This Changes Everything Page 6

“Term number two is grandma reserves the right to return said grandchildren at any time, with no notice, should they become cranky and or irritable or start teething.

  “Have you had your coffee?”

  “Not yet. Mind if I go get some before you head out?”

  “Not as long as you bring me a cup too.”

  -16-

  It finally dawned on sleepy Sami they’d carried on a conversation for two minutes and Karen still hadn’t taken her gaze away from the monitor.

  “Karen, what in God’s name are you looking at?”

  “Huh? Oh. The thermometer outside the main door to the mine.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s broken. I’m watching it to see if it changes.”

  “What makes you think it’s broken?”

  “Well, look at it. It says thirty four degrees. I wonder if we have another one in storage somewhere. I think I’ll ask Bryan to look for one.

  “I mean, how can we log in the high and low temperature each day if the darned thermometer is broken?”

  At that moment something small flashed across the monitor. From top to bottom, at fast speed.

  “What was that?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t know.”

  Karen was tired from working a long and boring shift.

  Sami was still half asleep.

  What should have been apparent to both of them instantly slipped right past them.

  They called for backup and Sarah came running.

  Sarah screamed and got everybody’s attention.

  Then everybody came running.

  The thermometer wasn’t defective.

  The calendar on the wall above them said it was August fifteenth.

  The hottest day of the year.

  The thaw had officially begun.

  It had been less than a year since Cupid 23 came crashing to the earth in the tiny town of Spangdahlem, Germany.

  No one, not even Hannah, had expected the thaw to begin the first summer.

  But it did.

  They had a long way to go.

  By nightfall the temperature would go back below freezing and everything would freeze again.

  There would be only a couple more days that summer when the temperature would climb back above the magical threshold. The melting of the snow pack would be minimal.

  But it was cause for celebration.

  For it was a first step.

  When the thaw came after Saris 7 there were only six melt days in the fifth summer.

  In the sixth summer there were just fifty seven melt days.

  The following year brought more than two hundred, and the group was able to plant a few crops.

  This time the pack was smaller, the sky not as dismally brown.

  “Do you think we can break out in the spring?” Karen excitedly asked Hannah.

  “I don’t know. I sure hope so. But I’d say more likely end of summer.”

  “Don’t anybody get your hopes up. This could be a fluke. Next summer it might never go above freezing.”

  But they would get their hopes up.

  They couldn’t help it.

  They were all human beings, after all.

  Some more than others.

  Many would say that Bryan barely qualified, and was more bear than man.

  Human beings tend to be eternal optimists. It’s in their nature. They tend to be “glass is half full” people way more than “glass is half empty.”

  Given the evidence before them, they really wouldn’t be able to assume that come springtime they’d be able to break out of the mine and relocate into the compound next door.

  They’d dream of being able to walk outside again; to look up and feel the sun upon their faces once more.

  To watch the birds fly over once again. To plant their crops. To grow fresh food.

  Odds were it wouldn’t happen that way.

  Odds were it would be August again the following year before the air temperature went high enough to allow the ice pack to thaw just a tiny but more.

  But they were still humans.

  They could still hope.

  Debbie walked over and ruined everything by telling Sami that Stef was awake and was hungry.

  It reminded her that, melting ice pack or not, she had a tiny baby who was totally dependent on her for anything and everything.

  The celebration would have to wait, at least for the new mother.

  She hurried back to the nursery Debbie helped her set up in the spare room of the clinic and lifted her daughter up.

  Bless her heart, she wasn’t a fussy baby, not at all.

  The only time she really fussed was when her diaper was messy.

  And who, really, could blame her for that?

  Stef tended to wake from her nap and to move her tiny head about, taking in everything there was to see in the small two-room clinic.

  She seemed fascinated by the lights, the colors, and the shiny instruments.

  She saved her smile, though, for her mommy when Sami came to pick her up.

  Sami still marveled at the baby’s piercing blue eyes, for both hers and Brad’s were brown as brown could be.

  “Maybe from my parents,” Brad offered, though both Debbie and Karen told them sometimes babies’ eyes start out blue and change color later on.

  Brad never knew either of his birth parents; he was put up for adoption as a baby.

  Neither did he know of his parents’ situation; why they didn’t want him.

  He’d struggled with that for years, wondering why he wasn’t good enough for them. But he’d been adopted by a couple who showered him with their own love and he eventually got over it.

  He walked into the room while Stef was happily suckling at Sami’s breast.

  He took his wife’s hand and gently fingered the tufts of curly blond hair upon his daughter’s head, until she opened her eyes, let go of the breast and smiled at him.

  This child of theirs would never be lacking for love either.

  -17-

  The excitement at the control center was short-lived.

  It ended in late afternoon, as the air temperature outside the mine’s door started to drop.

  The needle on the thermometer dropped back below thirty two degrees and water stopped dripping from the cliff face above the door.

  It wasn’t until later that Debbie, working the evening shift at the control center, noticed the snow pack receded just a tiny bit.

  The same security camera which focused on the thermometer also caught a glimpse of a metered yellow yardstick planted in the snow.

  The snow pack didn’t really melt, of course. But it softened a bit, and water is heavier than snow. What it did was pack down a bit, dropping the top of the snow packed against the yardstick by half an inch, from twenty seven inches high to twenty six and a half.

  It wasn’t much.

  But it was a start.

  There was hope the following few days would be unseasonably warm and would melt the snow pack more, but that wasn’t to be.

  The following day a cold front blew through, and high temperatures for the next week never went above twenty eight.

  Something else it did was bring a bit of joy back to the lives of those in the mine.

  It came at a time when they desperately needed it, for none of them wanted to spend another seven years awaiting the thaw.

  Hannah knew about Cupid 23 and its potential to bring another freeze.

  She also knew Cupid 23 was much smaller and moving much slower than her predecessor.

  She said from the beginning that Cupid 23’s freeze would be much shorter and much less cold than the first freeze.

  It wasn’t that her friends and family questioned her; not that they didn’t believe her.

  They just all hoped, despite her years of training, despite her inside knowledge of the whole meteorite thing… that she was right.

  Indications now were that she was indeed; and that gave them the shot in the arm they need
ed to stop dreading a long drawn-out term in their frozen prison.

  And helped them start looking forward to possibly getting out the following summer.

  Rachel was so happy she insisted on calling their friends at Eden South with the news.

  Particularly her good friend Marty Haskins.

  She and Marty had gotten quite close in the months just prior to Cupid 23’s collision with the earth near Spangdahlem.

  Marty was helping out then, since the converted prison had determined they had enough supplies to ride out another long freeze. The restocking operation at Salt Mountain mine was running behind schedule, partly because Brad disappeared and had to be found.

  And because Frank disappeared not long after.

  Sadly, Frank was never located and was presumed lost. But the days and manpower the group had spent searching for the two men put them way behind schedule.

  Marty and Lenny and several others from Eden South had assisted in the search.

  Once Brad was found and the second search for Frank was called off they continued to help. This time to gather supplies to make up for the mine’s shortfall.

  During that time Rachel usually manned the mine’s overhead door and was there to greet Marty as he drove his big rig into the main tunnel to drop his load and head back out for another.

  The pair… Marty and Rachel… grew to be good friends while Marty took a mandated half-hour break to warm up before he headed back out for his next load.

  In fact Rachel, a mere teenager when she was taken in years before when her father was shot to death on the highway in front of the mine, was all grown up now.

  Grown up into a fine young woman of twenty six.

  For her part, she was more than a friend to Marty.

  She had a major crush on him, dating back for quite some time.

  She knew that Marty was very much in love and very dedicated to Glenna and her children.

  And she didn’t want to upset Marty and Glenna’s love boat, or even make any waves.

  She considered herself a woman who lost by circumstance, or perhaps timing. For Marty had fallen for Glenna while Rachel was not yet a woman.

  She’d suffer in silence, love Marty from afar, with little to no chance of ever landing a man she considered half as good as him.

  To Marty she was merely a good friend despite her feelings about him. And sadly for her that was very likely never to change.

  Despite their closeness, though, they hadn’t spoken in weeks.

  The people in the mine knew that Lenny and Richard Junior had been shot dead by infiltrators.

  But they knew nothing of the security changes placed into effect at Eden South since the attack.

  Rachel didn’t know Marty had stepped up; had volunteered to take over a security function he knew next to nothing about.

  Or that he was struggling, desperate to prevent another situation where his friends or loved ones might be killed.

  He’d gotten everyone involved. He’d asked for all their input. For any ideas which might make them all safer.

  One by one they were discounting the more ridiculous of ideas and implementing the others.

  In essence Marty was throwing a lot of spaghetti noodles against the wall to see which ones might stick.

  One of the most recent changes was with their ham radio procedures. They were no longer using names.

  Of anything: places, people… anything.

  She sat down at the control center’s ham radio planning on sharing the good news with their friends at Eden South.

  What she was to get instead was a crash course in overkill.

  -18-

  “Eden South, this is Junction, Texas, calling with some news to share.”

  Rachel was disappointed.

  Usually the people in the old prison were Johnny-on-the-spot when it came to answering their radio. For duty on their “hack shack,” the raised platform they used for their control center, was as lonely and as boring as similar duty was in the mine.

  Controllers in both locations typically jumped at the chance to speak to someone outside their little circle of friends and colleagues.

  Especially when someone called in promising news of some kind.

  Not this time.

  This time Rachel’s hails were apparently falling on deaf ears.

  She checked the radio’s tuner to make sure it was correctly dialed in, for it wasn’t uncommon for someone to bump the unit and knock the frequency dial off just a bit.

  But it was dead on.

  She tried to hail them again.

  “Eden South, this is Junction, Texas, calling with news to share with you.”

  Rachel wasn’t alone at the mine’s control center.

  Debbie was on duty, watching the monitors for any sign of movement outside the mine.

  It was boring work, for no one was out and about. It entailed hours of watching monitors that showed nothing but fluffy white snow and the desolate forest surrounding Salt Mountain and the mine carved out of the mountain’s base.

  There was never any movement, save the barren branches of trees slowing swaying in the wind.

  Still, the recent ambush shooting of their friend Lenny Geibel in Eden was a stark reminder there were indeed desperate people out there.

  The mine had come under attack on three different occasions in the past.

  There were bad guys out there, possibly a lot of them, who knew the mine was there, was well-stocked and was occupied by people who weren’t suffering, weren’t freezing.

  Who, in a word, weren’t desperate.

  Debbie was bored, but was doing her job well. She recognized its importance.

  Still, as her eyes remained glued to the monitors, her ears were attuned to Rachel and her efforts to hail Eden South.

  She was concerned, for even if they’d missed the first call, they should have heard the second.

  Without moving her eyes away from her own task she reached for the base station microphone for the other radio; the two-way Motorola radio which maintained constant communications within the mine.

  She pressed down the black button at the microphone’s base and called out, “Mark, Bryan, Hannah… please report to the SCC.”

  She said to Rachel, “Honey, hold off on calling Eden until the others get here. They need to know you’re having trouble.”

  Rachel didn’t quite understand why, but complied. She recognized that Debbie was considerably more experienced in security procedures and what might or might not constitute a concern.

  Not everyone in the mine wore two-way radios on their hips.

  It was a personal choice for the most part.

  Yes, there had been times in the past when attacks were either in progress or imminent, and side arms and radios were mandatory.

  But they were in the midst of a long period of relative safety.

  An attack on the mine wasn’t out of the question, but was very unlikely.

  Such an attack against the reinforced walls of the mine likely wouldn’t be successful and would be easy to defend against.

  They were, as Karen put it to the children a few days before, “as snug as a bug in a rug.”

  Under the mine’s present state of security not all the adult residents chose to carry a pistol or a two-way radio.

  But key personnel did.

  In the bowels of the mine Hannah, her husband Mark, and her brother-in-law Bryan broke away from things they were doing and headed quickly toward the Security Control Center.

  None of them outright ran, for there had been no urgency in Debbie’s voice.

  There was concern, yes, but no urgency, no panic.

  That told them she needed them quickly, but that no one was in any immediate danger.

  Twelve-plus years of working together, managing various types of security crises and situations made them all quite good at reading one another.

  Within five minutes the three gathered at the SCC.

  Hannah asked Debbie, “What’s up
, boss?”

  “Rachel isn’t having any luck raising Eden. I wanted to wait until you guys were present to see if you think there might be something ugly going on there.”

  Debbie nodded to Rachel.

  “Go ahead, honey.”

  Rachel dutifully turned back to the ham and pressed the microphone button once more.

  “Eden South, this is Junction, Texas, calling with some news to share.”

  Again, dead silence.

  Bryan was the only one in the group of forty one who was an engineer by training. He was the “go-to guy” for all things mechanical, for he had a general aptitude for repairing things.

  He told Rachel, “Hold on just a second.”

  He turned the ham radio around and checked the in-line fuse to ensure it hadn’t been tripped. Then he checked the most basic of things: was the unit plugged into the wall, was the power switch on?

  He saw no reason it shouldn’t be working.

  He tuned the frequency to that used by the base station and the mine’s two-way radio system, and then keyed the microphone.

  Mindful he was surrounded by people carrying radios on their hips, he spoke into the microphone barely above a whisper.

  “Testing… one, two, three.”

  All around him radios came to life, repeating his words.

  From the dining room Brad yelled, almost at the same time Karen yelled from the hallway.

  “Loud and clear,” they both said.

  The outgoing signal was working, and was strong.

  Bryan tried the incoming signal by pressing the key on the base station’s microphone.

  “Testing… four, five, six.”

  Again came several yells from around the building: “Loud and clear.”

  Moreover, Bryan heard his own words come over the ham radio’s speakers.

  The unit was working.

  He tuned it back into Eden South’s frequency and tried his own luck.

  “Eden South, this is the outpost in Junction, Texas. We have good news to share with you. How do you read us, over…”

  Perhaps it was just Bryan’s day.

  Or perhaps not, since the growling voice which came over the radio from Eden South seemed none too happy.

  “Who are you trying to get hold of?” the voice snarled.