CyberStorm final Mar 13 2013

by Matthew Mather

  After showing Sergeant Williams how to install the software, we’d asked him to get as many people as he could to start using it. The more people that were connected, the further messages could travel. Vince had also gone out to neighboring buildings with some memory chips and explained the procedure. Judging by all the incoming messages, Vince and Sergeant Williams had been busy.

  The mesh network had gone viral.

  Already hundreds of people had joined, with dozens more every hour. People were finding ways to charge their cell phones, whether with generators or solar cells or by digging out and starting cars. Someone posted a general broadcast message to everyone connected, explaining how to pull out a car battery and hot-wire it to charge phones.

  “Could you broadcast a message asking people in our area for some more pot?” I asked Vince. He nodded and pulled out his phone.

  “We can pick it up on the way back.”

  We were going back up to Penn, to bring in the worst of the wounded. Two of them were in need of critical care, beyond what we could provide. Tony was rigging up backpacks with harnesses attached to makeshift sleds we could pull through the snow, and I walked over to the basement stairs to see how he was doing.

  As I arrived at the stairs, he was just coming up, noisily pulling his cargo behind him. Luke had been there helping him, really just running around and arranging piles of empty water containers, but he loved being near Tony. Tony had him under one arm as he came up the stairs.

  “Emergency lights have finally given out,” he said as he saw me. He put Luke down and Pam came over to take him upstairs. “We better start saving the charge on the headlamps. Batteries are scarce.”

  I nodded and reached down to help him haul the sleds up. We slid them into the lobby.

  “You’re the best skier,” said Tony, picking up the harness-backpack he’d jury-rigged together, demonstrating how to use it. “I think you and I should do the hauling, and bring Vince along for backup.”

  Vince shrugged. “Sorry man, surfing is more my thing than skiing.”

  How does a kid from Louisiana, who goes to school in Boston, end up a surfer?

  I sighed. When I put my jeans on this morning, I had to do up my belt one notch tighter than usual. On the bright side, it looked like I was going to lose some of that weight Lauren had been bugging me about. On the other hand, I was hungry, starving in fact.

  Starving.

  With a sinking feeling I realized I may get firsthand experience of what starving really felt like.

  Tony, Vince, and I got dressed, while some of the EMTs dragged the sleds over to the two badly burned people we were taking up to Penn. Despite the muffled cries and whimpers from the injured, they began bundling them up against the cold and doing their best to secure them in the sleds.

  Opening the back door, we scampered our way up to the top of the snow piled outside. The sky was a flat gray, and it felt warm. It was amazing how quickly the body adjusted to the cold. Just two weeks ago I would have been complaining about this temperature, shivering, but now, with it hovering a few degrees above freezing, it felt almost tropical.

  Standing on the snow pile, our feet were even with the heads of the people standing inside the lobby. One person propped the door open, while the rest carefully pushed the sleds carrying the patients up the steep incline of the snow.

  It was awkward work, and each jolt of the sleds earned a cry of pain from their occupants.

  Soon we had our skis on and were heading down the middle of Twenty-Fourth in single file with Vince bringing up the rear. The two-lane ski and foot trails down the streets had become well worn, with openings cut into the snowbanks lining the streets.

  Our pace was quick.

  Rounding the corner of Ninth, we stopped to look down the street. The building on the corner of Ninth and Twenty-Third that had originally caught fire was now a burnt-out husk, but the fire still raged in buildings further down the avenue and around the corner onto Twenty-Second. Thick, black smoke smudged the gray sky.

  Continuing onwards along Twenty-Fourth, the foot traffic became steadily heavier, with people going in all directions, dragging and carrying what they could.

  The trash that I’d first noticed appearing two days ago had now become heaped along the edges of the street, and with the warmer weather each breath of wind brought the reek of human excrement that was seeping up through the melting snow. At the larger heaps of trash near the intersections, rats competed with gangs of human scavengers, combing through the garbage, searching for food.

  As if in a trance, I slid through this landscape of urban decay, watching people, their faces, inspecting their bags, fascinated with the things they’d decided to carry: a chair here, a bag of books there. Someone was carrying a golden birdcage in the distance.

  Peering in through the smashed windowpanes of shops, I saw people huddled inside around oil barrels with fires, smoke pouring out of the windows, blackening the sides of buildings. Despite it all, it was mostly quiet, just the soft shuffle of feet on snow and the hushed muttering of the displaced.

  “Hold on a second!”

  Looking back over my left shoulder, as we rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue to start the trek up to Penn, I saw Vince crouched at the side of the intersection next to a pile of garbage bags, using his phone to take a picture of someone sitting there.

  What is he doing?

  This wasn’t the time to start fooling around. I slackened my pace slightly, not wanting to leave him behind. In a few seconds he was back on the trail with us, jogging to catch up and then running ahead of us and darting off into the snow at the side of the street again. Poking through some bags, and not finding what he was looking for, he ran back to walk beside me.

  “That guy back there was dead,” he explained, out of breath.

  He began fiddling with his phone, typing something, while he walked in step with me.

  There are going to be a lot of dead people, and if they’re dead, there’s nothing we can do for them anymore.

  Unimpressed, I didn’t say anything.

  “We should be making a record of what happened. That could be somebody’s loved one,” continued Vince, finishing typing and putting his phone away. “I created a mesh address, connected to my laptop back at our place, for people to send pictures and add text and explanations of where and when and what. When all this is over, maybe we can help piece things together, bring some resolution.”

  Taking a deep breath, I realized I had it wrong. Maybe there was something we could still do for them if they were dead. We could give their loved ones some closure.

  “That’s a great idea. Could you send me the address?”

  “Already did.”

  Something else caught his eye, and he ran off.

  “Smart kid,” said Tony from behind me.

  Up ahead, the crowd around Penn Station was much larger than two days before.

  The snow was black and tramped down, covered in litter and waste, and thousands of people thronged the entranceways. Soldiers in fatigues had replaced the NYPD officers manning the barricades, their weapons plainly visible, with a sandbagged command post hiding heavier weaponry just behind.

  As we approached, a low murmur grew into a roar of voices, sirens, and shouted instructions over megaphones.

  Slowing up, we stopped and stared at the crowd.

  “No way we’re getting in there,” said Tony. “Maybe we should try Port Authority or head up to Grand Central or Javits?”

  “They’ll be just as bad.”

  Pulling out my phone, I had an idea.

  “I’ll text Sergeant Williams. Maybe he can send someone out.”

  While I sent my message, Vince and Tony detached our harnesses, checking on our passengers and explaining what we were doing. Within a few seconds of hitting the send button, before I’d even put the phone away in my pocket, it pinged an incoming message.

  “He’s sending someone out to us,” I said.

  This mesh netw
ork is a lifesaver.

  Tony looked up at me and nodded, adjusting the blankets on one of the sleds, whispering that someone was coming.

  Vince stood beside me.

  “Did you get any incoming messages about—” I began to ask, but was cut off by a shriek in the crowd just ahead of us.

  “Give me the bag, bitch!” yelled a large man, pulling a backpack away from a small Asian woman.

  The man’s blond hair was braided up in dirty dreadlocks, swinging around his head as he pulled and tugged. The woman clung desperately to one strap of a bag, and he dragged her through the dirty snow while pulling a handgun out of one pocket.

  The crowd dispersed around them.

  “I’m warning you,” he growled, pulling the bag with one hand and pointing the gun at her with the other.

  The woman looked up at him, screaming something in Korean or Chinese, but she let go, falling into the snow.

  “That’s my bag,” she wept in English, her head bowed. “It’s all I have.”

  “Goddamn chink bitch, I should shoot you right now.”

  Beside me, Tony stood up and pulled out his .38, holding it hidden between us. Glancing at him, I shook my head and put a hand out, holding him back. With my other hand I brought my phone up, thumbing the camera on, and took a picture.

  The man stared at me, smiling.

  “You like that?”

  I took another picture and clicked a few buttons.

  “No, I do not. I just took your picture and e-mailed it to the NYPD sergeant coming out here.”

  His smile evaporated, replaced by confusion.

  “There’s no phones working.”

  “On that you’re wrong, and what you’re doing is wrong.”

  His confusion turned to anger.

  “You defending this Chinese whore?”

  I wasn’t much for confrontation, and had never been in a fight in my life, but right was right. “Just because we’re going through a bad time is no excuse to start hurting people.”

  The man straightened up. He was a lot bigger than I’d thought.

  “You call this a bad time? Are you kidding me? This is the end of days, brother, and these Chinese bastards—”

  “What you’re doing isn’t going to help,” I said simply.

  “It’s going to help me,” he laughed.

  “People will know what you did. You committed a crime, and I’ve recorded it.” I held my phone up. “This will be over one day, and you’ll have to answer.”

  He laughed again.

  “With all this crap going on, you think someone will care that I stole a bag from some Chinese bitch?”

  “I do,” said Tony, still holding his weapon concealed. A small crowd had gathered around us.

  “Does anyone else here care about this bitch?” yelled the man, looking around at the crowd. Most people stared dumbly, but many nodded, agreeing with Tony.

  “It’s not right,” yelled someone from the back.

  “Give the lady her bag back,” said another person in the front.

  The man shook his head. “Screw all of you.”

  He began walking off, away from us, and Tony started to raise his weapon, but the man threw the bag back at the woman after grabbing a few things from it.

  “Let him go,” I said unsteadily, holding back Tony. I was shaking. “It’s not worth it.”

  Tony grunted, obviously not agreeing, but put his gun away just the same. The crowd began dispersing, with two people coming to help the woman up. Several people walked over to us.

  “Is your phone really working?” asked a teenage girl.

  “Sort of,” I replied, motioning toward Vince. “You’ll have to talk to him.”

  Within a few minutes, a large crowd had gathered around Vince. Most of them still had their phones, but they were uncharged. He started by explaining ways they could charge them, and then began taking out the memory chips from some of their phones to copy the mesh software onto them.

  “That was a good idea, taking that guy’s picture,” said Tony.

  We stood and watched Vince tutoring the crowd on mesh networks. He was like a cyber-Johnny Appleseed.

  “With no police, people think they can get away with anything,” said Tony. “Taking pictures might make them think twice.”

  “Maybe,” I sighed. “Better than nothing.”

  “Much better than nothing, and better than shooting each other.”

  In the mass of people near the Penn entrance barricade, I saw some commotion, and then Officer Romales’ face appeared, bobbing through the crowd toward us. In a minute he was pushing through the last of the crowd, with two other NYPD officers in tow. He was shaking his head.

  “We can’t take any more,” he said immediately.

  I motioned toward the sleds.

  “These people are from the fire last night. They’re going to die if they don’t get help.”

  “A lot of goddamn people are dying,” muttered Romales, kneeling down beside one of the sleds, pulling back some of the blankets. Seeing the extent of the burns, he winced and closed his eyes, standing back up.

  “Okay, guys, grab these sleds,” he said to the other officers with him. Turning to me, he added, “We’ll take these two, but after this, no more. It’s as bad or worse inside there.”

  He pointed toward Madison Square Garden.

  “Understand?”

  I nodded. Is it that bad already?

  “One more thing,” he said as he turned to leave. “That guy Paul you brought in?”

  I nodded.

  “His brother died last night of his injuries, and we may have to let Paul go.”

  “Let him go?” I remembered Sergeant Williams’s heads-up, but I still couldn’t believe it.

  Romales shrugged. “They released all the medium-security prisons today. We got nowhere to keep them all. We’re keeping everyone we bring in for a day or two, taking statements, but we need to let them go until all this is over.”

  Rubbing my face, I looked skywards.

  My God, if Paul’s brother died, and they let him go—

  “When?”

  “Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next,” said Romales, disappearing into the crowd.

  I watched him go, and a sinking feeling settled into my hungry stomach.

  “You okay?”

  It was Vince. The crowd around us was gone. He was finished with his mesh network lessons.

  “Not really.”

  Tony heard what Romales had said as well, and I could see him gripping the .38 in his pocket. Vince watched the two of us silently for a moment.

  “Just before that guy attacked the girl, you were asking me a question, if I had any incoming messages from somewhere?”

  I laughed. “Ah, yes.”

  “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “Did anyone e-mail you saying they had some weed for us on the way back?”

  “Yep, I had two texts.”

  “Good, because I could use a joint about now.”

  Day 11 – January 2

  “TWO DAYS. MAYBE three.”

  “Only two days?”

  Chuck nodded.

  “And Ellarose can’t eat just anything,” added Susie, cradling her baby in her arms. “We’ve barely gotten her off formula.” She sighed and looked down. “Not that we had much choice.”

  I was going to mention breast-feeding, but it felt too awkward. Anyway, the calories would just be coming from Susie, and she was thin to begin with.

  Lauren noticed things missing yesterday when we were out and she’d gone downstairs to help Pam with the burn victims. We were in Chuck and Susie’s place doing an inventory now, sitting on their couch in the middle of their main room. Luke was running around with Chuck’s night-vision goggles on, squeaking and pointing at us.

  “Careful with those, Luke,” I said, gently taking them away from him.

  He tried to grab them back, so I rummaged around in the bag next to the couch for something else. Picking up
a cardboard tube, I gave it to him, and he immediately stuck it in his mouth.

  We had one of the cell phones turned on as a radio using an app Vince had found. While yesterday Manhattan had been down to two official radio stations still transmitting, we’d discovered that dozens of local stations had popped up, “pirate” ham radio stations that were being operated by local citizens, each broadcasting over a radius of a few blocks.

  “The entire country is in a shambles,” ranted the pirate radio announcer we were tuned into, JikeMike, in the background. “I say it ain’t just the Chinese, it’s those goddamn Russkies—”

  Chuck looked at me, bemused.

  “You know you just gave your son a flare, right?”

  “Come on, Mike, be more careful!” exclaimed Lauren, reaching past me to grab it from Luke.

  He shrieked his displeasure, but then he saw Tony in the hallway and ran off in his unstable gait toward him. Lauren looked at me and shook her head.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, still slightly in shock at what Chuck was telling me. I hadn’t really accepted that this could last, a part of me convinced that the power would come on at any moment and end the survival game we were playing. “So we only have two days of food left?”

  “—round all of ‘em up in the city, Iranians, Russkies, Chinese—hell, if they got yellow skin or wear towels on their heads we should just stick ‘em in a deep, dark hole until the lights come back on—”

  “Could we turn that off?” asked Susie, exasperated.

  Chuck reached down to the phone on the coffee table, swiping it, and it went silent.

  “About two days if we keep sharing out food with everyone on our floor, going the way we’ve been going,” continued Chuck.

  “We got”—he looked toward the ceiling, counting mentally—“thirty-eight people up here now, plus four on the ground floor in the infirmary. We can’t keep sharing what we have. People have been stealing from us. This isn’t going to be over in a day or two or three, no matter what they’re saying.”

  The official government radio station was still broadcasting that the New York Power Authority would have power back up to Con Edison and lower Manhattan in the next day, but nobody believed them anymore.