Hatfield stepped between them. “Here’s how we settle this. You can both leave the computer alone for the morning and get to school early.”
“What?” Tami demanded.
“That’s right. That’s how we settle arguments in this family. You compromise, or you both lose. Kind of how it works in real life, right?”
He nudged them into a reluctant hug, then watched them swallow their anger as they headed down the hallway to the front door. “What happened to goodbye, Dad?”
“Goodbye, Dad,” they sighed in unison before stepping outside.
The whole thing made Hatfield grin. As much as he didn’t like his kids at each other’s throats, he knew they loved each other under all that scowling and territorial spatting. Plus, as an only child, he would have loved to have had a sibling—even one who could be a pain at times.
From behind, he heard Jess ask, “Is that really how it works in this family?”
He turned, saw her standing there, hands on her hips, a facetious grimace on her face. “Sure. Compromise is important.”
She gave her head an impish shake. “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant the part about rankings. Last time I checked, thirty-seven outranked thirty-six.”
He stepped up to her, met her face to face, arms around her waist. “Yeah, by three months.”
“Three months, three years, what’s the difference? I outrank you, so that means I get what I want on TV, on the radio, for dinner…”
He wet her jawline with kisses. “You know, I’m far more interested in that part about compromises.”
“Too late,” she said. “I outrank you, and I’d rather talk about how much I outrank you.”
The kisses continued until she slapped him away. “At ease, soldier. Last time I checked, you have a job to get to.”
He gave her a playful tap on the behind and backpedaled to the hallway. “Yes, ma’am.”
Her face melted into a grin. “I think I’m beginning to like outranking you.”
Strapping on his backpack, he headed to the door. “Long as I get to tease you for being an old lady,” he said, buckling into laughter.
“Don’t push it,” she said.
“Have a good day!”
“Bye, honey.”
With the sky erupting into golden joy, it seemed like a wasted good day to drive to work. Living only a few miles away from the shop meant walking was always an option. Today it felt like a must. Unable to wipe the grin from his face as he soaked up the rays, Hatfield started on his way.
A few steps outside of his front door, he heard a voice from the side. “Hey, Trevor!”
He turned and spotted a delivery man, headed to the door with a large box. Not recognizing the face right away, he leaned in closer, realizing it was his friend. “Randall? Didn’t know you had a new job. You moonlighting?”
His friend set the box onto the front porch and sighed. “I wish. They had some layoffs at the sporting goods store, so I’m doing this until I can find something else. Not a bad job, I guess. Could be worse.”
Hatfield grinned, not sure what to say. Losing a well-paying job must have hurt, but it seemed rude to openly say so. “So… good luck to you. The economy’s rough.”
“Tell me about it.” He nursed his back a little. “You buy a new anvil or something?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “Nothing like that. Just a little something from my mom’s estate. They had this generator. You know, just in case worst comes to worst.”
“Good idea. You never know when the grid could collapse.”
Hatfield scanned his friend’s face, not sure if he was joking. “Really? To be honest, it never occurred to me that my dad could be right about that. I always thought he was crazy. Just imagining the danger—or at least exaggerating it.”
“Yeah, you know how it is, though. You never realize how wise your parents are until it’s too late. Like me: My dad always used to say you should have a job in reserve if something happens to the one you have. I thought he was crazy, too.”
With a grim smile, Hatfield nodded.
He took a look at his friend, curiosity itching at him enough to ask a question. “You get along with your dad?”
“Not really. He was old school, used to give us these spankings that made our butts raw for days. I guess I can’t blame him; that’s how he was raised, but jeez, why impose it on your kids?”
Hatfield studied his face, recalling the time when he felt the same way about his own dad. When he couldn’t wait to get away, to be free from all the old-school crap his dad wanted to impose on him.
He listened to Randall drone on about this slight or that, but the words lost their focus, and Hatfield drifted into a sharp memory he couldn’t shake if he wanted to—the day he took off.
The breakfast table was quiet as always, polite chatter only. Once they’d finished saying grace, there was nothing to talk about anyway. Trevor seemed to be in a world all his own, a world where he’d never have to listen to anything the old man had to say.
He watched his dad eating, then shifted his focus to his mom, knowing something was different about this morning. If all went well, he’d never see either of them again.
His dad ate quickly as always. Once done, he stood up and said, “Don’t take too long at the table, son. That garden’s waiting for you.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
His dad stooped, met him eye to eye. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, sir.” The thought that he might never have to address him again in life brought a grin to Trevor’s face that he couldn’t hide.
Before stepping out, he addressed his mom. “You keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get lazy. We’re not running a resort here.”
“Yes,” she said.
With the trailer empty except for the two of them, Trevor couldn’t stop staring at his mother. He wanted to ask why she put up with him all those years. But he knew he’d never get a straight answer.
“He loves you, you know,” she told him.
Trevor wasn’t sure where that came from. He guessed she could read the resentment on his face. “I guess that’s how he shows it, huh?”
His mom’s eyes went to the table.
“Push-ups, chores, rules against anything fun. Must be great to be one of those kids whose dads don’t love them.”
Mom didn’t have a comeback. She sat in silence then checked her watch. “Okay, time to get to it. Your father wants all the planting done before noon.”
They left the trailer together, squinting in the radiant sun. Trevor thought it would be a great day for a baseball game or maybe just hanging out with his friends, Kyle and Brick. As he knelt in the garden, he let the rays wash over him, and everything he hated about living in a trailer and having a drill sergeant for a dad faded away, immediately replaced by visions of cars and girls and parties with kids whose parents were away for the weekend. Life didn’t have to be an endless series of chores and lectures about the end of the world, he reminded himself. It might even be fun.
His mother headed to the river as usual for that time of day, carrying a box of dishes and other items that needed washing. “I’ll be back in an hour or so to check on you,” she said.
“Yeah, okay,” he grunted. Within seconds, he spotted something in the distance that brought a smile to his face. He took a look around, making sure nobody could see his next move, then slipped into the trailer and grabbed his backpack. When he came back out, the smile on his face expanded. A car headed in his direction. At last, he’d been rescued.
4
Slipping through the stalled traffic on the street outside of the shop, Hatfield was glad he’d walked to work that day. A car would be a problem—as it was for everybody on the road.
By the time he’d reached the other side of Temperton Street, tempers had begun to flare, and motorists were on the verge of losing patience. A few insults were hurled, and others stood in the middle of the street, asking nobody in particular what the hell was going on.
<
br /> It had been less than an hour. Hatfield wondered to himself how people would feel after two, three hours of this. Then two or three days or weeks. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Hoping to find the least congested path home, he ducked through an alley on Chester Street. It was nice and quiet, nothing but the distant commotion of confused drivers.
If anything, the quiet was soothing. No buzz of giant machinery. No engines, no factories adding to noise pollution. Even the absence of electronic devices was evident as he walked past Sy’s Pawnshop—a place usually abuzz with TVs, radios, and other devices being tried before purchase.
But soon after reaching the next block, the serenity came crashing to an end. The shatter of glass took place behind him, followed by an ear-splitting screech. He turned and saw nothing at first. Then came the hurried footsteps and a burglar racing from a home with a giant TV screen.
Hatfield briefly wondered if he should do something, but there was nothing he could do. The culprit was already on his way down the other side of the alley. He gave his head a shake, realizing the burglar was due for a disappointment soon—when he realized that the screen—however impressive—wouldn’t work.
Listening to the perpetrator scramble in the distance, he wondered if it might have been a good idea to carry his gun. This wasn’t something he normally did, and when he’d left home, the day had every sign of being normal. Still, the incident underscored the need to avoid any possible conflict.
But with a busy street he needed to cross to get home, this became a harder thing to do. On Franklyn Street, he spotted a chubby, middle-aged man frantically waving him over. “Buddy, can you help me out here? I got a school bus full of kids. I really need your help so we can get them out.”
Hatfield leaned in, eyebrows knitted. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s on fire, man! We need your help! Please!”
The two men jogged to the end of the block on Franklyn Street. As the man said, a bus had been overturned, smoke rising from the engine. “What you need me to do?” Hatfield asked.
“I’ll stand at the door and you crawl into the bus, handing the kids out to me.”
As promised, the man stood at the door at the front and side, then knifed the door open for Hatfield to jump inside. “Come on, hurry!”
But something seemed odd about the whole thing. He heard no sounds coming from inside the bus. No screaming or even talking. “Are you sure they’re still okay in there?” he asked.
“Yeah, they’re fine! Come on, man! We’ve got no time for this.”
Hatfield started toward the door and, gazing into the side-view mirror, caught an accidental glimpse of something that startled him. There were no kids on the bus. Only two armed men crouched behind seats, ready to attack him.
He backpedaled from the trap slowly and cautiously.
“Hey, buddy!” the guy yelled. “Where you going?”
Hatfield was gone by then, pulse still racing. He knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet.
By now, he was roughly five blocks away from home and moving quickly enough to get there in record time. Although he didn’t spot any riots or brawls, he knew that was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the city erupted into a mess. Without a grid to support them and keep them safe, there was nowhere else for it to go.
With three blocks to go, he heard a crowd of people gathering blocks away. A loud voice tried to tame them, but it didn’t seem to be working. A handful of exasperated drivers had abandoned their car, but most of them sat right there, shaking their heads, screaming at their dead cell phones and sometimes at their passengers. It felt to Hatfield like a forest being doused with gasoline, ready to be ignited into an inferno.
With two more blocks left, the noise level had increased. There was shouting, angrily hissed insults and some angry pounding on the hoods of cars. At times, the vitriol spilled over to other drivers. A few confrontations had taken place. Hatfield hoped he could get home and get himself armed before any large-scale violence could unfold.
A block away from home, he noticed a small gathering at his neighbor, Pete’s, house. They chit-chatted as if what was happening was a brief delay in their everyday lives, nothing more. Before heading home, he eased over to them. “Guys, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you really should be getting prepared. This thing is no joke.”
“Tell me about it,” Pete answered. “The last power outage we had lasted almost what, three, four hours? It was crazy. All the food in our refrigerator was spoiled by the time we got home.”
“This looks like it’ll be more serious than that,” Hatfield said. “Seriously, I’d recommend getting out of the city.”
He got a bunch of puzzled looks. “Out of the city?” Pete’s wife Sheila asked. “For what?”
“To avoid the chaos.”
Another neighbor, Dennis, asked, “Chaos? Look, I know people get antsy when the internet goes out, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t. Guys, we have been hit by an EMP attack.”
They exchanged glances, faces creased by confusion. “What the hell is that?”
Pete said, “Oh, yeah, I remember that on an episode of that show about the FBI agent! Crazy stuff. At least it would be if it happened in real life.” They laughed together.
Hatfield didn’t have time to persuade his friends that he was serious. So he gave one more warning as he stepped away. “Look, I’m going to get to my family and make sure they’re okay. I recommend you do the same.”
The reply was a series of politely nodded heads. But the looks on their faces suggested they weren’t convinced of the dangers. Hatfield recognized that look from the one his dad would get when he was asked what he and his family were preparing for. As a kid, he’d probably given him “the look” many times himself.
After reaching home, he charged inside, finding Jess right there pacing in the living room, her face wrinkled beyond her thirty-seven years. “Trevor, you don’t think this is a… what was that thing your dad was afraid of?”
“EMP, honey. And yes. That’s exactly what this is.”
“What does that mean, we call 9-1-1?”
“Jess, there is nobody to call. We have to take care of ourselves and the kids. First, we pick them up and get to the country as quickly as we can.”
“The country? What do we do there?”
“It’s the homestead my dad was building,” he said, digging his holstered Sig Sauer out of a living room drawer and sticking it into his pocket. “I’ll explain everything on the way there. First, we need to get the kids from school!”
“What do you need that for,” she asked, pointing at his pistol as if it could be a bazooka. “Has anybody threatened us?”
He stepped to his wife, hands on her wildly tossed hair. “Look, Jess. I don’t mean to panic you. But after this thing gets ugly, everybody is going to be a threat.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we won’t know who to trust—except each other.”
Jess turned away, shaking her head slowly, eyes huge. This was the look she got whenever bad news was delivered to her.
He pulled her into a reluctant hug, tried to caress her face. It was cold, and she’d gone sheet white. “Honey, we really have to hold it together for the kids. Do you understand that?”
She gave him a silent nod, eyes still wide and breath still heavy.
“Okay, let’s pack and get out of here. For now, the school is probably a safe place for them to be, maybe a little chaotic, but they should be fine, and most importantly, we need to get to them before that changes and the world gets pushed into anarchy.”
Jess swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Okay. Keep it together for the kids. We have to stay calm, not go crazy.” She was talking to herself, really, providing a much-needed pep talk.
“What I need from you, honey, is to get that bag in the basement we’ve prepared.”
“The bug-out bag?”
“That’s righ
t,” he said. “That should give us all the basics we need.”
With the school only a few miles away, the couple raced there, backpacks in tow. They drew strange looks from the drivers and pedestrians along the way. It must have looked weird to have two people walking with purpose while the rest of the world stewed in confusion.
Traffic congestion had doubled in the time it took them to pack and take off. People were growing angrier and less patient. A few loud screams even echoed from the distance, bringing more worry to Jess’s already-panicked eyes.
Hatfield grabbed his wife’s hand, hoping to ease her down. But the mild tremor in her hand threatened to make him as nervous as she was. “We can get through,” he told her. “Just remember that. As long as we have each other, we’re fine.”
Biting her upper lip, Jess managed to nod. “Of course.”
But blocks ahead, as they approached the downtown area, flames shot into the sky as entire buildings were rocked by an explosion.
Screams from all around filled the air; pedestrians turned and stared in horror. “My God, no! No! No!” Jess sobbed.
“It’s okay,” Hatfield said. “Whatever that was only got a part of the school.” His words may have been calm, but his voice and demeanor weren’t. He picked up the pace, scurrying toward the building, hoping it wasn’t too late.
5
As they neared Roosevelt Middle School, they were dragged off course by a series of screeches just ahead and a round of gunshots. A blur of bodies raced toward them, but Hatfield grabbed his wife and yanked her behind a dumpster before the image could become clear.
They held their position, motionless. Jess clung to him, her breath hard on his face, her body throbbing. He lifted a finger and put it to his lips, signaling “quiet” as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun. As silently as he could, he pulled back his Sig Sauer’s hammer.
Jess swallowed a gasp, shaking her head in disbelief. She mouthed the words, no, no, no! Having a gun in the house had always filled her with uneasiness, and the feeling only faded when her husband assured her he’d probably never have to use it.
How We Survive: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 2