A New Start: Final Dawn: Book 9 (Volume 9) Read online

  Dope fiends, in the last days before the world froze over, were desperate for a fix after their suppliers abandoned them. They likely broke in and ransacked the place, willing to try anything and everything to make them high enough to ride out the storm.

  David was surprised he didn’t find any bodies. He’d have thought that desperate junkies trying anything and everything would have stumbled upon something that would have killed them.

  He supposed they were lucky. Or maybe not. Perhaps death would have been a welcome relief for someone in the state they were in.

  In a storage room in the back of the building he’d found four pallets, still shrink wrapped with thin plastic, of dry dog food.

  The room had a double door which opened to the outside and David figured, “Why not? He was there anyway…”

  He opened the double door and propped it open, then walked around the building to his pickup.

  He placed the orange air rifle and box of darts on the front seat, then drove the truck around the back of the building.

  Almost a year before, Marty had brought two German Shepherds to the compound to trade for beef and chicken. Everyone was amazed that the dogs had survived.

  “The dogs’ owner was a manager of a Sam’s Club and took her dogs there to hunker down for the long freeze. She used pallet jacks to block the doors with heavy pallets to keep people out. When people tried to force their way in she fired a couple of shots and scared them away.

  “She said she had a hell of a time without heat, but managed. The place was so huge she was able to burn a fire twice a day to melt bottled water and cook her food without become overcome by the fumes. She said the cold was horrible. But there were plenty of clothes so she just wore four or five layers and a thick parka and eventually she got used to it.

  “Anyway, her four dogs became ten by the time she broke out. I traded some good stuff for these two. They’re from different moms and dads so you can breed them.”

  They did indeed breed the pair, and now had four puppies running in all directions around the compound.

  The dry food would definitely come in handy.

  -12-

  David was an optimistic soul by nature. And his expectations for this particular project were high.

  He walked into the dining room a few days later at four a.m. dressed in hunter’s camouflage.

  The only one there to greet him was Karen, who was mixing the batter for homemade biscuits for the breakfast crowd which would start filing through an hour later.

  “You’re too early for breakfast, David. But the coffee’s hot and fresh. I can nuke you some leftovers if you want.”

  “No thank you, dear. All I need is some strong black coffee to get me going, is all. I’ll eat something when I get back.”

  “You’re going hunting, I guess?”

  “Yep. I hope to bag the first of three does and two bucks, and to bring them all back alive.”

  “That might be biting off more than you can chew. I mean, all you guys together have only brought home three bucks in the last year and a half.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t need them. We only went out when somebody got tired of beef and pork and wanted something different.”

  “You really think there’s that many out there?”

  The voice had come from the back of the room.

  David turned and looked behind him to see Mark walking toward them, his hair uncombed and looking rather haggard.

  “Hi, Mark. Yes, I think they’re out there. And I’m a pretty good tracker, if I say so myself. I think given enough time I’ll find ‘em and bring ‘em back, one at a time.”

  “Yeah. I hope we have enough time. Hey, wouldn’t two does and a buck do?”

  “Maybe. But if I settle for one and he’s sterile I’m screwed. If you guys taught me nothing else, you taught me that redundancy is the key to survival.”

  “True. I just wonder how hard it’s going to be to keep them from killing each other during rutting season.”

  “I’m going to have two pens. They’ll each know the other’s there, but they won’t be able to get at each other.”

  “Need any help?”

  “No. You’ve got enough to do, and this is my little project.”

  “You’re not collecting RVs today?”

  “Nope, we finished our second run yesterday. A total of ten new RVs. We’ll go out again in a few days. Three more runs and we’ll have twenty five. That was our goal and should be enough.”

  Karen interrupted.

  “David, Hannah said you’re going to try to tranquilize some rabbits also. Are you going to breed them as well?”

  “I think they’ll do a pretty good job of breeding themselves. I read that a pair of healthy rabbits can turn into a herd of six hundred in a year. As long as we stock enough food for them, we’ll have enough to fill a couple of chest freezers and repopulate the forest to boot.”

  Mark whistled.

  “You ever see that old Star Trek episode, The Trouble with Tribbles?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll isolate the males if it starts to get out of hand.”

  “Sure you don’t need any help? I’m curious to see how you’re going to accomplish this particular mission.”

  “Me too. I’m going to be winging it. The dart gun is underpowered, so I’ll have to get close to get a shot. And I don’t know how many darts it’ll take to bring home a fully grown white tail.

  “Or a rabbit, for that matter. Hell, I don’t even know if the drug is still good. They may take the shot and just laugh, then turn around and look at me and flip me off.”

  “Um, David… Deer don’t have fingers.”

  “Bunnies do.”

  “Well, I hope you find your mojo and accomplish your mission. I can’t imagine a world without deer.

  “Or bunnies either, for that matter.”

  -13-

  Marty met his crew for the first time when he left Lenny and went to the prison.

  He walked into a room with eight men and three women. Most of them he knew, and a couple of them he wasn’t impressed with.

  He was starting to regret letting the mayor do the hires.

  But it was too late now.

  “Somebody’s missing. Does anyone know who it is?”

  The crew just looked at one another. A couple of them shrugged their shoulders, but nobody said anything.

  The door opened and a man shuffled slowly into the room.

  He looked shocked to see he was the last one there.

  “I’m sorry. I thought I’d be the first one here. I didn’t hear the bells.”

  The “bells” he was referring to were the church bells at First Baptist Church of Eden. The mayor was paying several people token land credits for chiming the church bells at the top of every hour.

  Marty was a bit perturbed but didn’t take it out on the tardy employee.

  Instead he reached under the table and took out a small cardboard box.

  He reached inside the box and pulled out a wristwatch, which he tossed to the man.

  “Here. Courtesy of Smithson Jewelers. It’s a wind-up. Don’t be late again.”

  The man looked at the gift. It was high quality, Swiss made. Before the world went to hell it was easily a thousand dollar watch.

  Marty reached back into the box.

  “Who else needs one?”

  Every hand in the room went up.

  “Gee, what a surprise.”

  But he didn’t mind. He didn’t want a work crew who had any excuse to show up late for work each day.

  And the watches didn’t cost him a dime.

  “Sorry, ladies. All they had were men’s watches. If we find some ladies watches on one of our trucks you can swap them out.”

  He hoped they’d use the watches as intended, instead of trading them for their gold or silver value. If they did, it was on them. They now had a way to avoid being late. If they showed up past reporting time again, he had no qualms about firing them.

&nbs
p; Once the last of the workers received their timepieces, Marty said, Okay, set them now to one fifteen, and don’t forget to wind them each night before you go to sleep.

  “I know most of you. If we’re strangers, don’t worry. We’ll be working closely for the next few weeks and will get to know one another quite well.

  “My name is Marty Hankins. I’m the chief of police and the foreman for the gathering project. Has the mayor explained to you why we’re restocking the prison?”

  One of the women spoke up.

  “Yes, sir. He said other cities and towns have started to remove all the abandoned trucks and trailers from the highways and commandeering the stuff inside of them.

  “He said he wants to make sure Eden gets her share before they’re all gone. That the trailers contain a treasure trove of stuff that will make it easier on all of us for years to come, if we grab it before it’s all gone.”

  “And he’s paying you well to come here and help?”

  “One hundred dollars in property credit for every day we complete. A five thousand dollar property credit for everyone who completes the project.”

  Marty nodded as though in agreement, although he hadn’t a clue what the mayor had promised them.

  “It’s a fair deal, and will allow many of you to get a home if you don’t already have one. Or to upgrade into something better. But I need to know, are you willing to work hard? I mean physical labor, ten hours a day, seven days a week?”

  Heads nodded. A man in the back said, “Hell yeah! Let’s get ‘er done.”

  “Okay. Here’s the way it’s gonna work. The first three trailers are already backed up to the dock. Tomorrow morning all of you will report at eight a.m. Not eight oh five or eight oh six. Eight sharp.

  “Our two forklift drivers will pull the pallets out and place them in an inspection area. Our chief inspector will look at what’s on each pallet and decide where it needs to go.

  “Anything that can be stored outside without getting weather damage will be placed on the edge of the loading dock. Once we identify a third forklift driver it will be his responsibility to take it off the dock and to place it in the exercise yard.

  “Other pallets will be sent to Cellblock A or Cellblock C, depending on what commodities are on the pallets. All lumber, plywood, sheetrock and insulation will be delivered to Cellblock B.

  “Are all of you familiar with a pallet jack?”

  A couple sets of eyes looked glazed.

  “A pallet jack is a piece of equipment used to run into a pallet, pick it up slightly off the floor, and then to move it around. That’s what most of you will be doing. A forklift won’t go through the doorways and into the cellblocks. So it has to be done by hand, and with the pallet jacks.

  “But relax. By the end of the day tomorrow you’ll be working together like old pros.

  “Now then, is there anyone here with carpentry experience? Or experience framing houses?”

  A tall thin man with thin gray hair stepped forward.

  “I’ve been a builder most of my life. I’ve framed at least a hundred houses.”

  “Good. Pick a helper with a strong back and the two of you hang back and see me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any questions?”

  “Marty, exactly how much stuff are we going to put in here?”

  “We’re going to fit as much stuff in the yard as possible. We’re going to stack it high and pack it in tight. When we’re done there won’t be much room to walk around in the yard, much less drive vehicles.

  “And we’re gonna do the same thing to two of the three cellblocks. Fill them until we have trouble keeping the door closed.

  “We’re gonna damn make sure Eden gets her fair share.”

  -14-

  Marty stayed behind after the others broke up and went home. Or went to their friends to show off their fancy new watches.

  After the room had cleared except for the three of them, Marty extended his hand to the tall carpenter.

  “We haven’t met. I’m Marty Hankins.”

  “Tom Tuttle. This here’s Charlie Shute. I chose him as my helper because we’ve worked together for years. He’s as good as I am. Maybe better. But I’m better looking than he is by far, so I’ll settle for that.”

  Charlie grinned and grunted, but said nothing else.

  Tom said, “Charlie’s a man of few words.”

  “Good,” Marty said. “Sometimes we waste too much time talking instead of working.”

  “Agreed. So, about this here building project…”

  Marty cut him off.

  “Follow me. I’ll show you what we’re talking about.”

  Marty led the two through a double door propped open with a huge rubber doorstop.

  Above the door, in block letters stretching two feet high, were the words, “CELL BLOCK B.”

  “Try not to kick the doorstep out of place. The door locks automatically when it closes. I’ll look around and see if I can find another set of keys for you guys in case you get locked in. But so far I’ve only been able to find one set.”

  “Nice to know,” Tom said. “How much time you figure we have before that meteorite hits?”

  Marty stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and looked at the man.

  He honestly didn’t know what to say.

  Tom continued.

  “Oh, I understand it was supposed to be a secret. And if it helps, I won’t tell another soul. I don’t know about the others, though. My guess is that by the end of the week most of the town will know about it.”

  “But how…”

  “How did I find out? The mayor told me. He told Charlie too. Odds are he told most of the others. I’ve known Al since grade school. We grew up back then. Even back then he couldn’t keep a secret. Every time somebody told him one, he made a mad dash to everyone he knew to get the word out. There’s something in his psychological makeup, I think, that makes him love being the one to share the news with people. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter.”

  Charlie grunted, “He likes to gossip too.”

  “Oh, yeah. Worse than a room full of grandmas.”

  Marty didn’t know what to do. He’d assumed that secrecy was important to keep the townspeople from panicking and getting out of control.

  But there was nothing he could do about it now. No way to put the cat back in the bag. He’d have to deal with it.

  “Do me a favor, both of you. If any of the others come to you to ask you about the meteorite, tell them it’s probably just a rumor. And tell them even if it’s true, it doesn’t change what we’re trying to do here. Except maybe to add a sense of urgency.

  “And to answer your question, Tom, I don’t know how much time we have. We don’t even know for sure if the damn thing’s coming. If it is, it could be seconds from now, or it could be years.”

  Tom looked at him and said, “Well, even if it never happens, I still think this is a good idea, to gather some of the stuff on the highways. Even without a meteorite, it was just a matter of time before Kerrville and San Angelo and San Antonio started grabbing everything. We might as well beat ‘em to the punch. Grab the good stuff.”

  Charlie muttered, “Damn straight.”

  Tom asked a new question.

  “So, you want us to turn this cell block into a survivable shelter for seventy people for four years, and to keep quiet while we’re doing it. Dos that pretty much sum it up?”

  “Yes. In a nutshell.”

  “Well, then. No problem.”

  -16-

  The three of them – Marty, Tom and Charlie, walked around the cavernous cell block, surveying it and tossing back and forth ideas.

  “Damn. It doesn’t look this big from the outside.”

  The common area of the block was a rectangular room, eighty feet wide and one hundred twenty feet long.

  In one corner was a triangular guard’s station, where two hacks once sat and oversaw the pod’s operation. It was on a platform which raised t
he station ten inches off the floor, and was surrounded on all sides by clear Plexiglas.

  Inside the station, two swivel chairs stood silent sentinel, as though waiting for their guards’ behinds to return to the station and warm them once again.

  Tom looked out and took a quick count of the stainless steel tables bolted to the floor before him, and the metal stools on each side of them. Also bolted down.

  Twenty tables. Eighty stools. All painted dismal gray to match the gloomy floor.

  Tom surveyed the rest of the pod as they walked around it. On the east and west sides were staircases which led to a mezzanine. The wrap-around mezzanine was nothing more than a walkway to allow inmates access to and from their cells on the upper level.

  Every cell was easily visible from the guard station in the corner of the block.

  There were no secrets here. No place to hide. The men who’d once lived here were under constant watch. Even after retiring to their cells and hearing them slammed shut behind them each night, the hacks constantly walked past and peered inside the heavy reinforced glass windows in each of the doors.

  Those doors were now permanently locked in the open position.

  The inmates who’d survived the big freeze by holing up here had taken care of that. They’d smashed the big control panel the guards once used to open and close the doors throughout the prison. Broke all the switches. Set fire to the control panel itself by pouring some type of flammable liquid on it and setting it ablaze.

  The unit still smelled of melted wiring, and the face was still charred black.

  The inmate’s last laugh, perhaps, at the contraption that made their lives a living hell.

  “There’s enough cells on the bottom tier to accommodate all seventy,” Marty started. “As long as we double up the married or coupled folks into one cell, and make the children share. I’m going under the assumption that the smaller the cv area we have to heat, the longer our fuel will last and the warmer it’ll be.”

  “And the more miserable everyone will be,” Tom pointed out.

  “What’s your suggestion, then?”