A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 (16 page)

     “Only birds and squirrels. And they’re not talking.”

-30-

     Marty had been at the compound many times before. The first few times he’d come mainly to spend time with Glenna, the woman he’d helped rescue from a brutal animal named Castillo at the battle of Eden.

     He and Glenna eventually fell in love. When he was offered the position of chief of police for the tiny town he asked if she wanted to go back home.

     She did.

     He’d have married her, but not a single minister in the town of Eden survived.

     So instead he made her a promise. He said, “On the very day a minister moves to town, or even just passes through, you and I will stand together on the courthouse steps and become one.”

     She replied, “As far as I’m concerned we already are. I don’t need a piece of paper or the government’s blessing to tell me that.”

     Now when Marty came to the compound he didn’t come to see Glenna and her kids. He brought them with him, to socialize with good friends and bring them up to speed in a world they rarely ventured into.

     But this time, this day, was different.

     Oh, everyone was friendly enough. There were plenty of smiles and hugs to go around as Marty and his new family walked through the gate and into the big house. They brought gifts for Sami, who recently lost her father, and for Hannah and Sarah, both severely injured.

     They were disheartened to hear that Sarah was in San Antonio, lying on a bed in a medically-induced coma. They’d really wanted to talk to her and lend their support. But that would have to wait.

     Yes, there was plenty of love and good mojo in the air, as there always was.

     But this time there was something else as well. Some kind of… tension.

     Marty couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Beyond the smiles, beyond the hugs and the friendly chatter, there was a pall that permeated every corner of the room.

     It was almost as though someone had died.

     Glenna took him aside and put it differently.

     “It feels almost like when you walk into a room with two friends who’d been arguing. They try to put on happy faces and pretend nothing is wrong. But you can sense there is.”

     Marty made a point to ask Frank about it one on one when they met privately after dinner.

     As for the dinner, there was no denying it was one of the best Marty had had in many years. Karen was an excellent cook, and had a superb staff of helpers. On this particular day they had steak. A rarity indeed for a group of people who usually took great care in rationing their meat.

     Mark explained it away by saying, “Love is in the air out in the pastures. The cattle and pigs are breeding like crazy. We’re getting ready to butcher several of them and freeze the meat so we have fewer to feed.”

     The comment went unchallenged by Marty, who read absolutely nothing into it.

     Marty and Hannah had been asked by the group to tell Marty about Cupid 23. They knew him better than anyone, having been the first to get to know him when they learned that the Trucker’s Paradise truck stop had survived the big chill. Now they considered him one of their very best friends.

     Although they fully planned to tell him of the threat, they wouldn’t spoil a good dinner by doing it over the table. Marty had made plans to consult with Frank after the meal, while Glenna and the kids were visiting with their friends. They’d simply take him and Glenna aside before then and explain the situation to them. They’d leave it up to Marty to tell Lenny.

     The talk over the dinner table was light and friendly. Everyone could feel the stress but no one mentioned the reasons it existed. Everyone in the compound now knew, of course, about Cupid 23. Even the children who’d chosen not to attend the meeting.

     Most of the adults also knew of the murder Marty was investigating, and knew that he’d planned to meet with Frank to talk about it. No one had the guts to ask Frank how much he planned to cooperate with Marty on the matter.

     Frank himself was conflicted.

     He’d spoken with Eva, his wife of many years, about it earlier in the afternoon.

     “I’ve been a law enforcement officer for more years than I can remember,” he’d said. “I can’t count the number of times I was offered a bribe, or asked to look the other way so I wouldn’t see a crime being overlooked or someone getting special treatment. I put away dirty cops and politicians and even testified against the chief of police once during a board of inquiry. I don’t know what happened out there to the man who hurt Sarah and took her hostage. I shouldn’t care. But I’m a lawman. I’ve been a lawman for too many years just to stop doing it. I just don’t know what to do.”

     She said, “You’ll do what you’ve always done, Frank. You’ll do what’s right and you’ll make me proud. Because lawman or not, you’re a good and decent man. If you weren’t I’d have walked away a long time ago.”

     Now Frank and Eva sat at a table in the dining room, a few tables over from where Marty and Glenna sat with Mark and Hannah. Her children sat at another table with little Markie and Chuckie. Frank watched as, one or two at a time, his friends and fellow residents went over to greet Marty and Glenna, hug them or shake their hands, and chat with them. Frank wasn’t the only one who considered Marty a friend.

     He didn’t like hiding things from anybody. Especially friends. And he didn’t like turning down a request from a friend who needed help. But he was in a tough position this time.

     As he told Eva, he didn’t know what happened on the morning Bryan, Bryan Too and Brad went out in that truck with the man they’d taken prisoner. Bryan wasn’t talking to anyone about it, and now that Sarah was in the hospital he was away from the compound most of the time anyway. He planned to come back every two or three days to take a short break and exchange his laundry. Other than that he was constantly at Sarah’s bedside holding her hand.

     Bryan Too was gone for good. The Army decided he’d completed his mission to help Bryan find his wife, and dispatched him somewhere else, to help somebody else on a new mission. In all likelihood no one from the compound would ever see him again.

     The only other person who could shed some light on what happened that morning was Brad. And he’d rebuffed every attempt to ask him.

     “I don’t want to talk about it,” was his standard response when asked.

     Frank liked Bryan and Brad. He had known them for only a couple of years, but they’d become almost like family to him.

     That’s why he was so conflicted. As he’d told Eva, he’d never forgotten his duty as a cop to protect and serve. And to administer justice. That duty wasn’t always cut and dry, when the ones needing protection were the bad guys. Or when the men breaking the law were his friends or fellow cops.

     “At some point,” he told Eva, “I’m going to have to stop being a cop and start being like everyone else. I have to stop seeing things from the prospective of someone who’s sworn to uphold the laws. I have to start understanding that sometimes there may be circumstances when the laws need to be overlooked, for the common good. And I need to recognize that maybe the world has changed a lot since the day I took my oath. That maybe the laws have become outdated. And that maybe a little bit of prairie justice is in order in this new world we live in.”

     “Perhaps,” she’d responded. “But the question is, are you ready to make that step?”

     “I don’t know, honey. I honestly don’t know.”

-31-

     Hannah waited until Marty and Glenna finished eating their dinners. She had the sense that after she shared her news with them they’d have no more appetite.

     “I have something to talk to you guys about.”

     Marty smiled and said, “Wow. The way you said that makes it sound like bad news.”

     But Hannah didn’t return his smile. And Marty’s own smile quickly left his face. He’d said it in a joking way, but he was absolutely right. He saw the serious look on Hannah’s face and knew that whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be good.

     Marty looked to Mark and saw the same look.

     “What? What’s the matter?”

     Hannah looked at Glenna and saw that her eyes were moistening. Glenna was a very sensitive woman by nature and had been through a lot of heartache and misery in recent years at the hands of some very bad men. And she had two small children to protect. She was likely to take the news a lot harder than Marty.

    She took Glenna’s hands in hers.

     “I have reason to believe there may be another meteorite headed our way. And there’s a chance it could collide with the earth in the same way Saris 7 did.”

     Marty and Glenna looked at each other. Glenna’s jaw quite literally dropped. Marty was never at a loss for words. But he had nothing to say. He put his arm around Glenna and pulled her closer to him.

     Hannah went on.

     “It’s called Cupid 23. It was a piece that broke off of Saris 7 in the collision that diverted Saris 7 toward the earth. At one time they were following the same path toward earth, but that may have changed. NASA no longer exists and there’s no way of finding out one way or the other.”

     Glenna found her voice. It was shaky and full of fear.

     “But… how can that happen to us twice? I mean, they said the first time was a one in a million chance…”

     “As I said, it may not happen. I might be jumping to conclusions. I hope I am. But it’s possible, I believe, because heavenly bodies that break apart sometimes continue to follow the same paths.”

     “But… wouldn’t it have hit us already? I mean, Saris 7 hit us so many years ago.”

     “Cupid 23 was moving much slower, and was much more erratic. That tendency- the tendency to be erratic, may have caused it to change course. To veer off its original path. But I’m afraid it’s impossible to say without NASA’s help.”

     Marty asked, “Is there any way to stop it?”

     “No. All we can do is prepare for it and hope it never happens.”

     Mark said, “That’s why we’re telling you. We’ve decided to start restocking our mine. To build up our reserves of food and water and fuel. So that if it didn’t veer off, and if it does impact the earth, we have someplace to go.

     “We wanted to give you the opportunity to help us. And to tell you that if Cupid 23 does hit the earth, you are welcome to come into the mine with us to ride out the next freeze.”

     “To help you how, exactly?”

     “Help us gather. Bryan and Brad are both qualified truck drivers. But they don’t have the experience or the speed that you and Lenny have. We want to cruise the interstates and state highways, looking for trailers and tankers we can use. A ten-thousand gallon water truck would be nice if we could find it. We could just park it in the back of the mine and use it as we needed it. Trucks full of diesel would be great too. And any box trailer that might contain bottled water or soft drinks or food. We’re thinking that if we have four truckers who are out there finding trailers, making them serviceable, then hooking up to them and bringing them here, we can gather what we need in just a few short weeks.”

     Marty was skeptical.

     “I hate to rain on your parade, Mark. But ten thousand gallon trucks full of potable water were hard to find even before the freeze. I mean, the highway department or construction companies used them during ground preparation, but it would be a miracle to just find one sitting around full of water. Diesel is the same way. For every twenty tankers of gasoline out there on the highway, there may be one tanker of diesel. And odds are fifty-fifty that it’s empty, and was on its way back to the refinery for refill. Any chance you could use gasoline instead?”

     “No. We decided early on that having large stores of gasoline was too risky. Diesel was much safer to store. So we bought diesel generators instead.”

     “Also, Mark, most of the trailers out there aren’t road worthy. They’ve been sitting there for better than ten years. All the rubber air hoses are probably weather-cracked and leaking. Same with the seals, and many of the tires.”

     “We expected that. But the air lines are easy to replace. You should have a lot of them at the truck stop. And if we run short we can pull them off the trucks we pick clean and use them over and over again.”