Next, he made a list of what supplies he should take with him. Think long haul, he reminded himself. Think worst-case scenario.
That wasn’t too difficult for him to do. As a lawyer he’d been taught to analyze a situation from every possible angle—defense, prosecution, judicial. Nothing was one-dimensional, and he needed to see this situation as completely as possible.
So he drew two lines down the next sheet and headed the first column One Week, the second One Month, and the third Indefinitely. If he had to guess, he figured their problems would last a while—but were they talking a year or five years? Or twenty? He didn’t know much about transformers, and he couldn’t research it with the Internet down. But he had glanced at Shelby’s notes—and the outlook wasn’t good.
Of course some things depended on what the president’s message had said. He pulled out another sheet of paper and began a list of questions.
How much of the United States has been affected?
Is it a global phenomenon?
What is the current situation in urban centers?
How will the legal and judicial systems continue until the power is restored?
His last question would not be most people’s first concern. They would be thinking about food, safety, and income—probably in that order. But Max understood that the legal system was what held their society together. Laws made it work. Without that framework, they would be transported back to the days of outlaws, cowboys, and Indians. And the judicial system supported the legal. Should the court system break down, they would have to resort to local law. That might be okay in a place like Abney, but how would it work in Houston? Or Philadelphia, Los Angeles, or DC?
He pushed aside his questions and pulled the sheet with the three columns toward him. He was halfway through the second column when there was a light knock on his door and Patrick stepped inside.
“I figured you would still be up.”
“And I figured you’d be home passed out.”
“Nah. Couldn’t sleep. Too much adrenaline.” Patrick pulled out a chair and sat down across from him. “Most folks are ignoring the curfew, in case you’re wondering. After the fire… well, you can’t exactly lock people up for helping.”
Max noticed Patrick had cleaned up somewhere. His face and hands were no longer covered with soot, though his clothes still carried the smell of smoke.
“We’ve got a problem,” Patrick said.
“You don’t say. No electricity? Fire downtown? Maybe you’re talking about the recent car thefts—”
“Okay, okay. We have several problems, but this is a new one, and I’m pretty sure it’s worse than the other things you’re worrying about.”
THIRTY-ONE
Max groaned and leaned back against his chair. Patrick waited, his arms crossed, the expression on his face grave.
“If it’s that bad, I suggest we break into my cookie stash.” He found the package of cookies at the back of his cabinet and brought it to the table with two glasses. “Would you like water or… water?”
Patrick grunted, but then he reached for one of the cookies.
Max pushed his papers to the side. “Talk,” he said. “What’s this about?”
“Tonight I saw two of the enlisted guys from our church.”
“Brian DeWitt and—”
“Gary Burch.”
“Both good guys.”
“They are, and they’ve both been recalled.”
“I don’t understand.” Max wasn’t sure why this was relevant to him, but he trusted Patrick. If he said it was important, then it was.
“DeWitt and Burch both had three-day passes. They weren’t supposed to report to Fort Hood until Monday morning. Tonight a WO1 shows up—”
“Warrant officer?”
“Correct. This guy shows up at their front doors and tells them they have three hours to get back to base.”
“Unusual.”
“I suppose drastic times calls for… unusual measures.” Patrick reached for another cookie. The sugar seemed to be calming him somewhat, though he still looked concerned.
“All right,” said Max. “They’re needed on base. That’s not so hard to imagine, especially given the severity of this situation.”
“That was the official message.”
“But there was more?” Max crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward to study his friend, sensing they were reaching the real reason that he’d stopped by.
“Unofficially the warrant officer admitted the base is powering up—some big deployment that will happen domestically.”
“Maybe they’re being sent to help regain control in the urban areas.”
“Possibly, but according to disaster plans, martial law should be implemented first by the Texas State Guard followed by the National Guard. The US military only becomes involved as a last resort.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at. Why is this a problem?”
“Because it shouldn’t be the troops who are doing this. Their movement suggests that there is a struggle going on between the feds and the state.”
Max sat back, glancing at his list of questions and trying to put the pieces together. Wasn’t it enough that they were without power, without additional food sources, and in need of medical supplies? His eyes hit on the page with questions.
How will the legal and judicial systems continue until the power is restored?
“Do you think someone is making a power grab?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think there’s a danger of invasion from foreign forces?”
“Maybe.”
Max picked up another cookie and took a bite, but the chocolate was suddenly bitter and unpleasant on his tongue. He washed it down with the rest of his water, stood up, and began to pace.
“If it’s a power grab, what you’re suggesting is that the foundation of our country is crumbling, less than three days after a natural catastrophe.”
“Didn’t the mayor tell you that she was suspicious of the president’s message?”
Max ignored that question. “On the other hand, you’re suggesting it’s possible we may have been or are in danger of being attacked by a foreign power that is probably struggling with the same issues we have.”
“Unless they aren’t.”
Max rubbed at his forehead as fatigue threatened to overpower him. When had he last slept? What time was it? And behind that, what would they face once the sun came up?
“Either scenario is hard for me to swallow, Patrick.”
“Because we’re the generation that has never known war—at least nothing that affected us domestically. But think of World War I and World War II. Both brought about a fundamental change stateside—rationing, blackouts, curfews. A domestic scenario is less difficult to imagine if you’ve actually served in the military. Trust me.”
“And you’re getting all of this from the fact that two guys we know have been called back to base?”
“They’re deploying… domestically. That much I’ve confirmed from three different sources.” Patrick ran his hand over the top of his head.
The crew cut reminded Max that his friend was former military. Many of his habits and even his way of thinking had been formed by his twenty years in the service. For the last five years he’d been a consultant to various security firms, so he knew danger when faced with it. If Patrick said there was a problem, there was.
“We’ve known that there are sleeper cells here,” Patrick added. “People who were placed here ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. They’ve assimilated into the culture.”
“And they’ll be affected the same as everyone else. They’re going to be looking for food and water.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It could be that they were waiting for an opportune moment—”
“A time when our infrastructure fell into chaos.”
“And if that’s the case, we have more to worry about than whether downtown Abney burns.”
THIRTY-TWO<
br />
Shelby opened her eyes to sunlight slanting through the window. Her first thought was of her current manuscript—what did she plan next for her characters? How could she make their lives pure misery before granting them a happy ending? It was Sunday, and she wouldn’t actually work today—but she did enjoy the first few minutes of daydream writing. She purposely avoided writing on weekends so she could attack her work with a fresh attitude first thing Monday morning.
Her gaze shifted to the clock.
No time.
No power.
The solar flare, and the fire, and Harold Evans dead because someone wanted his car.
She closed her eyes, longing to push it all from her mind, but that didn’t happen. More questions crowded into her thoughts, so she jumped out of bed to keep them from paralyzing her. Stumbling to the bathroom, she remembered that they had no water. Max had shown her how to place a garbage bag in the toilet, but as soon as she opened the lid she wished that she hadn’t.
Holding her breath, she took care of her toiletry needs in record time. Once in the kitchen, she grabbed a mug out of habit before remembering she had no way to make coffee. She stared at the coffeepot with longing. Her stove still worked, so she could boil water as Max had done—but she didn’t have the same fancy glass pot. What had he called it? A French press? She’d have to add that to her wish list. Peeking out the window, she stared over into Max’s yard to see if he had his camper stove going.
His truck was parked under the carport, but he wasn’t in the backyard. What time had he gone to bed?
Urgent problems first—she needed caffeine.
Maybe she could boil water and add grounds. Didn’t they call it campfire coffee? She tested the burner on her gas stove. One strike of a match, and the flame caught. Next she pulled out a pan and set it in the sink. But when she turned on the faucet, nothing happened. No water.
Carter had filled quite a few containers with water. They were sitting all over her kitchen counter. But should she use it for coffee?
Weighing the pros and cons, she finally turned off the burner and opened the refrigerator. What was left on her shelves wasn’t cold, but neither was it warm. The backpack she’d stuck on the bottom shelf looked ridiculous, but maybe it provided some degree of coolness for the insulin doses. She noted that Carter had finished the milk. She snatched a diet soda from the shelf. It wasn’t her breakfast of choice, but it would do.
She was halfway through the soda and rolling an apple back and forth across the table when Carter stumbled into the room.
“You going to eat that?”
“It’s all yours,” she said.
She tossed the apple to him and almost laughed when he caught it. How could some things feel so normal when the world had fallen apart?
Carter slumped into the chair across from her and bit into the apple. “Why does it smell so smoky in here?”
So she told him about the fire and the bucket brigade, but she didn’t mention the Daileys. She wanted to protect him from the harsh truths as long as she could, though that might not be much longer at the rate things were deteriorating.
“Our bathroom is gross,” Carter said.
“That it is, and the water is officially out. We’re down to what you put into containers. I never realized how important modern plumbing is to a household.”
“So what are we going to do? Build an outhouse?”
“We’ll check with our neighborhood coordinator. There’s supposed to be—”
“A red flag on the mailbox. I remember. Why wouldn’t they just make Max our neighborhood coordinator? He’s the smartest guy on the block.”
She suddenly remembered her late-night conversation with Max—the way he’d pleaded with her, the hurt in his eyes when she’d said no. She might be able to shield her son from some things, but he’d notice when Max wasn’t around.
So she walked across the room, put her soda can in the recycling bin—would they still be recycling?—and turned back toward Carter. “Max can’t be the neighborhood coordinator,” she said. “He’s going to check on his parents.”
“He’s leaving?”
“Not forever, just for… a while.”
Holding the apple core in his hand, Carter stared at her, openmouthed in surprise. He sat up straight and said, “Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
“Of course it does.”
“We’ll be okay without him.”
Shelby walked back across the kitchen and sat down next to her son. “We have always been okay, just the two of us.”
“He makes killer coffee, though.” Carter reached forward and ruffled her hair, something she would never have tolerated from another person on the planet.
Her son was like that—resilient. She should have known that he’d take the news better than she had. While she’d tried to appear nonchalant the night before, the thought of Max leaving filled her with dread. He’d become a cornerstone in their life, and maybe she should have never let that happen.
“There’s a lot I haven’t figured out, Carter. I don’t even have a watch. I keep fighting the urge to check my smartphone to see what time it is.”
“That’s an easy enough problem to fix.” He sauntered out of the room, his hair sticking straight up, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. When he returned he was holding a watch she had bought him the year before.
“You laughed when I gave you this.”
“Yup. I told you that no one needed a watch anymore. I guess I was wrong.”
“What are you going to use?”
Carter set another nearly identical watch on the table. “Remember? Usually you and Max coordinate gifts, but last year you apparently didn’t.”
Shelby did remember. Max had been at a law conference in Austin when he’d picked up the watch with a guitar imprinted beneath the glass. The neck of the guitar acted as the minute hand, and a star on the body of the guitar pointed toward the hour. Max’s gift had been “way cool” according to her son, while hers had been practical. Carter had been late multiple times that year, and both she and Max had come up with the same solution—give the boy a watch.
“What are we going to do about my meds, mom?”
“We’re good. I bought a thirty-day supply, and we already had two weeks.”
“The insurance approved that?”
“Not exactly.”
“So how much did a month’s worth cost?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How are we going to keep it refrigerated? What are we going to do when the supply is out? How am I going to eat right if there’s barely any food?”
“I don’t have the answers to all those questions, but I’m trying to think of something.”
Carter buried his head in his arms.
“It’s not that bad.”
“It is,” he mumbled. After a moment he raised his head and forced a smile. “I’m not naive, Mom. All those television shows you hate—they pretty much cover the collapse of society.”
“So I may be asking you what to do next.”
Carter groaned. The sound made Shelby laugh.
“Check your levels, find yourself something more to eat, and I’ll go change. We have a neighborhood meeting, followed by church at ten.”
“You might want to wash up.”
“I did that last night.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Okay. I’ll do it again.”
“And add a ball cap,” he called after her.
When she took a good look in the mirror, she understood why he’d suggested a ball cap. Had she actually gone to bed with soot and leaves in her hair? Her face and arms were still charcoal colored, and now that she thought about it, she smelled.
It had been less than forty-eight hours, and already she wanted to trade her right arm for a night at the Hyatt—with power, please.
Since the Hyatt wasn’t open, and it wasn’t near Abney either, she made do and managed to be ready to go in fifteen minutes.
“Record time,” Carter said as she pulled the backpack out of the fridge. “And why are you carrying that with us?”
“There could be thieves.”
“Looking for insulin?”
“You never know.” She tried to sound flippant, but she was thinking that the supplies in her backpack probably had as much trading power as little bars of gold.
THIRTY-THREE
Carter stood next to his mom, listening to Frank Kelton explain how to build a latrine. The man was wiry and old, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. Carter definitely wasn’t looking forward to digging a three-meter hole in the ground. He wasn’t the best at metric conversion, but wasn’t that around nine feet? How were they going to dig a hole that deep? With shovels?
He couldn’t imagine how long that would take, but anything would be better than the current situation in their bathroom.
Someone at the back hollered out a question the minute Frank paused. “Does everyone need to build one of these?”
“No. Our goal is to build one for every five houses.”
There had to be forty people who had shown up for the meeting. Now all of them were talking at once.
“Look, folks. We don’t have the supplies—”
“What supplies do we need?”
“Something to sit on when you’re using the… facility. Lumber to build a frame that provides some sort of privacy. Are you going to be satisfied with a hole in the ground? Or do you want to have something where you can close the door?”
“We could just put up a sheet,” said an older woman who sat on a contraption that converted from a walker to a chair. “A sheet works fine, especially in the summer.”
“That’s a great idea, unless it’s raining. We have enough lumber and tarps to make coverings for one latrine for every five houses. Now look, folks, you’re free to use whatever supplies you can find, but it’s going to take several people per latrine to get this done. Our neighborhood group covers this single block of Kaufman, from Third to Fourth Street. There are ten houses on each side, so we’ll put latrines behind the third and eighth houses on each side. I’ve already spoken with the homeowners—”
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