Frozen (Final Dawn Book 10) Read online

  Several hands went up.

  As was the custom, Mark selected the senior person first, and would work his way one by one until the youngest adult had a chance to speak.

  It was a custom they’d adopted from the Cherokee, a people who placed great value on age, seniority and the value of learned wisdom.

  “Okay, Mom. Go ahead.”

  “I’d prefer to stay here, to be honest. I know you’ve all put a lot of work into stocking the mine lately, but I just dread the thought of going in there again. I’d like to know, if we stay here, what it’s likely to be like.”

  Mark said, “Bryan, you’re the engineer. You’ve been crunching the numbers regarding the fuel supplies. You’re probably the best one to answer this one.”

  Bryan stood up, but remained at his table.

  “Well, in a nutshell, we can operate the mine at full capacity or the compound at partial capacity. But not both.”

  “What do you mean, partial capacity?”

  “The mine is naturally insulated by the mountain. You all know from our first time there that it remains about sixty three to sixty five degrees all the time. If we go in there, it’ll feel a bit cool for the first few days or weeks while our bodies adjust, then will be comfortable.

  “Our diesel reserves are right at thirty thousand gallons. In the mine that would be used strictly for power, and to run all the vehicles occasionally so their batteries stay charged. Since we don’t have to heat the mine, that’s plenty for at least five years until the thaw comes.

  “On the other hand, say we stay here, we’ll have to make a choice. It’s not enough fuel to heat all our buildings, or even all of this one. We’ll have to move everyone off the upper floors of the building and pack them into the first floor apartments. Then we can seal the vents to the upper floors and block their flow of heated air.

  “We’ll have to turn off the heat for the heated barn, which will mean we’ll have to move all the livestock into the mine whether we’re there or not. That means we’ll have to send people through the tunnel every day to feed them and to gather the milk and eggs. Not a major problem, but something to consider.

  “We can count on wind power to augment our diesel supply, as long as the wind blows. Based on past averages, I’m guessing wind will extend our capability by several months. That’s provided the turbine doesn’t go down for something we can’t fix.

  “I haven’t factored in the solar panels on the roof, because I’m guessing their contribution will be minimal. If we can get enough power from them to keep the water heated, we should consider ourselves lucky.”

  “So what’s the bottom line? If we make those concessions, can we do it? Can we stay in the big house until the thaw comes?”

  “Even if we only heat the first floor of this building, and even if the turbine works the entire duration of the freeze, the answer is no. If we stay here we’re looking at running out of fuel after about two and a half years or so.”

  A sigh went up from the back of the room. It summed up perfectly the feelings of many of the group who were hoping to stay where they were and to ride out the four year storm, as though it were nothing more than a severe winter blizzard.

  Nobody in the group, not even the more adventurous among them, was looking forward to going back into the mine. For as comfortable as it was in relative terms, it wasn’t much different than a huge off-white prison. A little bit cool, a whole lot of ugly, and depressing as hell.

  Still, each of them recognized they had no right to complain about it.

  Nearly all the other survivors would be stuck in the elements, burning furniture and any other wood they could find in fireplaces, huddled around them with their families and trying desperately not to freeze to death.

  In many cases the fires would go out as the survivors were sleeping and they’d succumb to death’s cold embrace.

  Or they’d be shot to death by cruel marauders, often for nothing more than a bottle of water or a blanket.

  Some of them would make it, of course, for the human spirit and desire to survive are strong.

  But what they’d become after making it through the second freeze was anybody’s guess. If the first freeze hardened and toughened them, what would the second do to them? Would it make them mean and uncaring to the plight of others? Would it make them fearful and deathly afraid that a third freeze might be coming? Just how desperate would they become?

  No, those dwellers of the Junction compound would not complain, for as bad as it was they had it much better than the average American. They knew that. So instead of complaining they’d accept their lot, such as it was. And they’d do what they’d always done before. They’d work together for the mutual benefit and mutual comfort of all involved.

  And they’d suffer what they had to, endure what they must, to persevere.

  -7-

  It was little more than a formality, then, in light of Bryan’s report about the fuel reserves. Nothing more than a block filler; a means of checking an item off a checklist and saying, “Yes, we did that.”

  But it had to be done. The mine’s government called for any major decision to be made by vote.

  And there was a small minority of residents who hated the idea of going back into the mine so much they’d rather stay in the compound, under very austere conditions, in the hope they could somehow make it work.

  Despite the numbers Bryan had crunched which told them that option was not feasible.

  So they went through the motions and called for a vote: should they stay or should they move into the mine?

  Several in the group abstained from the vote, thinking it pointless. In the end it was twenty votes to move to the mine, one vote to stay put.

  And that would have ended it, except Brad stood up and threw them all a curve ball.

  “I propose an alternative solution. A compromise, of sorts. One that just might enable us to stay here in the big house, and just use the mine as an emergency evacuation shelter in case marauders try to attack us again.”

  He immediately had everyone’s attention. He was throwing a life preserver to a drowning man. Giving everyone a ray of hope they might be able to avoid the dreaded mine after all.

  “Go on,” Mark told him. “What’s your idea?”

  Brad explained his logic as well as his plan.

  “This is the dry time of year. This is the time of the year when we’re more likely to have an extended drought than a heavy downpour. I know that it’s been ten years since any of us heard a TV weatherman give us a forecast, but those of you with long memories will know I’m right.”

  Karen broke protocol just a bit when she interrupted and asked, “So?”

  “So, who says we have to stop gathering provisions? Who says we have to just stop doing what we’re doing and run into the mine like scared little children just because the temperature is dropping?

  “It’s dry out there right now. The roads are still passable. They’ll stay that way until we get some precipitation. And this time of year that could be weeks away. And even when the snow and ice does come, we can still drive on it as long as we can, until it accumulates to the point where we start spinning out or getting stuck.”

  Bryan agreed with him.

  “He’s got a valid argument. All the tractors have chains in their gear boxes. We can keep on doing what we’ve been doing. Keep searching out provisions and fuel and keep cramming as much into the mine as long as we can navigate the roads. We can put increased emphasis on diesel tankers. There aren’t a lot of them out there, but if we can just find four or five more that would double our fuel stores and therefore double the time we could stay in the big house.

  “The nice thing about the diesel tankers that are out there is that they’re all untouched. They haven’t been rifled through like most of the trailers. There aren’t a lot of people who saw any need in tampering with them, once the thaw came. Your average survivor had no need for a truckload of diesel. That means if we place our emphasis there… on looking for diesel while gathering anything else we come across we might need, we just might get lucky enough to find enough to get by.”

  Mark was a bit skeptical.

  “What if you’re on your way back, towing a tanker with eight thousand gallons of fuel? That’s a hell of a lot of weight. And what if you’re going down a steep grade on ice and you start to slide? You know how crowded those highways are with abandoned cars. It’s like skiing a slalom course. If you’re sliding sideways down the grade, you’ll collide with all kinds of cars, and probably abandoned big rigs as well. How on earth are you gonna survive that?”

  Karen added her two cents.

  “And if you did survive the crash, then what? What if it happens when you’re eighty miles from the mine? Out of radio range? You’d be stranded there all by yourself. We’d have no way of knowing where you were or that you were hurt.”

  But Brad was unmoved.

  “Look, I’m not saying that we risk our lives out there. We’ve got safety procedures in place. I’m not advocating that we deviate from them. I’m just saying there’s no reason to stop gathering just because the weather’s turned cold. Those rigs are designed to operate in below zero temperatures. So until the roads start getting icy and the snow starts to pile up, let’s get as much use of them as we can. Let’s stop being sissies, bundle up, and keep on gathering.”

  “He’s right,” Mike added. “”This time of year we might not have any precipitation of any form for weeks. We’ve been averaging twelve loads per day. That’s an awful lot of cargo we’ll leave behind if we stop now.

  “We’ve got procedures in place in case we lose radio contact with one of our drivers. Every time we leave, we tell security control which highway we’re taking and which direction we’re going.
We call in periodically with an update. We’re still on I-10, still heading west, passing mile marker 608.

  “Any time we’re out of radio range, the security control center will have an entry in their log of our last reported location. If we fail to return in a reasonable amount of time, they’ll send out a search party, starting at that location, and headed in the direction we last reported.”

  “What about if you were to come under fire, like Bryan did, by those drug dealers?” David asked. “If you were out of radio range and wounded, no one would know to come to your aid for hours.”

  “Oh, for goodness sakes, David. No one ever said this job wasn’t without risks. Hell, in that regard, nothing has changed at all. If somebody wants to shoot us out there on a lonely stretch of highway, it’s gonna happen regardless of the road and weather conditions. When they tried to kill Bryan it was before Cupid struck on a bright sunny day, remember? Gathering provisions with drug people and marauders out there has always been dangerous and always will be. But we’ve never let that keep us from doing what needs to be done. And I contend that this needs to be done.”

  “Should we put it to a vote, then?”

  “No. This isn’t a decision of the group. This should be an individual decision. Let the drivers decide whether they want to go out and find more diesel and other stuff. If I’m the only one willing, then I’ll go out every day. If for no other reason to get me out of that damn mine for a few hours.”

  Mark looked at all the other drivers who’d been going out and gathering loads each day.

  Bryan said, “He’s right. Let’s keep rolling as long as we can.”

  Rusty said, “I’m in.”

  David said, “Might as well. Can’t dance…”

  Mike merely nodded.

  Mark wasn’t comfortable sending the drivers out on bad winter roads, but Brad was right. As long as the roads were dry and free of ice, they wouldn’t pose any more risks to the drivers than they had been.

  “Does anyone else have anything to say about the subject?”

  He looked around the room. A few heads shook, a few shoulders shrugged.

  “Okay, then. I propose we recognize the sacrifice these men are going to make, for all of us, by continuing to go out into the treacherous cold. I propose we let them gather as much as they can before the roads become unusable, then we can look at the fuel numbers again and reassess our options. Agreed?”

  No one had any objections.

  But as Mark moved on to the next topic, he caught Hannah’s eye. She looked worried as well.

  Mark wasn’t the only one having a premonition that something bad was getting ready to happen.

  -8-

  The mood at Eden Federal Correctional Facility was completely different.

  The outlook was generally upbeat.

  It may have been that Marty had more gatherers than the people at the compound.

  Or that his drivers weren’t searching the highways and byways, traveling sometimes three or four hours to find a worthy trailer to hook up to.

  Well, sometimes they were.

  But more often than not they were merely driving to the Trucker’s Paradise truck stop an hour and a half away. There they were picking up trailers and tankers that Lenny had preselected from the hundreds of dropped loads in the truck stop’s massive yard.

  Lenny had not only selected them, he’d pulled them out of the yard and staged them, then replaced any bad tires or air lines.

  It was because they saved so much time grabbing their loads that Marty’s people were able to process them in a more efficient manner.

  He processed them as a truck driver would. He had them unloaded, one by one, their loads closely evaluated after they saw the light of day.

  He had the things they could use separated and packed tightly into every available nook and cranny of the prison.

  And he took the stuff they couldn’t use and crammed it back into the trailers before they were taken and dropped on a nearby highway.

  In short, he was much more methodical in his approach.

  Another thing Marty had his people do was to record everything which came into the prison and stayed there. Right down to the smallest packet of instant soup, they knew what they had, where it was, and each item’s expiration date.

  Marty had been crunching numbers too, along with Mayor Al, every three days. Mayor Al, in fact, had been so worried about the numbers he placed a city auditor at the prison to keep track of the rising inventory. Every three days the auditor would prepare a report which would contain a roughly equal mix of hard and estimated numbers.

  At any given time the team knew exactly how much food they had, for example, and how many calories it represented. The latter number was made much easier since mandatory USDA rules required the number of calories be listed on each product’s label.

  The auditor then crunched the numbers of total calories available and estimated how many days it would feed seventy people on an average diet of two thousand calories a day.

  The three celebrated a few weeks before when the tally passed the four year mark.

  Even after that point, though, they’d continued to gather.

  Now they were confident they had enough, and had a luxury the people at the Salt Mountain compound didn’t have. They didn’t have to go out into the dropping temperatures to gather any more food.

  The same was true of fuel.

  The power plant at the prison was relatively unique in that its generators ran off either fuel oil or diesel. Early on in the gathering process Marty had been elated when Lenny called him over the radio to report a gold mine he’d found.

  “There are four tankers of fuel oil, lined up side by side, in Row 12 at the back of the field. They were traveling in convoy from a refinery down at Corpus Christi headed for Salt Lake City. I dipped them, Marty. Over thirty thousand gallons, total.”

  Now, in the early days after the second collision, they had more fuel than they expected to need, even after adding in a fudge factor of fifteen percent.

  Their water situation was rosy as well. They’d brought in almost a thousand cases of bottled water, taken mostly from Coca Cola trucks they found in the Trucker’s Paradise yard.

  But they’d only use it if their well pumps broke down, and then only long enough to repair the pumps.

  As every town resident was gathered up and relocated, along with a limited amount of belongings, they filed into the prison looking like haggard refugees from a war-torn country.

  Most of them hadn’t been in a prison before. At least from the bad side of the bars. Some of Eden’s residents worked at the facility years before when it was operational. But they were nearly all gone now.

  The prison’s new occupants, therefore, mostly didn’t know what to expect.

  They were pleasantly surprised.

  The bars were gone in the huge cellblock they’d call home for the foreseeable future.

  The cell doors had been replaced by fancy wooden doors not much different from the ones on their homes. Many had mail slots. All had windows.

  They were taken from a shipment being moved from a door manufacturer to a Home Depot distribution center.

  The common area of the cellblock, where inmates once spent the majority of their days, was once dank, dark and dismal.

  Now it was alive with colors.

  It was welcoming.

  It wasn’t quite home, and never would be.

  But the residents sure would have an easier time of it than they did during the first freeze.

  After the last of the new residents arrived, Mayor Al ordered the sally port sealed and said no one was allowed to enter without his or Chief Hankins’ permission.

  One of the not-so-bright laborers inquired, “Who is Chief Hankins?”

  “Marty.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “How did you get this job, anyway?”

  “Oh, it was easy, Mayor Al. My girlfriend is your secretary’s daughter.”

  -9-

  After everyone claimed their cells and deposited their belongings there, Mayor Al called a meeting.

  “Everyone, please come to the day room in about ten minutes so we can go over some things.”