CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013

by Matthew Mather

  My fears proved unfounded when we got to Ninth. The footprints and drag marks became hopelessly muddled with other foot traffic. Any hope of following further evaporated into the swirling snow.

  Chuck stood fuming, looking up and down the street.

  Dark shadows materialized out of the white to trudge past us, walking along the ravine formed by the edge of the buildings where the snowbanks ended. Like ships passing in the night. I nodded to one of them but got no response.

  “Up to Penn Station?” I asked, knocking my boots together and shivering. I wanted to bring some news home to Lauren. I felt guilty.

  Giving up on his chase, Chuck nodded, and we began climbing, hand over foot, up the steep slope of the snowbank edging Ninth Avenue. I followed him to the top, and we slid down the other side into barely ankle-deep snow.

  In the distance, a gleam of headlights cut through the sleet of snow, and a low rumble vibrated up through my boots. At least they’re still plowing. We headed uptown toward the oncoming lights.

  “Are you so crazy about your stuff that you’d really risk our lives?” I asked Chuck, walking in step beside him.

  “It’s risking our lives not to be crazy about guarding our stuff.”

  “Come on. The power came back on in less than a day on Christmas Eve, and even after Sandy most of New York was back up in a few days. There’s not been any flooding or wind, just this snow.”

  “People don’t learn.” Chuck looked down and angrily shook his head. “Critical systems are all interlinked, and this isn’t just a physical storm.”

  “So what, you think it’ll take a week? Even most of Long Island—”

  “Something is happening here that’s never happened before.” He stopped and looked at me.

  “You’re always being dramatic. The power will probably be back on in a few hours.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Aurora Test?” asked Chuck, continuing to walk.

  I shook my head.

  “In 2007, Idaho National Labs conducted a cyberattack exercise with the Department of Energy. They sent a 21-line package of software code from a thousand miles away, embedded as a virus in an email, into a DOE facility that caused an electrical generator to self-destruct by rapidly recycling its circuit breakers.”

  “So get a new generator.”

  “You can’t buy these at Walmart. They’re several stories high, weigh hundreds of tons, and take months to build.”

  “Didn’t they fix the problem once they found it?”

  “Not really. Most of it’s legacy equipment, built before the internet existed, and it’s nearly irreplaceable.”

  “If they built them before the internet, shouldn’t they be immune from it?”

  “They used to be, but someone had the bright idea of saving money by rewiring them using internet controls, just like our building. It saves money, but now everything can be attacked via the internet.”

  He sighed. “It gets worse.”

  The snow plow reached us, so we stepped to the side, climbing up onto the snowbank while it growled past. A small light above the head of the driver illuminated the inside of his cabin through windows streaked with melting snow. He was hunched over, wearing a mask, and I glimpsed a picture pinned to his dash that I imagined to be of his family, a family he was away from as he endlessly roamed the canyons of New York.

  The plow rumbled off into the distance.

  “How does it get worse?”

  “The US doesn’t even make generators like that anymore.”

  “So who does?”

  Chuck trudged on in silence.

  “Guess.”

  I could see where this was going.

  “China?”

  “Yep.”

  “So they can wreck them remotely, and we have no way of getting replacements.”

  “They may have already wrecked them. Maybe no electrical grid for months or years. And it gets even worse.”

  Now I sighed.

  “It’s more or less the same story for all critical systems—water, dams, nuclear reactors, transport and shipping, food, emergency and government services, even the military. Tell me something that isn’t wired into the internet and uses Chinese parts.”

  “Wouldn’t they say the same about us from their point of view? I mean, if they attack us, wouldn’t we just do the same to them? Mutually assured cyber destruction?”

  “Not the same. We’re the most wired country on Earth. Everything is accessible via the internet. In China, a lot of power plants and water systems still operate by switches and levers.”

  “We view open access to the internet as a fundamental freedom, but other countries don’t see it that way. They have limited access and control. We’re totally vulnerable to cyberattack on a massive scale, but they’re much less exposed.”

  “But then we would just bomb them, right? Who would risk that?”

  “Not so simple. How do you figure out who attacked? Half the world has an ax to grind with America for one reason or another. We can’t bomb everyone.”

  “Sort of been the plan up until now, no?”

  Chuck laughed. “I do like the way you keep your sense of humor.”

  We reached Thirty-First Street and began to battle our way along the block to get to the back entrance of Penn Station. The whole distance we were hugging the concrete walls of the huge New York City Post Office building, at first along the long line of shipping bay doors, and then along the side of a low wall that formed the edge of a kind of protective moat around the building. The guard shack halfway along the length of the building was empty, but there were lights shining in many of the windows.

  “What’s that saying?” I asked, staring up into one of the windows as we passed. The top of the Empire State Building loomed darkly over Madison Square Garden as we approached.

  “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor…I dunno. I think it’s written on the front. We can go have a look if you want.”

  “I think the mail may be late today,” I replied. “I don’t remember cyberattack on that list.”

  Chuck laughed, and we kept walking.

  Climbing on top of the snowbank at the edge of Eighth, we had our first glimpse of what emergency services had managed to accomplish so far. My heart sank. Hundreds of people were crowded outside the back entrance to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, with masses more visible in the distance down Thirty-First.

  “My God, so many already?”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” replied Chuck. “People are scared, want to know what’s going on.”

  With a few steps we jumped down the snow bank, crossed Eighth, and climbed the other side to join the teeming crowd. As we picked our way through, we heard murmurs of war and bombings from the huddled groups surrounding us. National Guardsmen were manning the entrances, trying to bring some order to the chaos. A line snaked up Eighth under the protection of some scaffolding and hastily erected plastic sheets to stop the wind. Gray blankets with Red Cross symbols on them were being handed out to people waiting.

  Immediately around the entrance was an angry mob, some yelling and crying, all wanting to get in. The Guardsmen stood their ground and kept shaking their heads, pointing to the back of the line that was getting longer even as we stood and watched. Chuck stood for a few moments on the periphery and then waded in, dragging me along behind him.

  “Sorry, sir, back of the line,” said a young Guardsman, holding up his hand to us and pointing toward Eighth.

  “We don’t want to go inside,” said Chuck loudly. “Are we at war?”

  “We are not at war, sir.”

  “So we’re not bombing anyone?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir.”

  “Would you tell me if we were?”

  The Guardsman sighed and looked down the line of people.

  “All I know is that help is coming soon, the power should be back on soon, and you need to get inside and stay warm and safe.” He looked into Chuck’s eyes and added, “Sir.”r />
  Chuck moved to get closer, and the Guardsman stiffened up, clutching his M16.

  “Mask, sir,” he said, nodding up toward a sign warning of bird flu.

  “Sorry,” mumbled Chuck, pulling out some masks he’d brought from his stash.

  He gave me one, and I put it on.

  “So is this bird flu thing real?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you don’t know much more than me, do you?”

  The Guardsman’s shoulders sagged. “Stay warm and safe, sir, and please back away.”

  “There’s nobody I could speak to inside that knows anything more?”

  He shook his head, and his expression softened. “You could wait in line, but it’s a mess in there.”

  This kid looked like he’d had enough already.

  “Thanks,” said Chuck sympathetically. “I bet you wish you were with your family.”

  He blinked and looked skywards. “That’s the truth. I hope to God they’re okay.”

  “How did they call you up?” asked Chuck. “Phones are down, no internet—”

  “I was on active duty. We didn’t manage to reach many when the order came in. And coordinating is hell—some land-based radio but not much else.”

  “Should we come back tomorrow, see what the news is?”

  “You can try, sir.”

  “Did you hear of any people being shipped in from Newark Airport?” I said.

  He looked at me. A crowd of people began to press in against us, pushing us into him.

  “Back!” he yelled, his face hardening again as he shoved against us with his M16.

  He looked at me and shook his head before yelling again, “Back, goddamn it!”

  Chuck grabbed me from behind and pulled me away.

  “Come on, I think it’s time we got out of here.”

  3:40 p.m.

  “WHICH ONE?”

  “The black one, five rows up.”

  I pointed up into the sky. “That one?”

  It was getting dark and snowing harder, nearing blizzard conditions again. We’d braved nearly thirty blocks to get to Chuck’s parking garage in the Meatpacking District. The city was mostly deserted at the street level, except when we’d passed the fancy Hotel Gansevoort on Ninth.

  It was still lit up like a Christmas tree, and there was a huge crowd of people outside, demanding entrance. Several large doormen were standing and shaking their heads. Everyone was yelling. We passed by and tried to ignore it.

  “No, the one next to that one,” said Chuck.

  I squinted. “Ah, wow, now that is one nice truck. Too bad it’s fifty feet off the ground.”

  It was a vertical parking garage, right at the corner of Gansevoort and Tenth at the entrance to the West Side Highway. The perfect location to make a quick getaway from New York, assuming your getaway car wasn’t suspended in space five stories up.

  Chuck growled and swore again.

  “I told those guys to bring my truck down to the first level.”

  The parking structure was a set of open platforms—each platform just big enough to hold a car—suspended between vertical metal beams that closely stacked the cars against the wall of the building behind it. Each set of vertical metal beams had hydraulically-operated lifts inside of them that could raise and lower the platforms to let operators get the cars off, but of course the lift controls needed power to operate.

  “Nobody’s going to come now. Couldn’t we hot-wire a different truck? Something on the road?”

  The snow had completely covered all the cars at ground level.

  “No way, we need my truck. Nothing else is going to get us out of here, not with all this snow and ice.”

  He looked longingly up into the falling snow at his baby.

  “Wolf ’94 XD 110, under armor, snorkel, heavy-duty winch, thirty-six-inch IROK Radial snow tires—”

  “It is pretty,” I agreed. “Pretty damn high up. Even if we got it down, do you think it could climb that snowbank?”

  I pointed toward the eight-foot-high pile of snow and ice lining Tenth Avenue. It was the only obstacle to getting onto the West Side Highway from the garage lot, but it was a formidable one.

  He shrugged. “One way or the other. But we can’t just crash it down from up there. Not even the Wolf could survive a drop like that.”

  “We better get going.” The temperature had dropped, and I was shivering hard. “Let’s think about it. At least somebody didn’t steal it.”

  Chuck stood and stared at his truck a while longer and then nodded and turned around. We scrambled our way out of the parking lot and began back up Ninth. The crowd outside the Gansevoort had mostly dispersed with the coming darkness.

  As we passed, several of the people still outside watched us closely, clearly interested in the backpacks we were carrying. Chuck reached into the pocket of his parka, gripping his .38, and stared back at them, but nothing happened. Breathing a sigh of relief as we left them behind, we passed the Apple Store. All the windows were broken, and snow had swept inside.

  “A funny time to decide you needed a new iPad,” I laughed.

  Then I noticed something else.

  “This snow’s getting deep.”

  We were walking right up the middle of Ninth Avenue. All day we’d been walking up and down the big avenues, and the plows had been rumbling back and forth. The snow hadn’t gotten more than ankle deep on the plowed streets.

  We were now up to our calves.

  I squinted into the gathering darkness but couldn’t see any headlights coming our way.

  “If they’ve stopped plowing, city services must be totally screwed,” observed Chuck. “This is going to get ugly.”

  “Maybe it’s just a slowdown?”

  “Maybe,” replied Chuck without conviction.

  We decided we better grab what we could from Chuck’s restaurants before somebody else did, so we wound our way back, stopping at the closest one near our place. We packed our bags with as much as we could, and when we got back outside it was near pitch black.

  Slogging the rest of the way back up to Twenty-Fourth, I had visions of the keys not working, of being trapped outside. The cold was unbelievable.

  We could die out here.

  My pace quickened.

  By the time Chuck was opening the back door to our complex I was totally frozen. Before Chuck could turn the lock, the door opened by itself, and Tony’s face appeared, smiling at us goofily.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you guys!”

  “Not as glad as we are to see you!”

  Chuck and I had our headlamps on, but Tony had been sitting in the dark.

  We asked him why.

  To not attract attention, he said, and we left it at that.

  Tony stayed behind to lock up and clean the hallway, telling us to get upstairs and that the girls were worried sick. In a jolly mood we began climbing the stairs, pulling open our layers of clothing and taking off our hats and gloves, enjoying the comparative warmth and the thought of a hot meal and coffee and a warm bed.

  Reaching the sixth floor, we stopped, and taking a deep breath, I opened the door. I expected to hear Luke come running, and I jumped into the hallway to surprise him.

  Instead, I was met by a mob of scared, unknown faces.

  A large homeless man was spread out on the couch outside my apartment door, and a mother and two young children cowered on the Borodins’ couch. At least a dozen more people I didn’t know were crowded into the hallway.

  A young man, wrapped in one of Richard’s expensive duvets, got up and extended his hand toward me, but Chuck appeared through the door and pointed his .38 right in the kid’s face.

  “What have you done with Susie and Lauren?”

  The kid held his hands up and gestured toward Chuck’s apartment.

  “Everything’s fine. They’re in there.”

  Behind us, Tony came charging up the stairs.

  “Wait, wait, I forgot!”

  Chuck was s
till pointing his gun at the kid’s face as Tony appeared in the doorway behind us, huffing and puffing. He reached out and put a hand on Chuck’s gun, lowering it.

  “I let these guys in.”

  “You did what?” yelled Chuck. “Tony, that is not your decision to make—”

  “No, it was my decision,” said Susie, appearing out of their apartment.

  She ran out and bear-hugged Chuck, and Lauren appeared out of the same doorway with Luke at her feet. She ran to embrace me as well.

  “I thought something had happened to you,” she whispered in my ear between happy sobs.

  “I’m fine, baby, I’m fine.”

  With a deep breath, she released me, and I leaned down to kiss Luke, who was hugging one of my legs.

  “We okay?” asked the kid, his hands still in the air.

  He looked like he’d had a rough time of it.

  “I guess so,” Chuck replied, putting his gun away. “What’s your name?”

  “Vince,” said the kid, reaching out to shake my hand. “Vince Indigo.”

  Day 5 – December 27

  9:00 a.m.

  SUNLIGHT STREAMED IN through the window. It was morning, but I had no idea what time. My phone was out of power, and it’d been years since I’d worn a wristwatch.

  Then it dawned on me—blue skies. I was staring out the window at blue skies.

  Lauren was curled up under the covers, with Luke wedged between us. Leaning over, I kissed her cheek and tried to pull my arm out from under her head.

  She sleepily protested.

  “Sorry, baby, I gotta get up,” I whispered.

  She pouted but let me go, and I swung out of bed, carefully tucking the covers back around the two of them. Shivering, I pulled on my stiff, cold jeans, put on a sweater, and quietly exited Chuck’s spare bedroom.

  It was our bedroom now.

  The generator was still purring reassuringly outside the window, but the small electric heaters running off it weren’t keeping out the cold very well.

  Even so, I admired the clear blue skies outside again.

  They were beautiful.