Hidden (Final Dawn)

by Maloney, Darrell

  He stacked the food in a pile on the snow and put the duffle on his back again. It was considerably lighter now.

  He looked at the men and felt pity for them. They couldn’t take their eyes off the food.

  Frank trudged away, fully expecting every step to be his last. He thought there was a better than average chance he’d be shot in the back of the head.

  But he wasn’t.

  Frank’s next stop, two blocks over, was a bit more heartening. He was greeted by a man and a woman who said they were the only ones left on their block. They’d been eating from all their neighbors’ houses, but the food was about gone. And as little as they had, they still invited Frank in to share their meager food before they knew what was in his backpack.

  “You’re the only ones left? What happened?”

  The man said, “The outlaws came. They went from house to house and took whatever they wanted. They killed everybody in the houses. Killed the pets too. The dogs and the cats. The only way we survived was by crawling into the crawlspace above the ceiling and hiding. All of our food was hidden in the box spring and under the snow. When they didn’t see any food, I think they thought we left like a lot of others. They left.

  “We went through the neighbor’s houses one by one. Most of them hid most of their food too, and we had to search hard to find it. We ate some of the dead animals too, I’m ashamed to say. I hope that God will forgive us for that.”

  The woman was probably about thirty but easily looked twice that.

  “Frank, you’ve been out and about. How many people are left alive out there?”

  He sadly said, “Not many, I’m afraid. Maybe a handful of people on some streets. Most streets, none at all. Most people either left and never came back, killed themselves, or froze to death in their sleep.”

  Frank left them the rest of his food and told them he’d be back in a couple of days to take the man to the warehouse.

  On his way back home with an empty duffle bag, Frank once again walked past the two men standing guard at the end of their block.

  This time they waved at him and smiled.

  Chapter 29

  Marty happened to be on watch in the middle of the afternoon when he heard someone yelling on the north side of the compound. It pissed him off because they hadn’t expected intruders coming from the north. The only thing north of the camp were three tankers full of diesel fuel, which they used to run their generators, and a huge farmer’s field.

  Marty scrambled to the north trailer that served as their observation post. He looked out the peep hole and saw the farmer they’d leased the field from for a stolen trailer of meat. Standing beside the farmer was a young girl.

  “I wonder what the hell he wants,” Marty mumbled to himself. He heard the farmer yelling, “Hello in the camp!”

  Marty yelled back, “Stay there! I’m coming out!”

  The farmer gave no indication he’d heard Marty, which came as no surprise given the thickness of the trailer walls. Marty scrambled outside the trailer and yelled to Tina to take over his watch. Then he laid down the heavy sheets of plywood that were leaning against the bottom of the trailer and crawled out to the outside world.

  Tina moved to the south lookout trailer and stood watch on the side they’d always presumed was their primary threat. Lenny, more of curiosity than anything else, took Marty’s place in the north trailer and peeped through the hole.

  He saw Marty shake the farmer’s hand, then the girl’s. He couldn’t hear what they said to each other, since they were a good forty yards away. But he could tell they were having a heated discussion. Marty paced back and forth in front of them, kicking at the heavy snow in anger. At one point he took off his heavy gloves and slammed them to the ground.

  As for the girl, she had her arms wrapped tightly around herself and stared intently at the ground. Lenny thought that quite odd. He couldn’t tell, though, if her actions were those of someone who was very cold, or very much in distress.

  Finally, Marty turned to return to the camp and motioned for the farmer and the girl to follow.

  On hands and knees, the trio crawled under the trailer and into the compound. Lenny jumped down from the trailer and asked Marty, “What’s up?”

  Marty ignored him, but looked at Joe.

  He growled, “Where the hell is Scott?”

  “I don’t know, Marty. Probably crashed out in his sleeper as usual. Why?”

  “Go roll his ass out of bed and drag him out here.”

  Marty offered his guests a cup of coffee. They both eagerly accepted, and he could tell by the expression on their faces that they hadn’t had any in awhile.

  Scott Burley crawled out of his sleeper cab and stumbled to the ground, half asleep. He looked around and saw the farmer and the girl, and was instantly wide awake.

  And terrified.

  “Get over here, Scott. We’ve got something to discuss.”

  Scott stumbled to the others as though he were a condemned man walking to the death chamber.

  “Joe, Lenny, you remember Mason Bennett. He’s the farmer who was kind enough to let us set up camp on his land.”

  Joe and Lenny shook Mason’s hand. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but they could tell by Marty’s tone that Mason was no threat to them.

  “Tina! Come here a minute, okay?”

  Tina came to the edge of the trailer and looked at Marty. He asked her, “All clear out there?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good. Come down here a minute, would you? I want everybody to hear this.”

  Tina hopped down and joined the group.

  Marty turned to Mason and said, “Sir, would you tell everybody else what you told me out there?”

  Mason had tears in his eyes as he began his tale.

  “This is my daughter, Taylor. She’s but fifteen years old. My youngest. My baby.

  “She came to Jane and me this morning bawling like a baby. It took us forever to get her calmed down enough to get words out of her. Then she told us.”

  He glared at Scott with pure hatred.

  “She told us a man came through her window in the night. Put a hand over her face as she was sleeping. Whispered to her that he would break her neck if she screamed or called out.

  Taylor looked down as the story was told. Partly out of shame, partly in anger. Tina went to her and wrapped her arms around her.

  “He took my baby’s innocence. He brutalized her. He was no better than a vicious animal, and my baby will never be whole again. We came here for vengeance.”

  Joe saw the way Mason looked at Scott.

  “But how do you know it was him?”

  “The trail in the snow led straight from her bedroom window to here. It was the only trail away from the house. And there’s something else too. There were tracks under each of the south windows. Some old and covered over with new snow. Some more fresh. He’s been watching her, it looks like quite a while, through the windows. Probably my other daughters too. Like a damned pervert.”

  Mason looked at his daughter.

  “Honey, is that the man who did that to you?”

  Taylor continued to look down. She could not make the words come out. She shook her head yes.

  “Don’t feel ashamed,” Tina told her as she held her tightly. “You did nothing wrong. Don’t you dare take on this man’s shame for him.”

  At that moment, Scott Burley fell to his knees and begged, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just watching, and I… I don’t know. Something just came over me. I don’t know how it happened.”

  Mason reached inside his jacket and pulled out a 9 mm handgun. This was something no one expected. Mason leveled it at Scott’s chest. Joe was ready to charge him, but Marty put a hand on Joe’s shoulder to hold him back. All of them carried side arms, but Mason caught them off guard and had the drop on all of them.

  But Marty sensed that Mason wasn’t interested in a shootout. He only wanted justice for his daughter.

/>   The others took Marty’s cue and abandoned any plans to escalate the situation. None of them had a clue what was to happen next.

  Scott was the next one to speak.

  “Please, sir. Don’t shoot, I’m begging you. I’ll make it up to you somehow. I’ll make it up to the girl. Just don’t kill me.”

  Mason was unmoved. “I am a Christian man, and not a man of violence. But this thing you did cannot be undone. It cannot be made whole again. The Bible says an eye for an eye. A life for a life. And what you did to my baby was just as bad as killing her.”

  His words were strong, but his morals were too. As Scott knelt on the ground before him, tears pouring down his face and begging for his life, Mason’s face began to quiver. Then he dropped his hand. He could not take this man’s life, despite the evil that he’d done.

  Everyone present thought that was the end of it. Scott breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then Taylor walked to where her father stood and took the gun from his quivering hands. The shame that had been on her face a minute before had been replaced by one of rage. Fire flew from her eyes as she raised the weapon again and pointed it straight at Scott’s heart.

  “You son of a bitch! You’re going straight to hell!”

  She placed both hands on the butt of the pistol in a shooter’s grip as Scott closed his eyes and waited for the explosion and the eternal blackness that would follow it.

  But Taylor’s hands, too, began to quiver. She, like her father, was too good a person to take another human life, no matter how much he deserved it.

  Taylor’s glare never waivered. Scott would not, could not look in her eyes. And finally, she dropped the gun in the dirt and turned away.

  Marty looked at Mason’s gun lying on the ground. Then he reached to the holster on his side and drew his own gun.

  Without so much as a single word or a moment’s hesitation, he pointed his gun at Scott Burley’s head and shot him at point blank range.

  Scott fell to the side, eyes wide open. But they’d never see again. Tina gasped and Taylor fell into her arms. The others looked at Marty for an explanation.

  Marty said, “We are not perfect people. We are all sinners in some form or fashion. But there are some things we just cannot tolerate.”

  Everyone else was frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Marty picked up Mason’s weapon and handed it back to him.

  “I’m sorry. I wish there was more we could do to help. But I can promise your daughter that he will never come to her again.”

  Joe grabbed a canvas tarp and dragged it over Scott’s body. Even in death, they were disgusted at the sight of him and didn’t want to see him.

  Mason and Taylor stayed for a time, had their coffee, and accepted a bag of ground coffee to take back home with them.

  “How is your food stock holding out?” Marty asked them.

  Mason lowered his eyes, as though ashamed. “It’s getting sparse. We’re having to ration everything now, to make it last as long as we can.”

  Marty understood Mason’s shame. No man likes to admit that he cannot provide for his family.

  “Well, don’t worry about that anymore. The snow’s still too deep to drive another trailer of food up to your farm house. But we’ve got plenty. And we’ll make sure you won’t run out.”

  Tina hadn’t left the compound in four years. But as she held Taylor, she made her a promise to come and check on her and the rest of the family periodically, and to find something nice to bring each time.

  She said, “Sometimes when bad things happen, we need someone to talk to. I know, because there were some terrible things that happened to me too at your age. I remember needing someone to talk to, but not feeling comfortable talking to my parents or sisters. If that happens to you, you tell your daddy to walk you over here to visit with me. I’m an excellent listener. And I’ll make sure you get back home safe.”

  Joe walked away and climbed aboard the big red trailer with “KFC” on the side. He jumped back down with a ten pound case of frozen chicken pieces.

  He handed it to Mason and said, “You come back every day or two and carry back what you can until you’re well stocked again. I promise you that as soon as that snow pack melts enough, I’ll haul a choice trailer full of food up the road to your farmhouse.”

  Mason didn’t know what to say. He could find no words, so Taylor found them for him.

  “Thank you. God bless you all.”

  Chapter 30

  “Okay, now that all of the old business is out of the way, we’ll move on to new business.

  “Now that fall has settled in and the temperatures outside have returned to freezing again, Hannah and Sarah have crunched some numbers for us. I’m not a scientist, and I’d screw up whatever the numbers mean, so I’ll just shut up and let them share the results with you.”

  Mark stepped to one side as the girls walked to the front of the dining room. Hannah whispered to Mark, “You might want to sit down, honey. This will take a few minutes.”

  Sarah began.

  “Okay, as you know, the security team manning the security control center keeps a constant watch on the monitor watching the thermometer and snow gauge in the front of the mine. Any day the temperature goes above thirty two degrees they log it into their book so we can keep track of it. They also log in the depth of the snow at the same time every day so we can keep track of how much of it melts away.

  “As Mark said, the weather outside has gone below freezing again and as late as it is into fall, we think the thaw days are over for this year.

  “Hannah and I have crunched the numbers, taking into account that we had twenty seven days this year above freezing, and twelve days last year. We did some calculations and can presume that next year we’ll have about sixty days of thaw, give or take a couple.

  “That is significant, because it’s almost enough to grow a wheat crop. Not quite, but almost.”

  Hannah took over.

  “And it also means that for the first time, we know when we can break out of the mine. Because next year’s thaw period will be almost long enough to grow crops, then we have no doubts at all we’ll be able to grow crops the following year.

  “So, also for the first time, we have a breakout date. We can safely move from the mine to the compound when the thaw starts a year from this April.”

  Sarah went to the whiteboard and used an erasable marker to write the number 590 in large red letters.

  Hannah went on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a countdown calendar.”

  A cheer went up around the room, and several people cried. Five hundred and ninety days was a long time away, to be sure. But it was the light at the end of the tunnel they’d been waiting for, for a very long time.

  “Any questions?”

  Brad called out from the back, “Does that mean we’ll have fresh fruits and vegetables to eat?”

  “Well, that’s a complicated answer. As far as the crops we grow in the fields after we break out, the answer is no. Karen will have enough fresh seeds for us to grow just a few dozen corn plants, a few dozen wheat plants and a few dozen sorghum plants. Those plants aren’t for eating. They are to provide more seeds so that we can plant an entire field of crops the following year.

  “But remember that we have two large greenhouses over there to grow other plants. We don’t know if they are damaged by the snowfall. The roofs are steep and equipped with what’s called “snow cutters” to prevent ice and snow buildup on them. Hopefully that prevented the roofs from collapsing.

  “If that’s the case, if the roofs didn’t collapse, then the greenhouses are large enough to grow enough vegetables and berries for us to have them at most meals.

  “The citrus trees we have in the small greenhouse here in the mine will be moved to the large greenhouses. Since the greenhouse here is so small, and since its purpose was to provide seeds instead of food, Karen has kept the trees closely cropped so that they only produced a couple of fruit per y
ear.

  “Once the trees are moved, we will no longer have to crop them. The large greenhouses will provide plenty of room for the trees to grow. These types of trees typically increase their yield three fold with each passing year. So the first year after breakout, for example, we will expect only three oranges. The year after that, it should increase to about nine or so. The year after that, twenty seven or so. The fourth year is when we can expect to start getting a fairly good yield. Eighty one oranges or so. The fifth year, over two hundred.

  “As for the other fruit and nut trees, one of the first things we did when we purchased the land for the compound was plant an orchard. We consulted a professional agronomist to determine which strains of trees were most hearty and most likely to produce good fruit quickly. And then we bought those trees and planted them.

  “We knew that after a seven year freeze, a lot of trees wouldn’t come back at all. The more established the root system, and the heartier the tree, the more likelihood we’d have of our orchard coming back.

  “We planted ten trees each of apples, peaches, pears, apricots, plums, pecans and walnuts. We don’t know if they’ll come back, but if they do, they will bear fruit within two years.”

  Sami asked if there was a backup in case none of the trees survived.

  Hannah looked at Karen and asked, “Karen, can you take it from here?”

  Karen stood up and said, “Yes. We recognized early on that there was a chance that none of the trees in the orchard would survive. Mark and Bryan planted them as soon as they could, but their root system was less than three years old at the time of the freeze. That may have worked against them. Or, it’s possible that their youth might have helped them, in the same way a teenager is stronger than an old man.

  “The problem is, the earth hasn’t been through a seven year freeze. At least not since humans have been around. So we just aren’t sure what will happen. We can guess and speculate all day long. But in the end we’ll have to wait until the thaw comes, and see what happens.