A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8

by Darrell Maloney

“Then I remembered about Cupid 23. And I had a dream that it was coming, and that it might impact with earth.”

  His mouth dropped.

  “You mean… you mean we’re in danger of a second collision, so many years after the first?”

  “Yes… maybe… I don’t know. I…”

  “Honey, you’re not making sense.”

  “Look, Mark. I may be totally off the mark. I pray that I am. But NASA pretty much wrote Cupid 23 off as unimportant. And at the time it was. I mean, Saris 7 was coming at us very quickly. It had the potential of destroying earth. Everything was focused on Saris 7 and Cupid 23 took a back seat and then got buried.

  “It was like if you’re on a railroad track and there’s a freight train coming. And you notice your shoe’s untied. Well, you don’t take the time to bend down and tie your shoe while the train is bearing down upon you.

  “You get the hell off the tracks. Then when you’re safe, then you tie your shoe.”

  “So what you’re telling me is, NASA and the whole scientific community put Cupid 23 on the back burner and then forgot about it? They walked away from the train tracks and then forgot to tie their shoe? And only now, ten years after the fact, they’re just now realizing their shoe is still untied?”

  “Mark, I don’t know what NASA knows, or if they’re even working the problem. For all I know they’re working very hard on it. For all I know they’ve already tracked Cupid 23 and determined it’s not on a collision course and that impact isn’t imminent. I haven’t even tried to contact them. I wanted to talk to you first to see if you thought it was wise.”

  “What do you mean, if I thought it was wise?”

  “Whether you think I should raise the flag again, without knowing whether there’s really a threat of another impact. I mean, even then, ten years ago… we knew there was a good chance that Cupid 23 would move so slowly that it would lose its path momentum. Or that its very nature as a tumbler would cause it to roll off course…”

  She stopped and regrouped when she saw Mark’s eyes glazing over. She could tell she was losing him.

  “Usually when meteorites break up, they continue to follow the same path, with the smaller or slower moving chunks trailing the ‘mother piece,’ or the piece with the greatest momentum. Like baby ducks following their mother.”

  She thought of a better example.

  “You remember when we met, before you got old and out of shape…”

  She smiled, trying to insert just a touch of levity into a very difficult situation.

  It didn’t work. So she went on.

  “When we met you liked to participate in bicycle races. Do you remember how you and your teammates took turns riding point, and the others drafted behind him?”

  Finally, something she said that Mark could actually relate to.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it’s kinda like that. Space is a vacuum, sure. But it’s still easier for trailing bodies to follow a larger body which pushes the atmosphere, such as it is, out of the way. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that the path of least resistance for the trailing bodies is simply to follow the larger lead body through space.

  “That’s frequently the case with tumblers, but not always. Tumblers, because they tumble instead of fly true, slow down over time. They can lose momentum and fall back, in the same way that a bicyclist who’s tired may fall back behind the point man and lose the draft. And when he loses the draft he slows even more.”

  She could tell she was losing him again.

  “I’ll tell you what, honey. I’m going to take a short break and go refill our cups. While I’m gone I want you to think about that same bicyclist. The one who was drafting off the point rider and got tired. So he started to fall back and finally was out of the draft. So he got even slower. I want you to picture him, and then picture what will happen to him as he gets more and more tired.”

  By now Mark’s head was spinning as he tried to wrap that spinning head around everything she’d told him thus far.

  She kissed him on the forehead and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  With that she scooped up the two empty coffee cups and hobbled off unsteadily toward the kitchen.

  -14-

  Hannah got sidetracked on her way back through the dining room by little Markie, who awoke to find his apartment empty and went looking for his mom and dad.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “How come you guys came and ate without me?”

  She dropped to one knee and was eye level with her son. He saw her wince in pain and said, “Mommy, are you okay?”

  She lied and smiled at the same time.

  “I’m fine, little sailor,” she said while tussling the mop of hair on his head.

  “First of all, we didn’t come to eat without you. It’s too early for breakfast. We just came over to get some coffee. Second of all, you seriously need a haircut, young man. You need that way more than you need breakfast.”

  “But I don’t want a haircut, mom. I want to grow my hair long, like Samson. Then I want to put it in a ponytail.”

  Samson was Markie’s newest favorite cartoon character. It didn’t matter that Samson’s hair was blond, and Markie’s was the same chestnut color as his mom’s. In Markie’s world, all he needed was long hair and he’d not only be a perfect likeness, but he’d also somehow gain Samson’s strength.

  “You’re aware that Samson doesn’t have a ponytail, right?”

  “But he could have one if he wanted one. Samson can do anything he wants. ‘Cause he’s awesome.”

  “As awesome as your dad?”

  Markie hesitated. He didn’t want to answer.

  “Well… Dad’s cool and all. But Samson is way stronger and has way way more muscles.”

  It was a point she couldn’t argue.

  “Well, that’s true…”

  Hannah had been trying to get Mark to start working out again for a while. He’d been getting soft around the middle, and a bit weaker as well. She hadn’t noticed it until he picked her up to carry her across the threshold to celebrate their tenth year together not long before. And he’d spent most of the next day nursing a sore back.

  At first she’d blamed herself, before she pulled out a scale and discovered she weighed the same as she had when they met.

  Actually less. She was two pounds lighter.

  “I’ll tell you what, little sailor. I’m going to take you back to the kitchen and ask Miss Karen if there’s anything you can do to help her with breakfast. That’s so Daddy and I can finish our talk. Then after breakfast, I want you to go to Daddy and ask him how come he used to be stronger than Samson, but now Samson is stronger than him. Then later you and I will sneak back to the kitchen and bake some cookies. Deal?”

  Hannah wasn’t sure whether Markie was more excited about chiding his father into working out, or in baking cookies. But he was certainly agreeable to her offer.

  “Deal!” he said with conviction.

  She took him by the hand and walked into the kitchen, where Karen, Debbie, Roxanne and Rachel were putting the finishing touches on an impressive breakfast spread.

  She asked Karen, “Hey, how come you never ask any of the men to come in here and help cook? Or me, for that matter?”

  Karen didn’t miss a beat.

  “Because we want the food to be edible. Now get out of my kitchen before I start cutting off your limbs and making sausage out of them.”

  Hannah hid behind Markie.

  “You wouldn’t make sausage out of a sweet little boy like this, would you?”

  Karen gave Markie the stink eye and cackled like a witch.

  “Well, dearie… sweet little boys make the best sausage of all.”

  Markie saw through the charade and giggled.

  Karen said, “Of course I wouldn’t make sausage of Markie. He’s my buddy.”

  “Good. Then can you let him help you around here for a few minutes? Mark and I are in the middle of something very important.”

&nb
sp; Karen saw a slight sense of desperation in Hannah’s eyes.

  “Sure, no problem. Markie, why don’t you go wash your hands and put on some plastic gloves? You can help me stir the pancake batter in just a minute.”

  “Oh, boy! Sure!”

  Markie ran off and Karen looked at Hannah.

  “Are you okay, honey? Is there anything I can do?”

  “I don’t know, Karen. I’ll let you know later, after I finish talking to Mark.”

  Karen sensed something was up but didn’t want to pry. Instead of asking more questions she reached out to her friend and hugged her, then added, “I so love you, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you, Karen. I so love you too.”

  -15-

  Hannah returned to the table but didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood behind her husband for a moment and placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry to spring this on you, honey. Really I am. It’s just that the only other person in the world I could talk to about this is Sarah. And God only knows when she’ll be able to tell me what she thinks about it.”

  “She might never be able to talk about it,” Mark said sullenly. “Debbie says she may never be the same again. And even if she appears to be, there may be whole blocks of her memory that never come back.”

  “When is the medical team coming in from Wilford Hall?”

  “Debbie said they’ll be here sometime this morning. And they’re bringing Dr. Hartley with them. Didn’t Debbie tell you?”

  “No. Dr. Hartley is my doctor. But he’s not a brain specialist. Why are they bringing him?”

  “Debbie asked them if they could send transportation to pick you up for your follow-up appointment on Tuesday. They offered to do you one better and to send your doctor to you. They said it’s a win-win situation. They only have to make one trip instead of two. And you don’t have to take that long car ride there and back.”

  “A doctor who makes house calls. That’s so… twentieth century. I wonder why Debbie didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t know. Too busy treating Sarah, I guess. Hey, can we get back to the meteorite thing?”

  “Yeah. I was just getting ready to do that.”

  “Before you went for coffee you told me to think about what happens to a drafter in a bike race if he’s too tired to keep up. What did you mean by that?”

  “Well, in a bike race, let’s say you’re riding point for your team. And let’s say that Bryan is riding behind you, drafting.”

  “Okay. With you so far.”

  “Let’s say that Bryan is tired. He partied too hard the night before. Or didn’t sleep well. Anyway, he has a hard time keeping up. After awhile he’s going to drop so far behind you that he loses his draft.”

  “Yes…”

  “And eventually he’ll get so tired he’ll start to slow down. Slower and slower and slower. And what happens when a bicyclist slows down almost to the point of stopping?”

  The light came on in Bryan’s head.

  “He starts to wobble. He has to rock his handlebars back and forth to keep moving and keep from falling over.”

  “Exactly. The exact same thing can happen to a meteorite which breaks up in flight. The lead piece will play point for the smaller or slower pieces which break off, and they’ll draft behind it for a time. Sometimes forever. It usually depends on their physical makeup and how close together they are. If the broken pieces are pretty much symmetrical and close to the lead piece they can be travel partners for eons.

  “But a tumbler, like Cupid 23, will move slower and more erratically. It will eventually fall behind the lead piece and then tumble into its own track.”

  “Okay,” Mark said. “Enough of the cosmic mumbo jumbo. Just give it to me straight. Are we in danger of another collision or not? And if we are, how come it hasn’t happened yet?”

  “The straight answer is I just don’t know. There were probably people at NASA who continued to track Cupid 23, even while everybody was scrambling to do something about Saris 7. If I could get ahold of someone at NASA, I could find out what Cupid 23’s status is. Whether it ever broke free from Saris 7’s track and went its own way. Whether it’s still headed in our direction. Whether it wobbled clear of earth and sailed right past us.”

  “So call NASA.”

  “I’m going to start today. I wanted to consult with Sarah to see if she thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. There were some scientists at NASA that said Cupid wasn’t worth worrying about because tumblers almost always break free of their mother’s track and go their own way. Scientists with a lot more experience than me. I think Sarah agreed with them. I wanted her to calm me down and convince me that this whole thing is nothing to worry about.

  “But now that’s impossible. I couldn’t talk to Sarah about it, so I had to settle for you.”

  “Well, thanks for that.”

  “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean that the way it sounds. This whole thing is just so confusing to me. And I’m a scientist by training, even though I haven’t done it for a very long time. Scientists look at data and facts and previous studies to make conclusions and predictions.

  “I don’t have any of that. All I have is a vague memory of Cupid 23, tumbling through space, following Saris 7 by a very wide margin, and headed our way.”

  Mark reached up and put a hand on Hannah’s cheek. It was still swollen and bruised, but his touch was tender. It comforted rather than hurt her.

  Mark wasn’t a logical person by nature. He’d told her many times in the past that logic was the devil’s plaything. “Don’t confuse me with logic,” he’d said more than once. “It gives me a headache.”

  But this time, for Hannah’s benefit, he tried his best to think things through.

  “Baby, listen to me. I’m not a scientist, but I know that scientists sometimes overthink things. True?”

  She nodded in agreement.

  “True…”

  “I think you’re overthinking this whole thing. I mean, if Cupid 43, or whatever the hell you call it…”

  “Cupid 23.”

  “Okay. If Cupid 23 was still out there, and was still a threat, then surely NASA would have sent out the alarm by now. I mean, yes, the world has gone to shit and most of the people have died. But there are still ham radios and police departments and FEMA and other government agencies. Don’t you think that they would have put a warning out by now if there was nothing to worry about?”

  “They didn’t last time, Mark. They tried their best to keep it from the people. They said it would create widespread panic. Like panic was worse than the deaths of millions of people.”

  “That was President Sanders, honey. He’s the one who gave the order to keep it from the public. And the survivors killed him and his family because of it. I don’t even know if we have a new president yet. But if we do, surely he would have learned from Sanders’ lesson.”

  “Mark, people in Washington never learn anything. They just keep repeating the mistakes of the people who came before them, over and over again. And people in Washington are concerned only for themselves. You know that. It’s been that way for decades. If NASA sent out the alarm, they would do what Washington politicians have always done. They’d scramble to take care of their own and leave the public to fend for themselves.”

  He tried his best to find a flaw in her argument, but wasn’t able to. The truth was, Washington was a sewer where the most vile of human excrement went to gather and to scratch each other’s backs at the expense of the American public. It was that way long before Saris 7 struck the earth and there was no real reason that the collision changed any of that.

  He grasped at one last straw.

  “But the military works closely with NASA, doesn’t it? I know some of those military people in and around San Antonio have buddies that work for NASA. Buddies that would say hey, something big and ugly is coming, you’d best take your family and get them under shelter and stock up for another seven year winter.

  “
But you saw the military in action. You saw Colonel Montgomery’s growing and breeding operations. You saw the Air Force hospital at Wilford Hall. Everything was business as usual. You didn’t see anyone scrambling to prepare for another disaster, like they were doing after the word got out about Saris 7.”

  Hannah’s demeanor changed, but only slightly.

  Mark had given her a life preserver to cling to.

  Mark, who hated logic with every fiber of his being, had somehow found an argument with just enough logic to pin her hopes on.

  She hoped he was right. He so seldom was.

  -16-

  As Hannah and Mark were finishing up their discussion three very sullen men came trudging through the dining room.

  Bryan, Bryan Too and Brad spoke to no one. Not Karen at the security desk. Not Debbie, who they bumped into in the main hallway. Not Hannah and Mark, huddled together at a table in the far corner of the room.

  Mark hadn’t been consulted about the mission the three men had been on. They were completely dressed, carrying rifles and side arms.

  Hannah glanced at them, then asked Mark, “It’s kind of a late start for them to go hunting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Maybe they took Sarah’s kidnapper to see Marty Hankins.”

  “Well, I hope so. As bad as he was, it just wasn’t humane to leave him all tied up out there in the bed of a truck with no food or water or a way to stretch his legs.”

  “Honey, they tried to feed and water him, but he would have none of it.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right and they took him to jail. We’re better than to leave a man out there all tied up like an animal, no matter how bad he is.”

  “Well, if he thinks he’ll get better treatment from Marty Hankins he’d better lose his attitude. Marty don’t play. If he curses and spits at Marty, he’ll likely get gagged again and handcuffed to the wall or something.”

  They watched the trio as the men got coffee and sat down to drink it.

  They, like Hannah and Mark, were obviously in no mood to socialize. They chose a table on the opposite corner of the dining room and sat down quietly.