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private, saw the look on Bryan’s face and knew their quest wasn’t over yet.
         “Where to now, sir?”
         “Do you think your superiors will be upset if you take me to San Angelo?”
         “Sir, they told me I was at your disposal for as long as you needed me. Where is San Angelo, exactly?”
         “A hundred miles north, straight up Highway 87.”
         He put the vehicle in gear and pulled out onto the highway.
         “Do you think we’ll find her, sir?”
         “Please. I’m not much older than you are. Stop calling me sir, okay? My name is Bryan.”
         “Do you think we’ll find her, Bryan?”
         “We’ve got to. She’s my whole life. I know it sounds corny, but she’s my everything. If she weren’t by my side, I’d have given up when the world went to shit and checked out of it like a lot of other people.”
         Bryan suddenly got the sense he’d said something wrong. The driver suddenly grew silent.
         “What?”
         “My girlfriend… we were going to be married a week after Saris 7 was scheduled to collide with the earth. Then the preacher cancelled the wedding to go back to his family in Ohio. We couldn’t find another preacher to marry us, because they were so busy consoling people and trying to save their souls in case they didn’t make it.
         “So Julie and I never married. She grew very despondent and depressed. Then one night she took a whole bottle of pain pills and just went to sleep and never woke up.”
         He turned to look at Bryan.
         “She was my whole world too. So I know how you feel.”
         Bryan felt like dirt.
         “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so insensitive. Say, what’s your name, anyway? And don’t say, ‘Private Mason.’ I mean your real name.”
         The soldier laughed.
         “Actually, my name is Bryan too.”
         “Bryan Too? That’s an odd name.”
         “You know we’re going to find Sarah, right? Somebody picked her up and took her to find help. And there are only so many hospitals and clinics left in the area. She’s got to be at one of them. And sooner or later we’ll find the right one.”
         Bryan was touched. He’d expected the soldiers who volunteered for Sarah’s search party to be cold and robotic.
         But what he found was quite the opposite. To a man, the volunteers seemed to take the search personally, and gave their all to find her. Bryan had commented to Karen about their effort and she speculated, “It’s probably because they’ve all lost someone they loved to Saris 7. They can relate to your pain and want to help you win one for a change.
         “Thanks for sticking with me on this, Bryan Too.”
         “No problem. Now, let’s get to San Angelo and find your bride.”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 11
     
         Hannah had been through a lot already. The shock of finding out her best friend was missing was something she didn’t need.
         “What do you mean, she never came back? She went to pick flowers all the time. Almost every day. She was learning those woods better than any one of us.”
         “I know, honey. But…”
         Mark chose his words carefully. She deserved to know about Sarah. Needed to know. But at the same time he didn’t want to cause her any more pain than he had to.
         “It appears that she was injured somehow. We found a discarded bundle of picked flowers in a clearing. And there was some blood next to them.
         “We think that she was hurt. And that maybe she became disoriented and forgot her way back. And that she went in the wrong direction, and went deeper and deeper into woods.”
         Hannah no longer had the feeding tube in her throat. But she still had the IV tube stuck in her forearm.
         She reached for it and started to pull