Read Breakout (Final Dawn) Online

Authors: Darrell Maloney

Breakout (Final Dawn) (6 page)

BOOK: Breakout (Final Dawn)
7.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

    Their logic was sound.
San Antonio got heavy rains an average of fifteen times a year. They planned to capture as much of these rains as possible, by removing the lids on the trash cans on rainy days, and letting the water running off the roof fill them up. Then they’d replace the lids so it didn’t evaporate.

     This probably wouldn’t provide all the water they
’d need to irrigate their crops. But it would certainly make a big dent. And it would greatly reduce the number of times they’d have to drive the pickup to the playa lake several blocks away to fill up water containers.

     If all went well, by the end of the summer they’d have enough wheat and corn stored to help them survive the winter. Some of it would be dry. Some of it would be canned. But all of it would be a welcome addition to the food they were bringing home from the Symco warehouse.

     Life definitely wasn’t good. Not by a long shot. But it was much better than it had been in awhile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10

 

     At the Trucker’s Paradise Truck Stop, Marty Hankins had his own project that was keeping him busy.

     One by one, Lenny hooked up to a trailer full of food and other merchandise and towed it over to the front doors of the main building. Then the two of them worked together to go through each pallet of goods and determine what to take inside and place on the shelves.

     It was funny. Marty had never pictured himself as a shopkeeper or a grocer. He’d never pictured himself as anything other than a long haul trucker.

     But those days were obviously over forever. It would probably be years before any company got organized enough to start manufacturing things again. Heck, Marty didn’t even expect city governments to be back on line for awhile. And he couldn’t even fathom how long it would be before law enforcement started enforcing laws again, and money became worth something again.

     He wasn’t even sure how many people were left out there. After they got the generator going and the buildings had power again, they’d turned on John’s old ham radio. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and most of it was from places far away. But they did talk to several people in nearby San Antonio who said there were still survivors in pockets here and there.

     John
was the truck stop manager who’d closed the place down just before Saris 7 struck the earth. He was the one who tossed Marty the keys and said, “I’m going home to spend my last days with the family. Help yourself to whatever you need. And good luck to you.”

     What Marty and Lenny needed more than anything was a purpose in life. A new mission. Neither of them had any living family that they knew of. And even though they weren’t two men who would have been friends before the meteorite hit, fate somehow threw them together. Now they were two peas in the same pod.

     Two peas with a lot of time on their hands, and nothing to fill it with.

     It was actually Lenny who came up with the idea.

     “Hey, people will probably be getting out again soon. They’ll see the sign from the highway and stop to see if we have food or other provisions. Just to kill time, why don’t we stock the shelves with whatever edible food we can find and help them out?”

     “Lenny, I’ve never operated
a cash register in my life. And I wouldn’t have a clue how to price the stuff.”

     “Shoot, Marty, I doubt if they’ll have any money. And if they did, I don’t know if it would be worth anything. Let’s just tell them to help themselves. That would be the neighborly thing to do. We can put a big jar up, and tell them that if they have any money and want to contribute something to feel free.

     “If there comes a time when the money is worth something again, we’ll be rewarded for our efforts. If not, we’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we helped some people out.”

     It seemed like a good plan, and they had no other real options they could think of. And so it was that Marty and Lenny, a truck driver and truck yard manager, became the
proprietors of a mom and pop store full of free merchandise and a truck stop to boot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

     Two months after moving to the compound, the group was getting settled. The mine was emptied out and put on caretaker status. Mark and Bryan went over once a week or so just to start up the generators and let them run for a few minutes, and to replace any of the handful of lights
that had burned out.

     The mine
was still their emergency evacuation point, so it could never be abandoned completely. But after living there for so many years they were quite honestly tired of looking at it.

     Everyone had their chores to do, which kept them busy for a few hours a day. In addition, the entire crew pitched in to plant their first corn, wheat and sorghum crops. It was while doing the planting that they discovered the first serious oversight in their preparations.

     They’d forgotten to buy a seed planter.

     It took all of them, working in shifts, a full two weeks to plant an acre each of the three crops. Crawling on hands and knees, poking holes in the ground with Phillips screwdrivers and dropping seeds into the
holes was for the birds.

     But the worst part of it was the realization that this was just a partial crop
. The plan was to use a good part of these seeds to plant two acres of each the following year.

     It was obvious they needed a
seed planter. Mark put that at the top of his “to do” list.

     They had a pretty good idea where to find one. There was a farm implement place about fifteen miles
west on Highway 83, just outside the city of Eden.

     And they knew when they needed to go: quickly. Before too many other survivors started getting out and about. The sooner they could get their planter and get it back to the compound, the less chance someone would see them with it. Anyone who saw them carrying it on the back of their truck, and who knew what it was used for, would know that they had seeds. And in a world where the survivors would be scratching for whatever food they could find, the knowledge that somebody was growing crops on a large scale could mean big trouble.

     Brad said, “There’s another factor we need to be concerned with.”

     “What’s that?”

     “There was a prison in Eden before the meteorite hit. The San Angelo TV station did a story on it a couple of days after the collision. They said most of the prison guards had abandoned their posts. Some were joining the suicide lines at the coliseum. Others were headed down to Mexico and trying their luck down there. The warden told the interviewer that of the two hundred person staff they only had about thirty that were still coming to work. And that they weren’t sure what they were going to do.”

     “So?”

     “So… what if somebody decided it was inhumane to just leave them in there to die in their cells of starvation. Or to freeze to death once the power went out.

     “What if somebody just let them all out?”

     “Wow. I hope not. They would have created havoc in Eden, and probably in San Angelo too.”

     “No,
San Angelo is a hundred miles away from there.”

     “You don’t think hardened criminals would have a problem stealing or hijacking cars?”

     Mark looked at Bryan, and saw that Bryan was thinking the same thing he was.

     “When Roxanne and Rachel
joined us in the mine, those two men who shot their father on Highway 83. They were both wearing light blue jumpsuits and identical dark blue jackets.”

     “Do you think those were prison uniforms?”

     “I thought prisoners wore orange jumpsuits.”

     “Not always. I’ve seen those late night prison shows on the cable channels. They wear all different colors, depending on the prison.”

     “So, if they let out several hundred criminals, most would probably have dispersed to the bigger cities. Either San Angelo or San Antonio. But maybe some of them stayed around here. Maybe they took over some of the abandoned houses in Eden. Maybe they’re still there.”

     “Maybe. Or maybe most of them are dead like everybody else?”

     “Well, the implement place is on this side of town, and a couple of miles away from it. So we can get the planter and bring it back without ever going into the town. Whether or not we can do it without being seen is the real question.”

     “I don’t even know what a planter looks like. Do you drive it, like a tractor or a harvester?”

     Brad said, “No. My Uncle was a farmer. I helped him plant his fields sometimes when I was a kid. It’s an implement. You tow it behind a tractor.”

     “Will it fit on the back of our twenty five foot trailer?”

     “Yes.”

     “Okay, now the real question is, do we want it bad enough to go get it?”

     “I vote yes. We can’t be spending two months every year and breaking our backs planting crops. And now’s the time to go. The longer we wait, the more people will be out and about. A lot of them are probably still holed up in their homes, afraid to venture out because they’re not sure what dangers are out there.”

     “I agree. Now’s the time to go. Implement
places have boom lifts or forklifts to load stuff like that. We’ll take a spare battery in case theirs is shot, throw the planter on the back of the trailer, and get the heck out of there.”

     “Okay, I agree. That makes it unanimous. One of us can operate the lift and the other two will provide cover. Now, which one of you wants to volunteer to tell the girls we’re going?”

     That detail was going to be at least as hard as going on the mission itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 12

 

     The girls were worried. And they were upset, and a little bit angry. But they weren’t just angry at the guys. They were equally angry at themselves. They thought to purchase or lease tractors, sprayers, harvesters and irrigation sprinklers to use to farm their new land. They’d remembered to stock up on fertilizer, herbicide and insecticide.

     But not a single one of them ever thought about a seed planter.

     They sat down together, the six of them, and went over various scenarios. They tried to brainstorm things that might go wrong, and how to deal with them.

     “What if you get part of the way there and the road is blocked with armed men?”

     “We’ll go slow enough to see them from a distance. That section of the highway is fairly straight and flat. If we see a roadblock in the distance, we’ll turn around and come back. Then we can sit back here again and come up with Plan B.”

     “What if you’re in the yard at the implement place and they block the exit so you can’t get out?”

     “No problem. The yard is surrounded by a chain link fence. It’s no match for the truck. We’ll just crash through it and haul ass out of there.”

     “And what if the truck breaks down and you’re stranded out there?”

     “We’re going to take two vehicles. Bryan can drive the truck. Brad and I will take one of the Humvees. The one with the sun roof. That way if someone is following us, we can get a good shot at their radiator to disable them. And if the truck breaks down, we’ll abandon it until we can figure out what to do next.”

     In the end, they figured they had a solution for any scenario likely to come up. That wasn’t to say they were comfortable with the idea. But at least they were confident that the odds of getting there and back without being shot were on their side.

     They checked and rechecked their own vehicles, weapons and radios.

     And when they were sure they were ready, they set out.

     Mark and Brad, in the Humvee, took the lead, with Bryan driving the flatbed truck right behind them.

    
About seven miles away from the compound they crested a hill and stopped dead in their tracks.

BOOK: Breakout (Final Dawn)
7.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Dinosaur Chronicles by Erhardt, Joseph
Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson
The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
The Dragon's Prize by Sophie Park
3013: Renegade by Susan Hayes
That Which Destroys Me by Dawn, Kimber S.
Side Chic by West, La'Tonya