One of Our Own: Final Dawn: Book 11 Read online

  And Frank had never let a friend down, not even once in all his years.

  Frank couldn’t drive a rig, but he could damn sure drive a Hummer.

  After the rest of the search teams were out on the roads, he found Rachel sitting alone at a table in the dining room.

  -15-

  “Hiya, hot stuff,” Frank teased as he walked up behind Rachel.

  “Oh, hi Frank. How are you? I heard you were bummed out about being left behind.”

  “Oh, I’m fine now.”

  He grabbed her hand.

  “Come on, pretty lady. You’re coming with me.”

  It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.

  But he wasn’t harsh about it. There was something somehow… frivolous in his tone.

  “Oh, I am, am I?”

  Even as she asked the question she stood up to comply.

  “Yep.”

  He continued to hold her hand as they walked down the corridor of the big house, then down the steps to the basement.

  “Um… Frank, you do understand I’m only nineteen. And you’re like… way old.”

  He smiled and faced her as they walked.

  “Are you implying, young lady, that old men are no longer capable of things they once were?”

  “No… I’m just implying that you’re older than the hills.

  “But I still love you and all.”

  She smiled sweetly at him.

  “Relax, hot stuff. You’re gorgeous and all, but you’re way too young for me.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief, while at the same time perhaps a tiny bit of regret.

  “Then where are we going?”

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  The pair walked, holding hands, through the long tunnel which connected the compound to the mine.

  They walked up the wooden steps the two of them had painted traffic yellow together.

  Rachel had been furious with him for brushing the hair from her face and surreptitiously applying a dot of yellow paint to her cheek with her thumb.

  Mirrors in the mine were few and far between and the dot was still there three days later, despite her having washed her face several times in the interim.

  Karen finally asked her if she was trying to make a “fashion statement.”

  Rachel had been furious with Frank and went several days without talking to him.

  She finally forgave him when he apologized and explained his logic.

  “A sweetheart like you is a shining star in every way. You should have something that sets you apart. Something no one else has. Something to show the world how special you are. That was why I left just a little spot of sunshine on your cheek.”

  She wound up giving him a very long hug, which of course he enjoyed immensely.

  They walked through the mine until they got to its main entrance.

  And once there, Rachel finally saw why he’d dragged her so far.

  Just inside the huge overhead door was one of the three Humvees he’d removed from the back of the mine.

  “Oh, Frank, I already told you. You’re way too old for me. And don’t you think it’s just a little bit undignified to go rolling around in the back seat anyway? I mean, that’s what high school kids do at drive-in movies.”

  “I’m surprised you even know what a drive-in movie is, little miss snotty snot.”

  “I read about them once… in an ancient history book.”

  “Cute.”

  “Yeah. I thought so too.

  “Frank, are you really going out there? The roads are treacherous.”

  “These things can go anywhere,” he said. “Even on ice. But I let some of the air pressure out of the tires, just to give me a little bit better traction.”

  “Am I going with you?”

  “No. You’re going to open and close the door and let me out.”

  She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Only if you promise to be careful.”

  “Oh, I will. Just in case you ever change your mind.”

  “Change my mind?”

  “Yes. You know… about the whole rolling around in the back seat thing.”

  “Oh, Frank. You’re such a scoundrel.”

  “Well, that’s a step up. Hannah and Sarah call me a dirty old man.”

  “No. You’re much too refined for that. Or maybe you’re not refined at all. Maybe you’ve just got the dirty old man thing down to a science.”

  “I think that’s it. I’ve been polishing my technique for a very long time.”

  “I’m serious. Promise me you’ll be careful or I won’t let you out.”

  “I promise.”

  Rachel took the radio from her belt and called the control center.

  “Karen, this is Rachel. Are we clear to open the overhead door?”

  Karen was a bit puzzled. She hadn’t heard anyone call in, saying they were returning to the mine.

  She must have just missed it.

  She checked her monitors and saw it was clear outside the mine’s entrance.

  “We’re good. Go ahead, Rachel.”

  As the huge door cranked open, Frank jumped behind the wheel of the Hummer and started it up.

  Rachel opened the passenger door and said, “I love you, you crazy old man. You be safe out there.”

  “I love you too, doll. I promise.”

  She watched the big machine as he pulled out into the frigid air, not quite sure why she’d felt a need to express her love to him.

  She’d always had premonitions which foretold impending doom.

  They often came to pass, although not always.

  She hoped against hope he came back safely at the end of the day.

  -16-

  It was close to high noon.

  Frank left his watch on the night table in his bedroom that morning. It was something he almost never did, for he felt almost naked without it.

  Odd how he hadn’t noticed it before now.

  But he could get by without it for a day.

  He’d always been one of those guys who could tell what time it was by the angle of the sun. A trick he picked up as a boy scout in Troop 111 in Lubbock, Texas.

  He’d gone to P.F. Brown Elementary School, and had joined the scouts on a lark.

  Actually, that wasn’t completely true. He’d joined because he heard a rumor that his major crush, Danita Moore, liked men in uniform.

  He knew because he heard it from Tommy, who heard it from Sally, who heard it from Stan. Stan couldn’t remember where he’d heard it, but he thought it was old Sam, the postman who delivered mail to Danita’s house.

  With credentials like that, it was a sure thing.

  Once he was in the scouts he decided he liked it enough to stay, and that was good.

  Because Danita Moore moved away shortly after that and he never saw her again.

  Frank used to impress his non-scout friends by betting them he could tell the time of day just by looking at the sun. He won a lot of soda pops and Clark’s bars that way.

  It was only when his friends stopped betting with them that he finally shared his knowledge with them.

  Actually, that was the year they started studying geometry in school. He was a natural, but many of his friends were struggling with the concept.

  His time-telling was an exercise in teaching them about angles as anything else.

  “There are roughly twelve hours of daylight on a given day,” he tried to explain.

  “If you take a round clock and chop it in half and lay it on its flat side, you have a half-circle.”

  His friends’ eyes glossed over, but he continued anyway.

  “You guys know what military time is, right?”

  They were all G.I. Joe fans. Of course they did.

  “Well, picture the clock we just cut in half as being military time. A twenty four hour clock. That means from one corner to the other is twelve hours.”

  One of his friends placed his head in his hands. Another
yawned.

  “Okay, there are about twelve hours of sunlight in a given day. And the sun typically comes up about six in the morning and sets around nine at night.

  “All you have to do is look at the angle of the sun in relation to the flatness of the earth.

  “If the morning sun is thirty degrees above the earth you know it’s about eight a.m.

  “If the morning sun is about sixty degrees it’s about ten a.m.

  “If it’s about ninety degrees it’s noon.”

  The yawner started to snore.

  Frank gave up.

  Later, when the boys were a couple years older, he was finally able to teach them the fundamentals of geometry.

  Not by using the sun as an example, but by banking his shots on a pool table.

  It was something they could relate to a lot easier.

  Frank looked skyward. He knew it was high noon not because he could see the sun above him.

  The sun was masked now behind a heavy brown haze.

  But the lightest part of the sky, a round spot about a shade lighter than the rest of the ugly brown haze, marked the midday sun.

  He reckoned it was within fifteen minutes of twelve, either way. It wasn’t an exact science. But it was pretty close.

  Karen called him on the radio.

  “Frank, since you insist on being pig-headed, stubborn and unreasonable, you might as well work Interstate 10 west of Junction.

  “Bryan is working his way east. Since you’re alone, please don’t pull the same boneheaded stunt Brad did. Call in every once in a while and let us know where you are.”

  “Ten four. Copy that.”

  “Oh, and Frank?”

  “Yes?”

  “Welcome aboard. Thanks for coming to the party.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  The Dwyer brothers had had one hell of a night. Unable to get the GMC tractor started, they faced the possibility of falling asleep and freezing to death.

  That was something they obviously wanted to avoid.

  John’s solution, his Plan B, was to leave the tractor and crawl into the trailer the old truck was towing ten years before when it came to what would probably be its eternal resting place.

  The trailer was empty, except for a stack of wooden pallets.

  “Great. That’s just great.”

  He cursed again as Justin studied the pallets.

  He had an idea.

  Possibly his best one yet.

  Trailers which carry the truckloads of goods across the nation’s highways are normally constructed with wooden floors.

  As they get older, though, those wooden floors sometimes get worn and damaged and have to be replaced or repaired.

  A common practice is for trailer repair companies to merely install sheets of metal over the worn wooden floorboards. It’s cheaper than replacing the wood and lasts longer too.

  And so it was that the center third of this trailer’s floor was no longer wood, but steel sheeting.

  “Hey John?”

  His brother was in no mood for polite conversation.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Why don’t we break up a couple of pallets and build a fire on the metal floor?”

  John stopped cursing.

  He tried to see a flaw in his brother’s idea and couldn’t.

  If they did it right, they might be able to generate enough heat to keep from freezing to death as they slept.

  As it happened, the idea worked amazingly well.

  They left the trailer door open, to allow the smoke to flow outside.

  Since smoke rises, they sat or stretched out on the lower half of the trailer, and managed to inhale just a little of the nasty stuff.

  Under normal conditions, the fire would have superheated the metal and set the wood beneath it on fire.

  But the frigid temperatures beneath the trailer kept the wood cool enough to prevent that.

  To be safe, the brothers took turns. One slept while the other kept watch over the fire, adding another piece of wood occasionally and making sure it didn’t get out of control.

  The temperatures that night hit five degrees above zero.

  But John and Justin Dwyer managed to survive. And they got enough sleep to sustain them for another long walk once the skies lightened again.

  By ten a.m. the following day they were once again on the move.

  Lugging a heavy car battery on Interstate 10, west of Junction.

  -17-

  Frank didn’t have the benefit of a passenger to watch the right side of the roadway.

  By the time he’d conned Rachel into helping him leave the mine, all the volunteers from Eden South had been assigned to other drivers.

  He was also at a disadvantage because he didn’t have the higher vantage point the others enjoyed. Sitting in a tractor is not unlike being king of the mountain. The drivers from the mine and the volunteers from Eden South were so high they could see over the guard rails and into the valleys and ravines below.

  If Brad spun out or lost control and left the roadway, they should be able to spot him.

  Frank’s Hummer was somewhat lower.

  Seeing into the ravines and valleys was a bit harder for him. He frequently had to stop when he saw a damaged guard rail and get out of his vehicle. Once he peered over the rail and was satisfied there wasn’t a vehicle below, he got back in and drove a bit farther.

  It was slow going. But Frank knew in his heart he was doing Brad more good than he would be if he was back at the compound worrying and waiting for news.

  In any search and rescue operation, the more pairs of eyes the better.

  The weather cleared a bit. Oh, there was still way too much snow on the ground. And the roads beneath the snow were still icy and slick. But the snowstorm that was further hampering the drivers’ vision the previous afternoon had blown off to torment somebody else.

  Visibility still sucked. But it could have been much worse.

  Frank hadn’t seen anything for several hours. Judging from the chatter on the radio, no one else was finding anything either.

  At one point Mark called in to report he’d spun out and needed someone to pull him out of a ditch.

  Frank was too far away, and wasn’t sure how much help the Hummer would be anyway.

  Rusty was on the same highway as Mark, working the opposite direction, and was only a few miles away from him. He went to Mark’s rescue. They lost about an hour’s search time, but it could have been much worse.

  As it turned out the Hummer had better traction than most of the tractors, even without tire chains.

  Frank had let some of the air out of his tires. That helped a little. But mostly it was the design of the vehicle and the tires themselves. The Hummer was designed to go pretty much anywhere with ease.

  While the others reported that driving on such roads was akin to ice skating with an elephant on their backs, Frank and his Hummer weren’t having much trouble at all.

  At mid afternoon, Frank went around a curve in the highway and looked out incredulously at the expanse of road ahead of him.

  “What the hell?”

  Frank wouldn’t have been surprised by too many things on this particular day. Deer in this part of the country are typically spotted right around sunrise. But he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a trophy buck standing there in the middle of the highway watching him roll past.

  He wouldn’t have been surprised to see abandoned vehicles on their sides or roofs. Because many people who’d tried to drive since the world turned cold again just weren’t experienced enough to handle the conditions.

  No, not many things would have surprised Frank on this particular day.

  But the sight of two men walking, carrying an automobile battery, of all things, caught him a little off guard.

  There was no question about whether he’d stop. Frank was one of those people, back when the world was sane, who always stopped to assist those in need.

  Even
though he never drove a car more than two years old, he always carried a pair of jumper cables in his trunk. His batteries never went bad, but other peoples’ did.

  He also carried a gallon of gas in his trunk and a portable air compressor. Not in case he ran out of gas or had a low tire.

  But in case someone else did.

  That was the kind of person Frank was before the world froze over.

  -18-

  There was no way he wasn’t going to stop and offer a ride to these two poor souls whose transportation had obviously given out on them.

  He pulled up alongside them and rolled down his window.

  “Hop in, fellas. It looks cold out there.”

  It had been John’s turn to carry the battery, and it weighed about twenty tons more than it did the first time he picked it up.

  He took one look at Frank, smiled broadly, and tossed the heavy battery unceremoniously to one side.

  John motioned for his brother to take the front seat.

  That was rather odd in itself, for John had told Justin all his life that as the older brother, John deserved the first pick of everything, the best seating assignments, the first toke from the joint, the first pull from the bottle.

  And John hated sitting in the back seat.

  But Justin didn’t question his brother. Every inch of his body was either frozen or numb. He didn’t care where he sat as long as it was warm.

  “Where you guys headed?” Frank asked.

  “Up to north Texas.”

  “Well, I can’t take you that far. But I can drop you off at the nearest town. Maybe you can get some wheels there. Did your car give out on you?”

  John answered from the back seat.

  “Yeah. Engine burned up on us.”

  “How long y’all been out here?”

  “This was our second day on foot.”

  As he conversed, John sized up the older man in the driver’s seat.

  He had a 9mm handgun in a belt clip on his right side. Easy enough for John to grab when the time was right.

  But there was plenty of time for that. Right now John could only move in slow motion. He’d need a little bit of time for his muscles to warm up.

  “Sure do appreciate you coming along and giving us a ride, Mister. You out gathering food?”