“Don’t be, Mom. It doesn’t matter. It only matters we are alive and together,” Lexi said.
A squeaking, thumping noise of an old car rattling along the dirt road interrupted the happy reunion.
“Is that a Model T?” Wanda asked as she watched the old car stop in front of the house.
“It is.”
Wanda peered out a window, observing a group of people exiting a shiny Model T that looked like it just came off the assembly line. “Your grandmother is driving?”
“Is there anything Granny can’t do?” Lexi asked.
“If there is, I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Come on,” Lexi said. “I’ll introduce you to my new friends and a very special guy who saved my life.”
“You met someone?” Wanda was having a difficult time containing her enthusiasm. “I need all the details.”
“Play it cool, okay?”
“Of course. I can’t vouch for your grandmother, though.” Wanda chuckled. “Lord help us all. We’re gonna need it.”
~ ~ ~
The survivors sat around a large table, eating, drinking, and sharing life stories. They took turns telling survival stories about the stadium, about kindness they had experienced, along with acts of cruelty they witnessed.
Debra Sue told several bad jokes which the others graciously laughed at. Wanda mercifully steered the conversation away from her mother’s bad jokes to a debate regarding the best way to cook wild hog.
Kinsey and Tyler sat together, and instead of sniping at each other, they complimented one another on their own acts of bravery and knowledge. They had pitched in and contributed to saving the life of their mother, and had demonstrated a maturity beyond their years.
Ethan had set aside his own needs to help the family he had come to know and to respect. He depended on them as much as they depended on him. His allegiance to the military and considering it a family had changed as he observed the dynamics of a real family and the love and bonding they shared.
Ethan mused how Becca had raised two children who would grow into fine adults. They were Becca’s legacy, and she would live on through them, through the DNA she passed down to the next generation. He also realized he had traded a real family for a massive, uncaring clog comprised of pomp and circumstance, of obeying orders, of politicians seeking power, of betrayals. He had given enough of his life. The time had come for him to put himself first, and those he cared for.
Oscar sat by Joe’s side, resting his muzzle on Joe’s leg. Joe let his thoughts go to Hannah, and the decision they made to let her die in peace. She was one of the good ones, and during the short time he had known her, she had shown bravery and selflessness. She could have easily been his sister. He said a prayer for her, wishing her a peaceful end and a place in Heaven where she was the guardian for all the animals. Who would have ever thought Joe would have made a friend with an animal activist?
Joe absentmindedly stroked the flat part of Oscar’s head, then massaged his warm ears. Oscar had been traumatized by witnessing the death of his trainer, a man who was respected for his knowledge and wisdom to view service dogs not as a commodity, rather a salient being with needs and emotions. Oscar chose Joe to be the man he’d be connected to, the man he’d give his loyalty to, and if necessary, his life.
The gathering lingered into the night, and Debra Sue insisted Becca and her family should stay until daylight.
“It’ll be safer,” Debra Sue said.
Little did she know how unsafe the world had already become.
Chapter 30
“Let us out!” the prisoner yelled. He rattled the bars of his cell at the notorious Ellis 1 Unit in Huntsville, Texas.
During the three days after the EMP struck, conditions at the state penitentiary had deteriorated quickly. Toilets weren’t working, there was no air-conditioning or central heat, showers were unavailable, and many guards had abandoned their posts to go home to their families, leaving a skeleton crew to oversee the overcrowded prison. Three bottles of water were provided once a day to each inmate for either hydrating or washing, leading to an overwhelming stench. Vomit dried on the floor, and to protest the worsening conditions, inmates had smeared bodily waste on the walls.
The prisoner in 32B had been convicted of manslaughter and given a fifty-year sentence. Now in his early thirties, he wouldn’t see freedom until well into his seventies, that was, if he lived until then.
The prison gained notoriety in the early 1980s when a lifer shot and killed a prison farm manager then murdered the warden by drowning him in a bucket of water. After the subsequent mass escape attempt, death row was removed from the prison. Regardless, violence at the prison housing inmates convicted of assault, rape, or murder continued to rise.
The inmate known by the nickname of Nail because he used a nail gun to kill a man, rattled the bars again. “We aren’t animals! Let us out of here!”
“They ain’t listenin’ to us, bro. Might as well sit yo ass down,” Dontrell muttered. He was stretched out on the bed, staring at the bleak ceiling, illuminated with emergency lights powered by the prison’s failing generator.
Nail was on Dontrell as fast as a shark on a hapless seal. Nail grabbed Dontrell by his throat and shoved upwards. “Don’t you never tell me what to do again.” Nail’s eyes were black, hollow. The eyes of a soulless person who killed without conscious,
