Hidden (Final Dawn) (24 page)

     The broken skylights, and the ones that glowed a brilliant white from the sun shining through their snow cover, made it easier to navigate the sea of debris.

     It was slow going, to be sure. Climbing over a pile of twisted shelving units and loose boxes created the possibility of falling and breaking an arm or a leg. There were a lot of sharp edges, too, and a cut meant a risk of infection. And infections could be deadly.

     In the center of the store, in what used to be the ladies wear section, the pair came across an area that had been cleared of all racks and debris. The scent in the air changed from the faint smell of burned wood to the more powerful and repugnant smell of rotting human flesh.

     There, in the center of the clearing, gathered around the remnants of what was once a campfire, were three bodies. Two were in sleeping bags, a woman and a teenaged boy, the bags gathered tightly around their heads and necks as though they were sound asleep in the freezing cold when they were shot in the head.

     The third body, a man in his forties, sat apart from the other two, his head mostly blown apart, and a gun still in his hand. Frank surmised that it was a father who shot his wife and son before taking his own life.

     The smell of rotting flesh came during the two months of thaw, when the bodies started the decomposition process, before they froze again. Frank was becoming all too familiar with the rancid smell as he walked through the neighborhoods around
Buena Vista Drive. He knew that literally hundreds of homes in the area still had scenes eerily similar to this one.

     When they made it to the Pharmacy department, they noticed that the steel cage which had been lowered into place the last time the pharmacy closed had been violently pulled to the side to allow entry. Drug addicts, Frank supposed, whose need for drugs was easily as powerful as the one for food.

     They crawled into the Pharmacy and used their flashlights to scan the bottles still on the shelves. It took several minutes to find what they needed, but their patience was rewarded. They found Cogentin, Depakote and lithium carbonate, and threw them into one of their bags. The next day, Frank would take the medicines to a family a few streets over. The husband, he’d found out a week before, was bi-polar and hadn’t had meds to take for quite awhile. He was unable to control his mood swings and was becoming increasingly violent. The medicines would make it easier to regulate his moods and would make it safer for those around him.

     They grabbed a few other items from the pharmacy as well. Penicillin and topical ointments. Pain pills and bandages.

     Then they moved on to the garden section, stopping along the way to get two bags of cat food and a box of kitty snacks for Widow Spencer’s cats.

     And sure enough, there next to the garden tools in the corner of the garden center, was a rack of seeds for every vegetable imaginable, and many fruits and melons as well.

     But even better was the stack of small brown boxes a couple of feet away from the rack.

     This stack, five boxes in all, contained a new shipment of seeds that someone was apparently tasked to put onto the rack just before Saris 7 hit. Saris 7 struck the earth on January 15th, six years before. Apparently the middle of January was when Walmart started preparing for the upcoming growing season.

     And that worked to their advantage. That meant that the seeds in the brown boxes were the freshest seeds available. And perhaps when fresh seeds freeze, they stand a better change of still being good when thawed out six years later.

     At least that’s what Frank and Jesse were banking on.

     They went through each of the boxes, and found that each type of seed came in a bundle of twenty plastic packages.

     Jesse asked, “Should we take them all?”

     “No. Let’s not be greedy. Others will have the same idea, and will come for them too. Let’s take four packs of each. If they’re good, that’s plenty for our needs. If they don’t work, then the others won’t be any good either.”

     They carefully peeled off four packages of seeds from each bundle and tossed them into their bags. Then they filled up their bags with plant food and fertilizer and headed back for home.

     In a few weeks the ground would thaw, and they would start to dig up the front lawns of all the houses on the block. And, if their luck held, in a few months they’d be able to grow their own food supply.

     None of them, of course, were looking forward to living an existence free of meat. Frank had never thought there was much need for vegetables. But it was food, after all, and he’d adapted to a lot worse things since the skies turned brown and the world turned cold.

     He figured he could adapt to this one as well.

     And besides, once the world was more or less back to normal and it was safe to travel, he planned to visit an area up north where he used to go deer hunting. His logic was that if any mammal could find a way to survive a seven year winter, it was a white tail deer.

     His old deer hunting ground was an area just east of Junction, on Highway 83. Near a place they called Salt Mountain.

Chapter 40

     They knew they shouldn’t have done it. They knew it wasn’t fair to everyone else. But here were two bottles of Jose Cuervo that Bryan had squirreled away all those years beneath the dresser in his RV. Saving them for a special occasion.

     And if being only a couple of months away from finally breaking out of the mine wasn’t a special occasion, then what else was?

     And so it was that Mark and Hannah left little Markie in the care of his cousin Anna and joined the others in the back of the vehicle storage bay.

     On the way, they stopped at the security desk to inform John where they’d be. They didn’t want to be thought of as intruders and shot when they walked back out of the back of the mine.

     John was a nondrinker. He didn’t care. And he couldn’t begrudge the group a little bit of fun.

     John’s only admonition was to keep an eye on his daughter, Sami. He said he didn’t want her to get so drunk that Brad took advantage of her.

     Hannah and Mark both bit their lips as they walked away from John. Fifty yards away and out of earshot, Mark asked if she was thinking the same thing he was.

     Hannah giggled and replied. “Yes. I’m not worried about Brad taking advantage of Sami. I’m wondering who’s gonna protect poor Brad from her.”

     They joined Sami and Brad, and Sarah and Bryan, and they all sat around for the next four hours doing tequila shots and reminiscing.

     At one point, the subject of weddings came up.

     “Shoot,” Hannah slurred slightly. “You guys are next.”

     She was looking at Sami and Brad.

     Sami giggled and then gushed, “Nope. Not this girl. Brad’s just my boy toy.”

     She poked him in the ribs.

     “I’ll use him and abuse him and then I’ll throw him away, just like a snotty old tissue full of boogers.”

     The group roared at Sami’s descriptive claim.

     Sarah spoke up and said, “Oh, bullshit. You’d better not throw him away. Men with Brad’s… attributes aren’t easy to find, you know.”

     The girls giggled even more than they normally would have without the tequila.

     Bryan scoffed.

     “What attributes? Brad has no attributes. He farts and tells bad jokes. What do you mean, he has attributes?”

     Hannah added, “Oh, he has attributes. Why, he has the prettiest… smile I’ve ever seen.”

     “Yeah, well, that’s just because he has no sense.”

     Brad, for his part, let the debate roar on. He was feeling no pain and in fact was close to passing out.

     The group eventually got tired of talking about Brad and went on to other topics.

     “What do you think it’ll be like once we get out of here? Do you think the world will be a better place without as many people?”

     “I don’t know. I’d like to think so. I mean, there will be fewer jerks, sure. But there will be fewer good people too.”

     Hannah said, “I think I’ll miss the mine.”

     Sarah gave her a strange look.

     “Really?”

     “Yes. I mean, the routine of it. Or maybe the consistency is a better word. I mean, I always knew where my friends were, and never had to worry about Markie going off with a stranger. It’s become… comfortable here.”

     “The only thing I’m going to miss is the constant temperature. Never having to decide in the morning whether to wear long sleeves or short sleeves, shorts or pants. It was always the same every day. Made picking out a wardrobe much simpler.”

     “Oh, I’m not like you at all. I miss the cold weather. When we went to the mine’s door to meet Rachel and Roxanne, I loved the feel of the cold air on my face. I missed it a lot.”

     Sami turned to the guys and asked, “What are you guys going to miss most about the mine?”

     But she got no response from the men. Brad had finished passing out and was softly snoring. Mark was laying on his right side, his hands folded together and tucked up under his face, sleeping with a sly grin on his face. Hannah wondered what he was dreaming about.

     Bryan’s head was in Sarah’s lap, mouth wide open, a long line of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth and soaking Sarah’s pants.

     The men’s efforts to out drink the women had done them in. The girls all looked at each other and laughed.

     “What a bunch of lightweights we have.”

Chapter 41

     They entered the tunnel with miner’s lights fastened to their heads. It would make it easier to move around the main building in the compound if they couldn’t get the power turned on and had to work in the dark.

     One by one they went down the steps into the long tunnel. Rachel and Roxanne had never been in the tunnel before and marveled at it.

     “You guys dug this yourself?”

     “Yes. Well, the boys did.”

     “Wow! How long did it take?”

    
Bryan said, “About a year and a half, five or six hours a day.”

     “That must have been a lot of work.”

     “Yes, but it was a good thing too. It kept us from getting bored. Gave us something to do to pass away all the hours.”

     Brad chimed in.

     “And it gave us a chance to talk about our women and share all of their secrets with each other.”

     He was getting his revenge for the tequila-fueled conversation two nights before.

     The women looked at each other in mild panic. Sami made a mental note to grill Brad later about what secrets the men had shared. Sami stared daggers at Brad. He just smiled back and blew her a kiss.

     As they neared the end of the tunnel, they felt the temperature start to drop. By the time they got to the far end and walked up the steps into the feed barn inside the compound, they had all put gloves on and raised the hoods on their parkas.

     They walked out the east door of the feed barn and out into the snow. Roxanne and Rachel were used to the snow and quite tired of it. Hannah, Sarah and Sami, though, seemed to enjoy kicking it around. It was the first time they’d walked through snow in six and a half years.

     Back inside the mine, John sat at the security console watching them walk across the compound from a camera mounted atop
Salt Mountain. His role was to provide lookout for them. If he saw something he didn’t like, such as a passing vehicle pulling over and stopping, or someone walking through the woods nearby, he would immediately sound the alarm.

     He would get on his walkie talkie and call for the group to get back to the mine immediately.

     His call would have to be relayed, of course. The radio signal would not reach through the thick salt mountain to the outside. David was standing at the mine’s entrance to the tunnel.

     Sami, after she got tired of kicking the snow around, would wait at the exit of the tunnel. If John were to raise the alarm, he would call David, who would relay the alarm to Sami, who would relay it to the others.

     It was a haphazard way of spreading the word, sure. But it was the best they could do.

     Even after they relocated to the compound in a few weeks, the mine would never totally go away. It would always be their evacuation site in case of future emergencies. Bearing that in mind, Mark and Bryan had already discussed rigging some sort of hotline between the security consoles at each location. For the time being, though, it didn’t exist.

     So the seven of them- Mark and Hannah, Bryan and Sarah, Brad, Rachel and Roxanne, crept slowly toward the main building in the compound. It was seven years old, yet had never been occupied. Its sole purpose had been to accommodate their group of forty, and its future generations, after they were able to break out of the mine.