“I can’t get a better signal if I can’t turn it on.” Greg screwed the lid on his canteen and grabbed a pouch of trail mix. “It’s dead.”
“Still a good idea, though,” Tuck said. “We could get a lay of the land. It’ll just be you, me, and Eustace. Tommy don’t want to go on account of his hip, so he can stay and keep an eye on the camp with Emma.”
Greg looked at his father and saw a hint of a smile on his face. The old man’s tone of voice made him sound like he was trying to pick a fight, but the look on his face suggested he was in a good mood. The man was a walking contradiction.
Maybe he truly has no idea how he comes across, Greg thought. It would explain a lot.
And somehow, Greg’s wife, Marion, thought this trip could heal the rift between Greg and his father?
“Okay, Dad, let’s go for a hike,” Greg said. “That’s fine. Emma, do you want to go on a hike with us up the mountain? We’ll probably have a really nice view.”
“No, if it’s okay, I’ll stay here,” Emma said, scrubbing out the coffee pot. “I was going to set up a place to process the meat we catch when we go hunting. I read all about it before we left home.”
“Okay, but you can hold off on that for now if you want,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.”
“I’ll go ahead and set it up,” she said, giving him that withering look of hers. “We’re going hunting soon, aren’t we? That’s one of the main reasons we’re here, right?” This would be Emma’s first time hunting, and Greg knew she was excited about it.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get our hunting in,” he replied.
Within the hour, Greg, Tuck, and that red-bearded giant, Eustace, loaded up their packs and headed uphill. Just before heading into the trees, Greg glanced back and saw his daughter already setting up a curtained area around some big rocks at the edge of the camp.
Poor kid. She just wants to hunt and fish, but she’s stuck with her father, who’s more concerned about this phone, he thought.
As for Greg, he immediately felt awkward crunching along through the forest with his father and Eustace. He didn’t know either man very well, and more than that, he was essentially a double agent spying on Eustace for an environmental court case. Things were still ice-cold between Greg and his father. Tuck clearly wasn’t going to be the one to bridge the gap, and Greg honestly had no idea how to do it. Dad’s friend Tommy seemed to have a calming effect on him, but he’d stayed behind.
This should be a fun little hike, Greg thought bitterly.
And, indeed, none of the men said a single word as they picked their way through the trees and rocks up toward a higher clearing above the tree line. The loudest sound was Eustace’s breathing. The man was constantly snorting, coughing, making weird grunting noises, or just sucking in air like a bear sniffing garbage.
They walked maybe two kilometers over the course of an hour, tying off nylon strips along the way to mark their path. When they reached a big rocky clearing above the trees, they finally stopped. Greg was out of breath and feeling the effects of thin air. He took a long swig of water from his canteen then sat down on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing.
Surprisingly, Tuck plopped down beside him with a long whoosh of air. Greg munched on trail mix, Tuck enjoyed a granola bar, and Eustace produced a chocolate bar. But not a single word was spoken. Periodically, Greg tried to think of something to say, but then he resented having to break the silence.
“Quite a hike,” Eustace said. The first spoken words since they’d left the camp. He dabbed his ruddy, lined forehead with the sleeve of his flannel jacket. As he stood there, he dug into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small handheld GPS. The thing looked about three generations of tech out of date. “Let’s see exactly where we are.”
“Does that thing work out here?” Tuck asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Eustace said. “We can get GPS coordinates on almost all of our company land. We’ve had employees check.”
Working up here, Greg thought. Doing what, exactly?
And that was the essential question. What was a gas company doing in all of this pristine, rugged wilderness?
“Well, what do you know?” Eustace said, punching the power button of the GPS device with one enormous thumb. “Damn thing’s not working. Won’t even turn on. I know I charged the battery yesterday before we left. I know it.”
He held up the device, turning the dark screen toward them. Greg felt a little flutter of unease.
“Dead like the satellite phone,” he said. “That means we have no phone and no GPS.”
Tuck flipped a hand in the air, as if shooing off a swarm of gnats. “Now, now, we’re camping, gentlemen. We don’t need technology. It’s a bit silly to lament all of the stuff we’re supposed to leave behind.”
Greg turned away so his father wouldn’t see the irritated look on his face, but he was biting the inside of his cheek so hard that it finally made him wince in pain.
“I’m not complaining,” Eustace said, in a surly tone that suggested otherwise, “but, come on, Tuck, it’s a little weird that none of the tech we brought is working.”
“The cold might have sapped the batteries,” Tuck said. “It’s not that weird. I’ve been on enough camping trips to know that sometimes things just break with no rhyme or reason. Enjoy your time, folks, and worry about your devices when you get back down off the mountain.”
I’m working here, old man, Greg thought. This isn’t just a vacation. I need my sat phone.
But he couldn’t say this, certainly not in front of Eustace. In truth, he was feeling a mounting anxiety over the broken tech. No, things didn’t just break with no rhyme or reason. There was always a cause, and it wasn’t nearly cold enough at the campsite to make batteries cease to function. Greg had never heard of such a thing. To make matters worse, Marion was expecting a call. He was supposed to have called her after they set up camp. She usually put his mind at ease when he was worried about things, but now he was surrounded by crotchety old men who were no comfort at all.
“If we go just a little farther up the slope, we should get a great view of the valley behind us,” Eustace said, pointing up the rocky slope toward a higher ledge. “It’s only another, maybe, two hundred meters.”
“Let’s do it,” Greg said, standing up.
Without waiting for the others, he set off across the clearing toward the loose, rocky slope beyond. He heard Eustace catching up to him. The man’s loud breathing was practically its own tracking device. By the time the three men reached the higher ledge, the morning sun was blazing brightly over the eastern mountains. Greg slowly turned around, taking in the vast, forested valley spread out below them. A faint mist lay in the valley, glints of reflected sunlight revealing a winding stream through breaks in the trees, but mostly it was just towering mountains and lush green forest as far as the eye could see.
“What do you think?” Eustace said, coming up beside him. “Isn’t it just about the most breathtaking landscape you ever saw?”
“It’s very nice,” Greg said.
“It looks untouched, doesn’t it?”
Greg nodded. Eustace seemed to have sprayed himself with some kind of pungent insect repellant. It had mingled with the smell of campfire, flannel, and sweat to create a potent mix when the man stood close.
“All of that pristine Canadian wilderness, and every acre of it gas company land,” Eustace said. “Not what you expected, is it? You expected to see giant smoking refinery stacks everywhere. I know how folks like you think.” He gave Greg a big toothy grin and wagged a huge red finger in his face.
“I expected nothing but a great weekend of camping,” Greg said, trying his best to sound like he meant it. It took a fierce act of will not to brush that wagging finger out of his face as it lingered there just a couple of seconds too long.
Tuck joined them then, stepping up beside his son and turning to take in the view.
“It really is something,” he said. Greg’s father had
wispy white hair that he generally combed back from a high, lined forehead, but the wind caught it now and sent it flapping out to one side like cobwebs. “Drink it in, gentlemen.”
Instead of drinking it in, however, Greg’s thoughts went back to the sat phone. Though he knew it was futile, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and tried to discreetly turn it on again. It didn’t respond.
Something’s not right here, he thought. He entertained the notion that somehow the gas company had polluted the air in a way that damaged electronics, but, of course, he knew this was silly. The only thing Greg could think of that would make electronics cease to function across an entire area would be some kind of electromagnetic pulse, but how could a natural gas company produce something like that out in the forest?
Unless it was intentional, he thought. Unless they wanted to destroy my phone. But, no, that was a level of conspiracy he was not willing to entertain—not yet.
A sudden strange bellow from Eustace broke him out of this chain of thought. The man had been slowly turning around, taking in the whole panorama, but he’d come to a sudden stop. Eustace was pointing off to the south.
“You boys seeing that?” he said.
A trail of dark smoke was rising up from a mountainside far to the south. This was not a campfire. The smoke was too substantial and too dark. If anything, it reminded him of the smoke from a house fire. He couldn’t make sense of it. What would be burning like that way out here in the middle of nowhere?
“Does that have anything to do with your company?” Greg asked.
Eustace gave him a sour look. “Come on, man. You think we’re burning down the forest out here? Of course not.”
“No offense intended,” Greg said. “It’s just a lot of smoke.”
“Well, my people have nothing to do with it,” Eustace said. “I can promise you that.”
“A cabin, then?” Greg suggested.
“There aren’t any cabins this far out. Not that I know of.”
Tuck shaded his eyes with one gnarled hand. He cleared his throat loudly and said, “Gentlemen, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but south, southeast is the approximate flight path in and out of the valley. I’m pretty sure we’re looking at the helicopter, and I’m pretty sure it crashed.”
4
The first thing Darryl noticed when he opened his eyes in the pre-sunrise darkness was the staleness of the air in his room. He was used to running the ceiling fan, no matter the season, if only to keep the air moving. Now, it was still and quiet. Still no electricity. Lame. He hated it, and it had taken him forever to fall asleep.
He realized his grandmother was standing beside his bed. He had a vague sense that she’d been calling his name in his sleep, trying to wake him up.
“Grandma, why is the power still off?” he asked. “Did we fry a transformer or something?”
“I don’t know what happened,” she replied, speaking just above a whisper. “We’ll try to figure it out today, but first, we still have a couple of bottle calves roaming around out there somewhere.”
“The other ones came along easy last night,” Darryl said, “but those calves just ran. They could be halfway to Vancouver by now.”
“They were spooked. That’s all. We’ll find them.”
Darryl rubbed his eyes and tried to roll over, but Grandma was persistent. She kept shaking his shoulder, so finally, he pushed his blanket back and sat up.
“Can’t the workers do it?” he asked. “No offense. I want to help. It’s just…well, they’ll be a lot better at chasing down those calves.”
“It’s just us this morning, I’m afraid,” Grandma said.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Why is it just us?”
“Workers should have arrived about thirty minutes ago,” she said. “No one showed up. I can’t wait around any longer. Those two calves have been out of the fence all night. They could be hurt.”
“Why would none of your employees come to work?” Darryl asked. He reached down to the floor and fished around until he found his socks, pulling them on one at a time.
“They couldn’t make it in for some reason, but my phone’s not working to call them,” she replied, nonplussed. “Maybe they lost power like us and none of their alarm clocks worked. Meet me on the porch in a couple of minutes. Hurry, now, we need to get out there and find our animals.”
With that, Grandma walked out of the room. By the solid sound of her footsteps, Darryl could tell she was already fully dressed, had her hiking boots on, and was ready to go. He reached back and opened the blinds on his window, but only a little bit of light seeped into the room. Fumbling around on the floor, he finally found his shoes and tugged them on. As he rose from the bed, he moved to the desk and grabbed his cell phone, unplugging it.
But probably not, he thought. She likes people to stay a hundred percent committed when they’re working.
As he crossed the room, he lifted his phone and tapped the screen with his finger. The screen didn’t turn on. He tapped it again, more forcefully this time, but it didn’t respond.
“Are you kidding me?” he muttered, heading into the hall. It was charging all night. I didn’t touch it after dinner. It was just sitting there plugged in!
And then he recalled the sparks bursting off the electric fence, all of the power going out on the ranch. Darryl was no expert on electronics, but what if somehow a power surge had fried his phone along with the fence? Was such a thing even possible?
What could have possibly caused such an intense power surge? he wondered.
He’d made his way down the stairs and was moving across the living room when a possible answer came to him. It was like a whispered memory of a half-remembered conversation.
ANPRIM.
Modern-day Luddites threatening to destroy the modern so-called technocracy. They’d caused trouble all over the world, but could they have implemented a power surge so great that it would affect a ranch way out in the middle of Northern British Columbia?
“Maybe,” he said, stepping out onto the porch.
He found his mother and grandmother waiting for him there. From the way his mother was furiously chewing on her thumbnail, he could tell she was anxious.
“Okay, he’s here,” Grandma said, starting down the porch steps. “Let’s get going. We have a lot of ground to cover, so we’re taking the Jeep.”
That was unusual. Grandma usually preferred to putter around the property in the golf cart. Darryl followed his mom across the front yard toward the driveway.
“Mom, are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, but didn’t speak for a second. “Dad didn’t call last night. That’s all. Maybe he couldn’t get a signal. He’s way out there.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” Darryl replied.
Or maybe his phone is fried like mine, he thought but pointedly didn’t say. A power surge strong enough to reach way out into the backwoods of British Columbia was too scary to contemplate.
He opened the back door of the Jeep and climbed in, but he saw the problem instantly. The interior light didn’t come on when he opened the door. When Grandma put the key in the ignition, the dashboard lights didn’t turn on. She turned the ignition, and the engine didn’t respond. It didn’t do anything. Not a single click or buzz or anything.
“The Jeep too?” Darryl said. “What the heck is going on, Grandma?”
“Maybe it’s the battery,” Grandma replied.
“Pop the hood,” Darryl’s mom said. “Let me take a look.”
As his mom got out of the car, Darryl followed. She raised the hood and put the hood latch in place, then bent over the engine. His mother was pretty handy with vehicles. As an engineer, she knew her way around a lot of machinery, and when something broke, she was usually the one to fix it. Over the years, Darryl had seen her repair vehicles, appliances, computers, and more.
“What’s going on, Mom?” Darryl asked, gazing over her shoulder at the engine.
She bent low over the car
battery, studied it for a few seconds, then sighed and rose.
“Nothing appears out of the ordinary,” she said. “I can’t see any damage, no sign of sulfation on the leads, no acrid smell. It looks fairly new. Maybe it’s not the battery.”
Grandma got out of the car then, and Darryl could tell she was whispering cuss words, though he couldn’t quite make them out.
“I installed that battery during the last tune-up,” she said, glaring into the engine, as if sheer anger would terrify it into submission. “That wasn’t even three months ago. Something screwy is going on around here, and it’s starting to piss me off. I’m sorry, Marion. It just is. Now, there’s a spare battery on a shelf in Tuck’s shed. Would you mind swapping it out and seeing if it works? I want to be sure.”
“Of course not,” Mom said. She rose, grabbed the hood, and pushed it shut. “What are you going to do?”
Grandma strode past her, grabbing Darryl by the shoulder. “Sonny and me are going out there to find those two missing calves.”
Darryl let himself be pulled away, even as his mother started toward the large shed at the head of the driveway. He didn’t relish the idea of trying to track down a couple of wayward calves on foot, but the strangeness of their circumstances was making the anxiety in his belly curdle into a real feeling of dread. Something was way wrong here. He started to pull his phone out of his pocket to check a news app, but he caught himself.
No news. No information. You’re cut off from the world now, buddy.
That only made the dread worse, until he was practically shaking with it. As he walked with his grandmother down the driveway and out into the broad pastureland, she didn’t speak, but she had a pensive look on her face. She was also furiously gnawing on her lower lip and staring at the ground.
Finally, Darryl could handle the silence no longer.
“You’re worried,” he said. A dumb thing to say, but he wasn’t sure how else to broach the subject.
“I am,” she replied. “Something’s wrong, something big, and I don’t know what it could be. Meanwhile, the men are out there on the mountain, and we haven’t heard from them.”
EMP: Return of the Wild West Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 3