A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 (9 page)

     “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.

     Mark looked at them and wondered why they were so sullen. They were staring at their cups of coffee and conversing very little. When they did say something they appeared to be talking in very hushed tones. Almost like they were whispering.

     Hannah brought him back to the problem at hand.

     “I think I’m going to try to raise NASA and see if there’s anyone still there I know.”

     “By ham radio?”

     She gave him a look that said, more or less, “duh.”

     “No, by cell phone, silly. Of course by ham radio. How else do people communicate by long distance?”

     “Won’t Karen, or whoever is at the desk, wonder why?”

     “Probably. And I’ll tell them why, but I’ll ask them to keep it under their hat until NASA either confirms my fears or shoots them down.”

     “And if they confirm your fears? If they tell you that Cupid 23 is still a threat?”

     “Then we’ve got a lot of preparations to do.”

-17-

     Marty Hankins sat behind a big wooden desk with his feet propped up and pondered the way his life had changed in the ten years since Saris 7 collided with earth.

     For most of his adult life he’d been a truck driver. Nothing more and nothing less. He loved life on the road. Other drivers hated their nomadic way of life. Eating greasy hamburgers at out-of-the-way truck stops, then grabbing a few hours of sleep in a cramped sleeper that rocked every time a fellow trucker flew by. Struggling with the balancing act of keeping on the company’s schedule while getting enough sleep to stay alert.

     Trucking had changed so much over the years. As much as he hated keeping mileage logs, popping little white pills and dodging the highway patrol’s speed traps, it was better in those times.

     It was when the big companies developed the capability of tracking their rigs through GPS transponders that a trucker’s life really became a living hell.

     Many truckers chose that time to get out of the business.

     The big companies became overbearing micromanagers, demanding that each trucker drive a certain amount of miles per day, and no more. They couldn’t understand that on the nights when truckers couldn’t sleep they saw no need in wasting valuable time cooling their heels at a truck stop when they could be putting miles beneath their rigs.

     They couldn’t understand that truckers planned ahead, to see what weather and road conditions would be like two, three, four days into the future. And when they saw a storm front coming in, they hauled ass to get ahead of the game while the roads were still dry and clear.

     So that they could slow down and be safer when the roads got icy and dangerous.

     Marty hadn’t gotten out of the trade. He took that opportunity to buy his own rig and be his own boss. As an independent trucker he could still set his own hours, more or less. Drive when he wanted and take a day off when he didn’t. He could choose his own loads and own routes instead of having big brother direct him every hour of every day.

     He could stop and shack up for a night with one of several girlfriends he had stashed all across the western states, and could easily avoid those who were mad at him for whatever reason.

     There was no better excuse for not wining and dining a woman in Phoenix than having to haul a load of corn across Iowa.

     The trucking industry changed in a lot of ways in the years leading up to Saris 7.

     And of course, Saris 7 changed it even more dramatically. It brought trucking to a screeching halt.

     When word got out that a meteorite was going to collide with the earth and freeze it solid for seven to ten years, it understandably got people’s attention.

     Most of them panicked. Truckers dropped their trailers at the roadside by the tens of thousands and bobtailed it home, even if home was two thousand miles away. Truck stops became graveyards for rusty fifty-three foot steel caskets, most of which would slowly die as their tires flattened and their brake lines rotted.

     Looters would have emptied most of them, in time. Except that in a world where almost ninety percent of the population didn’t survive to the thaw, there simply weren’t many looters left.

     Nearly all of them were stranded in the cities, with no desire to venture out.

     Some of the interstate highways were practically bumper to bumper with abandoned trailers.

     At the Trucker’s Paradise truck stop on Interstate 10 near Kerrville, Marty happened to be cooling his heels waiting to see how Saris 7 played out. To see if the whole thing was a hoax, the way the idiots on talk radio were claiming. A government conspiracy intended to convince mass numbers of people to commit suicide so the government could seize their land. Or grab their guns. Or drop them off the social security rolls.

     Or whatever conspiracy theory was most popular on that particular day.

     When the talking heads were proven wrong, and Saris 7 really did collide with the earth, the radios suddenly fell silent. It was as though the manufactured conspiracy industry said a collective “ruh-ro,” in Scooby Doo’s voice at that, and went into hiding like everyone else.

     The manager of the Trucker’s Paradise told Marty he was getting out of Dodge himself, tossed Marty the keys, and told him to do what he wanted with the place.

     So Marty did.

     He and some friends gathered a couple of dozen abandoned trailers, arranged them into a compound, covered the top, and weathered the seven year freeze. They ate food from the back of the trailers, guaranteed never to go bad in temperatures that never went above freezing. They burned what they didn’t need and kept a fire going non-stop for years, twenty four hours a day, to keep from freezing.

     When the thaw finally came, the small group emerged from their self-imposed prison to a whole new world. A world where the dead vastly outnumbered the living. Where the survivors had gotten used to taking what they needed without regard for others.

     It was a new world in so many ways. A newly violent world, devoid of most of the luxuries humans had become accustomed to before the big chill.

     Marty’s group disbanded, for the most part, and went their separate ways. Marty reopened the truck stop in a limited capacity, giving free gas and supplies to travelers and helping as much as he could.

     He was aided by Lenny Geibel, his good friend of many years. Lenny stuck around simply because he had no other place to go.

     Marty would have been content to live out the rest of his years at the Trucker’s Paradise, until he befriended a group of people in a hidden compound a few miles east and north of him.

     It began as an uneasy friendship, then grew into so much more. They traded him livestock for the goods off his trailers. They invited him into their home and he showed up with a pair of German Shepherds and liquor.

     They’d given up on ever seeing live dogs again. But Marty surprised them and won their hearts.

     When the group in the compound learned that the nearby town of Eden was under siege, they called on Marty for help.

     And help Marty did.

     He wasn’t a lawman. Nor was he a soldier. But he was a man of high intelligence and an impeccable planner. He devised a plan to take back the town from convicts who were released from the local prison by a softhearted and even softer-headed warden.

     Marty and his crew succeeded in liberating the town and in rounding up some very evil men.

     In doing so he’d accomplished two more things.

     He’d fallen in love with a lovely woman named Glenna, who he’d helped rescue from the clutches of a cruel and vile captor.

     And he’d been given an invitation from the people of Eden to be their town’s police chief.

     Really to be their only police officer. For they had no way to pay any additional officers. The dollar was still worthless, the Federal Reserve having gone out of business many years before.

     “You’ll have to work for free,” they told Marty when offering him the job. “At least for the time being. Keep track of the hours you work, and when the time comes we’ll make sure you’re generously compensated.”

     A lesser man would have laughed and walked away.

     But Marty wasn’t a lesser man. He accepted the offer and took Glenna and her children from the compound where they’d taken refuge.

     These days Marty stayed mostly in Eden when there was police business to do. And on the slow days he drove to the Trucker’s Paradise to help Lenny restock the shelves and sweep the floors.

     He got paid for neither job. But he was content in knowing that he was doing good for others, on both fronts.

     He took his feet off the desk and placed them back on the floor when his left leg fell asleep.

     He was still deep in thought until interrupted by someone walking into the door marked “Eden Police Department.”

     It was a man he knew well. A man who lived three doors down from Marty on Elm Street. The only other survivor on the block. His name was Shane Allen and he looked like a man with a terrible problem weighing on his mind.

     “Hey Chief, I found a body out east of here a bit. You got time to come and look at it?”

     Marty sighed heavily. Eden was a small town even before the big chill. Now, ten years plus later, it had shrunk even smaller. Not in terms of area, but population. Only a couple hundred people survived until the thaw. Many more were murdered by freed convicts who took over the town. Still others escaped the town for greener pastures to avoid the same fate.

     Lastly, when Marty and his friends liberated the town they either arrested or ran off some thirty of the convicts and their hangers-on.

     At last count, there were only seventy one people left.

     Eden was on the verge of extinction as a people and as a town.

     It was Marty’s job to protect the townsfolk from being murdered whenever he could.