The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy
Page 9
“And have you ever known me to accept ‘no’ as an answer?”
“Honestly? No.”
“I’ll be there soon. You just wait and see.”
Julie was indeed a strong woman. When someone told her she couldn’t do something she saw it not as a deal breaker.
But as a challenge.
She walked up to the Delta Airways ticket counter and said, “I need a round trip ticket to Washington, D.C. for myself, and return tickets for my husband and I in ten days.”
“Yes, ma’am. But the next available flight we have to Washington Reagan is in five weeks.”
“How about Dulles?”
“Seven weeks.”
“Oh geez. How about Baltimore?”
“Ten weeks.”
“Maybe I should have introduced myself first. My name is Julie Hamlin. I’m married to Wayne Hamlin. Doctor Wayne Hamlin. He’s a professor at the University of Missouri Springfield.”
“Isn’t he the Professor Hamlin who’s been on the news? The one who blew the whistle on the Yellowstone Event?”
“Yes. Yes he is, the very same one.”
“But… they said on the TV he’s dead.”
“No, dear. They said he was missing and feared dead. But it turns out he’s alive and well in a Washington, D.C. hospital. I need to get to him so I can bring him home. Please talk to your superiors and see what you can do to help me.”
Chapter 25
Two hours later Julie was sitting with several Delta Airways flight attendants on their way to Baltimore World Airport.
They didn’t bump a passenger to accommodate her. That wouldn’t have been fair.
But they explained to her that they, like all other airlines, regularly shuttle flight attendants and other employees from one airport to another to help with passenger backlogs.
And that several seats on each flight are always reserved for such matters.
And it so happened that one flight attendant who had a seat on the Baltimore flight came down with the flu.
She’d take a later flight.
And Julie was given her seat.
Wayne should never have doubted her abilities to pull strings and make things happen.
He wasn’t really surprised when she called him from Baltimore.
“We just landed. I’m headed to baggage claim to get my luggage and find a cab. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
He smiled.
It would be nice to see a familiar face.
He turned his head and saw, through a half-open door, a uniformed policeman standing in the hallway.
He panicked. The fear returned and his heart rate shot skyward.
The alarm on the heart monitor above his head went off, drawing the attention of the policeman. He looked into the room, looked directly at Wayne, then looked down the hall to the nurse’s station.
A nurse in purple scrubs rushed past the policeman and into the room.
“How do you feel, Dr. Hamlin?”
“A bit apprehensive, I’m afraid.”
She watched his heart rate on the monitor as it dropped closer to normal and the alarm went silent.
“Apprehensive about what?”
“I saw the policeman in the hallway. Should I assume he’s there because the government’s come after me? Am I under arrest?”
His fear was that upon his release government thugs might drag him kicking and screaming to a cell somewhere.
And that he’d never been seen again.
The nurse smiled.
“On the contrary, Dr. Hamlin. He’s not here to arrest you. He’s here to protect you.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s standard procedure. We get a lot of famous people as patients here. When it’s a politician… a congressman or a senator... the Secret Service stands vigil outside the patient’s door.
“But even though you’re a national hero and a major celebrity, you don’t qualify for Secret Service protection.”
Her voice fell to a whisper.
“Just between you and me, I don’t know why. You’re a far better patriot and American than any of those crooks up on the hill.”
She smiled again.
“So you get protection from the Washington, D.C. police instead.”
He felt a little better, but still had questions.
“Exactly what are they protecting me from?”
“From the press, mostly. And people who want to interrupt your sleep to ask for autographs. Or to ask you if they can take a selfie with you. That sort of stuff. It’s routine, really, anytime we have a celebrity patient.”
“But why would the press be after me?”
“Oh, they’re not after you to harm you. They’re after you to hound you.”
“But why?”
“To get their scoop. Every single media outlet in the nation, and many across the world, wants to be the one to land the very first interview with Captain America.”
“Who the heck is Captain America?”
“You, sir, are Captain America. At least that’s what they’re calling you on the media. You really haven’t been watching the television, have you?”
“Not a lot. I turned it off the day before yesterday after seeing the world’s going crazy out there.”
“Well, you’re a national hero. They’re calling you Captain America because you’re the one who went public and exposed what the government was trying to keep secret.
“And you’re responsible for the word getting out. They say you’re directly responsible for saving the lives of a hundred million people, if the government was able to keep the volcano under wraps until it blew.”
“But… all I did was do a favor for my friend Bud…”
“So tell them that.”
“Them? Who’s them?”
She smiled again, then went over to the window.
She drew open the drapes and looked down to the street eight stories below.
On the street, a roar went up. Someone shouted, “That’s it! That’s his window!”
“Is that him?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe. Zoom in!”
The reporters and cameramen below scrambled, trying to line up their shots with the reporters in the foreground and the window in the background.
The nurse very calmly took her cell phone out of her pocket and snapped a photo of the scene below her.
She walked back to the bed and showed Wayne the photo.
“This is them. Two hundred reporters, all waiting patiently for you to get well enough to speak to them, and in the meantime trying to figure out ways to sneak up here and beat everybody else to the punch.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Like it or not, you’re not only a national hero. You’re now a major celebrity. You might as well get used to it.”
She walked out of the room and Wayne was left to his own thoughts.
Wow. He’d never been considered a celebrity before.
This might be kind of fun.
Chapter 26
The plan, while Tony and Bud were in Washington doing their thing, was for Hannah to chill out at their home in Little Rock.
She’d hold down the fort, defend the home front, until they had taken photos of every tall and attractive brunette to go in or out of their two target buildings over a six day period.
Hannah was a bit apprehensive at first for a couple of reasons.
First of all, because she just got Tony back after he’d almost been killed. She certainly didn’t want to be separated again.
And second, because she felt as though she was contributing nothing to the effort. Not helping out at all in the quest to find her missing son.
But Tony and Bud ganged up on her. They convinced her she’d do the baby more good if she recuperated from her ordeal. She’d been through hell and was a physical and emotional wreck.
She needed to rest.
And relax.
And unwind.
And recover.
She’d always liked Gwen. They shared a love of fine art, of museums and Italian wines.
They hadn’t known one another before they met at work.
And although they worked at different offices a thousand miles apart, they became fast friends. Any time Geo-Dynametrics mandated training classes or corporate functions, they made sure they were scheduled together.
Occasionally Hannah found a reason to travel to Phoenix on business, and sometimes Gwen found her way to Little Rock.
Each time they had the chance to hang out together they grew a bit closer, and now they were as close as any two sisters.
In all those visits, though, they’d never met one another’s husbands.
Gwen had been a bit apprehensive about that as she and Melvyn had made their journey south from Canada.
“What if he doesn’t like you or you don’t like him?”
“Then we’ll just cut our visit short. But that won’t affect your friendship with Hannah. Good friends are hard to find anymore. You need to cultivate them and protect them. And you can’t give up on them just because your husbands might not be fond of one another.”
As it turned out, Melvyn and Tony hit it off famously. By the time Tony and Bud got into the car to head east to Washington, the two were well on their way to becoming good friends.
They shared a love of many things… old cars, Labrador retrievers and fine novels.
And music. Both had wildly eclectic musical tastes. And both counted The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Frank Sinatra among their favorites.
Tony couldn’t help but show off the autographed copy of Hey Jude he’d purchased several years before. Melvyn was so enamored by the treasure Tony made a mental note to send it to his new friend the following Christmas.
Gwen and Melvyn’s impromptu visit made Hannah’s recovery a lot more pleasant. Once Tony and Bud were gone they spent their days visiting all the cultural things Little Rock had to offer, as well as the usual tourist haunts.
Their evenings were spent sipping wine and talking of their respective adventures of late. Gwen and Melvyn, without sharing any details Joe would be uncomfortable with, spoke of their stay north of Windsor.
Hannah was fascinated. She knew that preppers existed. She’d seen cable TV shows about them.
She also knew of the more recent phenomenon of people going “off-the-grid.” But she never knew the details regarding how they survived and how they kept their secrets secret.
She, in turn, went into great detail about her abduction and captivity.
The one thing they didn’t discuss, other than in passing, was baby Samson.
For Gwen and Melvyn, it was because they didn’t want to get Hannah’s hopes up.
They’d never mention it. But they shared Tony’s belief that the baby might not have survived. And that was the reason the woman charged with his care never showed up to hand him over.
For Hannah the reason she seldom touched on Samson was more basic.
Every time she dwelled on him her heart began to hurt.
She firmly believed he was alive.
She felt the bonds of motherhood and couldn’t fathom the possibility he might not have survived.
She knew he was out there somewhere. She knew it because she felt him in her heart. There was no way, in her mind, a mother couldn’t know that her baby was gone.
Yes, he was out there. There was no doubt in her mind.
She’d see him. She’d hold him. She’d bring him home.
She didn’t know how. But she was more sure of that than she was of anything else.
She’d get him back.
At the end of six days Melvyn checked the fluid levels in Hannah’s car and inspected it prior to her trip to Washington.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I should be back in a couple of days with Tony and Bud while we plan our next moves.”
“That’s okay,” Gwen said. “We really need to get to San Antonio. We’ve got a lot to do before we can make the big move, and it won’t get any easier by waiting.”
Hannah hugged them both as they climbed into the old Chevy Impala they’d purchased from a college kid in Michigan.
She waited on the porch and waved until they were out of sight.
Then she went back into the house.
A few minutes later she was unloading the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.
Chapter 27
Roxanna was much more organized than Darrell could ever hope to be.
But even she was scatterbrained to the point she forgot her own name some days.
Oh, Darrell didn’t mind. It was one of the things he loved most about her.
Together they were two of the stooges in search of a third.
Her cousin Dede would have made a great third, but she lived in Dallas and couldn’t travel with them.
So they were essentially Larry and Curly, stumbling here and there about the country without Moe to guide them.
Another team of writers on a long road trip might have planned their trip better. Might have pulled out a large map and a list of the places they wanted to stop and tried to line them up in some kind of order.
Not these two.
They bounced back and forth, wherever the wind and fickle fate happened to send them.
Not long before they visited Cleveland three times in one month to interview three different people regarding three different subjects.
And any seasoned traveler knows that visiting Cleveland once in one’s lifetime is more than enough.
Some of it wasn’t their fault, for they were at the mercy of the schedules of those they wanted to interview.
And some interviews begat others.
For example, they might be interviewing a man in Nashville about a UFO he saw and he might give them a great scoop about his cousin Lenny.
“Cousin Lenny lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He not only saw a UFO, but it landed in his field. You really should talk to him.”
Now, it’s not every day a pair of writers get to interview a man who’s an eye witness to a UFO landing in his field.
So Rocki (as Darrell lovingly called his Roxanna) might insist they make a bee-line to Raleigh to make such an interview happen.
And in the course of the interview Cousin Lenny might divulge the rest of the story.
“Yes, it’s all true. I did indeed see the UFO land in my field. And a couple of little gray creatures got out and looked around and took samples of the grass and then got back in and flew away.”
“Can you tell us where that spot is in the field, so we can take a photograph of exactly where it happened?”
“Sure. But you’ll have to give me a ride back to Nashville. It happened at my farm outside of Nashville before I moved here.”
“It didn’t happen here?”
“No. It was just a couple of miles up the road from my Cousin Lester’s house.”
“Cousin Lester? The same Cousin Lester we just interviewed four days ago?”
“Yes ma’am. He’s the only Cousin Lester I got.”
Now, most writers would have given up at that point. They’d have decided to do the story without the money shot. To just describe the location of the field instead of including a photo of it in the book.
But not Larry and Curly.
Larry and Curly thanked Lenny and got back into their Winnie Minnie, then went back to Nashville to take that shot.
Had Moe been around he’d have poked them both in the eye.
But that was the life on the road with Rocki and Darrell.
Actually, they liked it that way. There was no organization, no rhyme or reason.
It was just what it was.
They’d made the decision to visit Yellowstone before it got too dangerous to go. Before there was a chance of it deciding to erupt at the precise moment they were taking photographs of it.
Before it had the cha
nce to blow them to smithereens.
Along the way to Yellowstone, though, they stopped along the way at the town of Hope, Arkansas.
Then they got a lead on a haunted house in Willow Ridge, Kentucky, which led to another lead in Eden, Texas.
It wasn’t an organized way to make a living by any means. It was a heck of a way to live, or to run a business for that matter.
But they loved the road and they loved meeting with and talking to people. And they loved the heck out of putting their words on paper.
And it gave Penny the chance to sniff fire hydrants and patches of grass all over the country.
Most of their friends said they were nuts for living such a lifestyle.
But then again, they weren’t working a dead-end nine-to-five job in a big city, where they’d commute for an hour in heavy traffic each and every day.
Both of them had been there, done that.
And neither ever wanted to do it again.
On this particular day the morning sun lighted the skylight above the compact bed in the back of the Winnie Minnie.
Darrell laid looking at it and wondering why it had a big black spot in the middle of it.
And wondering whether he should find the time to climb to the top of the RV and wash the spot off.
Then the spot dissolved.
The pigeon who’d cast his shadow on the light decided he had someplace else to go. He went off in search of a bug to eat, a puddle to drink from, a windshield to poop on.
Rocki hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d been up for a couple of hours, and the aroma of sausage cooking wafted into the sleeping compartment.
Darrell had fully intended to roll over and go back to sleep for at least another hour.
But how could he possibly sleep now?
Darn her and the smell of her sausage.
He stumbled to the galley and wrapped his arms around her.
“Have I told you how much I love you lately?”
“You just love me ‘cause you can’t find anybody else to make breakfast for you.”
“Not true at all. I love you for your coffee-making skills as well.”
“Uh huh.”
“Did you hit the internet last night?”
“Yep.”
Rocki, when she couldn’t sleep, typically left the television off and surfed the web, looking for new places to go or new people to interview.