He had only two choices.
He could run, get out of there as fast as he could, but it wouldn’t be very fast.
He was wedged between the cold steel of the Hummer and the cold snow pressing against his legs. To escape he’d have to sidestep to the end of the Hummer before he could break out in a full run on ice as slippery as owl snot.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
Especially since all this old man with the gun had to do was put his arm out the window and open fire.
Johnny’s other option was to turn on his charm and try to talk his way out of this mess.
As he saw it, the first choice was rather… bad.
That left him with only one.
“Hi. I’m… I’m… sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you up or anything. I was just wondering if you broke down, and if there was anything I could do to help you get started again.”
Frank was a social character himself. His starting position in any situation was to be friendly, unless he had reason to believe that tact would not work.
Here, now, he wasn’t quite sure if this guy was real or not.
He was still sizing him up.
“Who are you, young fella?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Johnny. My girlfriend, her name in Tina… she’s in our truck back there…”
Frank remembered the flash of light he thought he’d seen in the rearview mirror. He was wondering if he’d dreamed it.
Apparently not.
Johnny continued, “Tina and me, we were on our way to Big Spring. See, we just got the word that her mother is dying, and we need to get there as quick as possible. The doctors think they can save her, but they need blood from a family member. It’s kind of an emergency.”
Johnny was full of it, all the way up to his dirty red hair, but he fancied himself a pretty good liar.
And he wasn’t bad.
Frank was half convinced, and typically gave people the benefit of the doubt until they did him dirty. He cocked an eyebrow and waited to see if there was any more to Johnny’s sad tale.
There wasn’t.
He asked, “Where’s Big Spring?”
Johnny wasn’t exactly sure, but he guessed well.
“I think it’s a hundred miles or so due south. We thought the highway was cleared the whole way, and then we came across you. I thought that if you were broke down I might be able to get you running again.”
The young man’s story sounded plausible.
Frank was still wary, but would cut him a little more slack.
He lowered his gun. But he didn’t holster it. Not just yet. Instead he placed it on his lap.
“We didn’t break down. We just stopped for the night. We’ll get back underway after I get a few hours’ sleep.”
Now there had been times during his law enforcement career when his fellow officers told Frank to watch himself.
“It’s okay to be a nice guy,” they’d tell him. “Heck, there’s nothing wrong with being nice. But when you deal with some of the scum bags we deal with, you gotta be careful. You can’t come across as too nice a guy, or they’ll start thinking they can take advantage of you.”
Frank never much subscribed to that theory. To his fellow officers he always said, “It doesn’t matter much if they try to take advantage of me. It takes two to tango, and it takes the willingness of both parties for one to take advantage of the other.
“They can try to take advantage of me all they want. They’ll find out I’m not up for it.”
Josie had her own way of putting it.
She always called him a big softie.
“Only for you, honey,” he’d say. “Only for you.”
Johnny, desperate as he was to get as far away from Lubbock as quickly as possible, read Frank as an easy mark. He pushed his luck a little farther.
“Sir, can I offer a suggestion?”
“Name’s Frank, son. And suggestions are free of charge.”
“Frank… since we’re in a big hurry to get to Big Spring… because of the emergency with Tina’s mom dying and all…”
He sniffled a couple of times and even brought up a tear.
“Would you mind if I took the wheel of your rig and drove for you while you napped? Tina can drive our truck behind us, and as soon as you’re rested and ready to go I’ll go back and rejoin her.”
Frank honestly didn’t know what to make of the request. It was bold and rather unorthodox.
But it just might be something a desperate man might suggest to save the life of a loved one.
Johnny pushed a little harder.
“I’m a good driver, sir. I promise. And really, there’s no need to worry. I can’t steal your rig with you in it. And if I did, I couldn’t exactly make a quick getaway, now could I?”
Frank was at a loss.
He’d helped people out of binds his whole life. Many times he’d stopped at accident scenes and rendered first aid to the victims. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d changed tires or jump started batteries for perfect strangers or helped little old ladies load groceries into their cars.
Under different circumstances he’d have jumped at the chance to help this young couple.
But then again, he was still suspicious. Despite Johnny’s best efforts to win him over, he just wasn’t quite there yet.
Then he felt Josie’s hand on his arm.
-33-
Until that point Frank wasn’t even aware that Josie had awakened. When he looked at her a few minutes before she was sleeping peacefully.
Of course, that was before Frank rolled the window down and started talking to a perfect stranger.
It was the window more than the talking.
Josie was a light sleeper but was very tired. The time they’d spent in Lubbock with Frank’s friend Ronnie was very trying emotionally and she was spent.
Ordinarily she’d have slept through the voices. Half asleep she might reason it was simply Frank talking to Eddie in the back seat. Perhaps answering some of Eddie’s nonstop inane questions…
“Why do they call it a tire iron, Mister Frank? It’s not a tire and it’s not an iron, so why?
“Why are some birds blue and some birds black? Don’t they like blue? Don’t you think all birds should be blue? I sure do.
“How come sunshine doesn’t pile up on the ground like snow does?
“Mister Frank, what’s the difference between a vulture and a buzzard? And what’s the difference between a buzzard and a turkey buzzard? Does one of them look like a turkey and one of them don’t?
“You said, ‘When pigs fly.’ Pigs don’t fly, Mister Frank. That’s a silly thing to say. Do you really think pigs are gonna fly?”
After awhile she’d learned to just tune out most of Eddie’s nonsense.
Were she half awake on this particular morning she’d have dismissed the distant voices as just Eddie and Frank having a conversation.
But she was wide awake so she knew better.
It was the window, and not the voices, that made her that way.
Frank only lowered the window four inches or so. It wasn’t much. Just enough to find out what the young prowler was up to and to let him see the ugly end of Frank’s pistol.
But then again, when the air temperature is hovering around twenty five degrees outside, four inches is all that’s needed to create a very frigid draft.
Frank didn’t even notice it, because his mind was on Johnny and his emergency.
Josie, on the other hand, noticed it.
Josie was cozy and warm when she fell asleep.
But she woke up in a blinding blizzard in Antarctica in temperatures which seemed a hundred below zero.
At least.
She’d looked over at Frank to see exactly where to punch him for waking her up in such a manner, and was surprised to see him talking to a young man just outside his window.
Fascinated, she’d listened to Johnny’s sad tale of a dying mother-in-law and his frantic need to get to her.
Now, according to Frank Josie was rather naïve to the ways of the new world. He was constantly telling her not to believe everything she heard, and be wary who she trusted.
“There are all kinds of people out there just itching to use you,” he’d tell her. “Don’t take anything at face value.”
Josie, on the other hand, was constantly on Frank about his very bad habit of being cynical.
“Not everyone in the world is bad, Frank. You have to be careful not to overlook good people because you have a tendency to think they’re out to get you. Stop being so pessimistic and accept that most people are as good and decent as we are.”
They were both right to some degree.
Josie had been stepped on many times because she trusted people she shouldn’t have. The fact she never learned her lesson was a testament to her kind heart and strong sense of humanity.
Frank had passed up chances to make lifelong friends because he thought he sensed something evil within them that simply wasn’t there.
And despite Josie’s urging he still carried a very pessimistic view of the world.
Frank wasn’t surprised when Josie squeezed his arm and, when he turned to her, whispered, “Honey, we need to help these people.”
Josie was indeed surprised, though, when Frank agreed with her.
“You’re right, honey. We do.”
The trouble was Frank was still too exhausted to drive. He’d gotten precious little sleep, and what he got was very poor quality.
But they felt they had to do something.
So they took young Johnny up on his offer.
Half an hour later they were cruising along at three miles an hour, Johnny Connolly behind the wheel of the Hummer, feeling for the evenly spaced bumps beneath the driver’s side tires.
Frank, now sitting in the front passenger seat, watched his new friend, ready to grab the wheel if needed and generally impressed that Johnny had caught on so quickly.
After all, pushing three feet of snow out of your way and navigating by road reflectors you could feel but not see was not something they taught in driving school.
Following closely behind them and bored out of her mind was Tina. She was a little bit concerned when Johnny explained to her that they could continue their way south, but only if he drove the lead vehicle for a tired old man who just couldn’t go on any further.
Josie? She was curled up in the cargo bay like a sleeping kitten, a blanket laid tenderly over her by Frank.
And Eddie slept through the whole thing.
He’d wake up at daybreak to see a total stranger driving, Frank sound asleep in the passenger seat, and Josie nowhere in sight.
He’d start to panic, for Josie had been his whole world for quite some time.
But then he’d hear her softly snoring behind him and stop worrying.
He had so many questions, but for once he’d hold them all. Sleep was way more important, now that he knew Josie was okay.
He drifted back to sleep and would stay that way for hours.
-34-
Marty Haskins was fighting his own war with the weather. In San Antonio it was actually snowing, the flakes were huge and it was coming down hard.
Marty had never been much of a snow guy.
Sure, when he was a little kid he enjoyed lying in wait for his friends to come along, so he could jump out of nowhere and wallop them with snowballs.
When he was a teenager he enjoyed making snowmen with the girls and going for long walks through the fluffy stuff with them.
When he grew into adulthood, though, and chose truck driving as his profession, he came to regard snow and its evil cousin ice to be bitter enemies.
As a trucker he hated driving on snowy and icy roads. All truckers do. But he was better at it than most, and gained a reputation as a man who’d deliver a load when most other drivers would pass.
When Saris 7 struck the earth he spent the freeze huddled in a farmer’s field with a handful of other truckers in a makeshift compound. The compound consisted of stocked trailers arranged in a donut shape with two tractors sitting in its center. The donut hole was covered with heavy tarps to help keep the snow out and the heat in. It wasn’t much, but it was home for six and a half years.
When the group finally emerged from their frozen hell Marty swore he’d never again walk in the snow under any circumstances.
So much for that idea.
He slogged along, walking down the middle of a usually-busy street, grateful there was no traffic on the road with him.
Everybody with half a brain cell in their head was home, in front of a fireplace, drinking hot coffee or warmed whisky.
Marty? He’d give his right arm for anything warm to drink.
The only thing which warmed him at the moment was the knowledge he was completing a mission for a dear friend.
He’d found Mary Hightower’s missing brother, at a cousin’s house not far from the base. The brother had tried to find a ham radio he could use to call Mary, he said. But the nearest one available for public use was at a fire station several miles away.
His cousins had five cars between them, but every single one of their batteries was shot.
He was planning to hike to the fire station, and even had a day pack full of snacks and water ready to go, and then the world got cold again.
Marty assured him he’d get word to Mary that her brother was okay, as were her cousins.
“I’ll tell her you’ll make that walk to the fire station and contact her after things thaw out again.”
The cousins showed Marty how grateful they were that he’d come and fed him a hot meal: chicken and dumplings. Then he was on his way back, regretting his decision to decline their invitation to stay the night.
“Thanks anyway,” he said. “But I told Debbie and Al I’d be back before nightfall. They’re both worrisome old hens who’ll be up all night watching for me if I don’t make it back by then.”
He figured he’d barely make it back before the gray sky darkened to black.
In the distance he could see the Highway 90 overpass stretching over Military Drive and knew he only had to walk another quarter mile or so beyond it.
It was the light at the end of his proverbial tunnel. The end of his yellow brick road. The last piece of his long journey.
Or then again, maybe it was none of those things.
Maybe it was just another way of making him hate his life and be angry at the world.
From a hundred yards away he could see the small gate shack. Something seemed… odd about it.
There was no light on. It was getting quite dark outside. The sky was just a few shades away from pitch black now. How could the men working the gate operate in the darkness?
Then he noticed the sliding glass door of the gate shack was half open.
But that couldn’t be. The space heater inside the shack would be running at full bore, trying to put out enough heat to counteract the cold temperature outside.
Why on earth would they leave the door open and let all that warm air out?
And oh, by the way… where in heck were the sentries?
And why in the world was the gate closed?
He was in the middle of Military Drive, outside the double ring of abandoned cars that Mike Suarez and crew placed there a few days before.
He hopped upon the hood of a Chevy Impala and his feet immediately went out from under him.
The car was covered with a couple of inches of snow, as was everything else in the city.
That wasn’t necessarily a problem.
The problem was of his own doing, for he very stupidly forgot there was ice beneath the snow.
He slid off the Impala and between it and a Ford Ranger pickup truck next to it.
And his leg got stuck in the pickup’s wheel well.
“Oh, great,” he muttered.
This was getting better and better.
At least “oh, great” was tame. He usually uttered words which were much
worse.
The leg was stuck. Big time stuck, for when he went off the hood of the Impala he’d been sliding at what must have been warp five speed.
The Ranger was a quarter ton pickup, meaning it was much smaller than a full size. From the rear wheel well he could actually reach into the truck’s bed and root around, looking for something to help him get unstuck.
And again, the entire bed was covered in snow. That didn’t make his task any easier, for he’d have to find whatever was there by feel.
He looked to the heavens and whined, “Why me, Lord?”
A huge snowflake landed on his eyeball.
He decided not to complain anymore.
-35-
Instead of complaining he searched through the snow in the bed of the truck and pulled out everything he could find.
An empty whisky bottle.
“Oh, come on!” he wailed. “You could have at least given me a full one!”
Then he realized he was complaining again.
He called out, in a repenting voice, “Sorry, Lord.”
He pulled out a lady’s shoe. A pump. Purple, with jeweled accents.
“Oh, this is as ugly as my ex-wife. In fact, this is probably hers…”
He laid hands on what felt like a tool box, but just the corner of it. His fingers kept slipping off of it, as it was just out of his reach.
He rocked his stuck leg back and forth, trying to gain just another inch or two, then with a mighty effort lunged at the box.
He was able to drag it a little bit closer.
Just enough to get a good grip on it when he repeated the process a second time.
He dragged it to the edge of the cargo bay and brushed the snow off it, then opened it up.
It wasn’t much, as toolboxes went. Big enough to hold a handful of emergency tools. A hammer, a Phillips screwdriver, a pair of wire cutters.
Oh, and a Snickers bar.
Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord!
Now granted, the bar was ten years old. But hey, it was a Snickers bar. And even a ten year old Snickers bar tastes heaven-sent.
His problem was that there was nothing in the box which would help him extricate his leg.
The Blockade Page 11