Chapter 14

In the morning the Pauline and Anna spoke to Sarah about the plan to head back home. Sarah was all for the plans even though she was very afraid of what she'd find. After breakfast the women got the girls together and told them that they would be going back home. Nothing was said to give the girls any false hope.

While the girls were eating breakfast and the kitchen was being cleaned Pat transferred the girl's baggage to the Van Hool bus. By the time that the bus was ready to go everyone started milling around outside of the motel. The girls were a little quieter than they had been the day before as Pat put the bus in drive and began the trip back to where the trip started. He was leery of what they would find and a bit worried about how the girls would react if they didn't find any sign of their loved ones.

The drive was slow because of all of the accidents and once Pat had to push two cars off of the road with the bus. He remembered the detour that he had to take on the way to Las Vegas and he avoided having to backtrack at the accident site.

They passed an airplane that had crashed but they didn't stop. They knew that they wouldn't find any bodies or any other sign that people had died in the crash.

Pauline leaned forward and asked Pat, "How come we don't see more airplanes that have crashed? With all of the planes in the sky at any one time you'd think there would be many more."

"I'm not a pilot but the way that I understand it is that when the airplane is flying at the altitude assigned to it the pilot puts the airplane on autopilot. Since many of the major airports are on either the East Coast or the West Coast I would imagine that many planes that were on autopilot when this thing happened wound up in either the Pacific or the Atlantic. I guess the crashes that we see are the planes that weren't on autopilot for some reason."

They continued on toward the town where the trip had originated from. Several times they had to stop because of cows or pigs walking on the road. It was obvious that the livestock was hungry and looking for the humans that normally fed them.

The traffic accidents that occurred when the cars and trucks suddenly became unmanned slowed them down considerably and it took six days to get back to the school where Pat had picked up his passengers. As they drove through the town they didn't see any signs of life. They had been lucky to find diesel fuel at stations that still had power. When he pulled to a stop in front of the school the women took over. Pat was glad that they did as he had no idea how to deal with the trauma the girls would feel if they didn't find anyone alive.

The women and the girls had congregated outside of the bus to discuss how the girls would get to their homes to try to find anyone alive. There was some heated discussion and Pat stayed out of it. He knew that all he could do would be to muddle the situation.

Pauline got on the bus, "We decided to take the girls to their homes in our cars. Anna and I can take four girls each trip. Sarah has an SUV and she can fit six girls in it. We can have this over with by late afternoon. The girls suspect that they aren't going to find anyone. I really don't look forward to this."

By late afternoon all of the girls had been to their homes. Several of the girl's homes had burned when the food that was being prepared when the black hole passed dried and then caught fire. No one was left in the town and there were no bodies. Every thing in this town was like it had been in all the other towns they had been when Pat and his passengers had been trying to find someone else that had survived.

The girls congregated outside of the bus and became very quiet and Pat knew that they had begun to understand that this was final. Their loved ones were gone and the girls would never see them again. Pat suspected that the girls had known what they would find but they kept a spark of hope and now it had finally hit home that they would never again see their family.

Pauline got on the bus and the tension of dealing with the girls was on her face, "I don't think I can deal with this. Maybe this was a bad idea to come back here."

Pat pulled her on his lap and held her, "I think that we should get the girls on the bus and start driving. Tell Anna to get everyone together and let's get out of here. As long as the girls can see everything that has been familiar to them all of their lives we're going to have trouble with them. We'll keep driving until you women tell me to stop."

Pauline kissed him, "I dread what we have to look forward to tonight. The girls are going to be a handful. I doubt if any of us will get any sleep tonight."

"Just remember to not let any of them out of your sight tonight. We don't want to have to search for anybody in the morning."