“I hope I make myself perfectly clear.”
He seemed to. No one asked any more questions. No one shouted any more remarks.
Many held their ground.
Many others left.
By nightfall dozens of tents had sprung up, many encircling one of the burn barrels.
The survivors of Joint Base Lackland had begun a macabre vigil to capture and punish those they saw as traitors.
-38-
By the time the search crews pulled out that following morning, each of them carried a grid map.
They were each assigned a specific portion of the area Karen had circled on her map the evening before.
“Check every road that is wide enough to accommodate an eighteen wheeler. Don’t forget city streets that might fall in your area. He might have gotten lost or had to take a detour. Don’t assume he’s on a highway.
“Search everywhere.”
Bryan’s search partner was a man named Stuart Carlson. He was a wee lad when Saris 7 struck the earth. Barely a teenager when the thaw came and Castillo and his men took over the town of Eden.
On his fourteenth birthday Stuart saw his father attack one of Castillo’s men who was trying to rape his mother.
His father didn’t fare well. He was shot seven times. Then his body was dragged into the front yard to rot.
Stuart tried to bury him, but was ordered to leave him lay.
“Let him rot,” Castillo proclaimed like a king. “Let his rotted bones be a warning to others who would challenge us.”
Stuart’s mother went into a deep depression.
She accepted the heroin some of Castillo’s men offered her to ease the pain of her husband’s death.
And to cope with being raped and slapped around several times a day.
Stuart lashed out one day. Cursed the men and threatened to kill them all.
He was forced to wear heavy leg irons and shackles from that day forward.
One day his mother failed to come out of her room.
He shuffled inside to look for her and found her dead, a needle still stuck in her arm.
Stuart was an orphan now. A bitter young man with a score to settle, but no ability to do so.
Some said his mother committed suicide to escape her torment.
But Stuart didn’t buy it.
“It was an accidental overdose,” he’d say with firm conviction. She would never leave me willingly to face the world without her.”
Stuart was liberated with the other Eden residents when Marty Hankins and a band of volunteers overran the town and rounded up Castillo’s men.
Some of the outlaws were killed. Most were herded into an empty trailer and driven outside of town.
It was a new day for most of the townfolk but Stuart continued to live inside himself.
Probably always would, the town’s only doctor said.
Stuart was a nice enough guy. Those who knew his past pitied him. Those who didn’t seldom asked. He seemed to have an air of secrecy about him, as though he had a horrible history he wanted to keep to himself.
Whether they knew his secrets or not, everybody liked him.
Most of the quiet survivors had an ugly side. Often it would appear out of nowhere and vanish just as quickly, and almost always left pain and anger in its wake.
Stuart wasn’t that way. Despite all that he’d been through he was gentle as a kitten. Never raised his voice to anyone.
He seldom spoke. But when he did he was very soft spoken. Soft spoken and respectful.
There was more to Stuart’s reputation. He was known to be helpful to a fault. Reliable and dependable too.
Bryan never met Stuart before they were matched up, although he’d been to Eden several times.
He immediately took a liking to the boy. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, but he did.
Stuart, for his part, seemed the perfect partner for Bryan. He didn’t have to talk a lot, for Bryan was gregarious and long-winded and talked enough for the both of them.
Stuart mostly did what he was there to do. Intently studied his side of the road not only for wrecked tractor trailers, but for anything else that looked out of place.
It was Stuart who first noticed the orange triangles and said a single word.
“There.”
It was enough. Bryan took his eyes away from his own side of the road and focused on the triangles, making out the name they spelled out.
“Brad.”
Bryan yelled, “Hot damn!”
He resisted the urge to pick up the radio and notify everyone else their search for Brad was over.
He had to make sure first.
He parked his truck in the center lane of the roadway and fairly leaped out.
It was easy to see Brad’s footsteps. He’d only gone down to his truck three or four minutes before.
Bryan could make out the trail where Brad trudged on and off the highway four times each hour. The long rut where he paced north to south.
And the seventeen steps just off the road.
The ones that led to a Kenworth tractor trailer rig that was mostly hidden by the forest and heavy snow.
“Brad! Brad!”
He called out as he climbed down the steps toward the tractor, hoping against hope that his good friend was okay.
The driver’s door opened and Brad leaned out.
“Well, it’s about time you guys showed up. Next time I’m gonna call AAA.”
Brad was grinning ear to ear.
It was all over.
At least for him.
“Are you injured?”
“No. Just very embarrassed.”
Bryan took the radio from his belt and called in.
“Control, this is Bryan.”
There was no answer.
“Control, this is Bryan.”
Still no answer.
He was too far away for the compound to pick up his signal.
He went to Plan B.
“Bryan to all units. We’ve found Brad. He’s fine, and we’re headed back. Somebody who’s closer to control than we are, let them know we’re headed their way, will you?”
“Thanks for finding me,” Brad gushed.
“Oh, don’t thank me. Brad, do you know Stuart?”
“No. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Stuart doesn’t say much. But he’s a hell of a hound dog. He’s the one who spotted your triangles.
“If it wasn’t for Stuart, I’d have been too busy watching my own side of the roadway to see them. I’d have driven right on by and kept on going.”
Brad shook Stuart’s hand and said, “In that case, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Stu. Can I call you Stu?”
“No. I prefer Stuart.”
“Okay. Stuart it is. Thank you, Stuart.”
Brad’s glee was short-lived.
Bryan said, “Please tell me you know what happened to Frank.”
“Frank? No. What happened to Frank?”
“We don’t know. He went missing the day after you did.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We’re gonna take you back and then we’re headed back out to search for him.”
Brad’s head was suddenly swimming.
“He… he came out to look for me and disappeared himself?”
“Yes.”
“To heck with going back. I’m staying with you. I just can’t leave him out there if he got lost looking for me.”
“Forget it, buddy. You’ll go out only after Debbie examines you and says you’re fit to help search.”
“I’m okay, Bryan. Nothing’s gonna happen to me.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about your well being, Brad. I’m worried about what Sami will do to me if I don’t
bring you back.”
-39-
A few miles south of Eden on Highway 87, a group of white painted adobe buildings occupied a corner of an eighty acre compound at the northern edge of the Texas hill country.
The compound wa
s isolated, in that it was far enough off the highway to be invisible to passing traffic.
The only hint it was there, the only way it could be found by people headed there on business, was an indiscrete caliche road and nondescript little sign reading:
SHADY REST
The Shady Rest Home for Children was isolated and low key on purpose.
The home was created by a woman named Sharla Moriarty in 1972 and still operated by a multi-million dollar trust fund she left when she passed away in 2012.
Sharla lost both her parents in an automobile crash when she was six. She was injured in the same crash and spent four months recuperating in a Houston hospital.
By the time she was released into a foster home her life was totally shattered.
Two sisters had gone to stay with two different foster families elsewhere in the state. They would later be adopted, and because adoption records were sealed in Texas in those days, Sharla spent years trying to reconnect with them without success.
She was eventually adopted by an oil tycoon and his wife, who were unable to have children of their own.
Sharla had no complaints about her adoptive parents. They truly loved her, and she grew to love them as well. They gave her everything she needed and most of what she wanted.
Still, there was a lifelong hole in Sharla’s heart.
She found herself in Shady Rest.
In recent years there seemed to be a stigma attached to the term “orphanage.”
She didn’t know why, exactly. The term had been around for many generations and no one seemed to have a problem with it.
It seemed to have happened about the same time that political correctness took hold in America. Around the turn of the century everybody seemed to be offended by everything everyone else did.
Sharla tried to stay out of her executive board’s decisions. When they deemed “orphanage” too harsh a word they decided to take it off the sign out front.
The kinder and gentler name presumably made it a friendlier, nicer, more empathetic organization.
Sharla didn’t quite understand what made that so.
To her, it was what it always was:
An orphanage.
It’s an unfortunate fact that children who aren’t adopted by the age of ten are usually doomed to ride out their childhoods in state custody.
Adoptive parents, for whatever reason, almost always want infants or adolescents.
Most of them are honest. They say they want a child who is young enough to mold, to shape, to guide.
Older children, they say, have already developed bad habits. They frequently have bad attitudes, are more likely to rebel.
And that may be true in some cases.
It’s also true that many other older children are wonderful human beings. They’d be great additions to any family, if only given a chance.
Few of them are.
The vast majority of children who are not adopted by the age of ten stay at a place like Shady Rest until their eighteenth birthday.
Then they’re turned out into the cold harsh world with a government stipend, an option to take job training classes at a nearby community college, and little else.
It’s been that way for a very long time.
When word got out that Saris 7 was getting ready to assault the earth, the board of directors sprang into action.
By law they were only allowed to draw a certain amount of funds per year from Sharla Moriarty’s trust fund.
And it was nowhere near enough.
Luckily there was a seldom used and little known provision in the law that allowed for a one-time large payment of funds for an emergency.
The board petitioned a court to allow them release of two million dollars from the fund, citing Saris 7 as such an emergency.
The judge concurred, and the board of Shady Rest got to work.
Workmen were brought in to over insulate the dormitory.
Underground fuel storage tanks were brought in and buried, their fuel lines running directly to the dormitory basements and the boilers and generators in them.
Refrigerated trailers were leased and parked in a row behind the dormitories.
Actually the term “refrigerated trailers” is a bit of a misnomer. For although they are certainly used to refrigerate perishable items, they are more commonly used for frozen goods. Their cooling systems can freeze items to ten below zero.
They saw no need to buy such trailers. They knew that the trailer company would go out of business as soon as Saris 7 struck, and would never come back to claim their property.
The less money they spent on trailers the more they could spend on food and fuel.
They also saw no need to build big warehouses or buildings to store their frozen food.
They certainly could have.
But their logic was simple.
By running the trailers’ diesel powered refrigeration systems, they could keep the food frozen until Saris 7 struck. Then the earth itself would freeze over and take over the job.
It was a plan that worked flawlessly.
In addition to the ten refrigerated trailers parked behind the dormitories, all empty dormitory rooms were crammed full of bottled water and dry foods.
In the end it wasn’t an ideal place to ride out a seven year winter.
But it was warm, there was plenty of food, and it was relatively comfortable.
Until the thaw came.
-40-
The day Saris 7 struck there were twenty one children on Shady Rest’s roster, ranging in age from four to seventeen. Since boys are less likely to be adopted in general, there was a two to one ratio of boys, thirteen to eight girls.
A staff of twenty stuck it out that far. They were given an option. They were welcome to stay the course. To help protect the children in exchange for their room and board.
Or, they could go home to be with their families.
One man, Mark Douglas, grew irate at his options.
“Why can’t we bring our families in here?” he demanded. There’s plenty of room in the dormitories. Plenty of food to eat.”
“Therein lies the problem,” Doctor Charles Feeley countered. “We don’t know for sure that we have enough food. The scientists weren’t sure whether the freeze would last for seven years, or for ten. We think we have enough for ten years, but cannot be confident of our calculations.
“Therefore the prudent thing to do is to provide for the children and their handlers. And no one else.”
Douglas didn’t like the answer. But there was little he could do about it, so he left the facility to be with his wife and son.
He never forgot the slight, though.
As it turned out, his wife wasn’t strong enough to take the long dark winter. Just after the two year point she took a bottle of sleeping pills and drifted off to rest for eternity.
She left behind a sorrowful note:
My darling Mark and dearest son David,
Please forgive me for what I’m about to do.
I’ve never been strong enough to survive this treacherous thing nature has done to us. I’m weak. You two are strong. It’s no longer fair for me to eat food that will help to sustain the two of you. You two will survive this thing, and you’ll both thrive.
I’m too frail for this. You’ve both been great about telling me to hang in there, that I can do this. But I know better and so do you.
I overheard the two of you talking the other day about the food stash, and how you were worried it wouldn’t be enough to get us all through.
Now it should be.
Remember me, love me, mourn me if you wish. But don’t feel any guilt about my passing.
This is what I want to do. You both have sacrificed and done so much for our survival. Now it’s my turn to help.
I love you both more than any words can convey.
Be strong and carry on.
Your loving wife and mother.
She departed the earth with the best of intentions.<
br />
But things didn’t work out as she’d planned.
The son, David, went into the darkest of depressions.
One day when his father was in a nearby forest gathering firewood David took his own life by placing a gun to his temple and pulling the trigger.
He left no note, but he didn’t have to.
His father knew of his torment and his need to free himself of it all.
In a bizarre way, he was glad David left life the way he did.
For he was no longer in pain.
As for Mark Douglas, though, he’d never follow the path his wife and son chose to take.
He was desperately depressed, yes.
But he couldn’t leave the earth until he fulfilled his destiny.
His destiny, as he saw it, was an ever-changing one. At first, it was to protect his wife and son until the end of the freeze, and then to start afresh with the rest of the world’s survivors.
After he lost his wife, his new destiny was to help his son deal with his depression. To make sure the two of them survived together.
Now it was just him.
He no longer cared whether he lived. In fact, on most days he wanted to die.
But he had to fulfill one thing first.
His newest destiny was as an avenger. In his mind, Shady Rest should have allowed him to bring his family onto the grounds. They’d have done their share, pulled their weight, helped protect the children.
But those arrogant bastards told him no.
In Mark’s mind it was the board members of the orphanage, and not the bitter cold, who’d condemned his family to death.
And since he had absolutely nothing else to live for, he was consumed by a single desire to exact revenge on those who’d left his family out there to die.
When the thaw finally came he went on a recruiting mission. He couldn’t storm the orphanage by himself. He wasn’t a violent man by nature. At least not until the board turned him into a man consumed by hatred and warmed by the thought of revenge.
Six months after the thaw he had an army of five men. He didn’t have much to offer them, other than any valuables they found after they raided. He wanted none for himself.
He just wanted to make the board members suffer the way they’d made him suffer.
One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Page 13