A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8

by Darrell Maloney

  But none were particularly interested in Lenny.

  During the first freeze it had been just a handful of them. Lenny and Marty, Tina and Joe. Scott Burley, before Marty killed him.

  This time, if they went into the prison for several long years to survive another big chill, perhaps things would be different.

  Perhaps there would be women there. Single women. Women who’d have a chance to get to know Lenny, and to grow close to him. The thaw didn’t bring him the woman he wanted to settle down with, to spend the rest of his life with.

  Perhaps a second freeze would.

  As he daydreamed, Lenny continued his task at hand. To figure out a way to pull the partially-filled diesel tankers from amid the chaos that was the Trucker’s Paradise parking lot. There were three of them. Together they held about fifteen thousand gallons of diesel fuel.

  It wouldn’t be enough to last several years.

  But it would make a big dent.

  -47-

  Marty swore Lenny to secrecy, and intentionally wasn’t planning to tell anyone in Eden about Cupid 23.

  He wasn’t a man who liked keeping secrets necessarily.

  But he was in total agreement with Mark and Hannah. And with his friend Frank. There was no need to cause anyone any unnecessary grief. Not yet, anyway. Not until he assessed the situation and determined what he needed to make the prison operation a go.

  The people of Eden had been through so much already. Even more so, perhaps, than most of the rest of the world.

  For the people of Eden had survived a one-two punch. First, they were under the thumb of the freeze, having to dismantle neighbors’ houses to burn as firewood and to eat all manner of things they hated just to survive.

  Then they were under the thumb of Al Castillo, a brutal dictator of a man who took over the tiny town after the thaw and ran it with an iron fist. He decided who lived or died based strictly on what they could do for him. If they had no value, he had them executed.

  Sometimes in very sadistic and painful manners.

  Marty was trying to avoid two things. First and foremost, the stress and panic that would cause some of the survivors to throw up their hands and give up. Many were on the verge of that now, having to scrape each and every day in vegetable gardens just so survive another sunrise.

  It wouldn’t take much for some of the town’s residents to decide that enough was enough. That life was just no longer worth all that one had to put into it.

  It wouldn’t take much, he knew, for some of the town’s residents to just take their own lives, and achieve the peace and rest which had been kept from them for so long.

  At the same time, he didn’t want anyone to get the impression that he, Marty Hankins, had replaced Castillo as the town’s newest, albeit nicer, dictator.

  He didn’t want anyone to get the feeling that Marty was the decider-in-chief. The man who chose which residents got to go into the prison and live. And which ones were banished to the outside, where an almost certain death awaited them.

  Marty would tell the residents of Eden at some point. He had to, for he needed their help to prepare. But before he told them, he’d have a plan. A solid plan, which would ensure the survival of all of them.

  And when he did tell them, he’d be careful about the words he chose.

  Yes, there was the potential for it to get bad again. Very bad, but probably not as bad as the last time.

  But this time, he’d tell them, was different. This time the citizens would decide their own fate. They’d control their own destiny.

  Marty liked the way the people in the mine set up their government early on. Each adult had an equal say on every key decision that had to be made. Everyone had the right to voice his opinion. It was as far removed from Washington-style politics as it could be. Money didn’t buy influence, there was no one to curry favor to.

  Marty always considered himself a child of the sixties who was born a generation too late. He’d watched all those movies about Woodstock and the summer of love and hippies who didn’t have much to their name but who shared what they had and always seemed to get along.

  That was Marty’s nirvana. A society where everyone got along. Where everyone shared their opinions and then came up with the right solution for everyone. Without violence between sanctions. Without shouting or name calling.

  That was what he envisioned the prison sanctuary to be, and he’d tell the people of Eden that. There would be no more dictators, no one to please. He’d lead the way in stocking the prison and get it ready to occupy, then he’d step aside and let the people run it themselves. He’d be but a bit player from that moment on.

  He’d come up with a game plan, and then get the residents together and pitch it to them. They’d work together to get the prison ready to go. They’d clean up the inmates’ mess and work on the generators. They’d gather insulating materials to cover the cellblock walls somehow so that the generators only had to run a few hours a day.

  They’d furnish the cells so they wouldn’t be so drab and lifeless, and so the residents could fool themselves into considering them home. They’d gather flashlights and batteries and oil lanterns to light the main area during the day, so they wouldn’t have to use the lights as often. They’d try to find some industrial batteries somewhere… anywhere, to store electricity for when the generators rested.

  And those who tended to pray would pray they’d get it all done before the world went dark and cold again.

  He walked into a room marked “Pantry.” It was right next to another room marked “Food Stores.”

  He wondered what the difference was. He thought they were one and the same.

  Apparently not in the Texas penal system.

  Strewn about the floor were dozens of empty bags. He picked up one of them.

  SYMCO Brand

  Instant Potato Flakes

  Butter Flavoring Added

  25 Pounds Net Wt

  He examined the bag, then threw it at the floor in disgust.

  The bag once held twenty five pounds of instant potatoes, yet was completely clean. No residue, no potato dust.

  Further, it had been turned inside out when he picked it up. And it took him a minute to surmise why.

  Had someone been so desperate for food that he’d taken the time and energy to lick the bag clean?

  There were rice bags as well. Dozens of them. Yet not a single grain of rice anywhere. Piles of empty cans. Hundreds of them. Huge cans. The ones the grocery stores once sold in their bulk sections. The cans which were bigger than a man’s head.

  He picked up one can marked “tuna.”

  All the cans as well had been wiped clean. They couldn’t have been cleaner had they gone through a dishwasher. Someone had taken considerable time in removing every last bit of food residue from each of them.

  He never even knew that tuna came in cans that big.

  What lay before him was testament to a scene in which the inmates were slowly starving to death. He didn’t know it, but that was what finally forced them out of the prison, and into the waist-high snow, a few months before everything started to thaw.

  He didn’t know that Castillo’s original plan was to wait out the big chill, to wait until the thaw came, then to get the hell out of Dodge. To run as fast and as far away from Eden as humanly possible.

  Before Texas changed its mind and locked them back up again.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way.

  They’d run out of food just before the thaw finally came. And they had no choice but to brave the elements.

  In waist-high snow they couldn’t get out of Dodge. They couldn’t leave Eden, for long range travel was impossible.

  That was why they stayed. That was why they took over the town and started brutalizing the residents. They could only make it as far as the houses of the survivors, who were struggling to eke out a meager existence of their own. They invaded those homes, stole the food, and killed any residents who protested.

 
Marty and his small group of friends thought they had it rough during the first freeze. They spent several years in a dirt field, their only protection the twenty four trailers which surrounded their compound and provided them sustenance.

  They had it bad. But Marty could only imagine the hell the citizens of Eden must have gone through, both before and after the inmates left the prison.

  He vowed he’d do whatever it took to make it easier on them this time around.

  -48-

  Mark and Hannah were in the midst of a debate of sorts.

  He sat at her bedside, her tiny hand in his. He looked into her eyes and ran his fingers through her chestnut hair.

  “You’re missing the point, honey. Yes, I could go back to help. But what if the world went dark while I was there? What if I couldn’t get to you to pick you up and take you back with me? What if you were stuck here, all alone?”

  “I wouldn’t be alone, Mark. There are hundreds of people working in this hospital. Good people. People who’d find a way to survive. And don’t forget, we’re on a military base where there hundreds more. Hundreds more of America’s finest. I wouldn’t be alone.”

  “Baby, I’m not even sure America exists anymore. I mean, when’s the last time you heard of the federal government doing anything? The last official thing they did was to betray the American people by trying to keep Saris 7 a secret. And then lying and saying they had everything under control. That they’d found a way to destroy Saris 7 before it hit the earth. They lied, and sacrificed millions of Americans while they were preparing to take their own families into hiding. That’s the kind of government we had. And if we still have a government out there, it probably hasn’t changed much. If I go up there to help and the skies suddenly go dark again, I don’t want to rush down here to get you and find out they’ve sealed the gates and locked down the base. I don’t want to come down here to find out they’ve taken you hostage.”

  “Honey, they wouldn’t do that. You saw Colonel Montgomery and his growing operation. They were raising thousands of head of cattle and pigs and chickens and God knows what else. They were growing tons of food in their greenhouses to feed the survivors in San Antonio and Bexar County. Whatever you say about the old government, the one before Saris 7 hit, these are the people who represent the new government. And they’re doing a lot of good.”

  Mark paused for a moment, as though something heavy was weighing on his mind.

  Then he chose his words carefully.

  “Honey, the night before last I had a dream. I didn’t tell you about it before because it scared the hell out of me. I woke up at three a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. And the more I thought about my dream the more it made sense.”

  “What? What dream, Mark? What are you talking about?”

  “Honey, I dreamed that Cupid 23 hit the earth, just as you said it would. And that when it did, the world was in chaos once again. The skies grew dark again and the temperatures started to plummet. Wherever rain happened to be falling at the time turned immediately into snow. The ground started to be covered over again.

  “In my dream, the people who ran the so-called government abandoned their growing and breeding operations and went into huge bunkers with their families and friends and political cronies. And it became obvious to all that they weren’t growing food and raising meat for the survivors in San Antonio. They were growing it for themselves. They were stockpiling it in their bunkers so they could survive the second freeze while most of the regular people perished. Just like the first time.”

  “Mark, you’re talking nonsense. You’ve seen the people here at the hospital. They are as professional as any medical people anywhere in the world. They save lives each and every day. They saved Joel’s life. They saved mine, for Christ’s sake. If the military and the government were evil and plotting against the regular people, they would have just let us die.”

  “No, honey. That’s not what I said. I think we pegged Colonel Montgomery wrong. Remember when he first showed up at the compound? He demanded all of our livestock, every bit of it, and said if we resisted he’d take it by force. He’d have killed every one of us to get that livestock. Remember?”

  Hannah swallowed hard.

  “Yes.”

  “The only reason they never stormed the compound is because we had him by the balls and he knew it. We told them that if they tried to attack us we’d kill every last head of beef, every last chicken, every last pig, before they could get to them. And he relented, because he had no choice and because he figured that half of everything was better than nothing. And maybe because he didn’t want to explain to his cronies in Washington how all of our livestock got killed before he was able to confiscate it.”

  “Honey, what are you saying?”

  -49-

  “Hannah, just hear me out. We thought we were wrong about Colonel Montgomery. That we had misjudged him. We took him at his word that he was only harsh because that was the language people spoke and understood in the new hard world. We took him at his word when he apologized for being so heavy handed, and we let him become our friend. We invited him into the compound as our guest and we fed him and his fellow officers.

  “But here’s the deal. When we first saw him, I think we saw the real him. The evil him. The one who put on a show and pretended to be our friend while he tried to figure out how to get the rest of our livestock. That was why he was so friendly to us. That was why he took time from his busy schedule to give us tours of his growing facility at the old Kelly Air Force Base.

  “Honey, I think he was playing us for fools all along. He was trying to show us the good he was doing for all the survivors so we’d relent and give up more of our animals. Or, maybe we was just trying to get a foothold within the compound. So he could ask us to host a large group of his men. As a gesture of good will, or something. And then when we opened the compound’s gates for his ten or twenty or thirty men, they’d all of a sudden produce weapons and take the compound by force. Then steal the rest of the animals and leave us with nothing.”

  He said the last sentence slowly and deliberately.

  “And kill anyone who resisted.”

  Hannah suddenly had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  But she wasn’t like Mark. Mark tended to look for the darkness within a person’s soul. To analyze them and dissect them and pick them apart, trying to figure out whether they had any ulterior motives for doing the things they did.

  Hannah was a kinder soul, who tended to look for the good in people, no matter what they appeared to be on the outside.

  “Mark, that’s a good theory. A little wild, but well thought out. But you can’t convict somebody on suspicions. And it’s not right to assume that someone is up to no good without proof. It’s not fair.”

  “That’s just it, honey. I have proof. I just never realized it until just recently. Do you remember on the tour, when Colonel Montgomery said that the produce they grew and the seeds that they harvested were being distributed by the U.S. Army to all the survivors in San Antonio?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So I was talking to Frank and Eva Woodard yesterday. They were in San Antonio during the freeze. And when the thaw came they visited the local stores and home improvement centers to get seeds. They said they were worried that the seeds wouldn’t be any good after so many years and that some weren’t. But others grew. And they planted gardens and grew fruits and vegetables. And then they shared those seeds with others. Who in turn shared them with somebody else.”

  “Again. So?”

  “So… Frank and Eva had friends all over the city. They visited each other quite often to socialize, or to share seeds, or to share other experiences with each other. They said that not once, in all the times they went around the city to visit their friends, did anyone mention the Army helping them out in any way. Not with seeds, not with meat, not with anything.”

  That gave Hannah pause. She didn’t know what to say.

  So Mark c
ontinued.

  “But there’s more. Do you remember when Brad and I visited Colonel Montgomery’s growing operation, and then flew out by helicopter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember I told you that way off in the distance we saw a huge tract of land? It was full of bulldozers and front end loaders and a long line of dump trucks. We asked Colonel Montgomery what was being built there. Do you remember what he said to us?”

  “Yes. You said he got all huffy, like he was pissed that you asked the question. Then he smiled and said that was where they got the bedding soil for their greenhouses. He said they dug deep into the earth to get the highest grade soil. He said the deeper the soil, the better the quality.”

  “Did that explanation make sense to you?”

  “Sure. It sounded logical. Why wouldn’t I accept it?”

  “Because we saw a long line of cement mixers lined up outside the area, like they were ready to go in when their time came. I remember thinking ‘Wow, that’s a lot of concrete mixers,’ and I counted them just out of curiosity. Do you remember me telling you about that?”

  “Yes. But I don’t remember how many of them there were.”

  “There were twenty one. Brad said they looked like beetles lined up on a tree branch.”

  “Yes. I remember him saying that. But why does that matter?”

  “I almost asked the colonel why they needed so much concrete if all they were doing was digging dirt from the ground for their greenhouses. But I let it pass because he was being so testy. Then I forgot about it because I figured it didn’t really matter.

  “But now, everything makes sense. They weren’t digging up dirt for their greenhouses, honey. They were building a bunker. An underground bunker they could use for themselves and their families, and maybe the people running the show in Washington. And they weren’t growing food and raising meat for the people of San Antonio. They were raising it for themselves, to hoard and to store in their new bunker.