“Are we leaving today?”
“Get loaded up today. They’ve declared curfew in Nashville at night.”
“Damon,” Susie said. “Can I ask what you’re doing? You’ve been stuck on your laptop all night.”
“Analyzing data from NASA.”
“And why would NASA need you?”
“I worked with them on my PhD project about satellite constellations.”
I noticed he didn’t mention he was working with the DOD.
Damon continued, “Semiautonomous drones in space, that sort of thing. They’re already planning on launching new GPS satellites, but need all the help they can get figuring out where the debris is spreading.”
“And Terek’s helping you?”
“We’re good friends. I’m getting him into MIT next year.”
“And how’s it looking? I mean, up there?” Susie pointed at the ceiling.
“A lot of satellites lost or offline. They’re trying to move them out of the way. But it still doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“The whole thing.” He turned to me. “That conversation we were having yesterday? The big difference between outer space and cyberspace?”
I nodded. It was a rhetorical question. He was already halfway to developing his professor skills for what I suspected would be an academic career when all this was over.
“The biggest one is still money. Getting into cyber costs very little. Hackers cause havoc for pennies on the ruble. Whereas getting into outer space is incredibly expensive. I still don’t understand how Pakistan could have afforded the system that carried out their end of these attacks.”
I asked, “That’s the only big difference?” It seemed like there would be more.
“Attribution is the other one. Like Chuck said. In cyber, it’s hard to know with certainty who’s attacking you, whereas with the space system—I mean, missiles and rockets—you know where they come from. But it still doesn’t make sense.”
Chuck said, “I believe you are the guy to make sense of it. So figure it out. We’re going shopping.”
“I really respect what you did for those people back there,” Chuck said.
Irena was in the front seat beside him, with me squished in the back of the Range Rover. We’d thought of taking the Mini into the city, but Irena had insisted we take her truck. More space to load food and supplies, she’d said, and we couldn’t disagree.
“I did what anyone would do,” Irena replied.
“Well, yes and no. You really put in extra time and effort.”
We pulled off the highway at Exit 37. Chuck had opened two Tex-Mex restaurants in Nashville after selling the ones in New York to move here.
As we pulled around the off-ramp, we saw that cars were lined up ahead of us. Another roadblock manned by the National Guard, but this one wasn’t stopping and searching. Only acting as security.
A thick haze hung to the east in the morning sky, obscuring the sun in an orange blanket. The smell of fire in the air, even from a hundred miles away. There was a stiff easterly breeze that morning. Dry and blistering hot. The worst possible combination.
“Terek’s a good kid,” Chuck said.
Irena replied, “He is.”
“Must have been tough, basically becoming his parent.”
“This is why we came to America. For a new start.”
“It’s very courageous. I mean, I had a hard time moving from New York to Nashville, and I came from here originally. But going to a whole new country? Where you don’t know anyone?”
We pulled into the parking lot of his restaurant.
“You didn’t have family here when you came here, did you? Friends?” Chuck asked. He looked low through the windshield and inspected the building.
“Nobody,” Irena replied.
“I gave everyone time off when this started, three days ago.” Chuck completed his sweep of the parking lot and windows. “Place still looks intact.”
We had stopped at a Krogers supermarket on the way in. With the news channels and internet warning of impending Armageddon and the shutting down of logistics and shipping, the supermarket had looked like it had been hit by a zombie apocalypse.
There had still been flowers in plastic wrap and magazines and gum by the checkout, but most of the shelves were stripped clean, except for stuff like ketchup and the straggling remains of greens in the vegetable aisles.
No signs of looting, though. Not in Franklin or Nashville, as far as we had heard or seen, but the situation was worse in big cities. New York was remaining calm, from what I’d read on the internet.
We exited the Range Rover.
The restaurant was in a strip mall. The parking lot empty apart from us. The dry cleaner beside Chuck’s restaurant was closed. All the other shops shuttered. Same as a few years ago during the virus outbreak, and years before that in the cyberattack.
Chuck saw me looking. “Those blackouts and service interruptions they’re reporting? Doesn’t mean it has to be a cyberattack or even caused by GPS loss. Power companies need power stations, and power stations need people to operate them. Everyone goes home, all the services will stop.”
He unlocked the doors and checked the back. Nobody had been in. He directed us to the freezer and each of us filled a box with meat, then another with cans he selected from the shelves.
A powerful sense of déjà vu overcame me.
“I know,” Chuck said. He didn’t need to say what. He closed up and we ventured back into the sweltering heat.
Chuck keyed in the access code for his gate. A part of me waited for the electronics to stop working, for everything to suddenly shut off.
It felt weird that some things were working, but some weren’t. We had the internet, but no cell phones. We still had TV, but no long-range weather forecasts. We’d only been on the road for an hour, and already I felt the itch.
What had happened while we’d been gone?
“You really got a license for that SIG?” Chuck asked Irena.
“I said I did. You want to see it?”
“Just curious,” he said.
“It’s right there in the glove box.” She was driving. She nodded at the compartment in front of Chuck.
We rounded the corner to Chuck’s house, and before he could decide whether to look at the license, we saw Susie on the lawn. She waved her arms above her head and ran at us.
She was crying.
“What’s wrong?” Chuck rolled down his window. “Something with the kids? What happened?”
“It’s not the kids.” She held a hand to her mouth. “It’s Lauren.”
CHAPTER 21
THE EXCITEMENT OF not dying was beginning to wear thin.
“Welcome to the Naval Air Station Oceana,” announced a hand-painted sign on brown packing paper stuck to the cement block wall across from Lauren’s cot.
She had been staring at it for more than a day now.
Welcome indeed.
With the waves of the Atlantic Ocean almost touching the 777’s wingtips, at what had seemed like the last instant before a disaster, solid ground had materialized below the aircraft. Wailing prayers had transformed to gasping cries, and for vertigo-inducing seconds, houses had appeared below them—but then landing strips and lights.
Just before 1 a.m. on September 8, American Airlines flight 1265 had touched down on runway L25 of the Naval Air Station Oceana. Pandemonium had erupted in the cabin, shouting and hoots of laughter and tears when the wheels had squealed against the tarmac.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot had announced. “Welcome to Virginia Beach. It is now 1:04 a.m. local time, East Coast, United States. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
That was perhaps the most understated address Lauren had ever heard. She could have kissed the pilot at that moment.
They had left Hong Kong at sunset on September 6th, arrived in Virginia on the morning of September 8th, and Lauren was never going to leave her kids ever again. W
hen they opened the cabin doors, the fresh sea air, humid and hot as it was, was sweet relief—somehow it had even smelled like America.
Polite young men in camouflage had escorted them off the plane. Lauren had been amazed to see more commercial jets than she could count stacked along the edge of the runway and between the metal hangars. They’d herded the passengers along and divided them up, and Lauren had ended up here. In a gymnasium at the far end of the Naval Station.
Emily wouldn’t leave her side. The young men asked crew members to go with them separately, but she said she wanted to stay with Lauren. They were in this together.
When they’d offered Lauren a cot and said she had to stay here for now, Lauren couldn’t have been happier. A tiny metal cot with polyester sheets in an open gymnasium with a thousand other people had seemed like a godsend, and she’d hit the covers and slept like a dead person until the morning.
That was two days ago. Since then, no luggage. No shower.
She had been in these clothes for how long? It was September 10th now, her watch said. Her cell phone was out of power, but she’d heard that didn’t matter, because there wasn’t any coverage. No bars. Four days now she had been in these same clothes. Not even a change of underwear. Stinky didn’t even begin to cover it.
“I’m going to keep the baby.” Emily was lying down in the cot next to Lauren. The flight attendant’s beautiful red hair was a shambles. She had a glow to her, though. She couldn’t care less. “I’m going to tell Paul as soon as we get out of here.”
Lauren replied, “That’s great, honey.”
Enough was enough. She stood and gently took the arm of a young man in uniform who was delivering sandwiches to anyone who wanted one.
“Excuse me,” Lauren said. “But when are we getting out of here?”
“Ma’am, I don’t have an answer for that.”
The young man’s green eyes were a lot like Luke’s. The thought elicited what felt like an ice pick stabbing into her stomach. She hadn’t even been able to call her family, to tell them she was safe. They had to be beyond worried. She hadn’t talked to Mike in five days, the longest time they’d gone without contact since the day they’d met at Harvard, over a decade ago.
“Can I use a phone?”
“Ma’am, as I’m sure you have heard, telephones are not working.”
“I need my family to know I’m safe.”
“There are people working on that. We sent out all the passenger information to the DHS as soon as we processed it, but you have to understand”—he lowered his voice—“we got forty-plus passenger aircraft dumped on our heads in the middle of the night. There are more than four thousand civilians from every nation on Earth in here. They got the gates locked up, and won’t let anyone out till the DHS processes everyone. And right now, it is a mess out there. They shut down the borders.”
“I’m American. I have my passport. What’s the problem?” In a lower voice she asked, “It’s not biological, is it? Viral?”
“No ma’am, it’s not that. If it was up to me, I’d let you walk right out of here, ma’am.”
“Can I get my luggage?”
He shrugged. “That is above my pay grade.”
Lauren let go of his arm. “Thank you,” she said, “and thank you for your service.”
The young man continued on his way.
Lauren sat down on the squeaking cot and sighed.
“Ma’am?”
She looked up. It was the young man, but this time he was with someone else. A man in a suit with dark sunglasses.
“I think this is your ticket out, ma’am.”
The man in the dark suit asked, “Mrs. Lauren Mitchell?”
“That’s me.”
“I’ve been sent by your uncle, Senator Seymour. Please follow me.”
“Can I come?” Emily stood up from her cot.
“I’m sorry, I’m only authorized to bring Mrs. Mitchell.”
Emily looked at Lauren. “Please? I need to get out of here too. I need to talk to Paul.”
CHAPTER 22
“DADDY!” LUKE RAN at me with a paper in his hand. “Daddy, they found mom.” He jumped up and down in his socks. Ellarose joined in and Bonham ran in circles around me.
I still had my arms around a cardboard crate from Chuck’s. Kicking off my shoes, I crossed into the dining room to put it down, then turned to pick up my son. “I know, I know.”
My scalp was still tingling from the fear, and then the rush of excitement, when Susie had cried out Lauren’s name in the yard and said they found her.
Found her wasn’t quite accurate.
Lauren wasn’t home yet, from what I understood. The Seymours had gotten a note from the airline that she had landed. I dialed their Washington number. It picked up on the first ring.
“Michael,” answered a familiar voice.
“Senator Seymour, yes, I mean, it’s me. It’s Michael.”
“You heard the good news?”
“Do you have her yet?”
“She’s in a receiving center in Virginia. We sent a car to get her an hour ago. You’re at the Mumford residence?”
Luke stared up at me, smiling his gap-toothed grin. I grinned back and held up a finger for him to give me a minute. “That’s right. In Nashville. We got hung up on the roads coming in. We’ll be leaving for Washington tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll call you the second Lauren gets here.”
“How is Susan holding up?”
“Do you want to speak to her?”
Luke pulled on my pant leg. “Can I talk to mom? Can’t we do a FaceTime?”
I whispered to him, “She’s not there yet,” and then said to the senator, “Ah, no, that’s okay. Just want to know she’s okay. That everyone’s okay.”
“We’re more worried about you.”
“Me?”
A pause. “Mike, be careful on the roads.” Another pause. “There is some indication that this all might not be an accident. These space attacks.”
“Did India launch a nuclear strike?”
“We think that’s false information, but we’re not one hundred percent sure.”
“About what?”
“About anything, to be honest. Be careful. And get here as soon as you can.” He hung up.
How could he not be sure? He was in the epicenter of those-in-the-know.
Chuck stood in the doorway behind me, Irena beside him, both of them laden with boxes. He asked, “What did he say?”
“That they sent a car to get her.”
“Did I hear him say this wasn’t an accident?”
“He said there was an indication.” I wasn’t sure what he’d meant.
“I am so happy, Mike. This is amazing. I told you.” Chuck penguin-walked through the entrance with his awkward load. “I’m going to start loading the cars. We head out at first light tomorrow. I’ll get you home. Get you back to Lauren and Olivia.”
Irena followed him. “We’ll come too,” she said.
“What’s that in your hand?” I asked Luke.
“A paper airplane,” Ellarose answered. She was still jumping up and down. “We’ve been building them.”
Luke showed me the airplane he had made. “Like mom’s. Want to see it fly?”
“Sure.”
Luke and Ellarose shot past me and thumped up the wooden staircase to the catwalk landing a story up, which ran through the atrium. Bonham followed behind them.
“Watch this,” Luke exclaimed.
He stretched a rubber band out on one thumb. His airplane shot forward, spun in a tight circle before it flattened out, then sailed smoothly forward until it hit the wall of the atrium thirty feet away.
“Cool!” Ellarose shrieked.
“Guys, guys, can you hold it down?”
Damon waved his hands at Ellarose and Luke. He wanted them to be quiet. He obviously wasn’t used to kids, not the way I’d become used to them. Quiet wasn’t one of their settings.
I hadn’t noti
ced Damon and Terek by the kitchen table. Still on their laptops, but now they were standing in front of them instead of their usual slouching. I picked up my box from the restaurant and took it into the kitchen.
Luke came thumping down the stairs. “What did you get me?”
“Frozen turkey, I think.”
“Yuck.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you hadn’t eaten in two days.”
“Why wouldn’t I eat in two days?”
It was meant as a joke, referencing the disaster in our apartment in New York, but of course he didn’t remember it. It wasn’t the sort of joke I should be telling. Whatever was happening now, we were still in the middle of it.
“I’m only kidding.”
“Guys, please,” Damon urged as I got closer.
He wasn’t just noodling on his laptop. Someone else was on the screen, and not only one. A video conference with a half dozen people.
I opened the freezer door and said, “Sorry, I’ll keep it down.” Then I whispered to Luke, “Buddy, Uncle Damon needs us to be quiet. Why don’t you show Ellarose and Bonham how to make another plane?”
My boy frowned his serious look. “Okay, I’ll take care of them. You’re right.”
Only one year older than Ellarose, but to him it meant he was the little man of the house. In a low voice, he explained to them. They nodded and all glanced at Damon. I did as well, and I tried to be as silent as possible while I stuffed the freezer.
“You can buy a signal booster from any electronics store,” I heard Damon say. He stood up straight in front of his laptop and held up a device in his hand. “I’m sending you the modified mesh-networking app. You can use it to send pictures, even do voice calls. Do you have any drones?”
“Who’s he talking to?” I whispered to Terek, who stood to one side as Damon gesticulated to illustrate something.
“The first responders in Virginia are trying to deal with that fire.”
“How did he start talking to them?”
It didn’t really surprise me. Damon had a way of becoming the center of attention in almost any online space.
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