After The Solar Flare (Book 2): Adventures in the Apocalypse

by AJ Newman

  Patty laughed and replied, “I’ll bet you were going to ply me with booze and get me in your bed.”

  “I would like that, but a gentleman would never take advantage of a lady.”

  “I’ll be the judge if you are a gentleman.”

  Their guest joined them for drinks and then supper that night. Carlos introduced Pedro to them as his Regional Manager, and all enjoyed the friendship and liquor a bit too much, and all went to their rooms after midnight. After they had left, Carlos took Patty by the hand and begged her to walk with him on the beach in the moonlight. They spent several hours walking and then sitting on the sand under the bright moon before going to their room.

  Carlos woke up at dawn on the couch with Patty by his side. They were both still in the clothes they wore to the dinner. Carlos watched Patty as she slept in his arms and knew that he had fallen in love with her.

  Patty woke up and said, “Why aren’t we in the bed?”

  “I only know that I woke up with this beautiful women beside me and I never want her to go away.”

  Patty kissed him on the lips and replied, “I like you a lot, but I don’t know where I’m heading or what I’m going to do with my life.”

  “Stay with me.”

  “We’ll see. Take off your clothes. Now!”

  Their guests and Pedro were sitting down for brunch when Patty and Carlos joined them.

  “I’m so sorry that we are late. I think we had too much fun last night.”

  They finished their meal and Carlos said, “I guess we need to discuss business. Let’s go to my study, and I’ll share the projections for growth and where we see our markets heading. Sorry, it’s on paper. All electronics were fried, and we haven’t replaced them out on the island. We have done so at all of our offices. Perhaps the island’s beauty will make up for my lack of preparation.”

  “If it’s okay, my wife will also attend the meeting since she is our finance officer,” Brett said as he stood up.

  “That’s actually great because I normally have Patricia in our meetings; however, she was prepared to show Meg around the island.”

  The meeting was very successful, and they agreed on three-year contracts for transportation and sales of all goods supplied by IS Shipping and Trading Company.

  Later that night, Carlos held Patty in the moonlight and told her, “My dear, you were very savvy handling the client today. I want you to stay and work for us. I also want you to stay and get to know me better.”

  “I’ll join the company, and we’ll see where we go from there.

  None of the guests or Patty realized the connection between them. I didn’t hear about their meeting until much later.

  ✼

  Chapter 15

  On to Quito

  The Jungle below Cali

  We pulled off the road into the jungle about 20 miles south of Cali and prepared to stay for a couple of days. The truck left a path a blind man could follow, so I took several of the older kids and used them to help me brush out the tire tracks and straighten the bushes, small trees, and plants where the truck had left the road. Our work wouldn’t fool an experienced tracker, but it would hide us from the casual person driving by on the road.

  I was working with Bobby when he asked me a question I couldn’t answer, “Mr. Jones, will we like the orphanage in Quito? We’ve been with Mary and you so long several of us see you as our mom and dad. Will we see you again after we get there?”

  “Bobby I don’t have an answer, other than I know Sister Angela wouldn’t take you to a bad orphanage.”

  I changed the subject and wondered what the answers were myself. Mary and I had found Bobby, Jane and Billy in the junkyard in New Mexico and Mary had been with them ever since. I had grown very fond of them and was torn apart when I learned Billy had been killed.

  I thought about what poor little Bobby had said and discussed it with Mary. I told her what Bobby had said and what I think he meant, and then asked, “Mary, do you want to have children?”

  “Matt, I love you very much, and if you want us to have children, I will do it for you. The thought of being pregnant in this new world doesn’t thrill me I have to say.”

  “Mary, we’re young enough to have our own kids, but I think adopting kids would be a better idea.”

  “I agree, and I think we know which two to start with.”

  “Yes, Bobby and Jane. Let’s talk with Sister Angela and cut the red tape by just keeping them when we get to Quito.

  Sister Angela was very pleased with our adopting Bobby and Jane and agreed that we would just claim them now and avoid the red tape.

  Mary found Jane and Bobby, and we took them away from camp to ask them if they wanted us to become their mom and dad.

  “Kids, Matt, and I would like to know if you two would like us to adopt you and become your parents,” Mary asked?

  This caught them by surprise and, all they could do was cry and hug us for a few minutes, and then Bobby spoke up, “We already love you and think of you as our mom and dad. We were very sad about never seeing you again when we got to the orphanage.”

  “I want you to understand that this means that as your parents we make the rules and you have to obey them. You two are only kids even though you have had to do things that even adults never should have to do. Are you okay with that?”

  “We will do whatever you say. We respect you and know that you have saved our lives many times and only want the best for us.”

  “Okay, you are Jane Jones, you are Bobby Jones, and your mom will soon be Mary Jones. You will call her mom, and I’m dad from now on. I’m not wild about daddy so make sure it’s dad from now on.”

  Okay, go back to what you were doing, but from now on, we stick together and have each other’s backs.

  About an hour later, Mary came to me with another tough issue.

  “Hon, Jane asked me a question that I need your help to answer.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Jane came to me and asked me about Jamey. Jamey and Bobby have gotten very close. She is his girlfriend. We can’t leave her in the orphanage and separate them.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yes, oh, shit. We don’t know how close they have become and I don’t want them sleeping together under our noses.”

  “Double oh shit. We don’t need a pregnant 13-year-old and then a grandchild before we hardly get to know our new children. What the hell do we do?”

  “My loving and all-knowing soon to be husband that’s why I’m seeking your wisdom.”

  “Boy, that’s above my pay grade. I need to ponder it for a while. I think we start by finding out how close they are first. I’ll feel Bobby out, and you get to know Jamey better. Damn, are thirteen-year-olds on the pill? Crap, can you even find birth control pills.”

  “I hope so because I only have enough for two more months.”

  “Another oh shit moment.”

  The good news was that our questioning led us to believe that our young people weren’t sexually active, yet. However, it appears that they were ‘fooling around some’ as my mom used to say.

  I caught Bobby off to the side and questioned him about the situation, “Bobby, what do we do about your girlfriend, Jamey?”

  “Dad, I have been worried to death about Jamey going into that orphanage, but I know that her living with us could be a problem. We haven’t done anything yet.”

  I stopped him and said, “And you should not be doing anything for a long time. Your mom and I will figure something out if you promise to live with very strict rules concerning your contact and behavior with her.”

  “Dad, I really care for Jamey, and we don’t want to do anything that would keep us separated.”

  “Bobby, you are very mature for your age, so I’m going to be blunt. You are kids and cannot be having sex.”

  “Dad, we have never done that. We kiss, and that’s it.”

  “Okay son, I believe you; however, never lie to me and we can deal with anything calmly as
long as we trust each other. Mary and I are going to give Jane and you a talk later today about sex. Our only goal is to prevent disease and unplanned children. You both are too young to be tied down raising children.”

  “Dad, we had that two years ago.”

  “Well tell me if I miss anything.”

  “Well, how did your talk with Bobby go?”

  “Very well and I’m glad we compared notes on what to tell them during the talk. I’m afraid, as usual, most boys and girls that age know the mechanics but not the risks and the damage they can do to their lives.”

  “Same with Jane. I discussed the Jamey issue with Sister Angela, and she wasn’t much help. According to her pregnancy is a big problem at co-ed orphanages and they would be better off with us watching them.”

  “Umm, no magic answer,” I answered.

  “Do they still make chastity belts?”

  “I think we take Jamey also and do our best to keep them apart as long as possible. It will be a miracle if they aren’t ugh…”

  “Doing it.”

  “Dear, you have an excellent grasp of the situation. If we can keep them apart for 3 to 4 years, I would be very happy.”

  “I’ll make up the rules and penalties, and we’ll both sit down with them and present our proposal for Jamey to live with us.”

  The meeting with Jamey and Bobby went very well, and they promised to die before they touched each other. It actually turned out better than we imagined.

  We set the camp up as comfortable as possible for our two-day stay but still couldn’t have a fire. Cold Spam, tuna and MRE’s had to do for the duration. I also had a talk with Sister Angela and moved the boy’s sleeping area on the other side of the camp. We agreed that we needed to be more aware that half of the children were in the ten to 13-year-old range and would start exploration a bit early if we didn’t establish ground rules.

  Bobby, Jane, and Jamey shared guard duty with Jose, Mary and me covering our camp twenty-four hours every day. We made sure there was at least one adult on guard duty at all times. We saw nothing the first day and only heard a car pass the second day when Jamey came up to me with an issue.

  “Mr. Jones, I think someone is watching us from the side of camp away from the driver’s door on the truck.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I noticed the birds on that side went quiet, then I heard some twigs snap, and finally I caught a glimpse of movement."

  “Thanks and don’t point or look over that way.”

  I left her and slowly walked around the camp speaking with Mary, Bobby, and Jose for a minute each and filled them in on Jamey’s suspicion.

  “I’ll head over to our outdoor restroom and use it as a pretense to circle behind our spy and see if I can catch him. Have the team ready to fight if needed.”

  “We’ll be ready. You be careful. Is your back okay?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Jose left for the ‘bathroom’ and he was quickly out of sight.”

  We all moved close to our rifles and prepared ourselves for the possibility of a gunfight. Sister Angela started a game of hide and seek with the kids and kept them away from harm’s way while the rest of us waited. After what felt like an eternity, I heard a muffled sound coming from the spy’s direction and then a crashing noise heading for our camp.

  Jose came out of the jungle pushing a young man with his hands tied behind him.

  “There were two of them,” Jose said.

  “What happened to the other one?”

  “He resisted, and I had to kill him; this one used better judgment and surrendered. They were looking for us and planned to turn us into the drug cartel for a big reward.”

  “How can you be sure they haven’t already told them where we are?”

  “I motivated him, to tell the truth.”

  “We need to get out of here now.”

  “No, it will be dark in an hour, and then we will leave,” Jose said.

  “Okay, everybody start breaking camp and load up the trailer. Be ready to leave as soon as it is dark enough,” I told the team.

  Sister Angela asked, “What will you do with the spy?”

  Jose made a slashing movement across his neck and said,” Sorry, we can’t take him with us, and he will run to the cartel as soon as we free him.”

  Mary spoke up,” Tie him up, gag him, and place him in the trailer. We can drop him along the road twenty miles from here.”

  I replied, “Yes, I don’t want to kill a peasant for trying to earn some extra cash.”

  I duct taped his hands, feet, and mouth. He wasn’t going to move or make a peep.

  We headed out just after dark and drove faster than usual for an hour, stopped by the side of the road and I took the tape off his feet and told him to start walking. He ran off into the dark.

  We were 140 miles from the Ecuadorian border and another 80 miles to Quito when we dropped the young man off. We drove on and had rough going on the dirt roads and cow paths. We didn’t run into whoever was trying to capture us and made it safely to our stop for the night.

  It was a little less than ten miles to the Ecuadorian border; we stopped and spent the night in the jungle again because I didn’t want to try to cross the border at night.

  The night passed without event, we had breakfast and drove toward the border. We drove around the city of Ipiales to avoid the chance of the cartel’s people seeing us. There was a border crossing on the road from Ipiales to Tulcan, Ecuador and that was where we planned to cross the border.

  I was driving on dirt roads and cow paths to keep as far from people as possible as we approached the border. I saw the crossing up ahead when Mary yelled, “There are several trucks chasing us.”

  I floored the old truck, crashed through a fence into a parking lot, flew through the parking lot and up onto the main road into Ecuador. Suddenly bullets struck the back of the trailer as I drove past the Colombian Border Guards and onto the Ecuadorian side of the border. I stopped out of the range of the cartel thugs and parked the truck.

  I got out of the truck and told everyone, “Drop your weapons, get out slowly, and raise your hands into the air.”

  The Ecuadorian Border Security Guards held us at gunpoint and marched us into a holding facility while they contacted their commander. Then later they began to question us on why we crashed their border.

  They asked me ten times why I was there and where I found the kids. Were they kidnapped, are they slaves and a thousand other questions.

  Two hours into our interrogation, a Humvee pulled up, and two men in suits walked up to the bench I was sitting on.

  One asked, “Are you, Mr. Matt Jones?”

  “Yes, I’ve been….”

  “Your employer, Oscar Ramos has vouched for you and had called ahead to make sure you were allowed to cross without delay. Your unusual arrival startled our guards, and I apologize for the rough treatment.”

  I replied, “I’m sorry we had to come in so dramatically; however, we were being shot at by some thugs on the Colombian side of the border.”

  “We need all of you to go inside, get a hot meal, and a bus will be here in a couple of hours to take you to Quito.

  “Thank you so much; the children will finally have a safe place to live,” replied Sister Angela.

  The bus took us to the Quito Catholic Orphanage, and Father Phillip Esposito greeted us in the driveway.

  “Come on in my children. I have heard you had a long and arduous trek to get here.”

  “Yes, Father, we have. The trip would have been impossible with our two angels, Mary and Matt. They saved our lives countless times against all the odds.”

  “I have heard about some of your exploits from one of our new benefactors, Mr. Ramos. Matt, he spoke very highly of you and arranged for you and Mary to stay at one of our best hotels until you are settled into your new home. The man standing by that black SUV has been hired to take you to the hotel and help you with your stay here in our beautif
ul city.”

  “Oscar is a wonderful man, and I’m happy to see that he has taken the Orphanage into his generous life,” I replied, and then added, “We will let Sister Angela, and the children get settled in while we check into the hotel. Bobby, Jane, and Jamey will be visiting their friends from time to time so don’t think you will never see them again.”

  “I’m very pleased to see that you have bonded with our children and have taken them into your hearts.”

  I fibbed a bit as I said, “We found them in a junkyard in New Mexico before we met Sister Angela and Sister Nan. Mary and I loved them from the start.”

  Sister Angela crossed her fingers and winked at me as we walked down to the SUV.

  The man at the desk gladly added two more rooms after we figured out that Bobby wasn’t sleeping in the same room as Jamey or us. The clerk gave me a package with my name on it and told me that Mr. Ramos had it delivered the day before.

  We went over to our rooms, unpacked and cleaned up. It felt almost sinful to take a hot shower. Mary popped in on the girls, I checked on Bobby, and they were behaving as I had hoped, but I wanted to put them on notice that a surprise inspection could happen at any time.

  I noticed the package sitting on the desk and opened it to reveal a bundle of cash in US Dollars, 2 credit cards and a note from Oscar.

  I read the note to Mary, it said, “I am glad you made it to Quito safely. The man who brought you to the hotel will provide transportation and assistance during your stay. I have taken the liberty to place enough money and credit cards in your package to cover all of your expenses for three months.

  Don’t make a big deal about it. You saved my daughter and helped improve my little security force. I won’t pressure you; however, I do need an answer in five days on the job offer. I need to get my operation started and time is of the essence.