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."
Pauline kissed him again, "I love you. I'll miss you not holding me tonight but I think that I'll be calming the girls down all night."
"How's Sarah holding up?"
Tears came to Pauline's eyes, "She's putting on a good show but you can see the pain in her eyes. I think that she felt there was a chance that her husband had survived and she wouldn't let herself think that there was a possibility that he was dead. This afternoon made everything final. I'm going to keep an eye on her so that I can be there when she crashes and she will crash; I know it."
"How about you? You aren't going to crash on me are you?"
She hugged him, "I'm doing better than I thought I would. I have you and, whether you like it or not, I'm going to hang on to you for support."
"Is there anyone..."
She didn't let him finish, "My mother died about two years ago. My father has been in Europe for about ten years and I only saw him every summer for a few weeks. He was too busy in the corporate world to really be a father to me."
Pat and Pauline got off of the bus and walked to where Anna and Sarah were trying to calm the girls down. Almost every girl was either sobbing loudly or was crying silently. Sarah also had tears running down her cheeks.
Pauline pulled Anna aside and told her to get the girls on the bus. It took over a half an hour to get every one seated on the bus. Pat did a head count and then began to drive the bus out of town.
Most of the girls were crying, some sobbing and some crying softly. The women were doing their best to keep the girls calm but it was a loosing battle.
He drove about forty miles and came to the outskirts of a small town. He pulled the bus into a motel and parked. Anna, Pauline and Sarah were consoling the girls so Pat got off of the bus and checked out the motel. The motel was one of the higher end motels and it had a huge lobby and a restaurant off of the lobby. Pat checked and there was a good stock of lunch meat and bread and enough stuff to make salads. He knew that no one would be in the mood for a huge dinner tonight. Everyone could grab whatever they wanted to eat when ever they got hungry.
Soon everyone filed into the lobby. Anna had made each of the girls bring their sleeping bags into the motel. Many of the girls were quietly staring out of the windows; others were crying silently. Pat walked back into the lobby and sat down on a sofa by the window. The women were trying their best to consol the girls.
Soon several of the girls moved into small groups and they cried, talked and hugged each other and did their best to consol each other. The ones that had formed small groups seemed to accept what they had seen today better than the ones that tried to weather their pain alone.
Brenda got up and walked over to Pat and, without a word, sat down in his lap and put her arms around his neck and began to sob. Within minutes he had a girl on each side of him hugging his arms. Both of the other girls were sobbing too. Anna looked over at him, smiled, and then began attending to the girls.
By morning everybody was emotionally exhausted and was asleep. The lobby looked like everyone had been just thrown into it. There were people everywhere. Some were asleep on the furniture and some made use of their sleeping bags. Pat was asleep with a girl under each arm.
A couple of hours after he had fallen asleep he woke up with a terrible pain in his arms from holding the girls for hours. He slowly extracted himself from the sofa and made sure that the girls were comfortable and then went into the kitchen to make coffee. After he had his second cup of coffee Anna walked into the kitchen. She didn't say a word; she just walked to the coffee pot and poured a cup of coffee.
She sipped the hot liquid, "I'm exhausted both physically and emotionally. I hope the girls will start to accept what they found yesterday."
"I don't think that they're going to accept the facts for a long time without some pain," Pat said, "This has hit them hard and it's going to take a long time before they learn to live with it."
"I guess you're right."
Pat continued, "I thought that it was wrong bringing them back here but now I think that we really had to bring them back here for some closure. It's going to be tough dealing with their pain and their emotions for a long time but we just have to be there for them. Above all, we have to keep an eye on them to make sure that none of them makes any unwise decisions."
Anna went back to the lobby to check on the girls. She found that most of them were still asleep and the ones that were awake wanted to be left alone.