He turned, trying to read the face of this man whose name he couldn’t recall. “We haven’t heard anything. We just came to get Justin and Tami. You guys headed out of the city?”
The man wrinkled his brow. “Out of the city? No, we’re just making sure little Erica is okay. We figured something must have happened to the buses. This power outage was bad enough we’ve got this to deal with,” he said, indicating the fire blazing from the school’s windows.”
“Look, you can take this as seriously as you want you, but I mean it. This is no power outage. That explosion was not something that happens in a power outage. It’s only a matter of time before the whole grid gets disabled—if it hasn’t happened already—and all of the basic functions and society—”
The guy sent Hatfield a slack stare. Once again, it was that look. The one he never wanted to see again. He wondered for a second if he should even bother warning people, but it would tear into his conscience to know he’d had a chance to help people make it through but didn’t because he feared being labeled a lunatic. So he kept on. “It’s very important you get out of the city. That’s all I’m going to say. Relying on power coming back soon—or ever—would be a big mistake.”
The man gave Hatfield a warm pat on the shoulder and a smile like the one you give a four-year-old when he struggles to tie his shoe. “I hope everything works out for you and your family.”
The crowd had grown larger, and a murmur fell over them. Jess’s grip on his arms nearly cut off his circulation, and her eyes were alert. Hatfield struggled to make out the snippets of gossip floating through. All he could catch was the word “terrorist.”
The murmur faded as all eyes aimed at the school’s front door, fixed on a silhouette standing at the top of the steps. “Please don’t panic. The National Guard will be here soon to help those trapped.”
The words “National Guard” and “trapped” incited gasps and shrieks. Jess buried her head under her husband’s chin, sobbing a chain of words he couldn’t make out. She was praying, wailing, crying in horror at the same time. He stroked her hair gently, scanning the building for a way in or a way out. Relying on government help didn’t seem like a great idea.
Another hand-rung siren wailed half a block away from behind the crowd, dragging everybody’s attention away from the school. “Please step away from the building!” a man yelled. He was a well-built man clad in bright-yellow pants and boots.
Some in the crowd audibly sighed; others gasped. There was scattered applause and relieved calls of “thank God.”
Behind him, a large group of firemen arrived on foot, moving quickly but clumsily as many of them were still scrambling into their uniforms. Some seemed puzzled about their duties, staring at the building mouth agape.
They dragged a giant hose behind them as a few of them hefted large, rusted equipment on a pair of bicycles.
The bikes tumbled to the ground after taking a sharp corner.
Behind them, a group of uniformed cops arrived, also on foot. Their winded leader lagged behind them, older and wearing a slightly different uniform, still struggling into a navy-blue jacket.
Shortly after, an argument broke out between the two factions. Cops against firemen, patrol officers against the police leader. The ugly mess seemed on the verge of bubbling into a brawl when the new group arrived.
They had emerged in uniform—also on foot. The dress suggested they were the National Guard, but nothing else about them did. There was a sloppiness to their motions, their handling of weaponry, their symmetry that seemed off-kilter. Hatfield stared, shaking his head. “No grid,” he said to himself. The absence of a grid meant the absence of central leadership. Nothing was in sync. Nothing worked.
Within minutes a member of the guard began screaming at the fire captain, and yet another heated confrontation emerged.
The crowd gawked as the murmurs returned. Soon many were screaming at the various government officials, urging them into the building. But this only sparked more shouting, more heated insults, more chaos.
Jess stared at the anarchy, mouth open, head shaking.
He heard a snip from a woman in front of him; her neck craned to watch the ineptitude unfold. “The kids are dying, and this is the best they can do?”
“There’s no grid,” Hatfield said.
“No grid? What does that mean?”
“There’s no infrastructure. It’s like a body with a scrambled brain. Everything’s still there, but it can’t function. It can’t work.”
A loud shatter of glass happened off to the side. The crowd had broken a window, easing themselves inside. The figure on the stairs shouted something, but his words were smothered by wails and cries.
Soon a momentum had overtaken the crowd, with all bodies headed toward the window and fighting inside. Hatfield spotted a trace of hope in his wife’s eyes as they followed. As they reached the window, they could hear the desperate screams of kids and the roar of flames. Their vision was masked by smoke.
One by one, people covered their faces with whatever was available—handkerchiefs, purses, their shirts—then ducked inside the window, mindful of the shards of glass at all sides of the opening.
The figure on the steps was louder now, voice hoarse and angry. But his words couldn’t rise above the crowd’s grunts of protest. And nobody was listening anyway.
Jess arched her body back into a gymnast’s pose, lightly scraping her forehead on a dangling shard as she limboed her way through. Her husband followed, his larger body demanding a bigger struggle to get inside. Hands covering his head, he angled through, enduring a bump on his knee and a rougher bump on his elbow.
His wife pulled her sweater over her mouth, stooped low to avoid smoke. Hatfield tried a similar move, yanking off his sweatshirt altogether and pressing it against his face.
Within a few steps, they were lost, their range of vision limited to fifteen, maybe twenty inches ahead of them. Things were clearer as they ducked low, but there was nothing to see but the feet of those ahead of them.
There was nothing to hear but coughs and the distant screams of children, gaining volume every second. With a tight grip on his wife’s hand as they edged forward, Hatfield felt that as long as they were following the screams, they were moving in the right direction. This was the closest he could come to guidance.
After moving through a hallway, the line ahead of them stalled. It seemed a dead-end was reached, with nobody able to push farther. His wife’s grip on his arm tightened.
Unable to see much beyond the body of the petite lady just in front of them, Hatfield arched his head, waving away smoke in an effort to clear his vision. But it didn’t work. In fact, the smoke seemed to intensify. There was more coughing, gasping, cries for help. A loud bang could be heard ahead of them. That sounded less lethal than the explosions, more like a fist meeting hollow steel. More pounding followed, and the line surged ahead with an almost violent force.
Not sure where things were going, the couple moved along with the group as the shouts, wails, and sobs in the distance intensified. Within seconds, Hatfield could see what had happened. Someone had pounded open the doors to the gymnasium, revealing an arena full of young people, their voices louder, more desperate, more frightened than ever.
The man from the steps tried once again to keep order, but things were spiraling out of control. Hatfield couldn’t yet see him, but he heard his garbled voice smothered by the frenzied crowd.
They found a tangled mass of bodies, some crouching—as they were probably instructed to do to avoid smoke inhalation—others leaping to their feet, caught in a mad scramble for their parents. Finding Tami and Justin would not be easy.
“Do them see them?” Jess asked, her voice shaky with desperation.
Hatfield shook his head, scanning the place more as the smoke began to clear.
The man from the steps was now close enough to make out. “Please!” he shouted, his hoarse words barely rising above the bedlam. “We ask that you r
emain in the gym until you are given the all-clear from the authorities! It has been determined that the streets have become unsafe! Please, I repeat—”
With a grunt, the voice thudded to the floor, probably steamrolled by the mass of motion. The order to stay put seemed to urge everyone into more anxiety, crazier shuffling around. Parents searched for their kids, often kneeling to check fallen bodies, wondering if the wounded child was theirs.
A gasp came from Hatfield’s side—from Jess, her tumbling body inadvertently dragging him the floor. They landed in an awkward embrace, her elbow crashing against his nose.
She had tripped over a body below that now tussled back to motion. “I’m so sorry!” Jess yelled to the man as he shoved himself back to his feet.
Turning to her husband, her mouth flew open when she saw his face. “My God, are you okay?”
Hatfield brought a hand to his face, finding blood gushing from his nose. “Didn’t even notice that till now,” he said.
“All that adrenaline,” she said. “You better stop that flow. It’s pretty heavy.” She pulled up his shirt, pressing it hard against the wound, the pain now arriving. “I think that was an elbow, honey. I am so, so—” Her gaze drifted to the crowd, eyes giant, face exploding with relief. “Justin!”
Hatfield turned, watching his son knife through bigger bodies, his face red and swollen. He yelled something that couldn’t be heard over the din. But he seemed to be saying, “I can’t find Tami!”
The couple sprang to their feet, pressing through the mass to envelop him in a hug.
“She was under the bleachers a while ago!” he went on. “But she wasn’t there when I checked!”
Jess’s hand came to her mouth as she scanned the crowd, positioning herself between her husband and her son. The guys did their best to shield her as they moved forward, but there was no order or design to the clash of people. They shoved, elbowed, kneed their way through and stumbled hard against other bodies, often landing in a pile.
“I can’t see her anywhere!” Hatfield’s wife cried, combating a noise so loud she had to scream directly into his ear to be heard. An idea came to him—not a great one, but they were out options. “Come here!” he said, turning her away and gripping her waist. He tugged her up until she landed on his shoulders, then held her legs.
But with no free hand, his bloody nose couldn’t be plugged. He tried to lift his left hand to raise his shirt to it, but the tide of bodies around him had shifted enough to send him tumbling to the floor, bringing with him Jess and a host of others. “You okay?” he asked his wife, unable to see her through the clump.
No answer. With Justin’s help, he cleared out a lane to see her pointing fifteen, maybe twenty feet ahead of them. She turned to him, struggling for words. “That’s her!”
“Where? I don’t see anybody?”
But he was looking in the wrong place, scanning those on foot. She stabbed her finger downward, emphasizing the floor. Finding a girl of fifteen splayed in front of the bleachers, the three of them raced forward.
They knelt at her side, trying to nudge her back to life. “Tami!” Are you okay, honey?”
She turned quickly, eyes very much awake and alert, but with her teeth clenched in a pained grimace. “My arm!” she screamed. “I hurt it really bad!”
Hatfield lightly touched it, but Jess took his wrist and moved him away. “Come on, honey. Who’s the nurse here?”
“Sorry.”
With a slow, cautious touch, she pressed it along various points. “Besides,” she said to her husband, “you need a free hand to stop that nose from bleeding.”
He lifted his shirt and clamped the bleeding again, watching his daughter’s face. He’d never seen agony like that from either of his kids. He looked up to Justin to see him holding her uninjured hand. Probably the first time they’d ever done that voluntarily.
“Does that feel tender?” Jess asked, pressing against the muscle.
She nodded, sucking air into her teeth sharply.
“Can you ball your fist up, honey?”
Tami tried, but this only brought more pain. “Owww!”
“She’s got a broken wrist,” Jess said.
“Does she need to go see a doctor?” Justin asked, his face more worried than his father had ever seen it.
Jess raised her eyes to her husband as if weighing her words before speaking. “That’d be great if she could, but it may not be an option right now.”
“Why not?” he asked his mother.
His wife struggled for the right words, so Hatfield took the question. “We know you guys have been in here all day, so take our word for it. Things are getting chaotic out on the streets.
Jess asked, “You know of any place we can go that has some medical supplies we can use?”
“How soon do we need them?”
“What we need right now is to put ice on it. For the rest, the sooner, the better, but worst-case scenario, we need to get her there in the next few hours.”
“I know where we can get some ice!” Justin called, springing to his feet. “The cafeteria’s right across the hallway.”
Hatfield raised his daughter up to wobbly legs. “Let’s get her there. While we’re at it, we all might as well bug out of here!”
Justin cleared the way, with Hatfield close behind, holding Tami near his body so she didn’t get bumped and bruised too much along the way. Jess cradled her daughter’s face.
“Out of the way!” Justin yelled. “My sister needs to get out!”
The savage clash of those in the gym brought a scowl to Hatfield’s face. They seemed unmoved by the plight of a fifteen-year-old, tussling against her wounded body, jockeying through the sea of people, throwing elbows, fists and hips at grown-ups and kids alike in their path to get out.
The obnoxious man from the steps chimed in again. “Ladies and gentleman, I’m afraid I must insist you all remain here by order of the National Guard. Please close the doors, guys!”
The guards at the door tried to yank the doors shut, but a flood of bodies fought against it. A few slipped out, but most didn’t. When the doors clanked shut, a collective groan echoed throughout the gymnasium. Soon the groans turned into hisses and loudly-shouted obscenities.
The uniformed guards dragged everybody back, but the Hatfield family approached them. “Do you guys have any idea what you’re doing!” Hatfield yelled.
“I’m really sorry,” one guard answered. “It’s not up to me. I was given orders—”
“Not good enough!” he said, his gaze like granite. “My daughter needs medical attention, and if she doesn’t get it, you are going to answer for it. Not the person who gave you the orders. Not your commanding officer. I am going to find out who you are and make sure you regret it.”
The guard’s face wilted. “Yes, sir.” He eased the door open just beyond a crack. “If anybody asks, tell them you got through before they could—”
Hatfield kicked the door the rest of the way open, then followed his son down the hallway.
“This way!” Justin yelled, leading them to a closed door. The twelve-year-old tried to push it open. “I think it’s locked.”
Hatfield kicked it. Nothing. He tried a few more times. It didn’t open, but it gave way a little. “It’s not locked. They just put something against it.”
Justin and his father kicked it simultaneously a few times, finally getting it to open—not all the way, but enough to squeeze through one by one.
8
Once they got in there, the family was stunned by what they saw. A gathering of vagrants stared up at them, caught in the act of reaching into a large glass-doored refrigerator.
Hatfield looked back and saw they had placed a large machine at the door in a clumsy effort to barricade it. Then he took a second look at the vagrants. With tattered clothes and worn faces, they kept staring as if afraid of what would happen to them next.
“What do we do, Dad?” Justin asked.
Hatfield stepped forw
ard. “Look, guys, we’re not here to hurt anybody. We just need some ice, and then we’ll be on our way.”
In spite of his kind words, they scattered out of the way as he approached the freezer. Jess scooped up a handful of ice, placed it in a napkin, and wrapped it around her daughter’s wrist. “This will be enough for now,” she said. “But we’re going to need to get a cast on it soon.”
Looking at the urgency on his wife’s face and horror on his daughter’s, Hatfield’s mind spun in a million directions. A trip to the emergency room seemed impossible for the moment, maybe forever. He needed a new option.
Holding up her daughter’s wrist, Jess ripped a tablecloth from a nearby table, folding it in half and putting it around Tami’s wrist as a makeshift sling. She brought heavy eyes to her husband as if silently asking, “What are we going to do?”
He pondered more. “We need to find someplace, but we can’t do it on foot.”
“Do we have another choice?” Tami asked.
“So the minivan won’t work, right?” Jess asked.
“The make is too recent. Plus, it hasn’t been in storage.”
Tami started to sob, prompting the family to share a group hug.
The answer hit Hatfield. “The Hummer!”
“Did you leave that at work?” Justin asked.
“Yes, it’s in storage and has no electronics in it. All we have to do is get there. Once we get it, we can focus on covering more ground as we look for a place to go.”
They started to scramble from the cafeteria, but an eruption in the gym startled them. They heard more screaming, cries for mercy. They also heard the gym doors rattle open and a throng pouring into the hallway.
The vagrants raced to the door, setting up the barricade again.
“Guys, that’s not going to hold them. If my son and I could tear it down, you better believe it won’t hold a desperate mob.”
“They sound angry,” Jess said. “We better get out of here!”
The pounding at the door began immediately, getting louder and angrier with each passing second.
Justin called from behind. “There’s an open door in there!” he yelled, pointing into a closet. “Maybe it leads somewhere.”
How We Survive: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 4