Breakout (Final Dawn) (17 page)

     By the time they were picked up on camera 4, John, Mark and Brad could clearly see them as well.

     “Probably just hunters looking for game. No need to panic yet.”

     “I don’t know. If I was a hunter looking for game, I’d be in the woods. Not on paved roads. I think it’s more likely they’re looters.”

     “Well, it’s likely the sign
s will scare them off, but Brad, would you take an AK to the roof, just in case?”

     “Sure, John.”

     Brad grabbed a rifle and two magazines and headed for the stairs in the center of the building.

     John got on the radio.

     “Hannah, Sarah, Sami… would you take a head count? Make sure everyone is inside?”

     The men continued to watch the mon
itors. Hannah’s voice came on the radio.

     “We just got finished doing one, John. Everyone is accounted for except for Sarah and Bryan.”

     Sarah said, “Oh, crap,” and reached for the radio on her night table.

     She was nearly out of breath when she keyed the mike and said, “Bryan and I are in the building. We’ll be there in a minute.”

     Hannah noticed the breathlessness in Sarah’s voice and smiled. No one else had a clue.

     Outside the tall wall surrounding the compound, Skully and Smitty were unsure what to do. They’d parked their quad runners at the edge of the clearing so that none of the farmers inside the fence would hear them. Then they walked over to the wall, Smitty muttering, “How the hell do we get over that thing?”

     “We don’t go over it, stupid. There’s got to be a gate on one of the other sides. That’s how we get in. But first I want to see what those signs say.”

       They walked up to the wall and read one of the white signs that were spaced evenly all the way around it.

WARNING—EXTREME DANGER

U.S.
GOVERNMENT

BIOLOGICAL
RESEARCH CENTER 

INFECTIOUS DISEASES CONTAINED WITHIN

DO NOT ENTER

ADVERTENCIA-PELIGRO EXTREMO
GOBIERNO DE LOS EE.UU.
Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas
Enfermedades infecciosas CONTENIDA EN
NO ENTRE

     Smitty was aghast.

     “Oh, hell no! Ain’t no way I’m going in there!”

     Skully was more of a seasoned criminal, though. Warnings to keep out never really bothered him much, and seldom even slowed his down.

     Granted, this one was a bit unusual, though, and gave him momentary pause.

     But he was skeptical.

     “Why would the government put a facility like this way out here in the middle of nowhere?”

     “Hey, man, who the hell knows why the government does anything? Maybe to hide it from the TV station so they could do weird experiments or something. Maybe this is where they make nerve gas or something.”

     “Yeah, maybe.”

     “I’ll tell you what it ain’t, Skully. It ain’t no damn farm. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

     Smitty turned and started walking back to his wheeler.
Skully was still debating in his own mind whether to turn back or investigate further.

     He was just about to give up and follow Smitty back to
Eden, when the fickle hands of fate dealt a cruel blow to the good folks on the other side of the wall.

     For it was at that exact moment that two male hogs got into a biting match over a sow who happened to be in heat.

     Pigs, when they’re angry, can make a lot of ruckus.

     Especially when one is bitten on the flank and in pain.

     The injured hog let out a mighty squeal, partly because he was in pain and partly to try to scare off his foil before he got bit a second time.

     Smitty, it just happened to turn out, was raised on a hog farm.

     He stopped dead in his tracks. Then he looked at Skully and said, “What in the hell? Them’s pigs! It’s a damned pig farm!”

    
Skully just smiled, and tried to remember the last time he had a big steaming plate of barbequed ribs.

     And while he was thinking, he happened to notice the camera, mounted on the wall high over their heads, pointed in their direction.

     “Come on. This is gonna take some planning. We need to come back and figure out how it’s laid out inside this wall and how many people there are in there.”

     At the control center, the group watched as
Skully and Smitty remounted their wheelers and disappeared down the road. Insulated deep within the center of the main building, they hadn’t heard the hog squeal, and had no idea of the conversation that had just taken place outside the compound’s walls.

     John asked no one in particular, “Well, what do you think?”

     Mark said, “I don’t know. Probably hunters scouting out a good place to set up a blind. Maybe they saw the road and got curious to see where it led. Maybe it’s nothing more sinister than that.”

     “Yeah, maybe. In any event, it appears that your signs scared them off, so they probably won’t be back. But we need to be more vigilant the next few days, just to be on the safe side.”

Chapter
32

     As luck would have it, Hannah just happened to be sitting at the security console, working her regular four hour shift. Frank Woodard’s voice came across the speaker on the ham radio beside her.

     “This is Frank Furter with a message for Johnny Bravo. Johnny, I asked Robin your question about the bees.
Robin’s a neighbor of ours who’s an expert on that kind of thing. She said bees are like roaches. If you see one or two you probably have hundreds. They probably  just come in and out of your crops throughout the day, and even at night and pollinate them a little at a time. But she said if you want some more bees, she can capture a queen for me and I can bring a hive to you. Frank Furter out.”

     It wasn’t easy, but Hannah somehow resisted the urge to pick up the microphone and ask Frank for Robin’s last name. Hannah had gone to
Baylor University with a brilliant scientist named Robin Bell. Robin even attended her wedding. They lost touch after Robin moved her family to San Antonio to take a job with a government research facility. Hannah hoped beyond hope that her old friend had found a way to survive the disaster that Saris 7 brought with it.

     But Hannah remembered John’s warnings about using the radio only for short messages. She didn’t understand why, exactly, but knew it had something to do with others using tracking equipment to zero in on their location.

     So she waited a full hour before sending her own message.

     “Frank Furter, this is Hannah Banana with
a message from Johnny Bravo. He’ll pass your message about the bees and get back with you. Would you ask Robin if her last name is Bell, and whether she remembers an old friend named Hannah Jelinovic? Hannah Banana for Johnny Bravo out.”

     Frank Woodard, on the other end, was headed out the door to help Tony water the corn crop when he heard Hannah’s question. He thought the very least he could do for all the help they’d given him w
as to help Hannah reconnect with her friend.

     “Hey, Tony, I have a mission to go on. Can you start without me? I’ll be back in half an hour.”

     Tony chuckled.

     “No problem, Frank. Things always go faster when you’re not around anyway.”

     Frank smiled, but offered no rebuttal.

     He trudged four blocks over, to
Royal Valley Drive. The end of that street, like his own, was barricaded with cars to keep the marauders out.

     But Frank was well known by the survivors on this street, and he climbed over the barricade without being shot. He knew he’d be welcomed as a friend.

     This block, like all the others, had been decimated. Only two families survived intact. They’d taken in the sole survivor of the next street over, and four people from the street beyond that.

     And together they’d created a new community, which worked together to grow crops in the same manner as Frank and his group. In fact, Frank had delivered their seeds during one of his runs to spread hope among the neighborhood. He’d always be welcome here.

     “Hello, Frank. How are you today?”

     “I’m fine, Sal, thanks. Have you seen Robin lately?”

     “Try her house. She said she was going to bake some bread.”

     Frank knocked on Robin’s door.

     “Hello, Frank. Come in, come in. How are you?”

     “I’m fine and dandy, Robin. You’re looking as gorgeous as ever.”

     He meant it. Robin was tall and thin, with a runway model’s beauty. And despite all the turmoil that had befallen the world over recent years, she was able to keep her beauty intact. Even when everyone else seemed to have aged twenty years.

     She walked out onto her patio, where a camp oven stood perched above a bed of glowing charcoal
, and removed a loaf of freshly baked bread.

     She took the bread to the kitchen as she and Frank engaged in small talk about bees and corn crops and half a dozen other things.

     “I really should wait until it cools a bit, but I just love the way it tastes when it’s fresh out of the oven.”

     She sliced off the end of the loaf, placed it on a plate, and placed it on the counter in front of Frank.

     “Thank you.”

     “No thanks are needed, Frank. If you hadn’t shown us where the Symco place was, we wouldn’t have had the flour to make it. Fair is fair.”

     He took a bite and closed his eyes as he savored the taste. It was that good.

     “I wish I had some fresh butter to put on it. That makes it so much better.”

     On Frank’s street, they were getting fresh milk from the milk cow each morning. They’d kept the cows a closely guarded secret from the rest of the neighborhood, but Frank made a mental note to try to find a butter churn so he could surprise Robin with a bowl of butter at a future visit.

     “So, what brings you over here, Frank? I know you didn’t walk all this way just because you smelled my bread baking.”

     “That’s exactly why. The smell wafted all the way over to Buena Vista Drive, grabbed my nose, and dragged me over here.”

     “Yeah. Sure it did.”

     “Actually, I passed your message about the bees to my friends up north of town. The girl I talked to said she’d check with her gardening expert to find out if they need some bees brought up. I personally hope they don’t, simply because I don’t want to have to transport them. I’ve never liked bees, and they like me even less.”

     “Don’t worry, Frank. If we send some up there, I’ll make sure you do it safely. In fact, I’ll even go up there with you so I can show them how to handle a hive without getting stung.”

     “The girl I spoke with, her name was Hannah. She said she thinks she might know you. If you went to Baylor, that is. Her last name is Jello… or something.”

     Robin’s eyes began to tear up.

     “Hannah… Jelinovic?”

     “Yeah, that’s it.”

     “Oh, my God, Hannah has survived.”

     She was in a state somewhere between happiness and shock.

     Hannah was finishing her shift at the security desk and getting ready to hand over the reins to David, when Frank’s voice came over the ham radio again.

     “This is Frank Furter to Hannah Banana. Robin asked me to tell you she’s glad you made it. And that she and her family has survived and that Adam and Arika send their love.”

     It was the best news Hannah had received from the outside world since the crisis began seven years earlier.

     She sat back down in her chair and began to cry.

Chapter 33

     Skully and Smitty approached Salt Mountain again, but this time they opted to stay off of Highway 83. The camera they’d seen mounted on the high wall outside the compound made them wonder. Maybe they had other cameras as well. Cameras that looked out on the entire area. They had seen a tall wind turbine between the compound and Salt Mountain. It was hard to miss, with its forty foot blades making a shushing sound as they tore through the air.