Chapter 3
Tuesday, April 10
Andrew sipped a canned sweet tea and watched as the Skycatcher came around on final approach two miles from the airport. The pilot was one of his advanced students, and he’d advised against the man taking his final solo today. There was a 17-knot crosswind, and the temperature was hovering around 90. Not ideal flying weather. The wind was from a storm blowing in that threatened to bring hail and probably a lot of sand out of western Texas. The man had been adamant. He wanted his license and didn’t want to wait any longer. The conditions were borderline, but not out of regulations, so Andrew signed off, and up he went.
He’d made his two previous approaches perfectly, and this was the last. If he brought this one in, he was home free. The wind was picking up, though, and Andrew eyed the radio on the patio table, half expecting him to call for advice. He’d been a capable student but leaned toward uncertainty and indecision in difficult situations.
The chirp of his smartphone made him jump slightly in surprise. Aside from his mother, who rarely called because she hated “those damn cell things,” and an ex-girlfriend who’d last called to tell him she was getting married, there was only one other person who might be calling. He glanced up at his student’s approach and decided he had a minute, so he snatched the device from his belt holster and flipped up the cover.
As he’d hoped, it was an email from his commanding officer. He was to report for a readiness assessment at the base on Thursday, April 12th. A posting was being held open for him in the wing’s CAS unit, currently stationed at Riyadh’s King Salman Air Base. If all went well, he’d be on a transport to the sandbox in 72 hours. His heart was racing, and he felt light-headed. Back in the cockpit again after all these months? He was so caught off guard that when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, his student was taxiing toward the hangars, having already landed safely.
His fellow ex-military buddies took him out to dinner that night, all toasting his good fortune and seeing if they could get him drunk. With a fitness evaluation in only two days, and a medical eval in the morning, Andrew kept it at three beers for the night. The next morning, he was in his skivvies doing calisthenics for a bored army physical therapy specialist and answering inane questions like, “Do you ever wish you hadn’t been wounded?”
“No shit, Doc,” was the answer he wanted to give, “I wish at least twice a day that some damn 18-year-old kids hadn’t crushed my leg with a JDAM.” Instead he shrugged before he spoke. “What happens is often outside of our control.”
The doctor nodded and made a note. “Ever think about ending it?”
“Never.” The doctor regarded him with his dark eyes, and Andrew stared right back. That thought had never entered his mind, even as he lay in the hospital bed, and a German doctor told him he’d lose his leg.
The questions went on as a nurse came in, and Andrew went through the grinder. Up and down steps for 10 minutes as fast as he could. Jumping jacks. Lifting a 10-kilo weight from the floor and putting in on a table as many times as he could in five minutes. After, as he sweated and tried to control his breathing, they removed his prosthetic and examined the stump.
“A little irritation,” the doctor noted and typed on his tablet.
“Almost gone now,” Andrew admitted. The doctor gave him “The Eye” once more, but Andrew stood his ground.
“Okay,” he said and typed some more. Andrew tried not to sweat. Hey, it’s only your life, right, flyboy?
An hour later, he was buttoning up his shirt in the examination room as the doctor walked by to attend to another patient. Andrew knew better, but he spoke up anyway. “So, Doc, did I pass?”
“You’ll hear by tonight, Lieutenant,” the doctor said without stopping.
A cute redheaded nurse came in a minute later to pick up one of the testing instruments. She saw the frustrated look on his face and paused for a minute, and then she caught his eye. He looked up, and she winked. Andrew drove back to his apartment and started to pack.
* * *
The clerk glanced at his watch—only 15 minutes to closing. Outside San Antonio, the life in a big-box store could often be crazy on a Tuesday, and he had no idea why. The other clerks claimed Sundays were the worst, but many of them didn’t work Tuesdays. He hated Tuesdays. This one, though, looked to be ending on a high note. Then the clerk spotted him.
The man, whose name was Vance, was a nondescript white dude in his late forties, wearing his typically faded blue jeans and a camo-pattern T-shirt. He cleared the door 10 minutes before it was to be locked, and he had a massive list dangling from one hand. And he was a regular. Fuck.
Vance caught the look from the clerk as he stopped to orient himself in the discount store and smirked to himself. He always did his bulk item shopping on Tuesday because the coupons came in the mail that day.
A few minutes later, two shopping carts in tow, Vance was in the bulk commodities aisle and had his list in one hand as he moved down the row. Kidney beans were on sale, and he had two combinable coupons. He stopped to scowl at the stock; there were only 45-pound bags left on the shelf. With a sweep of the arm, they went into the first cart, and he quickly moved on.
The clerk glanced at his watch 40 minutes later—a half hour after closing—as Vance deftly maneuvered his two carts up with a smile. The manager spotted his arrival from the office and came out to assist. “Evening Mr. Cartwright,” he smiled.
“And to you too, Mr. Owens.” Vance liked the older man; he ran a good store. He only wished the guy would hire more amiable cashiers. The young man at the register glared at him as Vance began unloading his heavily-laden carts.
Twenty minutes into ringing up the load and scanning coupons, curiosity got the better of the kid. “What do you do with all of this stuff, anyway?” The store manager grinned as he placed a huge bag of rice into an empty cart. He knew what was coming.
“Tee-aught-wawki!”
“Huh?”
“T-E-O-T-W-A-W-K-I,” Vance spelled out the acronym. “Stands for The End Of The World As We Know It.” Another blank look. “The government is conspiring with foreign mega-corporations to strangle our food supply and kill 99 percent of all humans on the planet.” The kid’s look turned from confused to bemused, then horrified.
“Oh, man, really?!”
“Without a doubt,” Vance said and fished in his pocket for a card. On it was printed an endorsement to support a candidate for president, and a number of Internet links that would educate the kid. The store manager chuckled and kept the goods moving. He’d taken a card the first day Vance came in during an after-Christmas sale. Within a few minutes of checking links, he’d realized this “prepper” was as crazy as a loon, but his money was just as green as any other big customer’s, so he made sure to stay open for him whenever he showed up.
Vance whistled as he loaded his 10-year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee, emptied of most of the usual accoutrements of his lifestyle for this trip. The clerk finished locking the door and tried to not glare at Vance as he grumbled and headed for his car, a full hour after closing time.
The drive out of suburban San Antonio in the early spring evening was enjoyable. The weather was clear, and the temperature under 80 degrees. Vance had an ancient and well-played cassette of Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” playing on the venerable Jeep’s stereo, and the back of the car was stuffed full of what he estimated to be three months’ supplies.
The sun was getting low on the horizon when he glided down the exit off Hwy 90 just west of Hondo. Another 20 minutes brought him to within view of Flag Mountain off State Road 462, and he turned onto an unmarked dirt road—his retreat driveway.
The cabin was originally built in the 1930s. Abandoned in the 1960s, his father had bought it for next to nothing in 1982. Over the intervening decade, the elder Cartwright had spent many weekends lovingly restoring and upgrading the four-room, 700-square-foot cabin. The 300 surrounding acres were partially wooded and teeming with wildlife. However, just as he was finishing his restoration, Vance’s father had succumbed to a sudden heart attack. His mother had left years ago, so Vance inherited the cabin.
Vance had left Texas and had been successful selling software in California, but when he sold the company five years ago he found himself back in Texas. He began spending way too much time on the Internet and, a few conspiracy theories later, he was a born-again doomsday prepper.
Now, five years later and considerably poorer than when he started, Vance had recruited a small number of like-minded families, expanded his cabin, and stocked it with everything he would need to survive the end of the world.
He gave a little honk as he pulled into the covered space next to the cabin. Lexus, his five-year-old Doberman/Shepherd mix, came running from the woods, tail wagging and tongue lolling. “Hey girl,” he said as he climbed out and got a face-licking. “You ever catch that rabbit?” Lexus didn’t have anything to say and promptly went running off again.
“How’d the sale go?” asked a familiar voice from the cabin door. Ann stood there with a coffee cup in one hand, brushing her long red hair from her face with the other.
“Good. You ready to help with the unload?”
“Tim and Nicole will be here in an hour,” she reminded him; “it’ll be easier with four more hands.”
“True,” he agreed and shrugged. “Got any more of that joe?”
“Sure thing, sailor.”
The trees shaded the cabin well, and the coffee was good as usual. In the years Ann had shared the cabin with him, they’d grown into something more than friends, but less than husband and wife. He’d been within an inch of asking her to marry him more than once, but something always stopped him—maybe his own short marriage 20 years before, or her long but equally doomed one that had ended just before they met. She was a longtime friend of the Prices (Tim & Nicole), and that had led them to introduce her. Along with Lisa and Brad Hopkins, they completed the group he’d built around The Retreat.
“I love coming up here,” Ann said as she sipped her coffee and watched Lexus sniffing around a tree 100 yards away.
“You should stay more often,” Vance suggested. Was this one of those times when he’d almost ask, only to lose his will at the last moment? He pretended to study the bottom of the heavy ceramic mug through the dark brown liquid.
“I’d like that,” she said. Something more was unsaid there, and Lance looked up. Sure enough, she was staring at him. He lifted an eyebrow in an unspoken question. She opened her mouth to speak, but took another drink of coffee instead. To his surprise, a tear formed in the corner of her eye.
“Shit,” he said and moved closer. “I’m sorry I never…you know…”
“It’s not that,” she sniffed. “I mean, sure, I’d like to be an honest girl…it’s just…”
“What?”
She pushed the coffee mug away and looked him in the eye. Something said, “Uh oh…” in the back of his mind just before she spoke. “I’m late.”
A part of his mind laughed. No, you were right on time for a change. Another part recoiled in instant horror. The confused look on his face must have been obvious because Ann reached into her pocket, produced a small plastic stick and slid it across to him. On its side was a little window where a pink “+” was clearly visible.
“Oh,” he said, and he promptly fainted.
* * * * *