Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (18 page)

     Tom looked at Sara and winked. “I think she just took a roundabout way to call me old.”

     Sara smiled and Annie continued.

     “If the shoe fits wear it, Mr. Haskins. Also, when you go to bed at night, I want you to lie on the ground and elevate your bad leg for at least half an hour. If you can sleep with it elevated that would be even better. Each morning I want you to walk two hundred yards before you mount up. Don’t wake up and get directly on your horse. I want you to get that blood circulating throughout your body before you mount up each day.”

     Tom, despite Annie’s warnings, couldn’t help but be a smart-aleck. He’d been one for so long he didn’t know another way to be.

     “So, what are you going to do if I forget to follow your instructions, Miss Nurse Practitioner? Are you going to send a pigeon to dive-bomb my head with pigeon poop?”

     Annie’s face became serious. Her stern look was unmistakable, and got Tom’s attention.

     “I won’t do anything, Mr. Haskins. But I’m sure that young Sara here will appreciate it if you’ll follow my instructions, and maybe you won’t fall dead in front of her.”

     Tom’s smile disappeared. He asked, “Are blood clots and infections that serious?”

     “Yes. Clots can make their way to your heart or to your brain. Infections can eventually make their way to your heart if left untreated. Neither is something you want to mess around with.”

     Tom looked at Sara, who told Annie, “Don’t worry Annie. I’ll make darn sure he follows your instructions to the letter. If he doesn’t, I’ll kick his old cowboy butt.”

-38-

     Just after Annie read the riot act to Tom, the three had their last lunch together.

     Then Tom surprised Sara by suggesting she take a long nap in the afternoon.  

     “I’m not tired, you crazy old coot. Just because you want to sleep away our last day in Castroville doesn’t mean I want to. Maybe I want to spend some time with my new friend Annie before we hit the trail tomorrow.”

     Tom wasn’t happy with her tone.

     “I’m starting to have second thoughts about making you my first female deputy.”

     “Really? Why?”

     “Because we’ve gotten too darn friendly on this trip. For you to call me a crazy old coot is fine for two friends. But it’s unacceptable for an employee to call her boss. And that’s what you’ll be if I deputize you. You’ll be my deputy and my employee, and it wouldn’t be proper for my other deputies to hear you address me in that manner.”

     As soon as he said the words, he regretted them. It was true that Sara had gotten a bit too familiar with him. But it was hard to avoid after the time they’d spent together on the trail, and the battle they’d gone through together at the barn. And he could see something in her eyes when he pointed that out to her. Something that reflected hurt feelings. Maybe a little bit of sadness as well.

     “I’m sorry, Sara. I should have toned that down a bit.”

     But Sara was a big girl now. She could take a punch and remain standing. She’d done a lot of growing lately.

     “No, Tom. You’re absolutely right. You’ve become a great friend, and someone I’ve become quite comfortable with. Maybe too comfortable, for someone who wants to be your first female deputy. I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to tone it down, if you’ll put away that nonsense about having second thoughts about having me as your deputy. Fair enough?”

     “Fair enough. I’m sorry if my words stung a bit. And truth is, you’ll make a fine deputy. You’re tough as nails. Randy was right. I’ve never read a lot of Shakespeare, and I don’t know where that quote came from. But he’s right. You’re just a little spit of a thing. But you’re fierce as they come when you need to be. You’ll make a fine deputy. I’m just trying to prevent problems, that’s all.”

     “Fair enough. And I respect you for that. And I will continue to love you whether I become your deputy or not. You can never stop me from doing that.”

     “I’d never want to. We’ve been through hell together, and you saved my life.”

     “Let’s put this conversation behind us, Tom. I’ll start working a little bit harder to show the Sheriff of Kerr County the respect due him. If you’ll tell me why you think it’s important that I get a long nap the day before we leave.”

     “Oh, that… you need a long nap because we’re not leaving tomorrow. We’re leaving tonight. And if you’re gonna be up all night, it would be best if you got some sleep today.”

     “What? We’re night traveling? But why?”

     “Because Randy and I had a talk about it. And we agreed that this part of Texas is still too dangerous to be traveling by daylight. There are too many outlaws traveling the roads and highways during the day taking what they want from good and decent folks. And that’s especially risky if we’re going to be traveling with someone as small and vulnerable as Millicent.”

     “Where was I when this conversation went on?”

     “It was the afternoon before Randy left, when he presented me with his gift. I think you were helping Annie cook supper for the hands.”

     The little girl in Sara suddenly sprang to life when she heard the word “gift.”

     “What gift? He didn’t give
me
a gift. What gift are you talking about, Tom?”

     “Yes he did. The gift he gave me was for all three of us. He asked me not to give it to you until after he left. He said something about women’s tears and how he hated it when a woman got something nice and got all blubbery.”

     She couldn’t contain herself.

     “Well, what is it?”

     He said, “Wait right here.”

     He hobbled over to the corner of the room and took a box from the bottom shelf of a bookcase, then returned to her. The side of the box said, “Roma Boots Size Thirteen Men.”

     “He got me a pair of big boots? Seriously?”

     “Oh, hush up.”

     Tom lifted the lid from the shoebox to reveal three brand new pairs of night vision goggles.

     Rolling around in the bottom of the box were two dozen AA batteries.

     “What is this, Tom?”

     “Well, at the risk of repeating myself, repeating myself…”

     He smiled at his own cleverness.

     “It’s a gift. From Randy. He bought them from the prepper fella, the one with the ham radio.”

     “Do they work?”

     “Yes. He said he tried them all out. They’re top of the line, he says. Far better than the ones old Scott stockpiled away before the blackout.”

     “Yeah, Scott told me once he wished he hadn’t skimped on the equipment he socked away. He said some of the generators and other stuff he bought weren’t the best quality, but that he went cheap to save money for dried food and ammunition.”

     “Well, according to Randy, these were the best ones on the market before the blackout. And he bought enough fresh batteries to get us back to the compound. They’re rechargeable batteries too, so we don’t have to toss them when they go dead.”

     “So… you want to travel at night and sleep during the day?”

     “Yes. Sleep, hunt, fish, cook, fetch water. We can do all that stuff in the woods, where we’re hidden in the daylight hours. The only time we’ll be out in the open is when we travel. If we do that at night, when darn near everybody else is asleep, it’ll be a lot safer.”

     “And those who aren’t asleep will be at a disadvantage, because we can see them a lot sooner than they can see us.”

     “Exactly.”

     “Well then, Sheriff… Boss… I guess I’d better get myself upstairs and take a nap.”

-39-

     Ninety one million miles away from the living room where Tom and Sara sat discussing their travel plans, a massive storm was brewing on the surface of the sun.

     Scott Harter, years before, had stumbled upon a bit of Mayan history that had puzzled archaeologists and scientists for years. He found out that the Mayans had never said life on earth would perish in the year 2012, as many believed.

     What the Mayans actually said was that December 21, 2012 would mark what they called “the last period of progress.”

     What they meant was that sometime after that date something would happen which would return mankind to the Stone Age.

     The Mayans were far more advanced than any other civilization on earth at the time. They’d learned how to predict earthquakes, and modern scientists are still at a loss to explain how.

     The Mayans correctly named every one of the planets in the heavens and plotted their orbits, even though such things as telescopes and spyglasses hadn’t yet been invented. 

     They even found a way to predict tidal waves, even though their civilization lived almost exclusively inland.

     There were many of the Mayans’ accomplishments which confounded even twenty-first century scientists and archaeologists.

     One that escaped their interest was the Mayans’ ability to track storms on the face of the sun, and resultant solar flare activity.

     The Mayans knew that many things in the universe were cyclical in nature. Planets and stars revolved around each other at set speeds which varied little. Seasons came and went based on the same cycles.

     The same was true of the sun, where solar storms came and went with remarkable regularity.

     It was the Mayans, so very long ago, who discovered that every two hundred years or so the sun would incur a storm so massive it would bombard the earth with such powerful electromagnetic pulses, anything electronic or electric-powered that was not protected would be shorted out.

     Of course, in the Mayans’ time, there was nothing electronic or electric-powered. But the Mayans were a people who were blessed with great forward thinking. They predicted “ships of metal that will fly through the sky” and “machines that will do the work of a thousand men.”

     Scientists didn’t know how they could make such predictions. They still don’t.

     But Scott Harter discovered that the Mayans, before they seemingly vanished from the face of the earth, had left a dire warning for the people of the future.

     They’d said that solar storms in the early 1800s, give or take a few years, would wipe out all electrical-based machines.

     And that the same thing would happen around 2020.

     Give or take a few years.

     Scott had done his research and found that in 1820, a worldwide phenomena took place that scientists could never adequately explain.

     People all over the world suddenly felt nauseous. Many threw up. A lot of people got dizzy and lost their balance. Farm animals fell over in the fields.

     No loss of life was reported, and in the grand scheme of things it was considered a minor event.

     But it puzzled scientists and those in the medical community. It went down in history as one of those curious but unexplainable things which perhaps mankind is just not destined to understand.

     Scott believed the event was evidence that the Mayans were on to something. That the massive storms on the surface of the sun occurred in 1820, just as the Mayans said they would.

     That the resulting electromagnetic pulses bombarded the earth, just as the Mayans said they would. And even though the Mayans had no name for the pulses at the time.

     Scott believed that the reason technology wasn’t wiped out in 1820 was simply because such technology didn’t exist then.

     In the early twenty-first century, though, the world was different.

     Much different.

     And he focused all his efforts on stocking up for a worldwide cataclysmic event. He stockpiled food and water and supplies, and built a huge Faraday cage to protect a limited amount of vehicles and electronics.

     There were others around the world, like the prepper in Castroville, who also foresaw the cataclysmic event and prepared for it.

     Rumors had been circulating since the 1990s that a series of electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs, would eventually knock out the power grids around the world. Even though many of them had never even heard of the Mayans’ predictions, so-called “preppers” seemed to sense that something big was coming.