An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (9 page)

     So Tom and Jordan placed the empty casket on the back patio and the women went to work lining it with cozy
comforters. In Sara’s words, “So she’ll be toasty warm until they approve her ticket to heaven.”

    
The teddy bear was little Misty’s idea. “It’s always good to have a friend along on a long journey, so you can have someone to snuggle with and talk to.”

     It had been
Misty’s security bear up until that time. She’d never gone anywhere without it to that point. Wouldn’t sleep without it, and sometimes even dragged it to the dinner table.

     Hannah wasn’t so sure at first.

     “Are you sure you’re able to give Teddy up?”

     Misty
looked at her and in the biggest voice she could muster, said, “Mom, I’m not a child anymore.”

     And in a sense she was right. Joyce’s death changed all of them in various ways. They wouldn’t realize for months how they’d all become a little bit
more hardened, a little bit more cynical, and a little bit more suspicious of strangers.

     But in other ways, Joyce’s sacrifice would change them for the better. They now knew that any of them could be gone in the blink of an eye. And that the time they had together wasn’t unlimited, and needed to be cherished. Every single one of them secretly vowed to themselves to make more of their relationships with the others. In the months ahead, they would love harder and show affection more freely.

     After the casket was prepared, Tom very gently carried Joyce downstairs in his arms. Linda and Hannah had dressed her in her favorite blue dress. They even managed to wash and style her hair while Jordan was digging the grave and Tom was building the casket, although doing so was a monumental task.

     It wasn’t one they minded, though.

     There was no way to cover the bullet hole with makeup. So Joyce would go to heaven with a band aid on her head.

     “You don’t think she’ll mind, do you?” Hannah asked.

     Linda responded, “I don’t think so. Not at all.”

     Tom and Jordan could have carried the casket to the grave site by themselves, but Linda and Hannah insisted on helping.
Misty, Rachel and Sara all grabbed hold as well, although they were limited help. It was just something they had to do. It seemed to be an essential part of saying goodbye.

     Tom had cut four sections of rope, each piece t
wenty five feet long.

     He made a loop on each end of each piece of
rope, and looped the ropes around stakes he and Jordan hammered into the ground.

     The four ropes, stretched across the grave, made a cradle that would hold the casket.

     For the first time since they’d moved into the compound, the house was completely empty of life. Never before had they left the security station unmanned, even when everyone else was outside planting crops or doing other chores.

     For a few brief minutes, they
relied on the four men at Tom’s ranch to provide security from whatever or whoever out there might still do them harm.

     They gently placed the casket on the rope cradle, then stepped back. Tom asked them to bow their heads and said a short prayer.

     Linda said, “I’ll take the security desk. Somebody has to do it, and I said my goodbyes while we were doing her hair.”

     She didn’t get any arguments. It was nice of her to step up to the plate and bow out. Everyone loved Joyce, and no one wanted to miss the service.

     Linda opened the gate to let the men in, then stepped well away from them as they entered and took their place on the west side of the grave.

     Linda locked the gate behind them and then took her
own place at the security console.

     She noticed for the first time that
Jordan had turned one of the security cameras toward the grave, so that whoever had to pull security could see the ceremony.

     Linda smiled
and spoke out loud to Jordan, even though he’d never hear her words..

     “What a sweet son you are. Thank you, dear.”

     Sara, for her part, held down the microphone on her radio during the brief service so that Joyce could hear it as well.

     The compound’s residents took places on th
e east side of the grave, separated from the visitors by twenty feet or so. John looked longingly at Hannah, desperate to feel her touch, hold her, tell her he loved her. Knowing he couldn’t made an already dreadful moment even more so.

     Scott spoke first, with an appeal to God. He raised his face toward the sky and said, “Lord, please take this good woman under your wing and protect her. She didn’t deserve this, any of it. But she’s in your care now, and I trust you’ll do right by her. Please tell her how much I love her. How much we all love her. And how much we look forward to seeing her again someday.”

     Sara led the group in two hymns,
Amazing Grace
and
Shall We Gather at the River.
She looked through an old hymnal Joyce had on her bookcase, and found those two pages dog-eared.

     “These must be her favorites,” she told Linda. So she printed copies for everyone.

     Tom said a closing prayer, and it was time to lower Joyce into her final resting place. The four visitors on the west side of the grave each took a rope and unhooked it from the stakes.

     On the ea
st side, Tom and Jordan took the ropes on the ends. Hannah and Zachary took the ropes in the middle.

     Slowly and deliberately, they walked toward the grave, the casket slowly lowering with each step.

     By the time they made it to the grave, Joyce was resting at the bottom, and the eight of them tossed the ropes into the hole atop the casket.

     They were a mere five feet apart now. It would be the closest John and Hannah would be to each other for several more months, and it broke their hearts.

     But their hearts weren’t breaking as bad as Scott’s.

     “Do you mind if I have some time alone with her?”

     Tom said, “Take all the time you need, my friend.”

     All the others walked away, careful to keep a safe distance between the visitors and the residents.

     They sat at their respective picnic tables and watched, from a distance, as Scott knelt on his knees before the grave and carried on a long conversation.

     They didn’t know whether Joyce could hear his final farewell. But they knew that even if she couldn’t, it was still therapeutic for Scott to get the words out. To tell her what she meant to him.

     And perhaps to get out the things he’d intended to tell her before and never had the chance.

     Scott joined John, Randy and Robbie at the visitors table, and for the next hour the two tables carried on the most bizarre of conversations, through two way radios, or yelling across the twenty foot span that separated them.

     It was a dreadful way for loved ones to visit.

     At one point
Sara brought young Chris from the house to visit with his grandfather.

     It seemed a further insult, almost like rubbing salt into an open wound, that Scott had just buried his love. And now he could see his only grandson from twenty feet away.

     But he couldn’t go any closer without risking the baby’s life.

     “Someday, little guy,” he called across the span, “I’ll be able to pick you up and carry you and we’ll have lots of fun
together. In the meantime, you just remember that Grandpa loves you.”

     As the sun sank
low in the sky, the visitors went back to Tom’s ranch house for their second night. They were scheduled to depart first thing in the morning, after they came and said their goodbyes.

     This had been the hardest day any of them had gone through in a very long time. And the prospects of the next day being any better were dim at best.

     Fortunately, John had a trick up his sleeve.

-17-

     The sun rose about five thirty that morning. The light coming in through the east windows, which hadn’t been cleaned in many months, bathed Tom’s ranch house in a dusty glow.

     Scott stretched and opened his eyes to see Robbie, still asleep a few feet away. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawned, and looked around to see where his other friends were.

     They were nowhere in sight, although their sleeping bags and air mattresses were already neatly rolled up in the corner.

     Probably outside shooting the breeze, out of earshot of their sleeping comrades.

     Scott was unworried, so he allowed himself the luxury of dozing off for a few more minutes.

     The trip back to
San Antonio, after all, would be a trying one. It would be hard on all of them, emotionally, especially knowing the risks their loved ones would face again in their absence.

     A few extra minutes’ sleep would
n’t make their leaving any easier, but it would delay it just a little bit longer.

     The patch of light coming through the window started close to the ceiling when the sun rose, then slowly crept down the wall and onto the floor as the morning sun rose higher on the horizon. As it made its way across the floor, it eventually found Scott’s face and woke him up again.

     He looked at his watch. It was now almost ten.

     Robbie was nowhere in sight now, but his sleeping bag and air mattress now sat with the other two in the corner.

     Scott was a little bit upset now that they didn’t wake him. They probably figured that, as hard as the previous day was on him, he needed all the rest he could get.

     But still, they had to get back to
San Antonio.

     He felt bad for making his friends wait so long on him just so he could get some more sleep.

     He crawled out of his bag, walked outside, and urinated against an old oak tree. Tom’s ranch house had an indoor toilet, of course. But without power to run the well pump, it wouldn’t flush. Better to go outside and let the rain wash it away than to piss in a toilet that could never be flushed.

     He looked around for his friends, and saw Robbie coming through the field from the direction of the compound.

     “Well, hello, Sleeping Ugly. ‘Bout time you got your lazy ass out of bed.”

    “Yeah, well, up yours pal. Where’s everybody else?”

     “They’re gone, Scott. They went back to
San Antonio.”

     “What?”

     “Yep. It was John’s idea. He said after losing Joyce, you need a few more days to spend with your loved ones. He said that even though you can’t get close to them, you can still see them. And under the circumstances it’s better than nothing.”

     “When did he hatch this evil plan?”

     “Yesterday, while you were saying your final goodbyes to Joyce. We were sitting at the picnic table watching you, and I said I wished there was something we could do to help ease your pain. He said there was, and he told us of his plan. John just looks like an insensitive bastard. He really has a heart of gold. But don’t tell him I told you that. He’ll beat me senseless.”

     “You’re already senseless.”

     “Well, judging from the company I keep, you’re probably right.”

     “So why are you here?”

     “John told me to stay here and keep you company. So you didn’t have to sleep here in this lonely ranch house every night, all by yourself. I guess he thinks you’re afraid of the bogeyman or something.”

     “What about Chief Martinez? I mean, I’m just there as a temporary helper. I don’t care if I get fired. But what about you?”

     “John said he’d square it with the chief. Chief Martinez considers John the son he never had. He said he’ll talk the chief into giving us a leave of absence for two weeks. He’ll come back and pick us up then.

     “That should be long enough to see if there are going to be any more attacks here. And if they are, John made me promise to call them so they can come racing back. He said they’re going to run the generator twenty four hours a day and have a couple of the fellas on the other shift stay at John’s house for the two weeks so somebody’s always there to monitor the ham radio.”

     Scott was choked up. He didn’t know what to say.

     He managed to get out a squeaky “thank you.”

     “Don’t mention it, Scott. That’s what good friends are for.”