Eden Bound

by Darrell Maloney

“Did you go down to the pharmacy and get your medications?”

  “Yes. They gave me a ninety day supply so I don’t have to worry about coming back to get them refilled. The doctor said by the end of ninety days I can just stop taking them.”

  Debbie added, “I’ll check with the nurse and ask if they can spare a few bandages so you can change your dressing every day until it’s healed. We wouldn’t want to have to haul your big ol’ butt down here a second time because you got an infection.”

  He looked at her and she smiled broadly.

  This time he punched her in the arm.

  “Ouch.”

  Brad said, “Don’t complain. You deserved it.”

  Hannah told Brad the day before she thought Debbie and Al hit it off so well because they both needed a change in faces.

  He asked her what she meant.

  “Well, think about it. Ever since Saris 7 hit more than ten years ago and we locked ourselves up in the mine, Debbie has seen the same faces.

  “Mayor Al saw a different set of faces in Eden, but he was in the same situation. He saw the same faces, day in and day out, for many years.

  “Now, all of a sudden, they’re meeting people they’ve never met before. And it’s like getting a new toy at Christmas time.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But I see a major flaw in your theory.”

  “What? Blasphemy! My theories have no flaws!”

  “This one does. Big time.”

  “Enlighten me then, oh wise one. Exactly what did I get wrong?”

  “Look at this face,” Brad said. “There’s no way anyone could get tired of seeing this face, not even if we were locked up together for a million years.”

  Hannah started laughing hysterically. She slapped her knee and pretended her side hurt from laughing so hard.

  Brad didn’t buy it, because she was such a terrible liar. But she tried her best.

  “I hate to differ with you, big buddy o’ mine. But your face was the very first one I got tired of. Within days. I was so tired of it I wanted to puke. In fact, I did puke several times, but I was just too nice to do it in front of you.”

  “Oh, yeah. I can see how nice you are.”

  At that point in their conversation Debbie came walking by.

  She was on her way to somewhere else and didn’t have time to chat.

  So in the same manner a gangster does a drive by shooting, Hannah called out a few words to her.

  It was a drive by shouting.

  “Hey Debbie. If you had to describe Brad’s face in one word, what would it be?”

  Debbie, without missing a beat or slowing her pace, yelled back over her shoulder.

  “Ugly as sin.”

  She kept walking down the hallway.

  Brad could only think of one comeback, and shouted after her.

  “That’s three words, you big dummy.”

  He looked back to Hannah with a hurt look on his face. Hannah suspected it was phony, but couldn’t be sure.

  “Do you really think I’m ugly, Hannah?”

  “Oh, Brad, we’re only kidding. Actually you’re a very handsome man.”

  “Really? How handsome, exactly?”

  She rolled her eyes and tried to stroke his ego.

  “So handsome that if I wasn’t already married I’d marry you in a heartbeat.”

  “Would you really?”

  “Nope. But I’ll say it if it makes you feel better.”

  “Hag.”

  “Twerp.”

  As for Debbie’s newfound friendship with Al, the two of them would communicate over the ham radio every few days from here on out. They would introduce their spouses, and after the thaw the four of them would get together frequently. They had no way of knowing it now, but now that they met and hit it off, the four of them would become lifelong friends.

  -13-

  Hannah was next in line to use the radio when a woman overcome with emotion fell into her arms.

  She’d just spoken with her husband and kids on the radio and told them the good news.

  “I swore I wouldn’t cry,” she told Hannah. “Then my youngest, the four year old, started boo-hooing. And that made the sixteen year old follow suit. Finally my husband started choking back tears. He’s the manliest man I’ve ever met. Played football in college and has been a police officer for eighteen years.

  “That’s when I lost it. I figure if my husband can start bawling I can too.”

  Hannah, ever the compassionate woman despite the jabs she gave to Brad, held the woman until it was her time to go in.

  All the while she hoped she didn’t lose it when she spoke to her son Markie.

  She knew if he cried she would too. Mothers have a hard time holding back their own emotions when their children are sad or hurt.

  She needn’t have worried, though.

  For she never got a chance to talk to him.

  Karen was on duty at the Security Control Center when Hannah called.

  “Oh, hi, Hannah. How’s our mayor doing?”

  “He’s fine. He’s been discharged and he’s free to go home!”

  “That’s great. Now you just have to wait until they move those damn cars out of your way.”

  “Nope. That’s the other good news. They reopened the main gate just an hour or so ago.”

  “Awesome!”

  “So, is my husband or son around? Hopefully both of them? I want to share the news with them myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll call Mark on the two-way. Markie I’m not so sure about.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He and his cousins are on the far end of the mine, looking for Lucy. And I don’t think they took a radio with them.”

  “Lucy? Who in heck is Lucy?”

  “You remember, not long before you left, Maggie had pups? Well, the kids named all of them, and the one named Lucy got out of their pen. They can hear her howling in the night occasionally, but can’t figure out where she’s gone.”

  Years before, in the run-up to Saris 7 striking the earth and causing the first freeze, Hannah and Mark and Bryan and Sarah spent every hour of every day preparing for the event.

  They spent pretty much every last dollar they had to stock the mine with everything they thought they’d need to last them for ten years or more.

  They didn’t just plan for the basics of life: the food, the water, the fuel.

  They also stocked quality of life things, to make life more enjoyable during their long stay in self-isolation.

  Things like movies and games and sporting equipment.

  And pets.

  Pets don’t just make life more enjoyable. They also become almost like children.

  And no one would dream of taking shelter from a multi-year ice storm without taking their children.

  Furry or otherwise.

  To plan for the care of the pets the group stored more than three tons of dry dog and cat food, and about a ton of canned food.

  Most dogs and cats prefer canned food, of course, but dry food stores better and lasts longer.

  The thinking at the time was that if they preserved the wet food for the very young and the very old, the pets could eat the dry food for most of their lives.

  Their plan had a major flaw, though: the canned food they stored had a five year shelf life.

  In their fourth year in the mine they served the animals nothing but canned food, so that it wouldn’t go to waste.

  And of course, every dog and every cat got spoiled.

  When the switch had to be made back to dry food many of them went on hunger strikes. They refused to eat their food.

  Hannah and Karen tried to explain to them that the soft food was all gone, but they didn’t seem to understand.

  They steadfastly refused to eat.

  Finally the women softened the food with water and mixed leftover meat scraps from the kitchen with it.

  That was acceptable to the dogs, and they begrudgingly started eating again.

  Over t
he course of several weeks the dogs found their food less and less moist with fewer and fewer meat scraps, until they were eating the dry food straight from the bag.

  These days, now that the soft food was gone, the women softened the food just for freshly-weaned puppies and for older dogs who were losing their teeth.

  The cats? They had no problem transitioning from wet food to dry.

  The cats brought into the mine at the beginning were mostly rescues, and mostly mixed breeds.

  The dogs brought in were a pair of beagles, one male and one female; a pair of German shepherds, one male and one female; a single female poodle and a single female bichon frise.

  The single poodle and the single bichon frise lived out their lives in the tunnel and were buried with much fanfare beneath a mound of salt in the back of the mine.

  They were laid to rest right next to two humans who died during the first freeze, and their mummified bodies were disinterred along with the humans and more properly buried in the compound during the first thaw.

  Maggie, a German shepherd, was the granddaughter of Bonnie, one of the original dogs brought into the mine on day one.

  This was Maggie’s third litter of pups. Two males and two females.

  All were born healthy, and she recently finished weaning them.

  Now one of them was lost somewhere in the mine, and the mine’s residents were going nuts trying to find her.

  -14-

  Hannah told Mark not to worry, that they’d be back in a few hours and she was positive she’d be able to find young Lucy, wherever she was.

  Hannah had a reputation as kind of a “dog whisperer,” you see. Dogs seemed to relate to her in a way they did with nobody else. And they always came running when she was around, sometimes knocking her down and slobbering all over her.

  Bryan told her once it’s because she was a hound dog in a previous life, and they could sense that she was one of their own.

  Hannah stuck out her tongue at Bryan but didn’t take offense to the remark.

  She came back with, “I can’t think of anything more noble or cooler than being a dog. Dogs are faithful, caring and giving, and they never tell lies or judge others.

  “In other words, they’re much better than most people.”

  She looked Bryan directly in the eyes and said, “And they’re definitely way better than you.”

  Bryan shut up at that point.

  Except to mutter to himself that he should have known better than to go toe to toe with Hannah.

  While Hannah and Mark were talking Sami went off in search of the children so she could offer Mark Junior the opportunity to say hello to his mother.

  When she didn’t return within five minutes, Hannah began to feel guilty. There were still people waiting in line and she’d talked for long enough.

  “Just tell Markie that I’ll be home tonight, and the first thing we’ll do is walk through the mine calling for Lucy. I’m sure she’ll come to me, because I’m not a big scary monster like all of you guys.”

  She got off the radio and went back to Al’s hospital room, where she relayed Lucy’s sad predicament and her promise to help.

  Debbie said, “You promised them you’d be back tonight?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “We’ve already talked it out and decided it’s too dangerous to try to make it back in just a few hours. We’re going to get a good night’s sleep and leave fresh in the morning.”

  Hannah put a brave smile upon her face, all the time muttering something unintelligible under her breath.

  She turned on one heel and headed in the other direction.

  “Wait,” Mayor Al called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “To stand in that stupid line again.”

  -15-

  “Whatever you do, don’t freak out,” Johnny told Tina, even as he was freaking out himself.

  He had no idea why a Lubbock County Sheriff’s vehicle would be behind him with its blue lights on. But he had good reason to be nervous.

  In the state of Texas, if a police officer pulled someone over and found a small amount of illegal drugs, the driver of the car was assumed to be a user and was hauled away on a possession charge. The charge might be a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the type of drug and the amount.

  If a driver was pulled over and found to be in possession of a larger amount, or if the drugs they carried were individually packaged for distribution, they’d go down as a dealer, possession with intent to distribute, and would likely do hard time.

  If they were caught with several pounds of the stuff, like Johnny had in a suitcase in the cargo bed of his pickup, it was a whole new ball game.

  He’d be labeled not as a user, though he was. And not as a dealer, though he was. No, with the amount of dope he had in that suitcase he’d be charged as a distributor. It would come out at trial that only Mexican cartels could provide such amounts of several different narcotics.

  He’d certainly be found guilty, for the evidence would speak for itself.

  He’d be slapped in prison on a life without parole sentence, but that would be the least of his worries.

  The Mexican cartels have people in every prison in America.

  And they don’t play.

  Johnny would claim to be a target as soon as he walked through the prison gate and would request he be placed in administrative segregation, or “ad-seg.” His request might or might not be granted, based on whether or not prison officials believed him.

  If they did believe him, he’d be placed in what essentially was solitary confinement for his entire sentence.

  There’s no harder time to do than solitary confinement. And no man has ever done life in solitary without going insane or committing suicide.

  Or both.

  On the other hand, if the prison officials didn’t believe there was a threat to his life, they’d place him in “gen-pop.” General population. He’d have a cell with a roommate, or “cellie.” And he’d have to mingle with fifty to a hundred other men in the cellblock each and every day.

  Some of those men would have cartel ties.

  Word would get back to the cartel that Johnny Connolly was finally in lockup and ready to pay the price for stealing from them.

  The cartel might put out a hit on Johnny.

  Or they might just let their “shot-caller” in the cell block take care of it.

  Either way, Johnny would die in the prison shower, or beneath a staircase, or any one of a dozen other places in the cellblock not under video surveillance.

  If he was lucky and his request to be placed in ad-seg was granted, he still wouldn’t be safe.

  Because even people in solitary confinement have to eat.

  And food can be poisoned.

  And prison food is made by inmates.

  In short, if Johnny was arrested he was doomed.

  So it was with considerable trepidation that Johnny rolled down his driver’s side window and said, in a trembling and squeaky voice, “Good afternoon, officer. Is everything okay?”

  They say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

  That even a politician tells the truth every once in a while.

  That doctors aren’t infallible, and sometimes a diagnosis of a terminal illness turns out to be a kidney stone.

  And that even the unluckiest of people catch a break sometimes.

  That last one applied in Johnny’s case.

  The big sheriff’s deputy didn’t run Johnny’s plate. He didn’t know that Johnny was a convicted felon who’d committed drug crimes in the past.

  And that he wasn’t supposed to have weapons or large amounts of cash on him. And he darned sure wasn’t supposed to have dope with him.

  But this was Johnny’s lucky day, even if he didn’t deserve one.

  Because Deputy Daniel Sonmore didn’t run his plate. He just wanted to find out why Johnny was driving so slowly, and to offer his assistance if Johnny was having mechanical problems.

&n
bsp; From his perspective when he turned on his flashing lights, he couldn’t see that there was a Hummer fifty yards in front of Johnny who was driving slowly and clearing snow out of the way as it went.

  Deputy Sonmore saw nothing but a cleared highway when he left Lubbock, and wrongly assumed it was cleared all the way to San Angelo, where he was headed.

  A hundred miles or so past Big Spring.

  In other words, he’d be behind Johnny for a very long time.

  “The reason I pulled you over, sir, is because I thought you might be having vehicle problems. I stopped to help.”

  “Ummm, no sir. I’m just following a friend of mine, who’s plowing the snow as we go. That’s why he’s going so slow.”

  “Where are y’all headed?”

  “Only as far as Big Spring. Another thirty miles or so, I think.”

  Flashing blue lights can be seen a great distance. Especially on a lonely highway in the dead of night.

  When Frank saw the lights flashing behind Johnny’s vehicle in his rear view mirror, he did what every law abiding citizen would do.

  He stopped too.

  Deputy Sonmore looked up the highway and saw that the Humvee was stopped and idling, he decided to go talk to its driver as well.

  To Johnny he said, “I’ll be right back, sir. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

  -16-

  To anyone not named Johnny Connolly, the deputy’s comment was a joke.

  Anyone else would have gotten it, for Johnny couldn’t go anywhere if he tried.

  He was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  Or, more correctly, a sheriff’s vehicle and a stopped Humvee, with miles and miles of blocked road ahead of that.

  Johnny wasn’t bright enough to get the joke, so he did what low-intelligence people often do when faced with something ominous.

  He freaked out.

  “Oh, crap! He knows I have warrants.”

  Tina, on the other hand, was capable of logical thoughts.

  As was often the case, she did the thinking for both of them.

  She wasn’t quite comfortable in the presence of the law, but she wasn’t necessarily worried either.