years during the previous freeze took less than a year this time.

  That meant in a year, two at the most, they’d be out and about planting gardens again.

  Their joy couldn’t be contained. Half the crowd was laughing and yelling, the other half was crying tears of happiness.

  And Marty forgot his security hits and misses just long enough to say what was felt by everybody.

  “Hallelujah and thank you God Almighty! This changes everything.”

  -22-

  In Plainview four hundred miles to the north there was no Security Control Center.

  There was no raised platform where men took turns working guard duty, keeping an eye on all things related to security.

  The Dykes never tried to develop a security plan, other than to strike hard and fast every time they sensed an assault.

  The sprawling warehouse was made of steel.

  As such it was inherently noisy.

  To break into the structure not only took a lot of effort; it also made a horrendous racket.

  And not only was it a very unforgiving structure, it was also exceedingly well built.

  One couldn’t merely crash a vehicle into one of its massive overhead doors, for they were constructed of thick sheet metal and were heavily reinforced.

  Oh, it had been tried.

  A couple of times, actually.

  The first time a light pickup was used. And while it left a huge dent, it didn’t come close to penetrating the interior of the building. It essentially bounced off the heavy door.

  The driver was none too smart and condemned himself to death.

  He didn’t wear his seatbelt although he knew a vicious crash was coming.

  The air bag deployed, but only slowed him down a bit as he crashed twice: first through the windshield and then into the heavy overhead door.

  Still, he survived.

  For a minute or so, anyway.

  He lay sprawled across the pickup’s crumpled hood, dazed and bleeding and wishing he’d taken up a different line of work.

  For thievery didn’t suit him well.

  Had he moved a bit faster, crawled off the hood and scampered into the parking lot, he probably would have lived to tell the tale. He’d have been around to fight another day, though probably not using the same method.

  But he was too dazed.

  Too slow.

  Too dumb to ponder what might be coming next.

  He was starting to regain his senses, about to crawl off the steaming and smoking pickup truck, when Paul and Jason went running through the distribution center in search of the source of the very loud crash they’d heard.

  They rounded the corner of the main aisle and saw the smashed door, two wheels visible in the two-inch gap now existing between the floor and the bottom of the door.

  They fired blindly, for that was all they could see, but shot in the general vicinity of where they figured the truck’s cab would be.

  Just in case there were men in the cab getting ready to back up and take another lick at the door.

  It turned out there was no one in the cab, but that didn’t matter much.

  The driver, now lying across the truck’s hood directly in front of the shattered windshield, did an adequate job of collecting their bullets.

  Another time, a pair of hapless and decidedly unlucky wannabe looters hot-wired a Jitsu forklift with the intent of ramming it through another overhead door.

  This adventure, like the incident with the pickup, didn’t end well for the looters.

  Forklifts do many things exceedingly well. They make the world of material handling infinitely easier.

  And Jitsu lifts… well, they’re among the best in the world and the lift of choice for countless companies.

  But they’re not made for punching holes in heavy steel overhead doors.

  The heavy piece of machinery did a great job in ripping two holes in the door, as each of its tines sliced through the door panels like a warm knife through a stick of butter.

  A man standing just inside the door would have been skewered like a shish-ka-bob.

  It would have ruined his whole day and every day after that as well.

  The driver of the lift had been a thief all his life.

  He knew how to hot-wire a car.

  But he’d never held an honest job in all his nineteen years.

  Had he worked for any length of time in a warehouse environment he might have known a bit about forklifts.

  Like, for example that because they were often operated in industrial or dusty conditions, they often inhaled more dust and dirt than their fuel filters could catch.

  And why it was therefore important never to let such vehicles run out of gasoline.

  To do so would allow the unfiltered dusty sludge in the bottom of the tank to make its way into the fuel lines and to choke out the vehicle.

  Had he been a bit smarter it might have occurred to him as well that gasoline degrades over time.

  And that the gas in this forklift’s tank might not work as well as it did when the lift was used on a daily
basis years before.

  It would have behooved the wannabe looter to at least add a bit more gasoline to the almost-empty tank before firing it up and expecting the forklift to run at full speed.

  It didn’t, he didn’t and it didn’t.

  To clarify, the old and tired gas in the tank didn’t work as well as it would if it was new; the looter didn’t make an effort to add more gas to the nearly empty tank; and the lift didn’t run at full speed.

  Just before it made contact with the door the fuel line clogged and the engine died.

  The heavy brick sitting on the gas petal couldn’t do anything to stop it from rolling to a stop.

  -23-

  The bright red Jitsu forklift had the momentum it needed for the lift’s tines to rip through the panel’s metal, but not enough “oomph” to send the forklift itself crashing through.

  The score was now officially

  OVERHEAD DOORS: 2

  HAPLESS WOULD-BE THIEVES: 0

  Luckily this time, the wannabe looter would survive.

  He scampered off into a snow-covered parking lot hearing gunfire and bullets ripped through the door and pinging off the forklift.

  But he was far enough away not to have suffered a scratch.

  It had been more than ten years since the Dykes brothers took over the sprawling Food World facility, and that was as close as they’d ever come in losing control of the place to outsiders.

  Bearing that in mind, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that they saw no need in a twenty-four hour security control center.

  They were, pretty much, comfy and cozy and confident they’d survive any future challenges.

  Since there was no security station, there was no one monitoring a ham radio night and day.

  No one to jump up and down and do a happy dance when learning the thaw had begun.

  All the Food World Distribution Center had was Frank and Josie.

  They were standing in the doorway looking out upon the winter wonderland outside, as they frequently did to cleanse their minds and their souls.

  This time, though, they were looking out with a sense of puzzlement.