A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 (11 page)

     “You promised to keep this conversation to yourself, remember?”

     “Of course.”

     “Maybe.”

-20-

     “Kennedy Space Center, please come in.”

     “Kennedy Space Center, please come in.”

     There was dead silence on the ham radio.

     Frank stated the obvious.

     “Looks like they’re not answering.”

     Hannah gave him the
look.

     “Oh. Sorry.”

     Then he asked a very valid question.

     “Are you sure they even monitor the ham radio?”

     “No, Frank. I’m not sure at all. But the telephones haven’t worked in years and my carrier pigeons are all sick with the flu. This is the only option I have left.”

     “Well excuse me for breathing, Miss Smartass.”

     Now it was Hannah’s turn to apologize.

     “I’m sorry, Frank. I’m just very frustrated. I need to find out if we have anything to worry about. And if I can’t raise NASA I’ll never know.”

     “Do you have a plan B? If they never answer the radio, I mean?”

     “No. I wish I did. Do you have any ideas?”

     “Feed your carrier pigeons some chicken soup?”

     Despite her frustration, Hannah had to smile.

     “Maybe they don’t monitor it full time. They’ve probably lost a lot of their people, just like everybody else. Maybe they only monitor it at certain times of the day.”

     “Yeah, maybe. I’ll come back just before you go off shift and try again.”

     But she wouldn’t have to. As she stood to go, a meek voice came over the radio’s speakers.

     “This is Jake. Who’s looking for Kennedy Space Center?”

     Hannah couldn’t pick up the microphone fast enough.

     “My name is Hannah Snyder. It used to be Hannah Jelinovic. I’m an astrophysicist who used to work for DynGroup, one of NASA’s tracking contractors. It is very important that I speak to someone in the Operations Control Center.”

     Jake got back on, trying to catch his breath. There was something in his voice that gave Hannah the impression he’d been laughing.

     “I’m sorry, Missy. The OCC has been shut down for years.”

     “What do you mean, it’s been shut down? Where did everyone relocate to?”

     “Oh, hell, Missy. I don’t rightly know. Most of ‘em are in heaven now, I guess. Or hell. Either way they went, it don’t really matter to me. I didn’t really much like any of ‘em.”

     “Who are you, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

     “Me? I told you, Missy. My name’s Jake. And as for who am I, well I don’t rightly know. Nobody, I guess. I reckon I ain’t been nobody for a very long time.”

     “They couldn’t have died. Not all of them. Surely there’s somebody who used to work at the OCC that’s still around.”

     “I never said all of ‘em died. That would mean you’d be talking to a ghost. And I may be old and feeble, but I’m still kickin’. I used to work in the OCC. And I’m the only one left. Is there anything I can help you with that ain’t real complicated?”

     “You used to work in the OCC? In what section?”

     “In the industrial maintenance section.”

     He cackled like an old witch.

     “Pardon me?”

     “A janitor, Missy. I was a janitor. Some of the folks I worked with didn’t like being called janitors. They wanted to be called custodians. Or industrial hygienists. Hell, it didn’t matter much to me. I had to push the same broom no matter what they called me.”

     “And you’re the only one left? What happened to everybody else?”

     “Like I said, they scattered. A bunch of them got picked up in four charter buses and went to Washington for a conference about the meteor.”

     “Saris 7? It was a meteorite.”

     “Whatever. Anyway, word is they got hunkered down with President Sanders and his bunch of loonies, and they died with him and everybody else when the people rose against them and cut off their air supply.

     “The ones left behind… the ones the government didn’t want, well, they all got word that NASA was shutting down forever. And they all skedaddled. Dispersed into the wind, sorta. They just vanished. I hear tell nearly all of ‘em is dead now. And them that ain’t are probably hunkered down with their families somewhere.”

     The words “shutting down” were ringing over and over in Hannah’s mind, blocking out most of Jake’s other words.

     “Jake, what do you mean, NASA was shutting down forever?”

     “That’s the word that came down from on-high. The way I heard it, the phone call came from the vice president himself. He was the head monkey in charge of NASA, you know.”

     She was still trying to make sense of what she was hearing. She thought it likely she had a madman on the radio.

     “Jake, is there anyone else there I can talk to?”

     “Why? You think I’m crazy? The crazy ones are the ones who left. They should have stayed, and they likely would still be alive. Instead, they went out there and were stuck when the world went dark and cold. And they froze to death or starved to death or got shot for their food. They should have stayed like we did.”

     “Who is ‘we?’ Who’s there with you?”

     “I told you nobody’s here with me Missy. Not anymore. See, all those high fallutin’ scientists and big wig brainiacs left here to take shelter. And it never dawned on them that this was the best place to be. And they left it like the idiots they really were.”

     “What do you mean, it was the best place to be?”

     “It was. They thought that because it wasn’t a hardened building and wasn’t insulated with thick walls that it wasn’t a good place to survive the freeze. But they were wrong and stupid.

     “You see, it was a designated bunker and assembly point in case the United States ever got attacked. Most of the people knew that there’s a two level basement beneath the building designated as a fallout shelter. But they didn’t think it was a good place to ride out the freeze because it had no provisions. Do you know what MREs is, Missy?”

     “Yes, sir. Meals, Ready to Eat. Military food rations with long expiration dates.”

     “Exactly. Most of the people who ran off didn’t know that there were big storage rooms attached to the lower basement level. Pallets of MREs. Hundreds of thousands of them. With expiration dates of ten to twelve years. Hell, there’s still a bunch left, and they’re still not expired, although some of them I don’t eat anymore because they taste funny.”

     “So you’ve lived there the whole time, eating MREs?”

     “Yep. You see, I knew about them because I was a janitor, and janitors have keys to everything. All the managers and most of the supervisors knew about them. But those were the same ones who went to Washington for their so-called ‘conference’ and went into the bunker with President Sanders. The ones left behind thought there was just a whole bunch of empty rooms and cots and desks down there.

     “So eight of the security guards brought their families in with them. Me, I was all alone. I was divorced just before the meteor… meteorite hit. I still knew where my ex-wife was, and I could have brought her in with us, but when we divorced she told me to go to hell. I told her she’d beat me there, and I wanted to make sure that came true. So I left her outside to fend for herself.

     “Anyway, everybody left the center except for those security guards and me. They kept lookout with guns to make sure no looters came our way. And I kept everything clean, as best I could. It worked out pretty good.”

     “But what about water? And heat?”

     “Oh, there were several drums full of drinking water. It only lasted for two years or so, but it wasn’t a problem. By that time the security guys figured out how to drain water from a hundred thousand gallon fresh water tower they used to use to stabilize liquid oxygen systems. They would drive a pickup full of jerry cans over to the fuel dump every week or so and fill them with diesel to keep our generators running. The first few times someone tried to break into the building they shot them and left their bodies outside to rot, as a warning to others. Before long, the others got the message and started leaving us alone.

     “The worst part was the boredom. We raided the installation library on the other side of the complex and brought back every good book and movie they had. We played cards until they were so thin you could see through them. I must have played ten thousand games of Monopoly.

     “But by God, we survived. Every last one of us.”

     “But… you said you were alone. What happened to the rest of them?”

     “Oh, hell. They all lit out once the thaw came. Most of them had relatives in faraway states. They were as tired of the place as I was, but they had a reason to leave. They wanted to go see whether their relatives made it. Or just to go see what was left of the country.

     “Me, I’m all alone in the world. Like I said, I was divorced just before the freeze, and had no kids or other living relatives. So I’m content to just live out my years here, watching old movies and talking to friends I’ve made on this here radio set. There’s enough MREs to last me several more years if they don’t go bad, and I don’t reckon I’ll last any longer. I was an old man when the world went cold, just short of retirement even then. The freeze has aged me thirty years in just the last ten.”

     “And there’s no way that you know of to get ahold of any of the NASA scientists or engineers?”

     “You sound like a nice dame, Missy. I’d help you out if I could, I really would. But NASA went out of business years ago. All it is now is a reference in the history books.”

-21-

     Hannah was disheartened but didn’t want to give up. Not until after she tried Cape Canaveral and Washington, D.C.

     The people she talked to at Cape Canaveral said it now belonged to the United States Army. They’d turned it into a growing and breeding operation. The processes that Colonel Travis Montgomery had implemented at the old Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio were being copied in two dozen areas around the country. The Cape Canaveral operation now grew enough food and raised enough livestock to feed the survivors in the whole states of Florida and southern Georgia.

     But nobody she talked to knew anyone at all who used to work for NASA.

     Washington was no help to Hannah either. She spoke to many people, and nobody knew anything.

     That much hadn’t changed from the old Washington. The Washington that existed before Saris 7 poked a big hole in the ground in northern China ten years before.

     After four hours glued to a chair and the radio, Hannah finally threw in the towel.

     And Frank Woodard was fit to be tied.

     “Okay, I’ve been patient, sweetie, because I like you and because you’ve been through hell lately. But my patience is wearing very thin. What’s this all about, and why is it so damn important you get ahold of somebody in NASA?”

     She looked at the clock.

     “When is your replacement coming on duty?”

     “David is on next. He should be here in about fifteen minutes or so.”

     “That’s not enough time to explain things to you. You’ll have a thousand questions, and a lot of them I won’t have answers for.

     “I’ll tell you what. I’ve kept my doctor waiting for a while already. Let me go meet with him and talk to the ones looking at Sarah. I’ll come and find you later, after dinner, and I’ll tell you everything I know. But I’m going to swear you to secrecy. At least for now. If you open your mouth to anybody I’ll kick your scrawny little ass.”

     He smiled.

     “I ain’t afraid of you, girl. You’re tall, but you weigh no more than a buck oh five, and I could take you in a fair fight two out of three times. And as banged up as you are, I can outrun you.”

     He looked at her and grew serious.

     “I know that something is bothering you greatly. I can see it on your face and in your eyes. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me. And once you do,
if
you do, I’ll keep your secret until my dying breath. I was a peace officer for more years than I can count. I know how to keep a secret.”