They stayed there during the thaw because there was simply no reason not to. By that time they were comfortable and considered the place a home.
When the second freeze caught survivors all over the world off guard, the Dwyers just took it in stride and stayed in place.
They were indeed a family of rejects.
But least most of them were fairly normal, if not of shady moral character.
Frank was learning there were some exceptions, though.
The brothers’ Aunt Stacy made no secret she was fond of their new slave.
She even whispered in Frank’s ear a couple of times, calling him a “sexy beast” and inviting him into her tent after the others had turned in for the night.
The thought repulsed Frank and he tried his best to stay away from her.
As he looked around, he was impressed. The only thing the massive warehouse seemed to lack was heat.
They’d solved that problem mostly by wearing thermal underwear and heavy coats. Two large burn barrels had been placed in a huge open area in the center of the building, their smoke vented through a large hole they’d cut into the ceiling.
Each of the residents had his or her own tent, arranged in a circle around the burn barrels, and they slept in winter sleeping bags.
All in all it beat the hell out of being outside.
Even more of a pain than Stacy were her pet poodles. They crapped all over the building and left puddles in the most inconvenient places.
One of Frank’s new duties was to find and clean up such messes.
But it wasn’t that bad.
At least doing so gave him a good chance to case the joint, and to try to find a good way out.
-9-
On the trip to Plainview Frank had regarded John, the oldest of the brothers, as the biggest threat.
That was no longer the case. He’d made an uneasy peace of sorts by convincing John he would play nice.
And he would.
He had no choice.
His gun was taken away from him on the trip.
The knife he kept strapped to his calf was found and confiscated just after he arrived.
He was outnumbered by eight younger, stronger men. Each was armed and most were surly.
Of course he understood that part. If he’d lived in the same confines with Stacy and her poodles for ten years he’d have been surly too.
No, he no longer saw John Dwyer as the biggest threat to his personal safety.
Those honors went to John’s brother-in-law Eddie.
Eddie wasn’t a Dwyer by blood. He married John and Justin’s sister Josie.
And he was two bricks shy of a load.
No. He was a whole load shy of a load.
He’d been given the nickname “Crazy Eddie” and seemed to cherish it.
He also seemed to work very hard each and every day to earn the name.
The first time Frank laid eyes on him Eddie was riding a hobby horse buck naked up and down the aisles of the huge warehouse.
“Hey Eddie,” someone yelled. “Get over here and meet our new slave, Frank!”
Eddie parked his horse by leaning it against the side of a pallet of dog food.
He stroked its mane and said, “Don’t you go anywhere, Trigger. I’ll be right back, okay?”
He took three steps toward Frank and stopped short, then perked up his head as though hearing something in the distance.
Apparently Trigger had said something to him. He went running back and had a brief and whispered conversation with the wooden equine, then sauntered over to the group.
Frank, for his part, tried to avert his eyes.
Eddie was by no means an attractive man, and Frank was seeing much more of him than he wanted to.
It almost made his eyes hurt.
The rest of the group took it all in stride, as though Eddie’s bizarre behavior was an every day occurrence.
And in fact it was.
“Eddie, this is Frank. He’s our new slave.”
Eddie snarled and asked, “Where’d you find him at?”
“He’s the one who drove John and Justin up here from Fredericksburg.”
“Can we eat ‘im?”
“Hell no, we can’t eat him. Why would you want to do that?”
“Always wondered what human tasted like. It’s been so long since we had fresh meat and I’m damn tired of eatin’ canned goods.”
“Well, we ain’t gonna eat him and that’s that.”
Out of the corner of his eye Frank saw Stacy winking at him.
And he wondered if she was perhaps more dangerous than Eddie.
“Eddie, we’re gonna put him in shackles and chains and make him empty the porta-potties and clean up dog shit and stuff like that. We won’t have to take turns doing it anymore because he’s gonna do it all for us.”
“Then can we eat him?”
“Stop talking about eating him. We didn’t bring him here to eat him.”
Stacy winked at Frank again.
Frank felt nauseous.
“Well, maybe I’ll eat Fluffy or Fifi instead.”
“Eddie, if you touch either one of my dogs I swear I’ll skin you alive.”
Eddie huffed and puffed and gave up. He returned to his trusty steed and went back to riding up and down the warehouse aisles, screaming like a banshee the whole way.
“Interesting guy,” Frank remarked.
Justin said, “If by interesting you mean crazy as a loon, yes.”
“Has he always been that way?”
“No,” Stacy said. “He used to be normal. But he was into drugs. He went to prison for manufacturing, did five years. While he was in there he got hooked on artificial marijuana, smuggled in by one of the guards.
“Apparently somebody had a beef with him, and laced his dope with some nasty chemicals. It put him in a coma for five days and when he finally came out of it he was like this.”
“Does he ever have any good days?”
“Nope. He’s pretty much like this all the time.”
Frank spent the next several hours learning his way around the place, always under the close supervision of an armed man named Aaron.
And picking up dog poop.
Lots and lots of dog poop.
He made an observation.
“All this came out of two dogs?”
“Yep. Every bit of it. Of course, this is several days’ worth. Jordan is supposed to pick it up this week, but he’s a slacker who spends most of his time inside his tent sleeping. So it hasn’t been done in a few days.
“And then again you have the problem of Stacy not putting them on a diet. They’re the chunkiest poodles I’ve ever seen. All they do all day long is eat, and of course what goes in must come out eventually.”
In late afternoon Crazy Eddie came around again, this time dressed in a toga.
“Call me Julius Caesar,” he demanded.
“I’ll call you Julius Dumbass,” Aaron countered.
Despite his costume Eddie’s head seemed a bit clearer now.
Clear enough, anyway, to allow him to show Frank how to empty the porta-potties.
Once finished with his chores, they told him to climb up a storage rack and pull a box from a high pallet.
“It’s a pallet of four-man tents. You can put it together and use it to sleep in at night. We’re gonna give you a bucket at night and then zip your tent closed and put a lock on it until morning.”
Frank looked up at the pallet of tents that was about fifty feet off the floor.
“That’s a long way up for a man who’s afraid of heights.”
“Well there is an alternative,” Aaron said. “Stacy said you’re welcome to share her tent with her.”
Frank answered, “Say no more,” and started climbing.
-10-
Back in San Antonio, at the former Kelly Air Force Base, a different kind of drama was playing out.
Years before Saris 7 was discovered zooming through space toward the earth, t
he base was closed when the Department of Defense determined it was no longer needed.
The old base was still owned by the government but no longer served as a repair depot for what the Air Force called its “heavies.” Cargo aircraft of all sizes and shapes, including the mother of all military cargo aircraft, the C-5A Galaxy.
It takes a lot of land to support such aircraft. Kelly AFB was huge.
After its closure the old base came under the guardianship of its next door neighbor Lackland Air Force Base, which later became Joint Base Lackland.
Despite all its transitions, though, the old Kelly Air Force Base remained more or less intact. Its huge hangars were still there, as were the hundreds of acres of mostly isolated and lightly wooded land.
And it was in a secure area, protected from interlopers by a high fence topped with concertina wire.
A fence which still featured signs which warned against trespassers:
WARNING
U.S. Air Force Installation
No Trespassing
USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED
When Saris 7 hit the earth and caused the first worldwide freeze Washington and NASA insiders took care of their own.
Most of them perished in the bunkers beneath Washington shortly after Saris 7 struck, falling victim to angry citizens.
But there were others who knew the secret of Cupid 23 as well. Mid-level NASA scientists who didn’t have enough pull to be invited into the Washington bunker, and who therefore were left to fend for themselves.
Left out in the cold, as it were.
Likewise, many Washington elites knew about Saris 7 and Cupid 23, but didn’t get a ticket because they weren’t quite elite enough.
Some of them survived the long freeze and were still around when the thaw came.
They planned for the long haul, for they knew what few of the other survivors knew: that Saris 7 would be followed by Cupid 23 ten years later.
It was the second set of Washington and NASA fat cats… the “B” team, if you will… who thought the old Kelly Air Force Base would be an ideal place to set up their own bunker.
The problem was, they only had two years to do it.
Oh, they could have opted for a more elaborate bunker. One with all the bells and whistles. But just getting a basic bunker built and stocked within a two year period would be hard enough.
They had no choice, really, but to settle for a stripped-down version.
As it was, the project was fraught with problems. Finding enough cement mixers and qualified drivers was the first big obstacle. They had to bring in drivers from as far away as Utah. They had to be single, as they each had a place in the bunker, but wives and children weren’t welcome.
Finding a working concrete mixing facility was another problem. There wasn’t one within a thousand miles of San Antonio.
They had to find qualified people and ship them to an abandoned plant in San Antonio and make it operational again.
All this happened while the United States was still under martial law, which made it easier to confiscate trucks and facilities.
But it was still a major undertaking.
Toward the end of the project… when the last of the mixers were pouring concrete and all the food and supplies were being crammed into the bunker, it became obvious they’d passed out too many tickets.
It was time to cull the herd.
Many of the drivers disappeared, their bodies dumped in the woods several miles from San Antonio. Remaining drivers were told they were shipped to another secret bunker in Idaho, where there was more space for them.
Others, like Colonel Travis Montgomery, were deemed pains in the asses of those in charge, and were disposed of by other means.
Montgomery himself was killed when his helicopter was made to suffer catastrophic engine failure in flight.
Hannah almost died in the same crash.
The last of the truck drivers were welcomed into the bunker and assigned quarters in an open-bay barracks.
The second night they were locked in, after two canisters of cyanide gas were tossed in with them.
They were still there, in that sealed room which became their tomb, when Cupid 23 struck the earth in Germany and brought back the freezing temperatures.
They were still there now, two weeks later, while Master Sergeant Wayne Selleck huddled with Colonel Morris Medley and Colonel Tim Wilcox.
The trio had tried using a wrecking ball to break open an access hole at the end of the bunker.
The thinking was the men inside were cowards who’d surrender instead of fighting.
But they were wrong.
Their efforts were met with gunfire from within the bunker and they stepped back to regroup.
Their second attempt was to drop tear gas canisters into the bunker to force its occupants out.
That had no affect at all. The occupants either had gas masks or an air filtering system.
“Plan C” was to block the vents and prevent new air from going into the bunker.
And it worked.
As Selleck and the colonels watched from afar the heavily reinforced door began to move.
It opened only far enough for what appeared to be a broomstick to poke through.
To the end of the broomstick was tied a simple white flag.
The trio thought it was the end to a long standoff.
Actually the fun was just beginning.
-11-
Colonel Wilcox immediately ran to one of the Security Forces’ patrol cars and went on its public address system.
Over the PA he provided a reminder to the crowd of angry spectators who’d kept vigil at the bunker for five days.
“Hold your fire, people. Do not disgrace yourselves or your country by gunning down unarmed prisoners.”
He turned to a young Captain who was in charge of the Security Forces.
“Have half your men train their weapons on the bunker’s occupants. Have the other half watch the crowd. If anyone in the crowd raises a weapon, I want your men to take them out. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir,” the captain said as he saluted.
“Make sure your men understand it too.”
Wilcox yelled to MSgt Selleck to jump into the passenger seat and he climbed behind the wheel.
They drove to a position directly in front of the door and about fifty yards away from it.
“Get out and come around to my side. Hopefully it’ll provide us some cover if the white flag is a trick and they decide to start shooting again.”
“Yes sir.”
The white flag was slowly waving back and forth as the men positioned themselves behind the driver’s side of the police car. The microphone cord was just long to reach out the open door.
The colonel went back on the PA, this time for the benefit of those inside the bunker.
“My name is Colonel Tim Wilcox. I am the new base commander. As long as you follow my instructions to the letter, none of you will be hurt.
“If you understand, lower the flag to the ground.”
It took several seconds. Apparently there was some discussion or debate going on within the bunker.
Finally, the broomstick which held the flag moved downward until it touched the ground.
“Good. I want everyone to come out in a single file line. Head east, toward the rear of the bunker. If you have coats and gloves, I suggest you bring them. I expect you to be out here for quite some time while we sort you all out.
“You will be separated and taken to two different locations.
“Your family members and any others who are determined to be innocents will be taken to the base gymnasium for processing. Then they’ll be placed in more comfortable quarters for the duration of the trials.
“Those of you who had an active hand in building this bunker and hiding it from the American people will be taken to the base stockade to await your trials.
“If you understand these instructions thus far, raise the flag into the air.”<
br />
Again, there was a delay. This one was longer than the first.
Wilcox thought there must be a debate going on inside whether to comply with his orders.
Apparently they realized they really had no choice. That Wilcox held the cards. The broomstick lifted off the ground and was held high in the air.
Wilcox went on, “I must warn you not to carry any weapons outside with you. If any of you are seen carrying a weapon you will be considered a lawful combatant and will be shot.
“Also, after everyone is out of the bunker our security personnel will clear the facility. Anyone left inside will be considered a lawful combatant and will be shot.
“If you understand these instructions lower the flag and place it on the ground again.”
This time nothing happened.
It occurred to Wilcox that the people inside the bunker couldn’t see what was going on outside. They were as blind as Wilcox as to what kind of force they were up against.
Perhaps they thought there were only a handful of men outside.
Perhaps they thought they could pretend to surrender, but could carry weapons outside with them in the hopes of initiating and winning a gun battle with the interlopers.
He hoped that wasn’t the case.
It was easy to imagine a massacre scenario if one or more of the men left the bunker brandishing weapons.
A massacre in which innocent women or children might be killed, for bullets had no conscience. They didn’t really care who they hit.
But then, finally, the flag lowered and touched the ground.
The door opened the rest of the way.
Leading the way was a one-star Air Force general in uniform.
It was Brigadier General Martin Swain, who was the commander of Joint Base Lackland, and who mysteriously disappeared with his family several days before.
Swain dejectedly held the flag of surrender in his left hand, his right hand high in the air.
The crowd saw him and recognized him.
But no one tried to shoot him.
Instead they cheered and jeered.
They cheered his capture and jeered him personally, yelling all manner of obscene things in his direction.
Final Dawn: Book 12: Where Could He Be? Page 4