“Hey, Mike. Al Petrie, mayor of Eden.”
“Hey, Al. How are you recovering?”
“You know about my procedure?”
“Of course. Wilford Hall always lets me know when they have a VIP as a patient.”
Al immediately felt a warm fuzzy.
He’d been mayor of the tiny town of Eden for many years, and no one had ever said, or even implied, that he might be a VIP.
“Did they tell you I came to visit?”
“No. Really?”
“Yes. The charge nurse said you were allowed visitors so I came by to say hello. But your room Nazi wouldn’t let me come in.”
“My room Nazi?”
“Yes. She said her name was Debbie and that she was your personal nurse. She said that you were much too weak to get involved in anything as foolish as politics and that you needed your rest.
“She had some tall guy with her. She said he was your personal bodyguard, and that he was itching for trouble because he’d gone a whole week without beating anybody up. So she advised me not to argue the point or give her any grief.”
Al smiled.
He’d fully expected Hannah to be a pain in his ass, because that’s the kind of person she was.
But he never expected Debbie and Brad to go out on a limb to look out for his well being. He’d only met them a few days before when they volunteered to drive him to San Antonio.
He appreciated their efforts to save him from a very long-winded mayor.
And he felt another warm fuzzy.
Two warm fuzzies in one phone call.
Not bad.
“Listen,” Al said. “The reason I called is because our snow plow broke down on your highway not long ago and now we can’t find it.”
“I figured that’s why you were calling.
“I went into our maintenance facility the day before yesterday to present one of our city workers with his thirty year pin.
“I didn’t tell him I was coming because I like to surprise people with stuff like that. So I walked into the heavy equipment shop and found him working on a big white snowplow with ‘City of Eden’ on the doors.
“So I asked him why in the world we had an Eden snowplow in our shop and he said somebody found it on the highway and didn’t know what else to do with it. So they brought it there.”
“Well, thank you for that, Mr. Mayor. I have two questions. First, how much do I owe you for the repair job?
“And second, how soon will it be ready so my friend Marty can drive it back?”
“Well, as a show of ‘city to city’ courtesy I told my people we’re going to eat the bill on this one.
“The problem is they had to order parts from Cleveland and as you can probably imagine the parts pipeline is pretty long these days. It’ll be a month before they come in and a week after that before the repairs will be completed.
“But hey, here’s the good news. It’ll give your team another good reason to visit our fine city when they come back to pick it up.”
-23-
As much as Marty hated being told he “had to” drive back to Eden because he was most experienced in driving through a mountain pass on icy roads, at least he didn’t have to drive a snow plow with a broken wheel on the return trip.
The roads had six inches of new snow since they’d come to town, but that wasn’t a problem.
The big Humvee they were in could take ten inches of snow with ease.
Here they were, headed out the main gate of the base, and just happened to chance upon Colonel Morris Medley and Mike Suarez.
They pulled over to find out what was going on.
Actually, it was Hannah who forced Marty to pull over. He didn’t really want to.
“Marty, pull over and park, would you?”
“Why, exactly?”
“I want to give Colonel Medley a hug and say goodbye to him.”
“Na-uh. You wanted me to drive so I’m driving. The driver, because he’s the driver, gets to make the decision whether we stop or don’t stop.”
“Please?”
He stopped the vehicle, but not the debate. He was still sleepy and still a bit peeved they were making him drive.
With Marty, peeved meant snarky. They went hand in hand together, and there couldn’t be one without the other.
“Give me one good reason to stop and chat, when you people were all gung-ho about getting on the road just a few minutes ago.
“Go ahead, just one good reason. I’ll wait.”
She opened the door and stepped out.
Then she stood outside the door and stuck her head back in.
“Because you wouldn’t want to drive off and leave me, that’s why.”
“Who says I wouldn’t?”
“Why, Marty… you’re hurting my feelings.” She stuck out her lower lip and pretended to pout, and then closed the door.
Marty muttered something under his breath the others couldn’t hear.
Truth was, though, that Hannah knew just what strings to pull to make Marty her puppet.
They’d been the best of friends for many years now. He’d do anything for her, and she knew it. And if she took advantage of their friendship every once in a while she didn’t feel guilty at all.
He’d made a big mistake, when he and Hannah and Mark were sharing a bottle of whiskey Marty brought them for Mark’s birthday two years before. He confessed that he’d had a crush on her from the beginning.
One of the problems with alcohol, besides that it makes fools of men, is that it loosens tongues.
After a drink or four people sometimes say things they never intended to say. They reveal feelings and thoughts better kept to themselves.
They tell secrets that should have remained secret, and admit to crushes and feelings they should never admit to.
That’s what happened on that night two years before, not long after Hannah dropped her own bombshell on everyone.
After conferring with Sarah, she decided there was a very real possibility a second meteorite was headed toward the earth.
Certainly not as big as Saris 7, which brought the first freeze with it.
But big enough to make its mark as well, to kick mankind while it was down and to wreak its own brand of terror.
Together, she and Sarah tried to find someone… anyone at NASA or in the federal government who would either confirm or deny their suspicions.
But NASA had disbanded.
The NASA scientists which were still around had gone to ground.
And anybody in the federal government in a position to know wasn’t answering their phones.
The pair concluded that was probably because they were martialing their resources and going back into the same bunkers they used to ride out the first freeze.
Colonel Travis Montgomery and his blown top secret bunker project went a long way to confirm their suspicions.
They advised their family and friends that they hated the thought of a second freeze as much as anyone else.
And that they hoped beyond hope they were wrong.
But that the best course of action, as they saw it, was to prepare for it.
Just in case.
The way she saw it, she never really demanded much of him.
And despite his grumbling, he didn’t really mind.
Not much, anyway.
So began a mad scramble on two fronts.
Mark and Bryan and Brad began gathering resources to stuff into the mine to add to what they already had.
Marty and Lenny Geibel joined Mayor Al and the citizens of Eden to turn their abandoned prison into a well-stocked shelter.
All worked ten to fifteen hours per day, seven days a week, to get where they felt they needed to be.
It was a Tuesday morning when Marty, in his truck hauling back a tanker of diesel fuel, happened to hear someone wish Mark a happy birthday.
He hadn’t seen Mark and Hannah in more than two weeks. They’d all been too busy on their respective projects.
And Marty just happened to find, when he unhooked the abandoned tractor from the diesel tanker, a fifth of Jack Daniels in the tractor’s glove box.
He couldn’t think of a better reason to open the bottle than to celebrate his friend’s special day.
The trouble was, he went too far that night.
His tongue loosened, he confessed that the first time he saw Hannah his jaw dropped and he drooled. He bemoaned the fact she was a married woman and fancied her for himself.
Now, Hannah was a beautiful creature and as sweet as a barrel of honey.
It wasn’t the first time Mark was told how lucky he was to have such an incredible wife. He’d heard it lots of times.
He took no offense, and Hannah, while blushing a bit, didn’t either.
Nothing came of it, of course. Marty never tried to intrude on the sanctity of Hannah and Mark’s marriage, and indeed fell in love with Glenna not long after.
But words said in confession cannot be unsaid.
Hannah knew, at that moment, that she had Marty wrapped around her little finger. And that he would do anything she demanded until the end of time.
That’s why, when she ordered him to stop…
He stopped.
Oh, he fussed and fumed about it.
But he did it.
He watched as she went to talk to Colonel Medley, and to Mike Suarez, about the operation to move all the cars away from the base’s many gates and the perimeter fence.
And his curiosity was aroused.
Not a lot, but enough to curse a few choice words under his breath, then to step out of the vehicle to say his own goodbyes.
Their adventure on Joint Base Lackland was just that: a great adventure.
They’d gotten the medical help Al needed just in time to save him.
Hannah had turned the screws on an obstinate general and convinced him Medley should be set free.
Marty was arrested and jailed for a short time himself, but that was due to his own stupidity.
All in all it was a fairly fruitful trip.
But it was time to head back.
As everyone scrambled back into the Hummer, Marty grumbled, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
-24-
Driving at night in west Texas can be a maddening affair.
The terrain is flatter than a pancake.
And that’s good in a lot of ways.
Even during inclement weather, there are no slippery hills to climb up and down. An approaching storm can be seen from miles away, and there’s plenty of time to find shelter from a tornado or a hailstorm.
Flashing lights from emergency vehicles can be seen from at least three miles on a clear night. Plenty of time to take a quick detour down one of the hundreds of county or farm-to-market roads. No reason to get stuck in a traffic jam out here, no siree.
But there’s a downside too.
Unless one is particularly partial to cotton fields and oil rigs there’s not a lot to look at.
And the lights of the next city can be seen from forty miles away.
No, that’s not a good thing.
Not at all.
It gives one the false feeling that they’re close to home. If one can see the city lights of Midland, or Lubbock, or Waco, a driver feels a sense of euphoria. Like home is a few minutes away. Like he’ll be pulling into his driveway in no time at all.
And it’s because of that feeling that it seems to take forever to get to that driveway.
Even at highway speeds one feels as though he’s advancing at a turtle’s pace.
The lights never seem to get any closer.
In fact, a driver gets the sense the lights are teasing him. That instead of getting closer they’re really getting farther away.
Someone once said that the coldest winter they ever experienced was the summer they spent in San Francisco.
It’s sort of like that.
The longest thirty miles ever driven are the last few miles heading into home on a lonely Texas highway.
That’s true whether a driver is driving the sixty miles an hour most states cap their speeds, or the eighty five miles an hour legal on many highways in Texas.
Try driving six miles an hour.
Now granted, this was not a normal night. The collision of Cupid 23 had put a gray pall over the earth, and driving these days was similar to driving in a fog.
Still, the brightest lights of Big Spring, which before Cupid 23 could be seen for forty miles, were still visible cutting through the muck from twenty miles away.
Frank was frustrated.
And not just by the lights which never seemed to get any closer.
He was frustrated because he couldn’t remember, when they left the city of Lubbock, exactly how far away Big Spring was.
Josie didn’t know either.
He seemed to remember, somewhere in the back of his head, that his friend Ronnie Rosco told him it was about fifty miles away.
Josie said she was pretty sure it was about thirty.
They compromised and agreed that it was forty miles, no more, as though some big geographical genie would appear from nowhere and grant them their wish just because they said so.
When the trip odometer in front of Frank finally clicked over to forty miles Frank was happy. For surely they’d pull into Big Spring any time now.
Not.
By the time they finally saw the lights of the city several hours later he made the mistake of feeling happy again.
But at six miles an hour the lights never got any closer. Never seemed to move at all.
In the back seat, despite Josie’s admonitions not to, Eddie couldn’t help himself.
Like every five year old on every long car trip since the invention of car trips, he was antsy and impatient and kept asking, “Are we there yet?”
Frank applied a tactic he always used when ferrying his own kids on car trips forty years before.
And his grandkids twenty years before.
Any time he was asked the question, he always responded with exactly the same answer.
He’d always say, “We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Depending on the kid or grandkid, it would take as little as two, and as many as six questions being answered exactly the same way.
Then, inevitably, a follow-up question would surface.
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
“Hey, wait a minute. That’s what you said last time, and the time before that.”
“Well, I was wrong then. But this time I’m right. We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
That always put an end to it.
When his kids and grandkids realized they were going to get exactly the same answer no matter how many times they asked the question, they inevitably gave up and stopped asking.
Frank wrongly assumed the same tactic would work on Eddie.
Frank lost track, but Josie didn’t.
When he asked the twelfth time, Frank said, “We’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
Eddie said, “Okay.”
Then he went back to gazing out the window.
Josie had had enough.
And she could see that Frank was getting flustered himself.
She was a little peeved with Frank anyway, for treating Eddie with what she viewed as a little bit of disrespect.
She half turned to face Eddie, seated directly behind Frank.
“Eddie, do you remember that silly song I taught you not long ago? The one I told you to sing when you were bored?”
“The beer bottle song?”
“Yes. The beer bottle song. Why don’t you sing it?”
“Okay, that’s a great idea! Should I start with twenty bottles of beer on the wall?”
“Why don’t you start with two hundred? And be sure to sing it loud and proud. I’ll bet by the time you get to zero we’ll be in Big Spring, and we can stop and get something to eat.”
E
ddie started singing. Frank leaned over to Josie and whispered, “Sadist.”
She didn’t hear him. She’d put earplugs into her ears and covered up with her blanket and was already half asleep.
-25-
Police departments in most Texas cities have used sedans for decades.
Mostly souped up Ford Crown Victorias.
For many years Ford made special versions of that model with souped up engines, extra sturdy frames and suspensions which could take the rigors and abuse of police chases. They called such specialty vehicles their “police interceptor” models.
In recent years many departments have switched to SUVs, which do the same thing at far greater cost and much worse gas mileage.
The trend for police departments to switch to big SUVs began around the same time many departments began to “militarize,” by getting excess equipment from the United States Army left over from the Afghanistan War.
Many police departments now have armored personnel carriers or light-armored vehicles responding to tactical situations.
Whether such vehicles are needed is subject to debate.
But they look way cool.
Sheriff’s departments in Texas, on the other hand, have used SUVs for many years.
It just wouldn’t do for patrol cars to get themselves stuck on muddy isolated roads. And sheriff’s deputies are much more likely to have to go “off road” when chasing bad guys in high speed pursuits. They often chase such miscreants through hay fields and cow pastures. Places which don’t often exist in, say, downtown Houston or Dallas.
Another feature which comes standard on sheriff’s vehicles are whip antennas.
These antennas can be several feet long, and are typically tied down to the vehicle’s roof.
That’s kind of important, because otherwise they’d hit low hanging power lines and overpasses.
Sheriff’s deputies sometimes work in counties that are several hundreds of square miles, you see, and they need powerful two way radios and whip antennas to communicate with their dispatchers.
Such was the case with all the sheriff’s vehicles for Lubbock County.
Including the vehicle currently assigned to Deputy Daniel Sonmore.
While Frank Woodard was warm and cozy in his Hummer-turned-snowplow and tooling along at six miles an hour, Josie was sound asleep in the passenger seat next to him.
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