Missing by Darrell Maloney Page B

lounge, and to let their Army guests work in peace.
         The adults who weren’t part of the search party went about their daily chores and duties. But then they did additional chores to cover for those who weren’t there.
         It was especially hard on the kitchen staff. They not only found themselves with thirteen extra mouths to feed. But now they were preparing dozens of sack lunches to be taken to the searchers if they weren’t back by noon.
         And once that batch was gone, they’d start preparing a second batch for their supper.
         They didn’t mind. The people they were feeding were there to help find three of their own, and to bring them back home. They’d do whatever they needed to do to help in the cause.
         Helen, Rachel and Megan appointed themselves as a hospitality team, although no one asked them to do so.   
         They placed a folding table exactly halfway between the compound’s security desk and the operations center set up in the main lounge.
         On the table they placed two large pots of coffee and three trays of cookies and fresh fruit.
         The coffee went quickly and had to be refreshed often.
         It took Helen awhile to understand exactly why.
         She assumed it was because most of the men had been up all night, and were trying their best to stay alert.
         And that was part of it, to be sure.
         But the main reason was because Lt Col Weiss’ team couldn’t get enough of it. They’d been drinking coffee from cans that had been ground years before, and was bitter and stale. It wasn’t what they wanted, but it was all that was available.
         But this… this was coffee that was recently grown, in a greenhouse. Karen grew the plants from coffee beans ordered off the internet shortly before Saris 7 hit the earth and did its damage. She carefully cultivated them for eight long years. First in the salt mine’s tiny greenhouse, with artificial sunlight. Then in the larger greenhouses of the compound, where the plants thrived in the abundant natural light of the sun.
         Several of the men commented on how great the coffee was.
         “I’ll tell you what,” Karen had told them. “You find our people and bring them back here safely, and I’ll give you some plants to take back with you so you can grow your own coffee beans. I’ll even teach you how to roast and grind them. Just bring our people back to us, please.”
         She didn’t know it at the time, of course, but her pleas would go unanswered.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 22
     
         Hannah awoke with a start.
         Despite Joel’s best efforts to keep her awake, she’d dozed off. And now the pain in her midsection was approaching unbearable.
         It wasn’t a pain from an external injury to her body, though. At least she couldn’t feel any lacerations, nor see any blood. It was a pressure pain. Her abdomen had filled with blood. Blood that wasn’t supposed to be there. Blood that was leaking from somewhere within her. Blood that would continue to leak until her veins ran dry and her heart stopped beating.
         Or, until someone came to rescue them.
         Them…
         It occurred to her that Joel, her knight in shining armor the day before, was gone.
         She looked to her right, where he’d been laying at her side. He had vanished.
         Her eyes moistened.
         Now she was troubled.
         Had she imagined Joel from the beginning? Was he nothing but a hallucination, something her mind created out of nothing, to help her cope with being the only survivor?
         Was her hero, the man who’d talked her through the worst of the pain, just an illusion?
         Was the heat from his body that helped warm her in the chilly night just her imagination?
         Was she really all alone?
         Was that the way she was meant to die? Alone, lonely and