A Perilous Journey

by Darrell Maloney

  “I know those people pretty well. I don’t see them refusing to take us in. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a possibility.”

  And that, of course, was before Eddie stowed away and inserted himself into the picture.

  There wasn’t anyone like Eddie in the mine. Some of the mine’s residents had met Tommy Stone, but most hadn’t.

  After Mark explained to them that Frank wanted to bring not only his wife, but also a grown man much like Tommy Stone, the group would debate Frank’s request. Some might object.

  But to Frank, it was an all or nothing package. They would not abandon Eddie in order to gain entry for themselves. They wouldn’t even think of it.

  “We’ll be back on the road before you make your decision,” Frank told Mark. “How about this… it may take a month, maybe a bit less. Maybe even a bit longer. But eventually we’ll pull up at your location in the same vehicle I left in. Your cameras will pick up the license plate so you’ll know it’s me.

  “The vehicle will look the same except it’ll have a snow plow blade attached to the front of it.

  “We’ll pull up at your location and I’ll step out and lay all our weapons in front of our vehicle. I’ll take off my wool cap and lower my collar so you can see my face.

  “And then we’ll wait. If the door opens we’ll come in and I’ll introduce you to everybody. If it doesn’t open we’ll go elsewhere. Fair enough?”

  “Frank, I don’t anticipate a problem, I really don’t. But thank you for allowing us to follow our constitution and letting all our folks have a say-so.”

  “Hey Mark, I don’t want to hold you up forever. Who else is around for me to say hello to before I get off? Is Hannah around so I can tell her I won’t be flirting with her anymore, since I’ve got my own sweet beauty now?”

  “No… I’m afraid she’s not here right now. There’s been a bit of an emergency.”

  “Really? What kind of emergency? Is she okay?”

  “Yes, she’s fine, as far as we know…”

  Frank was suddenly very concerned. Hannah was one of his very best friends in the mine.

  “What do you mean, as far as you know?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  And he did. When a good friend like Hannah’s welfare might be at stake, he had all the time in the world.

  -23-

  “Well, if I tell you what’s going on, I’ll have to speak in generalities.”

  “Of course, Mark. I understand.”

  “You remember Al? Marty’s friend?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Al’s had a medical emergency. Debbie’s pretty sure it’s appendicitis. And it’s something she can’t fix herself.”

  “Okay. I’m with you so far.”

  “She made the recommendation, and Marty agreed, to try to get Al to the big military hospital in San Antonio.”

  “Good. They’re one of the best hospitals in the country. I’ve been there myself.”

  “The problem was the snow. Marty got a snow plow and plowed a path to our front door.

  “Hannah and Brad and Debbie used that path to go pick up Al, while Marty got a head start on plowing his way to San Antonio.

  “It didn’t take our guys long to catch up with him.

  “But we lost radio contact with them hours ago. The reception on our two-ways is spotty and only forty miles or so under the best conditions.”

  “Do you think they made it okay?”

  “We sure hope so. We think they got there in the last couple of hours or so and just haven’t found a ham to call us on. Or that maybe they’re still tied up at the hospital getting Al admitted.

  “In any event, we expect them to contact us at any time.”

  “Okay. I’m sure you’re all praying you’ll hear from them soon. I’ll add my prayer to the mix as well. But Mark, I’ve got to ask a question…”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why did Hannah go? I mean, there are plenty of other guys who could’ve helped Brad with the driving.”

  “She insisted. She said she wants to kill two buzzards with one rock.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s how she says ‘kill two birds with one stone.’ She wants to testify on behalf of those two colonels who are being court-martialed. And if it’s too early for her to testify she wants to make a sworn deposition that it wasn’t their fault.”

  “Oh… okay. That makes sense.

  “One more thing, Mark. Again, speaking in general terms…”

  “Okay, Frank. Go ahead.”

  “If we show up there and are welcomed back into the fold, and if something happens to us, and if the package we’re bringing is still there and becomes a problem, there’s a Plan B.”

  “Okay. I’m still listening.”

  “If you’ll write down our frequency and hang onto it, there’s a mailman in Lubbock who will take the package off your hands.”

  Josie raised an eyebrow, having an idea what Frank was referring to but not understanding why.

  Mark said, “Read you loud and clear, Frank. Understand and will comply.”

  “I’ll get off now so I don’t step on Hannah’s call. Please tell everybody I said hello and give them my best. As I said, you can expect us to show up at your door in the next month or so.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, my friend. As I said, I don’t expect any problems.”

  “Ten-four. Signing off.”

  When Frank turned off the radio, a very exasperated Eddie said, “Wow! I thought you’d never get off!”

  Josie asked, “Eddie, are you okay?”

  “Yes. I just need to go to the bathroom real real bad.”

  “Well, you could have gone anytime, silly.”

  “I know. But I didn’t want to miss anything good,” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran toward Ronnie’s portable latrine.

  Josie looked at Frank, and both cracked a smile and shook their heads.

  Living with Eddie was an adventure which never ended.

  His departure gave the couple a chance to talk in private.

  Frank explained his reference to Tommy Stone, and how much he was like Eddie. He explained it was only fair to the people in the mine that they know what they were getting into if they welcomed Eddie into their midst.

  Josie understood and concurred.

  Frank also told her of his earlier conversation with Ronnie.

  Hearing of Ronnie’s offer brought tears to her eyes.

  And that concerned Eddie when he returned a few minutes later.

  Eddie instantly jumped to the wrong conclusion, as was his habit.

  “Josie, what’s wrong? Did somebody die? I hope nobody died. Did Mister Ronnie die? I sure hope not, on account of I really like Mister Ronnie and I don’t want him to die. Is that why he didn’t play on the radio when we did, on account of he couldn’t because he died? I sure…”

  Josie cut him off because… well, because she pretty much had to, or he’d have gone on forever.

  “No, Eddie. That’s not it at all. It’s just that Mister Ronnie did something for us that was very very nice. And sometimes when people do things that are very very nice, silly people like me just have to cry a little bit, that’s all.”

  “Well that is pretty silly, Josie, on account of that song you sing to me sometimes. The cry song. ‘Member, it goes… oh, I don’t ‘member. Do you ‘member it, on account of I don’t ‘member it.”

  She sang softly to him, “Oh, I don’t know why, oh why… I sometimes get sad, and cry…”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Even the song says you’re supposed to cry when you’re sad. So it’s pretty silly to cry when you’re happy, on account of…”

  This time Josie looked to Frank, who just shrugged.

  They seemed to agree not to stop him this time, instead just letting him ramble on and on until he rambled himself out.

  -24-

  Josie walked out of the room Ronnie had s
et up as a radio room.

  Actually, it wasn’t really a room, as much as it was a space in the corner of the open floor surrounded by boxes stacked head-high.

  But it might as well have been a room, for it served the same purpose. It allowed for separation from the rest of the tenth floor and provided for some degree of privacy.

  Frank and Eddie stayed behind in the tiny radio area while Josie went off in search of Ronnie.

  She found him on the other side of another head-high row of boxes, which more or less separated his sleeping area from his den.

  He was relaxing in a huge recliner. One which looked like it was made for a king. She imagined a couple of very strong men must have struggled to get it up ten flights of stairs. But she had no doubt they were well-compensated for their efforts.

  Ronnie was watching an old war movie on DVD on a television as massive as the recliner.

  He didn’t hear her approaching, as his hearing wasn’t what it once was.

  She crept up behind him and wrapped her arms around him in a big bear bug.

  He said, “Frank, if that’s you I’m going to shoot you dead.”

  She walked around and sat on the edge of a coffee table facing him.

  “It’s not Frank. It’s just me.”

  “Honey, I don’t know what I did to deserve that, but I hope you’ll tell me so I can do it a thousand more times.”

  “Frank told me you offered to take Eddie in and take care of him if anything should happen to us. And I’m sorry. As sweet as that is, you can only do it once. You can’t take it back and keep doing it over and over again.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to settle for the one time then. But you need to know that hug made my day. Heck, it made my whole year.”

  “Can I ask you why, Ronnie?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you take in a disabled man you only met a few hours ago?”

  “Frank didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “My son David was much like Eddie. He didn’t become that way at the hands of another, though. He was born that way.

  “Despite his disability he didn’t have an unkind bone in his body. He was the gentlest, the kindest, the finest human being I’ve ever known.

  “When Saris 7 struck I knew the world would become a much harsher place. I had sheltered David all his life to that point, you see. I protected him from the evils of the world. And I made arrangements with some good friends, more David’s age, to take care of him when I passed away.

  “I thought I’d planned for everything. In exchange for my friends taking care of David after I died, I agreed to leave them everything I owned. And it was a significant amount, because I’d saved for David’s future from when he was a very young boy.

  “Then, as I said, the meteorite hit.

  “Steven and Melissa, my friends I’d made the pact with, moved in here with David and me. I taught them the prepper business. I thought we were doing well.

  “Steve was the only one in his family who didn’t live in Chicago. He hated Chicago and left the day after he graduated from college. He moved here to meet Melissa, who he met on one of those internet dating sites, and they fell in love.

  “Steve thought about taking Melissa back to Chicago to ride out the freeze with his family. But travel was very difficult. He stayed in touch with his family on the ham, and they told him to stay here and take care of Melissa and they’d meet up after the thaw.

  “They said they were okay. That they were safe and had plenty of provisions, since some of them were preppers as well.

  “About three years into the first freeze Steve got on the ham to wish his mother a happy birthday. He got no answer.

  “For days he tried raising them and had no luck at all. Melissa and I told him everything was fine. That maybe a storm took out his family’s antenna or their radio was on the fritz or something.

  “Then he thought to contact a friend of his from college, another prepper who still lived in Chicago.

  “His friend did a welfare check on Steve’s family and found them all dead.

  “They were all assembled in the basement of the house Steve grew up in.

  “They’d killed all the children first, by suffocation. They were all dressed in their Sunday best and lined up side by side in the center of the room.

  “The adults all drank cyanide, then surrounded the children and held hands and prayed.

  “His friend knew they’d prayed their last minutes because all of them had Bibles in their laps, turned to the same passage.

  “Apparently they’d planned it for quite some time, but never told Steve because they knew he’d try to talk them out of it.

  “Steve asked if they’d run out of supplies or food and his friend told him no. There was enough food and fuel and provisions to last them years longer.

  “They were a lot more religious than Steve ever was. Steve left his church-going ways behind him when he left Chicago.

  “Apparently what they ran out of was more important than food or water or fuel.

  “Apparently they ran out of hope.”

  -25-

  “Steve took it hard, as you can imagine. He was devastated. Every person he’d ever loved, other than Melissa, was now gone by their own hands.

  “He knew he was the last of the blood line. Not long before Cupid 7, a doctor told Melissa she couldn’t bear children.

  “The Hastings name would die when Steve and Melissa did.

  “Steve went into a deep depression. Nothing we could do seemed to help.

  “Toward the end he and Melissa spent a lot of time alone, over there in the corner, whispering things David and I couldn’t hear.

  “I had a suspicion I knew what was coming, though both of them denied it.

  “One day I awoke and looked out the window and saw a commotion in the street but couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “Steve and Melissa were gone. They left behind a note saying they were sorry, and thanking us for everything. They said they loved us both and wished us well.

  “But that’s all it said. I hoped that they just left. Maybe to go to Chicago to pay respects to his family. I hoped they were still alive. That they didn’t do the same thing his family did.

  “One of the local officers… one of the few who could climb ten flights of stairs, he told me they climbed up to the roof early that morning, held hands and jumped off.”

  Then Ronnie, this tough ex-cop who Josie thought was every bit as rough and tough as her Frank, started sobbing.

  Between sobs he blubbered a few words at a time, continuing his story.

  “I’ll tell you what, Josie, I thought that was the end of the world. Steve and Melissa were the closest thing David and I had to family. I considered them my children. I told people I had three kids.

  “I was destroyed. I went into the same funk Steve had been in.

  “God help me, I even considered shooting David in the head as he slept and then eating the gun myself.

  “After several weeks I started getting better. After several months I was pretty much back to normal.

  “But I was in a major bind.

  “I knew I could die at any time. Men in my family never make it to seventy, and I was sixty one at the time.

  “I knew that David could not survive on his own once I died. I had to start training him how to live in a frozen world. I had to toughen him up so he could survive to the thaw if I didn’t. Because there was simply no one else I could trust to watch over him.”

  “I started taking him with me when I went places.

  “I had him start carrying unloaded weapons, so he’d get used to the feel of them and others would see he was armed. I thought maybe they’d think of him as less of a pushover if they got used to seeing him packing.

  “I took him out to the LPD’s training area west of town. To the shooting range. We expended a boatload of ammo, but I taught him how to shoot.”

  It was important he present an a
ir of independence. He needed to be seen out and about alone before Ronnie passed.

  The two started going out together on Ronnie’s barter missions. Ronnie introduced David to his barter and prepper friends.

  He even let David drive his four-wheel drive truck. Very slowly at first, then at the breakneck speed of twenty miles an hour.

  The first few times David went out on his own Ronnie was a wreck. He paced back and forth; he chain-smoked one stale cigarette after another.

  He said a prayer each time David left and another when he came back into view.

  “I started to convince myself I’d done it. I’d given him the tools he needed to survive.

  “Then one day I was standing at the window, looking down ten stories.

  “I saw my pickup pull up and park.

  “I saw David get out, and reach into the back to take out a box of… something. I can’t even remember now what it was.

  “And I saw him drop like a rock onto the icy street.

  “A fraction of a second later I heard the gunshot.

  “Man, I never ran so fast in my life, down those ten flights of stairs. I was asking God every step of the way to let him be okay. I could treat a flesh wound. I asked God to spare his vital organs.

  “By the time I made it outside they’d already stripped him of his weapons and ammo and disappeared.

  “There were witnesses, but they were no help. People on the street, they never see or hear anything. They just shrugged their shoulders and played stupid. The only thing I could get out of them was that there were three of them, white or Hispanic.

  “David was dead. Shot once through the heart. The oddest thing was he died with a smile on his face. I took a little bit of solace from that. You see, David always got a great sense of pride when he completed a mission on his own. He always rushed up the stairs with a big grin on his face to tell me he did it. That he went out alone and came back safe.

  “He had that grin on his face when he leaned over to get his stuff out of the pickup’s bed. They shot him once, through the heart, and the smile told me he died instantly. He felt no pain.