They wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Nearly all of the qualified scientists were dead. So were the technicians who knew how to compile data from the heavens, or the analysts who knew how to interpret it.
NASA these days was nothing but a bunch of rusting and looted abandoned buildings spread throughout the country.
For all practical purposes, NASA was dead, except in the recesses of the memories of the few people left alive who cared.
And that was too bad. Because with the demise of NASA was also the demise of the NASA contractors who once employed hundreds of astrophysicists to watch the heavens.
Like the one Hannah and Sarah once worked for.
And since there were no contractors watching the movements of celestial bodies, no one knew about Cupid 23.
Cupid 23 was a misnomer if there ever was one. For the class two meteorite slowly tumbling through space had no love at all for the people of earth or anywhere else.
Cupid 23 was once a part of Saris 7, until Saris 7 collided with another meteorite and broke into pieces. It was that collision which changed the course of Saris 7 and sent it speeding toward the planet earth years before.
NASA’s computers noticed the chunk that broke off of Saris 7 and assigned it a new designation: Cupid 23.
But they went no further than that.
Their sights were so much set on Saris 7’s new collision course that the slower Cupid 23 was overlooked as nonconsequential.
Except that it wasn’t.
Yes, it was rather odd shaped. Most heavenly bodies are after they survive collisions with other bodies.
And Cupid 23 moved at a much slower pace than its mother Saris 7. It tumbled through space, rather than shooting through it.
But that didn’t make it any less dangerous.
The problem with Cupid 23 was that it wanted to follow Saris 7, not unlike a baby who trails in a straight line behind its mother.
Hannah was the one who first discovered that Saris 7’s course had been altered and it was headed straight for earth.
Or so she thought.
It turned out that her superiors already knew about the pending collision, but were trying to keep it under wraps.
“We’ve got plenty of time to destroy or divert it,” they’d told her. “There’s no reason to alarm the public unnecessarily.”
Hannah and Sarah had an uneasy feeling. Their superiors, after all, worked for the federal government. And the federal government, especially in those days, wasn’t exactly known for telling the truth.
Or for watching out for anyone’s backs other than their own.
In the end it turned out that their suspicions were well founded. Their superiors had no intentions of protecting anyone other than themselves and their political cronies in Washington.
They eventually paid the ultimate price, along with the Washington insiders who thought themselves insulated from an outraged public.
Hannah and Sarah saved many lives by going to the media to announce the imminent collision with Saris 7, thus giving the common people time to prepare for the worst.
And that would have been the end of it, had Hannah not been severely injured in a helicopter crash.
Hannah was treated by morphine while in her initial stages of recovery.
Morphine was a very effective painkiller.
But those who’d ever used it could attest that it was a very powerful narcotic as well. Some patients experienced deep sleep and wild dreams. Others hallucinated.
Hannah didn’t experience any adverse effects during her waking hours.
However, when she slept her dreams were very vivid.
And one dream in particular had been much more vivid than the others.
And also terrifying.
Actually, it wasn’t a dream inasmuch as it was a recollection. A recollection of a meeting she’d had with Sarah and several other astrophysicists after Saris 7 collided with the large meteor and broken into two.
They’d been pondering the possibility of Cupid 23 following the same path through space that its mother, Saris 7 did. It sometimes happened that way. There was even a term for it: flightpath duplication.
What it basically meant was that sometimes when a meteorite broke into pieces, it still followed the same path as before. The smaller piece frequently got sucked into the same path as the larger piece, as the larger piece created a vacuum and gave it an easier path to follow.
It was not unlike two people trekking through heavy snow. The first person did the bulk of the work, forcing the snow out of the way and giving the follower a set of footprints to walk in.
One of NASA’s concerns following Saris 7’s breakup was that Cupid 23 might follow Saris 7 into the earth just as the earth was recovering. A one-two punch, they called it. It was just a theory, and they had no hard proof to make the theory plausible. But it made sense.
The trouble was everyone in the scientific community got so freaked out by Saris 7 and possible ways to stop it that Cupid 23 got swept into the background. They simply put it out of their minds to focus on the problem at hand: stopping Saris 7.
Saris 7 wasn’t stopped, and did its damage. Nearly all the scientists who knew about Cupid 23’s existence were dead now. Or, like Hannah and Sarah, survived and got on with the hard new business of staying alive, and forgot all about Cupid 23.
That was, until the nightmare Hannah had while she was recovering.
Now it was foremost in her mind.
She didn’t want to discuss the matter with anyone other than Sarah. It would unnecessarily alarm them, and might even make them panic.
And it might be an unnecessary concern. After all, the thought that flightpath duplication might occur between Saris 7 and Cupid 23 was only an unsupported theory.
Yes, they’d seen it happen when other meteorites broke into pieces. But those cases were different. They involved a much smaller trailing piece, that wasn’t a tumbling odd shape, and which followed a truer, faster path.
Cupid 23 was a tumbler. Tumblers tended to have more erratic paths, and moved at a slower pace.
It was possible that the trail Saris 7 cleared for Cupid 23 would close up behind her, and that Cupid 23 would find its own, different path, which would steer it clear of the planet earth.
Still, NASA had been so busy dealing with Saris 7 that they hadn’t studied the possibilities at all.
No, Hannah didn’t want to alarm anybody by suggesting that there might be another meteorite strike.
But she did want to discuss the possibility with someone, to get their opinion on the matter.
Now there was only one other person she knew who could relate to Cupid 23. What it was and what it was capable of doing.
And that person couldn’t even remember who Hannah was.
-8-
Hannah was still having trouble getting around. She was defying her doctor’s orders by even being out of bed. But it was important she show support for her best friend. Hannah had never had a sister, but she couldn’t imagine even a sister’s love being stronger than what she felt for Sarah. And now Sarah didn’t even know her name.
Hannah was devastated. She went back to her room, crawled into bed and cried.
Now she was conflicted. She wanted Sarah’s opinion on Cupid 23. She wanted to hear Sarah tell her that she was blowing the whole thing out of proportion. That her memory was flawed because of the helicopter crash. Or that her paranoia was acting up again. She wanted Sarah to tell her that the trajectory was wrong. That the potential flightpath they’d plotted for Cupid 23 was subject to great variation. Plus or minus three degrees over each million miles. Certainly enough to steer it clear of earth’s atmosphere.
She wanted to hear Sarah tell her she was being silly. What her mother used to call a “worry wart.” She wanted Sarah to tell her to relax and put it out of her mind, and just to focus on her family and on her recovery.
She wanted to hear Sarah tell her those things. Sarah was the only person in the world who c
ould convince Hannah she was jumping to the wrong conclusion. The only one she’d believe.
And if Sarah didn’t even remember Hannah, would she even know what Hannah was talking about when and if the subject of Cupid 23 ever came up?
That wasn’t the only thing weighing on Hannah’s mind. She had a second secret she was keeping from Mark. A secret she’d been hiding from him since that day at the hospital. The day he’d finally met Joel. Joel knew her secret, but Hannah knew he’d keep it until his dying breath. He tried to convince her to tell Mark the first chance she got.
But she wouldn’t. She just couldn’t tell Mark, knowing the pain it would cause him. And knowing that it would change their relationship forever.
He would find out soon enough. It was inevitable. But she wouldn’t rush it. She’d let him be at peace for as long as she could before breaking the terrible news to him.
Now, here she was, lying on a tear-soaked pillow in a world of pain and worry. Everyone had thought she was incredibly lucky for surviving the crash. She was beat up and bloody and bruised, they said. But she was alive and whole and would eventually recover. She was the lucky one, in everyone else’s mind. She was the one who’d walk away. John died. Sami lost her father. Joel lost his legs. Even Sarah, in a totally unrelated circumstance, lost her memory and quite possibly her mind.
But Hannah would heal. Hannah would be Hannah again. Hannah was the lucky one.
Hannah was living a lie. Hannah was keeping secrets.
Hannah was a mess.
There was a knock on the bedroom door.
“Honey? You awake?”
She almost pretended to be asleep. But no. He’d seen her come in just five minutes before. He knew she wouldn’t have dozed off so quickly.
“Come in, Mark.”
He eased the door open and peered around the corner, then entered the room and closed the door quietly behind him.
He sat on the edge of the bed and wiped away one of her tears with his thumb. Then he hugged her, tenderly, mindful that her entire body was still wracked with pain, still swollen and bruised.
“I’m sorry, honey. I know you’re worried for her. She’ll come back to us. I know she will. I think just her being back here, with you and Sami and Bryan, will help her heal. You’ll help each other. You’ll see. You’ll both soon be back to normal. Things will be the way they used to be. I promise.”
She looked at him but said nothing.
He went on.
“Debbie sent me in here to ask if you need some more pain medicine. And Karen said she can make you some fresh chicken soup if you’re up for it.”
“No thank you, baby. You guys are all wonderful. But I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
For the first time in as long as she could remember, Hannah was intentionally lying to her husband.
-9-
Nathan Martel was many things. A very brutal man. A man feared by many over the course of his lifetime, both for the vile things he did to people and for the things he threatened to do.
One thing Martel had never been accused of was being smart.
He was miserable, as miserable as he’d ever been in his life. He was lying face down on the hard steel bed of a pickup truck, shivering in the early morning cold and soaked in his own urine. His hands were drawn tightly behind his back and tied to his ankles. In order to be tied in such a manner, his legs were drawn back and bent at the ankles in a totally unnatural way.
He’d been that way for many hours and some parts of his body were completely numb. Those were the lucky parts. The rest of him… every inch of him that still had feeling, now screamed at him in pain. He was convinced that he’d never walk again.
Twice since his captors had arrived back at their compound they’d ungagged him. Asked him if he was ready to cooperate so they could make him more comfortable and give him something to drink, perhaps some food to eat.
He’d answered their question in the worst possible way. He’d cursed their very existence, insinuating they were illegitimate, that their mothers were whores, that their fathers weren’t really their fathers.
He’d threatened to break loose and to kill them, one by one, in the most agonizing manners possible. Then he threatened to rape their women, and their children, and then to kill them too.
No, Martel had never been accused of being very smart. He’d lived his life through the intimidation of others. He’d gotten so used to getting the things he wanted by striking fear into the hearts of others that he didn’t know any other way to behave. Even when he was hog-tied in the back of a pickup, he thought against all logic that he still ran the show. That he could make others do his bidding. That he could still make others tremble.
It never once dawned on him those days were finally over.
His efforts to make his captors fear him had accomplished nothing. They’d merely told him to shut the hell up and forced the gag back into his mouth, then wrapped duct tape securely around his head again. One of them, in a fit of anger, even kicked him in the ribs for good measure. They’d given him no food, given him no water.
In his twisted mind, Martel was the victim. In his twisted mind, he still held the cards.
In his twisted mind, whenever they finally followed his demands to set him free, they’d pay a heavy price for their insolence.
They’d pay with their lives.
They’d left him there, all night long, shivering. At one point an old barn owl flew to the truck and perched on the side of the bed, watching him.
He could make out the bird’s shape against the backdrop of a mostly-full moon. Could even see the bird’s head move, back and forth, as it watched Martel and its other surroundings.
He’d wondered what owls ate. He assumed they caught mice and crickets and other small creatures that came out and scurried around in the night.
It dawned on him that he was helpless, even to such a diminutive creature, and suddenly feared the bird would swoop down and pluck out one of his eyeballs. He turned his head, face down, a stab of pain in the left side of his neck from having laid in one position for so long.
He let out a loud groan from the pain in his neck.
The startled owl flew away, picked up a field mouse and flew off with it into a nearby tree.
Martel was still miserable and fuming, but at least his eyes weren’t in danger of being an avian snack.
Sometime later he drifted off into a fitful sleep, and didn’t open his eyes again until just after dawn.
This time it wasn’t an owl which caught his attention.
It was men’s voices.
He started to squirm. He tried to roll over but couldn’t get the momentum.
He wanted to scream at the bastards, to tell them to let him loose and fight like men.
He wanted to strangle each of them with his bare hands.
But he didn’t see them. Any of them.
They were talking amongst themselves, in hushed tones. Martel struggled to make out the words, but they appeared to be garbled.
Most were unintelligible, either because both his ears were full of the urine he’d been lying in for hours, or because the sides of the truck bed were muffling most of the sound.
At one point he thought he’d heard a name: Sheriff Winslow.
That was okay by Martel. He’d broken out of a county jail before. He could damn sure do it again. And then he’d go back after these bastards and make them pay for what they’d done to him.
Before, when they’d come to give him water, they’d opened the pickup’s tailgate and dragged him onto it. When he’d failed to cooperate, they’d shoved him back into the bed of the truck and slammed the gate closed.
He watched from the corner of his eye, his head slightly cocked toward the back of the pickup, for the gate to open once again.
This time it was the doors of the truck which opened.
Martel couldn’t see the men who crawled into the truck. But he felt them. His body rocked slightly as the first man crawled in
to the cab and slammed the driver’s door shut.
A passenger did the same.
A third man climbed over the side of the bed and sat on the wheel well. He was completely unseen but made his presence known. He kicked Martel in the ribs and said, “Good morning, Sunshine. We thought it would be a nice morning to take a drive.”
There was something… chilling, about the man’s words and the way he said them.
-10-
Mark Snyder worshipped his wife. He coddled her. Some would say he spoiled her. And it was almost scary the way he could read her like a book.
He knew something was wrong. Something she was keeping from him. And he suspected he knew what it was.
Joel Hance was the Army sergeant who’d kept her alive at the crash scene. He was the only other survivor when their helicopter, flying too fast and too low, crashed when its pilot suffered a massive heart attack and drove it into the ground.
Had the chopper been flying higher, or slower, the co-pilot might have been able to recover it. Landed it safely. Performed CPR on the pilot. Perhaps could have saved everyone’s lives.
But that’s not the way it happened.
The chopper crashed in heavy woods, killing almost everyone. One of Hannah’s dearest friends perished, and unknowingly saved Hannah’s legs by bearing the brunt of the weight of the fuselage with his shattered body. It was something he had no control over, but Hannah liked to think it was a final act of kindness on his part.
For many long hours the two of them- Hannah and Joel, coaxed each other to fight. To live. To get out of there alive. For hours they tried to keep each other awake and alert. To focus on anything and everything they could think of to keep from dwelling on the pain.
They were rescued, not because the search teams stumbled upon them on their own, but because of Joel’s bravery. Despite losing one leg outright and having to drag the other one behind him, he was able to retrieve a signal flare to draw the searchers’ attention.
He was Hannah’s hero, not once but twice.
It was a bond the two of them would share for the rest of their lives. For each of them knew instinctively that they wouldn’t be around if not for the other. They couldn’t not feel a new kinship.
A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 Page 4