Breakout (Final Dawn) (2 page)

     “Yes, sir. For the reals.”

     “When can I see them?”

     “I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow night we’ll ask Daddy how to get up to the roof. And we’ll all go up there, and if it’s not too cloudy, maybe we can see the stars. Oh, and maybe even the moon too.”

     His eyes grew as big as saucers.

     “The moon too?”

     “Yep. If it’s out. Sometimes it hides for a few days.”

     “Oh, I hope it’s not hiding. I want to see it
and
the stars.”

     Hannah turned her head to look at Mark. He was still sleeping like a baby,
his mouth open and a long line of drool soaking his pillow. He very softly snored, but not enough to keep anyone else from sleeping.

     That, apparently, was little Markie’s job.

     “Honey, if Mommy lets you snuggle and sleep with her tonight, can we figure out what to do about your bed tomorrow?”

     “Okay, deal. And can we put a ‘
Monsters Go Away’ sign on my bedroom door, just in case they accidentally get in?”

     “Okay, deal.”

     He snuggled against Hannah’s bosom and put his arm around her. Or at least as far as it would reach. She held him close.

     But before she drifted back to sleep, her curiosity got the best of her.

     “Markie?”

     “Yes, Mommy?”

     “How come every time you get scared, you always wake me up instead of your daddy?”

     “Because you’re softer.”

Chapter 2

     Mark woke up before the alarm went off, and for a brief moment panicked when he didn’t recognize his surroundings.

     Then he remembered they’d moved from the mine into the compound, and felt foolish. He’d make a point not to tell Hannah. She loved to make fun of him. And he did plenty of dumb things over the course of the day to give her reason to giggle. No sense in volunteering more.

     Hannah was still
sound asleep. So was Markie, lying sideways on the big bed with his feet resting on Hannah’s head. Mark noted that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

     He very quietly took his digital camera out
of the dresser drawer where he’d placed it the previous day. He made sure the flash was off, and checked the light sensor, hoping there was enough existing light in the room to take a photo. There was, so he snapped two. One from far away, to capture the whole scene. Another close up, capturing Markie’s little feet atop Hannah’s tangled hair.

     She’d hate the photo, as she hated every photo of her with less than perfect hair.

     But these photos weren’t for Hannah. They were for Markie, and he would love it. When he eventually saw it. But it wouldn’t be for awhile.

     Starting when Markie was a baby, just a couple of days old, Hannah had a brilliant idea.

     “Let’s take photos of him, throughout his childhood. We’ll show some of them to him occasionally. But we’ll keep most of them, the best ones, a secret. And on his eighteenth birthday, to celebrate his growing up and becoming a man, we can present them to him. Can you imagine how cool it will be for him to relive his entire childhood, all at once?”

     Hannah
always had the best ideas.

     He was reminded for the thousandth time how lucky he was to have her.

     He placed the camera back in the drawer and carefully leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. Then he gathered some clothes and stepped into the shower.

     For so long he’d had to take three minute showers to conserve water. In the mine, he turned the water on for only a few seconds, to wet his body and hair. Then he took his time lathering his body and shampooing his hair before turning the water back on and spending a couple of minutes rinsing it back off again.

     It was such a habit that he caught himself reaching for the handle to turn the water off as soon as he was wet.

     Then he remembered that part of his life was behind him now.

     “Screw that,” he said to himself. And he stood with his back to the shower for a full ten minutes, letting the hot water wash over his shoulders and down his back.

     He was going to like these new accommodations.

     When he stepped out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Hannah and Markie were still sound asleep. Markie had rolled over and was on his stomach now, but his feet still maintained their positions atop his beauty’s head.

     He smiled and shook his head, then walked out the door.

Chapter 3

     Mark
passed the security control center on his way to the kitchen for breakfast. John was already hard at work, watching all the monitors, trying to determine if there were any blind spots they didn’t cover that would allow marauders to sneak up on them.

     John was a
Dallas cop for many years, and the logical choice to be their chief of security. He took the job seriously. It was a given that he’d do everything in his power to keep the unwanted and unwelcome out of the compound. And that if someone did break in, he’d be their first line of defense. He’d gladly give his life to save any of the others. No one wanted that to happen, of course. But just knowing it was enough for the others to appreciate his efforts. He was therefore easily the most beloved man in the compound. The ladies went out of their way to bake him cookies and to give him extra big portions of his favorite food. The men let him beat them at pool and at cards. John thought he was the best pool player in the group. But everyone other than him knew the truth.

     John asked Mark, “I know there’s a thousand and one things to do today. Are you going to address the group?”

     “I thought I would, but only for a moment. Just long enough to ask them to carry on the same duties they had in the mine. At least for the time being. It’ll be a lot easier that way, knowing that I don’t have to wonder whether the cattle are being fed and such.”

     “Robbie already asked me what he’s going to do now that he no longer has to work in the water plant,
collecting and recycling water. Have you given any thought to that?”

     “Yes. We’ll have several people who will fall into that category. The three guys in the water plant. The three in the power plant. I thought
we’d ask them to become farm hands, or to help Karen in the greenhouse. We’re also likely to need more help with the livestock, as the herds start to grow.”

     “Good idea. That’ll make Robbie happy. I got the impression he was bored because he didn’t have to go stir the water pools first thing this morning.”

     “Yeah. Old habits do die hard, don’t they?”

     Mark walked over to the dining room, and was greeted by smiles and the sweet smel
l of bacon wafting over from the adjacent kitchen. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits. A couple of them complimented Mark on the job they’d done designing the facility.

     “Oh, trust me,” he said. “Hannah made all the key design decisions. I just made sure her wishes got done. But you’re right. She did a really great job.”

     He looked around and saw that a few were missing besides Hannah and Markie. That was okay. They deserved to sleep in after all they’d endured in previous years.

     “Can I have everyone’s attention, just for a couple of minutes
? I know everybody is anxious to finish unpacking and getting settled in. I’ll keep it short. But I understand that some of you who no longer have chores are looking forward to getting some.”

     “I’m going to make some notes on the whiteboard behind you. Basically, we’re looking for two people to help Karen in the
greenhouses. As you know, there are two of them and they’re pretty good sized. Karen used to grow just enough plants in her tiny greenhouse to keep her seeds fresh from year to year. She was able to do that by working only a couple of hours a day. Now she’s going to be growing a good portion of our food supply, and she’s going to need two full time helpers. I’ll make a request for two greenhouse workers on the white board. Please think it over, and if it’s something you’d like to do, please write your name down.”

     “We’re also going to need farm hands. In the back of the feed barn, before the meteorite hit, we stashed two fifty pounds sacks of corn, one fifty pound sack of raw
sorghum, and one fifty pound sack of wheat kernels. We don’t know if the seeds are any good after all this time, but since they were in the shade even when the temperatures went above freezing, we’re hoping the cold helped them survive.

     “In any event, we’re going to plant them once we hit twenty straight days above fifty degrees and hope for the best.

     “If they don’t grow, all is not lost. We’ll still plant the seeds that Karen produced in her greenhouse last year. But if Karen’s seeds are the only ones that grow, we’ll have to save her entire yield so we can plant a much larger crop next year. Either way, there will be a lot of work to do in the fields the next few months. So we’ll need three bodies for that. Again, I’ll make a note on the white board that we’re looking for three farm hands. If you’re interested, please write your name up there.

     “The only other thing I have for you is a request. We’re pretty sure that Brad and Bryan made all the repair
s to the apartments over the past couple of weeks. But in case they missed anything, please let us know so we can make repairs quickly. We want to stay on top of things like leaky faucets and electrical issues so that little problems don’t turn into bigger ones.

     “Does anyone else have anything to share with the group
?”

     No one did.

     “Okay. Thanks for your attention. Have a great day.”

Chapter 4

     Mark had breakfast and then walked back over to the security station to talk to John again.

     John was still watching the
monitors, while at the same time setting up a new ham radio.

     “I’m going to start scanning the airwaves while I’m sitting here. See how many people are left alive out there. I might be able to get a reading on what life is like in
San Antonio and San Angelo. Find out if the survivors are friendly or hostile.”

     “It seems I read somewhere that it’s possible to determine somebody’s location by
listening to their radio waves. Is that true?”

     “Triangulation. It’s a lost art. Back during World War Two that’s how they got a fix on enemy ships and troop concentrations. But it’s not that easy. It requires three radios, working in concert with each other. Each radio determines which direction a transmission is coming from and the approximate distance, based on the signal’s strength. All three of them do that, and the point at which the three estimations line up, that’s the general area where the transmission is coming from.”

     “How accurate is it?”

     “Oh, it’ll get you in the ballpark, but you still have to do some searching to find the exact spot. And in any event, that’s not something we should have to worry about.”

     “How come?”

     “Well, for one thing, we won’t be tra
nsmitting. At least not often. For someone to track us, we’d have to be putting out a prolonged signal. We’ll be listening ninety nine percent of the time, just monitoring the transmissions of others to try to get a feel for what’s going on out there. At least until we’re sure it’s friendly.

     “If we do talk, it’ll be in occasional short bursts, just to ask a question or
make a brief comment. But we won’t be on long enough for anybody to get a fix on us.

     “And besides, nobody will have any reason to think we’ve got anything they want. We’ll never mention that we have livestock, or crops, or anything else that might attract the wrong kind of attention. As far as anyone else is concerned, we’ll be just another Joe Schmo with a ham radio in his garage, trying to make new friends. Even if they did have the capability to track us, they’d have no reason to.

     “We’re going to log all the intel we get from the ham radio into a special log book. It’ll be here on the desk any time you guys, or anybody else, want to take a look at it. Over the course of a few weeks, or months, it should give us a pretty good idea of what it’s like out there, both locally and around the rest of the world too.