They were struggling. The bills were eating up their savings and they were looking for ways to cut corners.
Mamie made a deal with Ted.
“Send your car back to the bank,” she told him. “Let them repossess it. Or turn it back into them voluntarily.
“You can use my car as much as you need it, as long as you take me to my doctor’s appointments twice a month and to the grocery store each Saturday.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Mamie pooh-poohed any assertions she was being generous.
She wasn’t. At least in her own mind.
She was so close to the Rogers family they’d practically adopted her years before.
It was the oldest boy, Mark Rogers, who mowed her grass every spring and summer, shoveled her walk after each winter snowfall, and picked up the newspaper from the yard each morning and dropped it in her mail slot.
It was the oldest girl Amy who sat on Mamie’s front porch swing with her on the first Saturday of each month and read The Reader’s Digest to her from cover to cover.
Mamie’s vision was rapidly failing, you see.
She could have changed her subscription to the large print edition, but that would have been hurtful to her pride. She’d have to admit she had a problem, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that.
Plus, she’d miss the sweet melodic sound of Amy’s voice as she closed her eyes and tried to place herself into each and every story.
Even the youngest daughter, Amanda, came over and knocked on Mamie’s door each Saturday morning.
She brought Mamie a cup of coffee brewed on Linda Roger’s Keurig, because old-fashioned Mamie had no desire to learn to use such a new-fangled gadget.
Each Saturday seven year old Amanda brought her a brand new flavor of coffee and asked what time her dad should pick Mamie up to go grocery shopping.
Mamie looked forward to all of that. They seemed the children and grandchildren Mamie never had a chance to have.
As for the Rogers children, who lost three of their four grandparents and never saw the fourth, Mamie was the next best thing to a loving grandmother.
It was more than a friendship.
It was a never-ending exchange of love by all parties.
The Rogers family’s decision to stay in place was born not of stubbornness, but rather of their deep religion.
They were of the belief that God would keep them safe from all harm, as long as they were righteous.
Oh, they believed that the earth was boiling beneath their feet.
And they believed that some day it would erupt, as the pressure grew too great to be contained.
They just didn’t believe it would happen in their lifetimes.
“God grants comfort and safety to those who faithfully follow where He leads,” Ted maintained.
Linda echoed Ted’s contention.
“God will keep us safe and protect us from danger.
Mamie, the same stubborn woman who refused to leave herself, tried to convince them they were being foolish to no avail.
They were in it for the long haul, the five of them were, but for vastly different reasons.
It was Saturday morning, as Julianna and Dave drove down a nearby street on their way back to Highway 22 and a day slogging through heavy woods.
Mamie’s door rang and she greeted Amanda’s little girl smile with a roundhouse hug.
“What did you bring me, little sunshine?”
“Mom says it’s mocha char… mocha char… mocha something.”
“Mocha is close enough, sweetheart. Mocha anything is my absolute favorite.
“And I’ve got something for you to take back. Can you guess what it is?”
Little Amanda sniffed the air. It was rich with the smell of hot melted chocolate chips.
“Um… cookies?”
“Wow! I just can’t fool that little nose of yours, can I?”
“No ma’am.”
She produced a plate of fresh tollhouse cookies, covered with a thin sheet of plastic wrap and handed it to the tiny tot.
“Tell your dad I’ll be ready to go at ten o’clock sharp and I’ll meet him out front.”
Chapter 22
The ride to the grocery store was a pleasant one.
Ted and Mamie talked of anything and everything except the elephant in the room: their mutual quest to get the other to agree to leave the area.
It would likely spoil both their moods, as it had every Saturday for three weekends in a row.
So it was by unspoken mutual agreement each of them chose not to broach the subject until their trip home from the market.
Mamie scanned the streets along the way, saying, “My. It seems more and more people are running away.”
“They’re getting a lot of pressure from law enforcement,” Ted replied. “Someone came to the door the other day and said the power’s going off in a couple of weeks and it won’t be coming back on.”
“Why? To punish the people who’ve decided to stay?”
“No. They’re saying it’s because nearly all the employees have voted to evacuate. The handful who want to stay aren’t enough to run the place. It’s easier for them to just cut the power and lock the doors.”
“But how will we get power?”
“I went to the Home Depot. They’re loading up trucks and getting ready to abandon their store. I talked them out of a couple of generators for half the retail price.
“The manager said he figured the less they had to move the sooner they’d finish.
“He suggested I buy several fuel cans as well. He said he’d heard rumors both gas stations were going to shut down as soon as their underground tanks were empty.
“Not because they wanted to, but because their contract with the fuel delivery company ends at the end of the month.
“And the delivery company has already told them they’re not going to renew the contract.”
“Why on earth not?”
“They said they’re having trouble finding drivers willing to drive tankers into the area. Those who will are charging three times their old rate. Eight dollars a mile. And the company says they can’t afford to pay that price for what the retailers are willing to pay for the fuel.
“The Home Depot guy suggested we buy enough gas cans to last us a couple of months. He says the nearest gas station may be a hundred miles away and that way we won’t have to drive that far to fill them up very often.”
“Will you take me by there so I can buy a generator too?”
Ted smiled.
“Why do you think I got two of them, silly?”
“How hard is it to operate?”
“Not hard at all. In fact, I can hard wire it into your existing electrical system.
“All you have to do is go out on your back porch and start it up.”
“For how long, Ted?
“Will an hour a day be enough to charge everything?”
He smiled again.
For all her years, for all the wisdom she had, Mamie was still a babe in the woods when it came to some things like computers and cell phones.
And generators.
“I’m afraid there is no charging, Mamie dear. You’ll have no battery bank. You’ll have to run the generator any time you want to use anything electrical.
“Lights, the stove, even your refrigerator. You’ll have to run it for a couple of hours a day just to keep things in your refrigerator cool.”
“Oh, my.”
“Oh, come on, now, Mamie. You’re always telling me how growing up during the big war made you tough and used to roughing it.”
Now it was her turn to smile.
“Oh, it did, Ted Rogers. I’m easily as tough as you. Wanna arm wrestle and find out?”
“I’m afraid we’re all going to have to rough it.
“Have I ever told you that after I lost my job the electric company turned our power off for non-payment?”
“No.”
“We had money in s
avings. But Linda and I wanted to conserve it as long as we could. So we tried an experiment. We told the kids we were going to see how long we could live like the pioneers.
“We actually lived without electricity for several weeks.”
“And how did you do?”
“We were miserable. That’s why I bought the two generators. It’ll be rough, but at least we’ll have a few creature comforts.
“And we’ll be better off than some.”
“You’re talking about the hermits?”
“Yes. But I understand they prefer to be called something else. Off-the-gridders, I think.”
“I grew up calling people like that hermits. They’re still hermits to me.”
“Whatever they’re called, they’ll still have it worse off than us. They won’t be able to go to the grocery stores to buy their food. They’ll have to hunt or fish for it.
“And the rumor I heard is that all the wildlife is abandoning the area.”
“Well, I guess if they get hungry enough they’ll hike down out of the woods and go to the supermarket.
“Or loot all the abandoned houses.”
They parked at the market and grabbed an empty shopping cart from a parking lot collection chute.
“Looks like their cart guy’s been goofing off,” Ted said. “Might as well help them out a bit.”
His mood changed when they got to the door and saw a sign the manager posted that morning:
WE REGRET TO INFORM OUR CUSTOMERS WE WILL BE CLOSING OUR DOORS FOR GOOD EFFECTIVE CLOSE OF BUSINESS ON TUESDAY.
OUR INSURANCE COMPANY HAS AGREED TO WRITE OFF EVERYTHING CURRENTLY IN THE STORE.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HELP YOURSELF WITH OUR COMPLIMENTS.
GOD BLESS AND HELP US ALL.
Chapter 23
Hannah and Tony were preparing to take their own road trip.
They’d promised Gwen that as soon as they got Samson back they’d drive to Phoenix to visit.
Of course the term “as soon as” is relative and means different things to different people in different situations.
It doesn’t always mean immediately.
The young couple had been brutalized by Rebecca and her henchmen. They’d been horribly beaten and deprived of basic creature comforts.
Hannah, having given birth while in captivity, was denied post-partum medical care.
Both suffered emotionally after learning their firstborn had been stolen from them and was taken on a multi-state fugitive pursuit.
They needed time to recover from all that before they were in any condition to socialize with anyone.
One of their biggest worries, that Samson would suffer his own emotional or physical injuries, was unfounded.
Marilyn Petty, for all her personal and legal issues, turned out to be a doting mother. The only abuse Samson suffered at her hands was having to go hungry for a couple of hours when Marilyn ran out of formula and tried to shoplift more.
Hannah went so far as to ask Rebecca, her Department of Homeland Security handler, to pass a message from her to Marilyn.
“Please thank her for not abusing our son,” Hannah said. “We hope she gets the help she needs and recovers.”
Hannah had hated Marilyn Petty at first. Later she softened her position when she learned the woman was mentally ill and had lost her own young son to SIDS years before. The fact the kidnapper took such good care of Samson helped enable Hannah to ultimately forgive her.
Tony wasn’t so forgiving and couldn’t understand Hannah’s speedy willingness to forgive and forget.
“Tony,” she said, “If the woman is mentally ill she didn’t realize what she was doing was wrong. You can’t punish her for doing something she didn’t understand.”
Hannah was wrong about that.
The Department of Homeland Security wasn’t as understanding.
The Department of Homeland Security wasn’t about to let Marilyn Petty go unpunished. She’d exposed a lot of DHS secrets and compromised several of their agents.
And Rebecca didn’t like being made a fool of.
Rebecca told Hannah Marilyn Petty was being treated at a secret psychiatric hospital with the goal of someday being released back into society.
In reality Marilyn Petty was dead.
She was beaten senseless by the same group of thugs who’d beaten Tony, then shot in the head.
Her body was cremated by a Philadelphia funeral home which frequently did off-the-record work for the DHS, and her ashes were mixed with the ashes of other legitimate deceased clients.
It was the typical way the federal government disposed of its victims without a trace. They’d been performing the practice for decades.
The Carson family… Tony, Hannah and Samson, had been reunited for almost a month now.
Tony and Hannah were starting to feel comfortable out in public again, and were no longer fearful they were going to be kidnapped again.
Samson was a happy, though somewhat silly, baby. Hannah maintained he got the silliness from his father.
The world was chaotic around them, but all in all they’d recovered quite nicely and seemed no different than any other young family.
There was no reason they shouldn’t take a well-deserved vacation.
Three days before Hannah had Gwen on the phone.
“You guys still want some company?”
“Sure we do. When are you flying in?”
“We’re not flying. All the airlines are booked solid for the next three months. Their waiting lists for each flight are over a hundred passengers. Apparently people are desperate to get back to their families or to get anywhere away from Yellowstone.
“We’re driving in, but not in our old Honda. We’re not sure it would make it more than a thousand miles each way.
“We scored a rental car instead.
“But get this… we had to pay in advance and pay a five hundred dollar deposit to pay for recovery charges if we abandon it instead of bringing it back.”
“Well that doesn’t sound like a very nice thing to do. Why on earth would they require a deposit?”
“They said they’re having a big problem with people renting cars and driving them to wherever they find a safe place to ride out Yellowstone. Then so they don’t have to pay for the car they just abandon it somewhere.”
“People are really doing that? Aren’t they afraid they’ll be arrested for car theft?”
“Apparently it’s not car theft if the rental car companies handed them the keys. It’s a civil matter. The car rental companies could go after them in court but say it’s not worth their time. Plus, they’d have a hard time even finding the renter.
“They could ruin the renter’s credit, but in most cases these are people who are walking away from their mortgages because they can’t sell their homes in or near the evacuation zones. So their credit is ruined anyway.
“Apparently that’s the least of their worries. They’re just desperate to get to a safe place regardless of the circumstances.”
“Well, I’m glad you were able to rent a car, although I still don’t think it’s fair you should be inconvenienced due to someone else’s issues.”
“It’s okay. We fully plan to return our car, so we’ll get the deposit back. It’s a minor thing compared to everything else we’ve been through lately.”
“When will you arrive? When do I finally get to hold that precious baby?”
“We’re leaving early Wednesday morning. We’ll be there sometime Friday morning.
“And Gwen… just to give you some advance warning… we’ve got something very important we’d like to talk to you about.”
Chapter 24
Tony’s best friend Jeff agreed to stay at Tony and Hannah’s home while they vacationed in Phoenix.
“Are you sure this is no imposition?” Tony asked him.
“Not as long as you restocked your fridge and filled it full of Coronas,” Jeff answered.
Really, it was no imposition for him.
He hated the neighbors on each side of him.
The neighbors to his north smoked pot all the time and the smell permeated everything in his apartment. So much so that when he walked into a supermarket people gave him funny looks. A policeman who took his K-9 into the local Pets-Mart to buy him a treat patted Jeff down when his dog alerted on him.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the neighbors were friendly and invited Jeff over to share their weed with them. But they were openly hostile to Jeff because Jeff had a habit of parking in their reserved space.
The people on the other side of him, an elderly couple with bad hearing, kept their television cranked up from dawn to dusk.
On C-Span, of all things.
So no, it would be no imposition for Jeff to spend two weeks in a real house, with no noisy or stingy neighbors, a refrigerator full of his favorite beer and food he didn’t have to pay for.
Jeff had another reason for accepting the invitation.
Her name was Alyssa.
Jeff and Alyssa worked together at the home improvement center. He was the lumber manager, she worked in accounts and receiving.
He’d been wanting to ask her out for awhile, but he’d heard she grew up a single child, a daddy’s girl who got everything she wanted and was spoiled rotten.
Even now, it was said, she wouldn’t date a guy unless she felt he was going places.
And she’d certainly never marry a guy who didn’t have a degree, a nice car, and a clear path to success.
Success, of course, being measured by how fat his bank accounts were.
Jeff came across as a really nice guy. And he was, in most respects.
But he was also a bit of a cad.
He wasn’t above lying a little to Alyssa to win time with her.
He wasn’t above pretending he lived in his own house in a middle class neighborhood instead of a rinky-dink little apartment.
He didn’t have plans to marry her, so it wouldn’t be a long-term ruse.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 7
