The stench of death, or possibility of death, was in the air.
Everyone on the base, whether they were directly involved in the Wilcox and Medley case or not, had an opinion.
The hard-core military veterans typically saw things in black and white. If the two colonels did indeed commit treason, they must be found guilty and they must be punished.
Those who knew Wilcox personally, or who knew Mannix personally, saw things a different way.
They could very easily envision a scenario in which Wilcox spurred his co-conspirator into action.
Or that General Mannix needed to quit being an unreasonable hothead and should take a timeout, like a little kid.
And then to go back and look at the facts a second time, with a clearer head.
And maybe he’d see things differently.
At JB Lackland there seemed to be few other things people were talking about, and it seemed everyone was taking sides.
Beneath Salt Mountain outside of Junction things were a bit calmer.
Only two of the mine’s residents were affected by the legal wrangling at the Air Force base.
Hannah, the colonels’ key witness, had pretty much put the case out of her mind.
She’d told Captain Wright she’d testify, but only after the thaw made it safe for her to travel back to San Antonio for the court martial.
He agreed to her terms tentatively, and promised to call her back if his superiors wanted him to try to change her mind.
That was weeks ago and he hadn’t called; she assumed that meant he agreed to her terms.
Mark, her husband, insisted she take a hard line with the Air Force.
He believed, and rightfully so, that the military could not force her to do anything she wasn’t ready and willing to do.
“They’re bluffing,” he’d insisted. “You’re a civilian. They can’t compel you to travel to them and testify, no matter how much they want you to.”
Mark took the silence as confirmation he was right.
And every husband enjoys being right in front of his wife.
Especially Mark, because it so very seldom happened.
Everyone at the Salt Mountain mine, therefore, was more or less happy.
They were able to focus on other things.
Happy things.
Like, for example, the fact they knew something few other people in the world knew.
That the thaw had already begun.
That the outside air temperatures had already gone above freezing.
Sure, it was only for a brief period of time.
Sure, the temperatures had gone back below freezing and stayed there.
But that wasn’t the point.
The point was that the thaw finally started to happen. There was no going back.
The following year, at about the same time, the thaw would have a much bigger impact.
The year after that, even more so.
That year would probably mark the end of it.
Except for a handful of people Cupid 23, the second meteorite, caught the world by surprise.
They knew nothing about it.
No one said anything about a second meteorite when the world was preparing for the imminent collision of Saris 7; not NASA, not the government, not the news networks.
NASA didn’t share the information. They saw no need to.
Hannah and Sarah knew about it, sure. But it was a situation where a sadistic killer said to the world, “I’m gonna cut off your head. And then I’m gonna punch you in the nose.”
Nobody was worried about the punch in the nose they wouldn’t feel anyway. Everyone was focused on getting their head chopped off, and it was Saris 7 which promised to do that.
Now those lucky enough to have survived the first impact were concerned about three things: first, where in heck did the second freeze come from? The government never said anything about a second impact.
They were concerned about how long this new freeze would last, and whether there would be enough food and burnable fuel to last long enough.
Lastly, they were worried about whether there were additional freezes coming.
The logic was sound.
If NASA and the government knew about the second freeze and never warned them, what other secrets was it keeping from them?
Was there a long trail of incoming meteorites which would strike the earth in succession in coming years? Was each one going to wipe out more and more of the human race until there was simply no one left to turn out the earth’s lights on their way out?
Was it all a cruel ruse to make the survivors believe they had a chance?
Were they wasting their time all along, fighting against the odds to survive, only to die during the next freeze when resources were even more scarce, their rivals even more hostile?
These were the things the survivors were thinking about as they endured the second freeze.
But not in Junction, Texas. Not in the bowels of the Salt Mountain mine.
They knew this was the last freeze.
They knew the thaw had already started.
They knew they had plenty of food and fuel to survive until their second and final breakout.
They didn’t worry as the other survivors did.
They had the peace of mind to be able to focus on other things.
Like, for example, whitetail deer.
-51-
David Sorrels was Karen’s husband.
He’d been a dentist for most of his adult life, save a brief stint in the Army between Vietnam and Desert Storm.
He didn’t like to talk about his Army days.
He viewed that time as one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
Oh, it wasn’t the Army’s fault.
It was his own, he’d admit to the very few people he’d discuss the subject with.
“I was right out of high school and not sure of what I wanted to do with my life,” he’d say. “I stuck my head into a recruiter’s office one afternoon on a lark, and he started filling my head with lies.
“He said this was the day of the new Army. One which had to rely on volunteers and therefore had to compete with the civilian workforce.
“He told me since they no longer had the draft to compel people to serve they had to treat them better. They had to pay them better. Give them more freedom to choose their jobs and assignments.
“My father told me never to believe what a recruiter tells you, but I was young and naïve and fell hook, line and sinker.
“I went in thinking I could demand my dream job: repairing and flying helicopters. That I could demand to be stationed right there in Birmingham, Alabama.
“I was told that if I liked the Army and reenlisted, then stayed for twenty years, I’d retire at half pay for the rest of my life. And that I’d be rewarded for my career by getting medical care for life, absolutely free. And that my wife would get the same, and my kids would too until they graduated from college.
“Boy, was I a sucker. I bought all their lies. And when I went to basic training and got my assignment as a basic infantryman I asked my drill instructor what happened to my helicopter job.
“He laughed at me, called me a sucker and a crybaby, and told me I was a moron.
“I served my four years and told the Army to go to hell.”
David found another path.
The only promise the Army really made good on was the G.I. Bill which helped pay for his education. He went back to school to become a dentist, of all things.
It wasn’t the helicopter mechanic job he’d dreamed of in his youth, but it paid better and his hands were a lot cleaner.
And when he thought about it, it wasn’t that much different.
In one job he was reaching into the bowels of an engine compartment, replacing a part that had been overstressed during a long flight and making the machine whole again.
In the other job he was reaching his fat fingers into the bowels of someone’s mouth and extracting a rotten tooth destr
oyed by a years-long love of sugar.
He’d replace the rotten tooth with a false one, making the owner of the mouth more or less whole again.
David, it turned out, was an excellent dentist. One of the best in Birmingham.
But he only practiced dentistry to pay the bills and to secure his children’s’ future.
His passion, his true love, (after Karen, of course) was his hobby.
He’d been a hunter since he was taller than his first rifle.
That had been his dad’s promise to him as a young boy.
“Whenever you’re as tall as your rifle I’ll teach you how to shoot and take you out with me.”
Thus began a family ritual.
Every year, just before opening day of the deer season, David’s father would drag the old rifle out of the closet and stand it on its butt against the living room wall.
“This is the rifle my father gave me when I was finally tall enough,” he said. “It’ll be your first rifle too.
“Eventually you’ll put it aside and go on to a better weapon, but don’t get rid of this one. I want you to save it for your own son.
“It’s my grandfather’s legacy.”
Year after year David inched ever closer to the tip of the barrel and finally made it when he was ten.
“You’re tall for your age,” his father told him. “I had to wait until I was eleven.”
From that day until the day Saris 7 struck the earth, David never missed a hunting season.
One of the things no one knew before the first strike was how long the freeze would last.
There was some concern certain animal species would become extinct.
A freeze which lasted several years, after all, would be deadly not just to humans, but also to every other species which shared the earth.
David had been administering anesthesia to his patients for years.
Granted, humans and white-tails were as different as different could be.
But he was confident he knew enough about different types of anesthesia to try to capture some deer alive to take into the mine with them.
Not to eat, unless they were truly desperate.
But rather to ensure the survival of the species. To set back into the wild when the thaw came, to breed and multiply and replenish the deer population.
For David couldn’t envision a world without venison, next to the ham and turkey, on his Christmas table.
It was quite a chore, building pens suitable for two bucks and two does. Letting them get free to run roughshod through the mine was a dangerous prospect and therefore unacceptable.
Even harder; harder than David wanted to believe, was how to determine the type and amount of medication to load into the darts. Enough to incapacitate the animals so they could be hogtied and transported, but not enough to cause them permanent harm.
They actually killed their first buck by accidental overdose. But the meat didn’t go to waste.
David ate the medicated meat first because he felt responsible. It was his blunder, he said. If anyone was to suffer any ill effects it should be him.
But there was nothing unusual about the taste. He didn’t fall into a deep sleep or pass out.
And he did learn through trial and error.
Each pair of deer lived in separate pens, and by the time the thaw came they’d produced several offspring.
Getting ready for the second freeze, they didn’t have as much time. They were able to capture two bucks but only one doe. They couldn’t share a single pen because the bucks were just too competitive.
The doe spent an equal amount of time between the bucks’ pens, and was now very close to delivering for the first time.
-52-
It was Karen’s habit, as the mine’s dedicated school teacher, to look for every opportunity for her young charges to learn.
That was why she scheduled regular field trips throughout the mine.
So Mark could teach the children the art of treating gray water and making it clean enough to drink.
Or Bryan could teach them how a generator turned diesel fuel into electricity to power their video games and heat their bathwater.
Hannah taught them about weather systems and how rainwater ran into lakes and oceans until it evaporated and then turned back into rain again.
Sarah taught them all about the heavens, explaining how celestial bodies were born and lived and died, just like human beings.
Maybe a bit slower, but similar nonetheless.
Brad even taught them how to change the oil in a diesel truck engine, although it excited the boys much more than the girls.
There were dozens of other things they learned on those special days, every other Friday, throughout the school year.
It had been that way since the day they locked themselves in the mine the first time years before.
One would think that Karen would run out of field trip topics, but that wasn’t the case. Not by a country mile.
As it turned out, there were a thousand and one different things which had to be done to keep the mine running.
And she had no shortage of volunteers who offered to teach their own talents and hobbies.
David offered shooting lessons and training on weapons maintenance.
Debbie’s hobbies were needlepoint, knitting and sewing; she held separate classes for each.
Bryan built model airplanes.
Although most of the model paints were past their expiration dates and were now too gummy to use, he still taught the kids how to build the models.
On this particular day Karen was expecting a pregnant white-tail deer named “DoeDoe” to give birth at any time.
There was a humorous story behind DoeDoe and how she got her name. And even that presented a teaching opportunity.
Shortly after they’d sealed themselves in the mine the second time Karen took her students to the back of Bay 22, where the deer were penned.
David went with them and taught a lesson about trapping large game without hurting them. That led to a lot of questions about anesthesia and what it was normally used for. Also, methods of tying unconscious animals, and how to safely release them when the anesthesia wore off.
There was only one question David could not answer:
Little Amy’s query of, “What are their names?”
It never dawned on David to name them, for in his view they were not pets.
They were no longer wild so they couldn’t be considered game. Not any more.
Their real purpose was to guarantee the survival of the species to ensure they were available to hunt for many generations.
David wasn’t quite sure what to consider them. He supposed they were more livestock than anything else.
Technically, anyway.
And nobody names livestock.
“Actually, they sometimes do,” Karen informed him.
“Sure, a cattle rancher with a big spread and hundreds of head doesn’t have a name for each animal.
“But farmers and ranchers frequently have names for their favorite milk cow or sow or horse.
“We named our milk cow Daisy and each of our horses based on their personalities. Why wouldn’t we name the deer as well?”
And there it was; at the end of his lesson, David the guest teacher learned a lesson of his own.
Sometimes farmers and ranchers did indeed name their livestock.
And if these white-tails were to be considered livestock, perhaps they needed names so people could tell them apart.
“Okay, okay, I give up,” David relented.
Karen added, “Why don’t we let the students name them?”
She turned to the kids and asked, “What would you like to name them, children?”
Robbie raised his hand respectfully, for he was the best eight year old gentleman in the mine.
He even waited to speak until he was called upon.
“Yes, Robbie.”
“I think the big buck should be called Big Buck, Miss Karen. O
n account of he’s the biggest buck so he deserves credit for his size.”
“I think that’s an excellent name, Robbie. Does anyone else have any objections?”
No one had any objections, or other suggestions either.
“Excellent. Big Buck it is for the larger of the males. Now, how about the smaller buck?”
“How about Little Guy?” Amy suggested.
“Why, Amy… I think that’s an excellent choice. Little Guy it is.
“And last but not least, we need a name for the doe. Who’s got a suggestion?”
Little Markie wasted no time, for he wanted to make his mark in the game as well.
“How about Dodo, Miss Karen?”
Karen smiled.
“Another excellent choice.”
And so it was done. The names were chosen and the lesson was over.
It wasn’t until several days later that Karen learned Markie didn’t mean the deer’s name should be “DoeDoe,” as Karen assumed. That was indeed a suitable name.
But it had a completely different meaning than she thought. She learned that when she overheard Markie proudly tell his mother Hannah that he was the one who named her.
“I named her Dodo,” he said. “After the dodo bird, because she has crossed eyes and looks like a dummy.”
Karen frowned, but she shouldn’t have.
For she’d just been presented with yet another teaching opportunity.
-53-
The following day, in the tiny classroom with all six of her students, Karen opened a general discussion.
“Today we’re going to learn about societal norms. Does anyone know what those are?”
Six blank faces stared back at her.
“Okay. Then how about this. Does anyone know what common courtesy is?”
The same six blank faces looked first at her, then at one another.
“How about etiquette?”
Markie asked his own question.
“Miss Karen, this isn’t gonna be a test, is it?”
It dawned on Karen that, perhaps because her class consisted of students of different ages and abilities, she’d always taught her classes using the simplest of terms, in a common language they all knew and understand.
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