Breakout (Final Dawn) (11 page)

     And each of the crates was marked with the words

American Casket Company

Sandusky, Ohio 

     Their playful mood suddenly grew somber, and they knew why the boys had seemed distant.

     They were planning the reburials of their mother, who had died in the mine three years before, and of Rachel and Roxanne’s father, who was murdered on Highway 83 not long after.

     They’d watched on one of their monitors that dreadful day as the girls’ father had stopped along the side of the road to help two stranded motorists. They thought it was a nice thing to do, to stop and help total strangers whose car had broken down.

     And then they watched in horror, helpless to stop it, as the stranded motorists suddenly produced an assault rifle and shot the good Samaritan to death.

     As the killers forced the two teenaged girls out of their pickup, Mark was already outside the mine and running to help. By the time he made it to the scene, the assailants were long gone in the stolen truck, the girls’ father was dead, and the girls were inconsolable.

     Mark knew it was hopeless, but he
performed CPR on the dead man for a full twenty minutes, just to give the girls a bit of hope. But he was long gone.

     The group adopted the girls into their family, and buried their father on the floor of the mine, next to Mark and
Bryan’s own mother.

     Wrapped in white linen, then covered with pure white burial mounds of powdered salt, the two were given proper eulogies and memorial services. The manner of the burials wasn’t meant to be permanent, and was done only out of necessity, until the world thawed enough to enable proper burials. From the day the compound was first created in Mark’s mind, he’d planned a small burial plot in the western corner for their loved ones.

     “I want it there so the morning sun will come over the east wall and warm their graves,” he’d said.

     And now the time had come to move the bodies.

     Mark and Bryan had told no one that they’d found a trailer full of caskets. They hadn’t inventoried it before they brought it back to the compound, but they now knew it contained fifty four full sized caskets of various types. Some were metal, some were oak or mahogany. Some were plain and some were very ornate.

     They selected a plain white casket to bury
their mother in. It suited her personality, they thought. Now they were trying to figure the best way to retrieve it from its nest in the center of the trailer.

     “Can we help?” Hannah offered.

     The boys hadn’t even realized that Hannah and Sarah were there.

     Mark looked at his wife, standing at the door of the trailer.

     “Oh, hi. How long have you guys been there?”

     “We just walked up. I guess it’s time to bury Mom and
Bill Meyers?”

     “Yes. This was Mom’s favorite time of year. I think she’d want it to be now. And yes, you can help, if you can drive the forklift for us.”

     Sarah said, “Let me. I’ve had more practice on it. We don’t want to drop any of these and damage them.”

     Her implication, of course, was that they’d need all of them eventually. Everyone expected to live out the rest of their lives at the compound, since the world outside it had become an unfriendly and dangerous place.

     But she didn’t elaborate further and no one else felt a need to comment.

     Sarah retrieved the forklift from the opposite side of the pad of pavement and brought it to the rear of the trailer. Bryan and Mark unstacked t
he first of the caskets, turned it sideways and slid it onto the forklift’s tines.

     Hannah went after two pieces of 4 by 4 lumber and laid them side by side on the pavement, about six feet apart. They would serve as dunnage, allowing
Sarah to lower the casket down on them so that she could drive out from under the casket and go back for the next one.

     Within an hour, they removed the white casket and set it aside.

     Now came the hard part.

     “You girls are tighter with Roxanne and Rachel than any of us will ever be. Would you mind asking them to come out to pick one out for their dad before we put them back in?”

     The boys took a break, sitting on the back of the trailer and reliving memories of their mother, and how she kept everyone from going nuts their first months in the mine. She was the glue that held the group together, and her passing had been hard on everyone.

     T
en minutes later Hannah and Sarah came back out of the building, Rachel and Roxanne in tow.

     The boys watched silently as the girls went from crate to crate, peering into fold down inspection widows precut in the cardboard linings. As they neared the last of the caskets sitting in the lot, Mark offered, “If you don’t like any of those, we’ll help you up here and you can look at the rest.”

     Rachel, the youngest of the two, looked up at him, and he noticed for the first time that there were tears in her eyes. Rachel was eighteen now, and had turned into a fine woman since she and her sister had joined the group. They were both an integral part of their family now, and Mark’s heart hurt at what she must be feeling.

     Roxanne said, “I like this one over here. The dark oak. I think he’d like it. What do you think, Rachel?”

     “I agree. I think if he were to pick out his own casket, it would look something like that.”

Chapter 21

     The boys took the two caskets to the large storage building in the center of the compound and then went back to put the remainder of the caskets back into the trailer. The four of them, Mark, Bryan, David and Brad, spent half a day moving the bodies one at a time through the tunnel and to the caskets, and laid them gently inside.

     They were amazed at how light the bodies had become. The salt mounds that had covered them
since their deaths had absorbed all of their bodily fluids and had mummified the corpses. There was a general assumption among the men that their facial features were probably fairly well intact, much like Egyptian mummies of old.

     None of them unwrapped the bodies from their burial shrouds to find out, though. There was no need for the bodies to suffer such an indignity after resting peacefully for so long.

     Besides, they all preferred to remember the bodies as the people they once were, not what nature had transformed them into.

     While they were preparing the bodies, The girls were inside trying their best to console Roxanne and Rachel, making small talk with them about their father and their lives with him. The girls wanted him
reburied in the family plot, but the actual process reopened old wounds and brought back new pain.

    
Hannah and Sarah found out things about Bill they hadn’t previously known. He had been a United States Marine, had fought for his country during Operation Desert Storm. Then he’d been a high school teacher, and later a principal.

     Hannah excused herself for a minute and called Mark on the radio, out of earshot of Roxanne and Rachel. Didn’t they have a couple of American flags somewhere in a box?

     Mark said he’d take care of it, and thanked her for the information.

     After the bodies were placed within the caskets, the men moved to the northwest corner of the compound, to the small piece of land designated as the family burial plot. It was forty feet square. These two graves would seem lost in a sea of space, but they knew that in the years ahead everyone
else would join them. One at a time. Mark found himself wondering just how many generations would have to live in this place before the world was sane enough and safe enough to venture out past those walls again.

     Hannah walked out of the “big house,” as they’d started to call the main building in recent months. It was a humorous reference to what inmates sometimes call a prison.

     “Hi. It’s pretty stressful in there. How are you guys holding up?”

     “Probably better than Roxanne and Rachel. I think it helped us to be involved in the process of getting the bodies ready. Or maybe just staying busy in general.”

     “What’s the game plan?”

     “After we finish the graves, we’re going to leave everything overnight and have the funerals in mid
morning. Mom first, then Bill. We decided a joint funeral wasn’t right. They were both fine people and both deserve their own moment in the sun.”

     “What can Sarah and I do to help?”

     “You can pass the word to everyone that the graveside service for Mom will be at nine a.m. Then everyone will return to the big house while we move Bill into place, and will return for his graveside service at ten thirty. Then anyone who’s interested can gather in the lounge for remembrance.”

     “Okay, got it. What else?”

     “We thought we’d leave the bodies in repose overnight, under candlelight, for anyone who wants to visit them and spend time with them. Can you find some candles to place atop the caskets, and maybe a kneeling pillow to place before each one?”

     “Sure. Anything else?”

     “No, I think that about covers it.”

     The following morning, David manned the security desk and everyone else assembled at the grave of
Phyllis Snyder. Bryan, who’d once toyed with the idea of becoming a minister, conducted a brief but dignified service to celebrate the life of his mother. The group sang her favorite hymn,
How Great Thou Art
, and then retreated to the lounge for coffee while the men lowered her casket into the grave and prepared the adjacent plot for the second service.

     The funeral for
Bill Meyers was just a bit more elaborate.

     John and
Brad were both military veterans. Although they had no uniforms, they stood at attention and saluted their fallen brother-in-arms. Then they enlisted the help of Bryan and Mark to remove the United States flag from the casket and fold it into a perfect triangle shape. Roxanne and Rachel had no way of knowing they’d been up until three a.m. practicing.

     John presented the folded flag to Roxanne,
Bill’s oldest daughter, then he and Brad stood at attention at the head of the casket while Joe played a muted
Taps
on a bugle a short distance away.

     Roxanne and Rachel both said brief eulogies and
the group sang
Shall We Gather at the River
, using notes that Sami had printed and passed out.

     Rachel asked if she could give the closing prayer, and
Bryan stepped aside to let her do so.

     Then the group retired to the lounge for fellowship and support.

     John, David and Brad returned to the gravesites in the early afternoon to close the graves, and went to the mine to retrieve the gravestones that Karen had crafted two years before.

     Karen added a final touch by placing a bouquet o
f flowers upon each grave. She’d grown them in the greenhouse especially for the occasion.

     The rest of the day was decidedly somber
.

Chapter 22

     Frank packed enough food and water for two days, but hoped to go back before then. He’d brought a tent, but wasn’t sure he’d use it. The Ford 250 had a bench seat, and it was still cool and crisp at night in San Antonio. In the mountains northwest of town, at Salt Mountain, it might be downright chilly.

     He’d make a decision just before nightfall to
either sleep in the truck or pitch a tent.

     He’d arrived in mid
afternoon, and planned to scout around, looking for tracks, and perhaps a stream where the deer came to drink. He suspected that he’d probably be the first human to trek these woods in several years, and that the deer would catch his scent long before he could be seen, then scurry away out of fear. So he had little hope of seeing any animals today.