“Hey. I don’t want to lose you guys. I don’t have a lot of friends left and I’d like to hang onto you.
“I’ll drop you off and then circle the block. When you come out, no matter which side of the hotel you come out of, just watch for me and flag me down when I come past.”
They’d already filled up four jerry cans with diesel fuel and had gotten the box of salt Joe needed, and the spool of fishing line and two boxes of .22 ammo. It was the last item Joe had wanted the most, since the store he frequented was out of the small bullets on his previous run into town.
“I hate shooting rabbits with a deer rifle,” he’d told them. It’s more expensive and makes too much of a mess.”
Before he dropped them off he circled the block a couple of times. They looked for no-frills economy cars with blacked-out windows which might belong to the government and didn’t see any.
No men in black suits either.
Nobody seeming to express a particular interest in them.
“Looks like the coast is clear. Good luck and I’ll see you shortly.
He dropped them off at the front door and a doorman dressed in an elaborate red tuxedo welcomed them and opened the door for them.
They walked into a lobby accented in gold and red velvet.
“Wow,” Gwen remarked. “What a beautiful place.”
Along one wall was a bank of telephone booths. They’d been there since the twenties but were still very well maintained.
Each booth had a folding door made of oak with hand-carved trim. Inside was a tiny wooden seat attached to the wall, topped with a round red cushion.
Gwen sat upon the seat but left the door open so Melvyn could hear her conversation.
And to lend her his support in case the conversation didn’t go well.
As it turned out, though, there was no conversation.
She turned her cell phone on for the first time in days and retrieved Hannah’s home phone number.
There was no answer.
She tried Hannah’s cell.
Again, no answer. Just a recorded message saying the mailbox was full and to please call back later.
Gwen was crestfallen.
She’d so wanted to hear Hannah’s voice, telling her she was okay. And that it was safe to come out and rejoin the world.
She gave Melvyn a pitiful look. A look of defeat.
He tenderly took her hand, then held her as she stood.
But alas, sometimes in the darkest hour of the night a beacon starts shining and changes everything.
As Gwen rested her head on her husband’s chest her eye caught something on the other side of the lobby.
A very familiar face.
A face which had lost some of its glow; some of its luster.
But which was unmistakable nonetheless.
“Melvyn…”
“Yes, dear?”
“Melvyn, that looks like Hannah.”
She broke free and ran across the lobby, almost bowling over a man walking with his coffee cup and half-reading a newspaper.
Adjacent to the lobby was a lounge area set up for guests to relax while they were awaiting a limo ride to the airport, or while waiting to meet other guests or visitors.
In the center of the lounge was a huge television which showed Hannah’s face… as she said herself, bruises and all.
Gwen stood mesmerized in front of the screen, Melvyn standing behind her with his hands on both her shoulders.
It was Hannah’s press conference from the night before.
Gwen missed the first half of it, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It would be played over and over again in coming days on every network in North America, and many others throughout the world.
“She said her name was Rebecca,” Hannah was saying. “And she said my son was premature but was healthy. And that she was having someone bring my baby to me.
“She lied.
“The person never showed up.
“If my baby was dead, she should have told me that. They didn’t have to give me the false hope that I was going to get my son back if it wasn’t true.
“And if Samson is alive, they perpetuated the worst crime imaginable. What kind of monsters would steal a baby from his mother?”
At that point Hannah paused and broke down. Tony, standing beside her, held her and tried to soothe her frayed nerves.
She continued, “The people who did this are employees of the Department of Homeland Security. They are supposed to protect the citizens of this country. Not to falsely imprison them and torture them and steal their children.”
At that point Tony felt the need to intervene. He leaned over to the bank of microphones and added, “They were working for a man named C. Hastings Townsend. He’s a big shot at the Department of the Interior. He told me he’s the one who sent the dogs from DHS to kidnap Hannah.”
Both of them, Hannah and Tony, knew they were risking their freedom. That they’d broken the nondisclosure agreements they’d been forced to sign against their wills.
And neither of them cared.
They wanted their baby back, and saw this as the only way to do it.
Chapter 13
In a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland a woman reached over and turned off the television.
She’d been watching the same broadcast Gwen and Melvyn had seen.
And she wasn’t pleased. Not at all.
She picked up her cell phone and said, “Siri, connect me with United Airlines.”
She had no idea how long Hannah and Tony would be in St. Louis.
There was a good chance she’d get there only to find the couple had gone home; had flown back to Little Rock.
But that was okay.
She knew where they lived.
Gwen was full of excitement.
“Melvyn, do you know what this means?”
“I think it means we can go home again. Or at least to the burned pile of rubble which used to be our home.”
“If they’ve released Hannah and Tony, they no longer have a need for us either. We can go home and rebuild. See what we can salvage from the rubble and talk to the insurance company and start over again.”
“I don’t know if I have the strength to start over. We’re not as young as we used to be.”
“Then what’s the alternative?”
“I don’t know. We could move in with the kids in Tampa.”
Gwen laughed.
“I know you. That would last a week, no more. When the grandkids jumped on the bed at five in the morning telling you to wake up and play you’d be begging me to take you back home.”
“Yes. I suppose you’re probably right.”
“No probably about it. I’m right and you know it.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go find Joe and give him the news.”
Joe had circled the block twelve times. He had to be on his toes constantly, since the hotel had exit doors on all sides and he didn’t know where they might be coming out.
As it happened, they walked out the same door they’d entered, just in time to flag him down.
Gwen was full of excitement.
“They let her go, Joe. Her husband too. They captured both of them and tortured them horribly. But they let them go. It’s all over.”
“So they’re no longer worried about their secret getting out?”
“It’s already out. We saw Hannah on the television talking about it.”
As she talked, Gwen got a strange vibe from Joe. He went silent. Almost as though he was sad.
And he was. He’d gotten used to having company; someone to talk to and share his time with. And he was going to miss them.
He’d likely never admit that. Not Joe, who was a rough and tumble man by nature, and fiercely independent as well.
He was the “I don’t need anybody else. I can survive on my own” kind of man.
No, he was unlikely to mention it.
But Gwen certainly would.
“Joe, can I share something
with you?”
“Sure.”
“I feel I’ve come to know you quite well in the short time we’ve spent together. I’ve come to believe you’re a truly amazing man, and a great friend.
“You’ve opened up your bunker to us. Fed us and kept us safe. You didn’t have to do that, yet you did. And Melvyn and I are forever grateful to you for doing so.
“Melvyn already considered you his brother even before we met. So I know I speak for him as well.
“And I know he won’t mind me saying that we’ll both miss you tremendously.”
She stole a glance at him and was amazed to see his cheeks were flushed a bit. He was actually blushing, for he was a man not used to someone heaping praise upon him.
She chose not to mention it.
Instead she continued, “Joe, would you mind very much if Melvyn and I started making an annual pilgrimage to your place? In the summer, when the weather is nice? That way you and Melvyn could go hunting and fishing together. We could stay for a week or two and catch up on everything.”
Joe swallowed hard and said, “Yes. Yes, I think I’d like that very much.”
But she wasn’t finished.
“I’d also like for you to consider something else too, Joe.
“I know you enjoy your life off-the-grid.
“I know you don’t like feeling you’re dependent upon anybody else for anything.
“But we’d love to have you come and visit us occasionally as well, if you would.”
“I don’t fly, Gwen. I haven’t flown in years. When you fly you give up all control. You place your very life in the hands of a flight crew who might not be on their game.
“If I die by my own mistake I’m willing to accept that. But I can’t cotton the thought of dying because someone else made a mistake.”
“I understand, Joe. But you told me one of the things you miss most was the chance to just get out and drive. You said in your younger days you’d just get in your truck and drive for two or three days at a time, without knowing where you were going or why you were going there. You said you just went.
“Do you remember telling me that?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to feel you can still do that, Joe. Except now you’ll always have a place to go.
“I want you to feel that whenever the mood strikes you, you can just crawl into your truck and lock up your bunker and drive.
“Only now you’ll have a destination. You can come and visit us. Stay as long as you want.
“I want you to feel you have another home, Joe.”
Melvyn grunted, then said, “Can I interrupt for just a quick moment?”
She turned and looked at him.
“Sure, honey. Go ahead.”
“I agree with every word you said. But I’m starved. Can we stop and get something to eat?”
Chapter 14
As each day went by citizens in the central United States grew more and more hysterical.
The airports looked like Christmas Day on steroids. Every flight was overbooked. Standby lists were miles long. Bumped passengers, or those who couldn’t get flights out, were running airport rental car companies out of vehicles.
And all this despite the scientific community’s contention there was no real hurry.
It wasn’t just the airports and car rentals.
Retail stores all over the nation were slammed. It was Black Friday, only it was May.
You’d think a category five hurricane was on its way. A hurricane which would come ashore on the east coast and sweep across the entire continental United States without losing any wind speed or strength.
Every retail store in America was running out of generators, flashlights and batteries, drinking water and rice.
And nobody could explain why, except to guess that’s the way Americans have always behaved when a natural disaster loomed.
One after another scientists and geologists, with a spattering of volcanologists, were interviewed on the cable stations.
None would argue with the data. They all agreed the Yellowstone volcano was getting ready to blow.
What they couldn’t agree on was when.
Many people don’t know this, but every weatherman on every local newscast in America gets his or her data from the same place: the National Weather Service.
Yet three different weathermen on three different stations can come up with vastly different forecasts.
One might say there’s a twenty percent chance of rain in the viewing area and the high will be fifty five degrees.
Another might say there’s an eighty percent chance of rain and a high of forty five degrees.
Yet another, in the same viewing area as the first two, might say there’s absolutely no chance of rain and it’ll get up to seventy.
All three get the same data. And all three use the same computer models which make calculated guesses.
But they all interpret the data differently.
The only way the poor viewer can know which one’s the accurate forecaster is to look at each meteorologist’s track record.
In other words, it boils down to nothing more than which one is the best at guessing.
The same thing happens with scientists when viewing complicated data. Three scientists can review the same data and come up with vastly differing opinions on what it means.
And maddeningly enough, the more data they review the wider opinions seem to differ.
The learned men of science, instead of working together to come up with an agreed-upon conclusion, were declaring open warfare on national television.
Some resorted to calling their colleagues incompetent and moronic, as well as other more colorful terms.
One talk show host interviewed an astute volcanologist who maintained Yellowstone could blow “at any minute.”
His follow-up guest said it would be ten years and not a day before.
The flustered host threw up his hands and offered his own suggestion.
“Hell, let’s just average them out. One fool says tomorrow and the other fool says ten years. Holy crapola! Let’s add the two together and divide by two. Five Years! There’s your frickin’ answer. It’ll blow in five years. Problem solved!”
He stormed off the stage and was fired the next day.
The fact no one could agree when the disaster was coming had everyone scrambling to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Those in the danger zones were trying to call their children in New York City or their cousins in Florida to ask permission to move in with them.
Many of those children and cousins were refusing to answer their phones.
Congress was ordered into session by the President, yet it wasn’t that easy. They were spread all over the country and were using the backed-up airline flights as a convenient excuse to stay where they were.
The real estate markets in cities outside the evacuation zones were booming.
Builders were buying up huge tracts of land and taking out huge loans they’d never be able to repay.
Unless, of course, they threw up cookie cutter houses incredibly quickly and charged premium prices for them.
Construction workers read the writing on the wall and started walking off projects in what the news now termed the “danger zone states” and moved to areas far outside the zones.
Up and down the eastern seaboard zoning commissions were being petitioned to redesignate commercial property for high-occupancy residential projects: condos and apartments by the hundreds of thousands.
If twenty to thirty percent of the United States was going to be relocated within the next two to five years they’d need a heck of a lot of units to house them all.
Some people weren’t waiting.
For the first time in its eighty year history U-Haul-It had every working truck in its fleet on the road. And a standby list of over four hundred names in the larger danger zone cities.
But the early bird doesn’t always get the worm, and early movers s
ometimes got burned.
Apartments and rent houses they were promised before they loaded up their belongings weren’t always available after all. And some were available but at highly increased prices.
Homeowners arrived at safer cities only to be told that no, they couldn’t buy a new house before their old one sold. And they were screwed, because there was no way anyone was going to buy their old one.
Actually that wasn’t necessarily true.
Rumors flew that the scientists had it all wrong. That Yellowstone wouldn’t blow for hundreds of years.
Some unscrupulous speculators went into the evacuation zones and offered to buy properties for pennies on the dollar. They were buying two story homes for a few hundred dollars apiece. And people lined up for the deal so they could rid themselves of a white elephant they might otherwise be stuck with.
Houses started mysteriously burning down.
And insurance companies stopped paying claims on them.
It was getting quite ugly, and promised to get uglier still.
Chapter 15
New cottage industries sprang up.
Nationwide moving companies offered a new service. Critics called it the “Get the hell out option.”
The companies bought ad space on the twenty-four hour news networks, knowing they’d be seen by millions because people were glued to their televisions.
The ads encouraged people to “evacuate now, while there’s still time!”
They pointed out that Uncle Fred in San Diego or Cousin Frieda in Seattle had plenty of room for them.
And that they’d be heartbroken if their relatives in the danger zone didn’t get out in time and got blown to bits.
Or buried beneath three feet of gray powdery volcano ash.
The commercials seemed to go to great lengths to describe the horrific deaths people would suffer if they didn’t take them up on their offer, and pronto.
Their offer, for a premium price, was to visit them at Uncle Fred’s or Cousin Frieda’s houses and to sign moving contracts.
Moving contracts that would entail the moving companies to go into the danger zone and retrieve their stuff for them.
They justified the exorbitant upcharges by saying, “Most movers won’t go in there. We have to pay premium prices and bonuses to find workers willing to risk their lives to retrieve your Tupperware dishes and photos of your cats.”
The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy Page 5