by Keith Taylor
The short drive back into town took Shepherd through the suburbs on the wealthier side of town, still and silent at this hour apart from the one kid on his bike who spent each morning violently attacking each home with rolled up copies of the local paper. He’d claim that he was ‘delivering’ them, but Shepherd would argue that he left far too many broken screen doors and startled pets in his wake for that to be the case. Shepherd had warned him once before that he was supposed to be gently tossing the papers, not pitching them like Cy Young. The kid had responded with “Who’s Cy Young?”
He cruised away from the leafy suburbs and into the quaint little town square, which was unsurprisingly just as quiet as the surrounding streets. Nothing in Willow Falls opened before 10AM on the Fourth, not even the local diner, but Shepherd had planned ahead. As he pulled up in front of the community hall he reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed his breakfast, a greasy paper bag holding a turkey sandwich with all the trimmings. He’d learned years earlier that it was a rookie mistake to go to a barbecue on an empty stomach, just as you should never step up to the plate without limbering up with a couple of practice swings. The smart move was to prime the engine with snacks throughout the day. Only then would your stomach be ready for the onslaught of hot dogs, watermelon and apple pie the afternoon would bring.
It wasn’t until Shepherd finished his sandwich and was nibbling at the pickle that the first signs of life began to emerge in the square. The traffic began to pick up, though ‘pick up’ in a town as small as Willow Falls meant there were two or three cars driving around the square rather than none at all. Shepherd watched the neon sign above the diner flicker alight, and as the perpetually cheerful owner, Pam, propped open the front door and waved at Shepherd the sound of her jukebox reached out across the square: Ragged Old Flag by Johnny Cash.
… Is this the first time you’ve been to our little town? I said, “I think it is.”...
Shepherd wiped his mouth with a napkin and reached for his keys. Just a few more quick errands to run and then he could drop the truck at home, hitch a ride out to the park and sink an ice cold beer or six. By the look of the cloudless sky it was a perfect day for a beer. Not that there was any other kind of day, of course.
… And she’s gettin’ threadbare, and she’s wearin’ thin, but she’s in good shape, for the shape she’s in...
He put the truck in gear with an unpleasant grinding noise, and reminded himself for the tenth time to book the Jeep in for a long overdue service. Four owners and three decades of daily use had left it in pretty rough shape, and Shepherd only had the know-how to fix about half the problems that came up. He could change a tire, switch out the oil and fix the collapsed suspension, but the inner workings of the ailing gearbox were a complete mystery. For all he knew it might as well be magical fairies shifting the gears.
… On second thought, I do like to brag, cause I’m mighty proud of that ragged old…
The jukebox suddenly fell silent and the neon sign above the diner flickered out. Huh, must be a blown transformer somewhere. It happened. The summer heat always took a harsh toll on the timeworn power network across the whole county, and it was a rare week that went by without a sudden cut somewhere. The outages usually lasted no more than a couple of hours, and the more resourceful people around these parts kept a small generator to plug the gaps and keep the freezer humming. No big deal.
Shepherd pulled out into the street, and as he turned to cross the square he noticed the traffic lights were out as well. Huh. That was unusual. Just a couple of years ago there’d been a hell of an accident two towns over during a power outage. Three people had died, one adult and two young children, when a truck T-boned a station wagon at an intersection in the middle of the night while the traffic lights were out. It shouldn’t have happened. If the drivers had a lick of sense they would have been paying closer attention whether or not there were lights to tell them it was safe to proceed, but after the accident the county had made a big fuss about installing small battery backups to every signal, so that even in the event of an outage they should keep going for a few hours.
The outage left Shepherd a little worried, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Something just niggled at the back of his mind, but before he could pick at it his concentration was broken. A voice was calling out to him.
“Would you believe it, Shep? Brand new off the lot just last month and it’s already crapping out on me. Damned Japanese junk.” At the side of the road an elderly man with a paunch, a plaid shirt and a hairpiece that looked like a dead raccoon stood staring down at the engine of his Prius. Ron, Shepherd’s next door neighbor and long time friend.
“We gotta go hybrid, we gotta go hybrid,” he said in a mocking feminine tone. “Kath wouldn’t let up about it, and now look at this crap.” He pointed at the engine, stuffed with sleek electronics gadgets and a block stamped with the words ‘Hybrid Synergy Drive’. “I don’t even know what the heck I’m looking at here. Not a carburetor in sight. You have any idea how these things work?”
Shepherd shook his head sympathetically. “Sorry, Ron, it’s all witchcraft to me. You want me to ride you home?”
Ron shook his head. “Nah, don’t trouble yourself, Shep, I gotta stop by the pharmacy anyway. I’ll call Kath and have her bring out the truck, and then I’m taking the keys back. She can drive this toy car if she wants to save the world so much. It’s like I keep telling her, I’m a old man. I’ve only got a few good years left in me, so let me enjoy my damned truck while I still can!”
Shepherd chuckled and gave a skeptical nod. “OK, you tell her that, Ron. I’ll see you down at the park and you can tell me how it went. Ten bucks says you’ll arrive in the Prius.” He pulled away, leaving Ron fuming over his dead car, and turned off the square and onto Main Street, the quarter mile stretch of retail and farm supply stores that led to his home.
As soon as he turned the corner he pulled the car to a halt. He gripped the steering wheel tight and felt a cold, sickening knot form in his stomach as he saw what was going on.
About two dozen cars sat idle on Main Street, just stopped in the middle of the road. Almost all of them had their hoods raised, and beside each one a driver stood staring at their dead vehicle with a look of confusion.
Shepherd knew right away what had happened. It had been bothering him since he’d seen the dead traffic lights. He’d figured he was just being paranoid and pushed the thought from his mind, but now…
He tapped the gas and approached the closest car, some late model SUV driven by Rose, a young woman he knew from the local drugstore. She turned and threw up her hands as he pulled up beside her. “Well how come yours is still rolling, Shep?”
“What happened here?” Shepherd asked, ignoring the question and struggling to keep his voice level and calm.
“I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine. It just stalled out on me, then I looked around and saw everyone else was the same.” She gestured to the line of cars in the street. “Everyone but you. What do you think could cause that?”
Shepherd felt his pulse quicken. “Beats me. Say, could I please borrow your cell? I just need to make a quick call, and mine’s out of juice.”
Rose nodded and reached into her purse, pulling out some oversized glossy brick of a smartphone. She frowned. “Huh, I’m getting no bars. That’s weird, I just spoke to my son a few minutes ago, and he came through clear as a bell.”
Shepherd tried his best to keep his expression neutral. That confirmed it. “Oh well, never mind. Thanks anyway. You have a good day, and I hope you get rolling soon.” Without another word he put the car in gear and pulled away. A moment later he reached down and cranked up his window, and as he passed the pack of stalled cars in the street he kept his eyes straight ahead. He didn’t want to meet the gaze of anyone he passed. He didn’t want to recognize them. Didn’t want to remember their faces.
He knew he couldn’t help them now.
He knew nobody could help the
m.
It was all over.
΅
:::3:::
SHEPHERD'S MIND RACED as he turned off Main Street and back into the suburbs towards his home, carefully keeping to a safe speed despite the urge to bury his foot in the floor. Stay calm, he thought. Don’t draw attention. Remember what Dad taught you. That’s what’ll keep you alive.
Shepherd had always been an easygoing type as a boy, happy to take each day as it came, and folks around town had always joked that he couldn’t possibly have been his father’s son. Hell, even Jim had had his doubts a time or two. His father, Howard Shepherd, had been the most intense sonofabitch ever to walk God’s Earth, a man so humorless and acerbic that he and Jim could both share the same nickname in a small town without confusion. If someone said “I bumped into Shep today” they didn’t have to specify which Shep they were talking about. It’d be obvious from their tone and expression. Nobody in the history of Campbell Country had ever talked about Shep Senior with a smile.
Howard Shepherd hadn’t been a bad guy, though. In fact he’d been a damned good father. He’d taught Jim well. He’d kept him well fed and healthy, and he’d never once raised a hand to his son if he didn’t deserve the lesson. That had been pretty damned progressive in the Eighties, back when it had still been pretty normal behavior for a father to take out a bad day on his kids, just for the hell of it, or dole out a light whupping after a few too many beers.
No, Shep Senior had been a good dad, and he’d done well to raise a son all on his own after Jim’s mom had passed. The only problem was that for as long as Jim could remember his father had been certain – unshakably certain, to the very depths of his bones – that the modern world would soon come to an end. He’d spent his entire adult life expecting the collapse of society and the horrors that would surely follow, and he’d allowed that pessimism to poison his every waking moment.
To Shep Senior every odd-looking contrail in the sky was the ‘Russkies’ launching their attack. Every public health scare was the first wave in a biochemical war. He’d once watched a display team parachute out of a military aircraft at the state fair, and he was so sure it was a bombing raid he bundled Jim into the truck and drove fifty miles in the other direction at high speed. It later turned out he’d been making his coffees extremely Irish since breakfast. He was lucky to get off without jail time when the traffic cop found the half empty bottle of bourbon rolling around under the seats.
Shep Senior had spent the final decade of his life trying to drum the same kind of fear into young Jim, without all that much success. Jim was just too easygoing to fear the future. He’d always taken the dire warnings in his stride, much to his father’s frustration, and never more so than when it came to nuclear war. After all, Jim had spent his childhood reading comic books that suggested that an A-bomb could give a man incredible superpowers if he stood at just the right distance from the blast, which Jim always thought sounded pretty cool. In any case, who in the world would bother to drop a bomb anywhere near Campbell County?
There was, however, one particular scenario that never failed to strike terror into Jim’s heart. He could laugh off the idea of nuclear war, chemical weapons and ground invasions. These were problems that would be faced by the folk far away in the big cities, but one threat left him with nightmares that lasted well into his teens.
An EMP. An electromagnetic pulse.
This had been the nightmare scenario for young Jim; the only way that the collapse of society could ever feel real. Shep Senior warned of a mysterious weapon that could essentially act as a permanent off switch for every electronic device in the country. The power grid would go dark everywhere from California to Maine. Every TV in the US would stop working. Every fridge would let its contents spoil. Every microwave would stop humming, and every AC unit would fall silent. Forever.
Neither Shep Senior nor Jim really understood the science behind such a weapon, but that didn’t matter. Just the idea that something like that could possibly be out there, just waiting for some evil bastard to push the button, was enough to scare the crap out of Jim, and it was a fear that only deepened and developed as he grew older and began to truly understand the ramifications.
As a kid the thought of the TV shutting off forever had been enough to shake Jim to his core. He couldn’t really relate to the idea of hospitals losing power and gas pumps running dry – those were concerns for grownups – but the fear that one day there would be no more episodes of his favorite cartoons was something he could imagine, and that alone was enough to terrify him. As he grew older, though, as he joined adult society and watched as that society became ever more complex and reliant on technology, it became clear that the lack of new TV shows would be little more than a minor annoyance.
The modern world was powered by computers. It ran on a bunch of ones and zeroes that were the only thing that kept this insanely complex machine running, and the tendrils ran deeper – far deeper – than electrical appliances and the fancy phones in our pockets.
Without power the US couldn’t feed itself. Couldn’t even come close. America’s farms produced more than enough to feed every man, woman and child comfortably, but it was all for nothing if that food couldn’t be delivered to those who needed it. It was all for nothing if the gas pumps stopped working, and if the trucks that hauled the food to market were stalled on the highway.
Without communications there’d be no way for farmers to know where to deliver their produce even if they had working vehicles, and without factories there’d be no way to process that food into the products most people even recognized as food. Hell, most people thought their meat came magically prepackaged in the freezer aisle. Who knows what they’d make of the carcass of a cow, or a fresh fish? Could the lazy, store-trained shoppers of today even figure out an unshucked ear of corn after a lifetime of having their food handed to them ready to eat, shrink wrapped with cooking instructions printed right there on the package?
And that was just the food. What about water? Medicine? Law enforcement? Banking? There were a million and one things to worry about, and that number only grew with each passing year as the world moved from analog to digital. As endless interconnected systems became ever more reliant on each other. As the US moved further from its simple roots towards a complex and unknowable future.
The fact was that the modern US wasn’t a country so much as a never ending production line. It was a machine designed to feed and water three hundred thirty million people, and it did the job damned well most of the time, but without power the machine would break down at a terrifying pace, and people would die. It was as simple as that.
And now it was happening. It was real. This was no longer just a part of his father’s delusional paranoia and Shepherd’s own childhood nightmares. It was in the streets. It was in his town.
Lights out.
΅
:::4:::
SHEPHERD BREATHED A sigh of relief as he turned on to his street and saw nobody out in their yards. It’s was still early, just a little after ten, and most of the neighbors would be enjoying the rare opportunity to sleep late on a Thursday. It could be another hour before they finally rolled out of bed to turn on the coffee and noticed that the familiar electric hum that pervaded their homes was absent, by which time Shepherd hoped to be long gone.
When he finally reached his home he turned the Jeep off the driveway and across the lawn, tearing through a decorative bush to make it to the back yard. It probably wasn’t really necessary to hide just yet, but he didn’t want to advertise to the neighbors that he had a working vehicle. Better safe than sorry.
The Jeep was damned near as old as Shepherd himself, an ’85 Cherokee XJ that now had more rust than its original red paint. Hardly a vehicle anyone would covet, but he’d chosen it for one reason and one reason alone: it could survive an EMP without skipping a beat. The XJ was one of the last purely mechanical American 4x4s; the last without fuel injection, any kind of electronic engine management system, or a
ny of the useless gadgets the US market now demanded. Hell, it didn’t even have cup holders.
The engine was simple: gas in, grunt out, and the simple unibody chassis made it about as effective a Faraday cage as any vehicle that wasn’t built with EMP shielding in mind. He’d even removed the radio aerial and the speaker wiring to minimize the risk. Aerials and wires of any kind only amplified the effect of an electromagnetic pulse, drawing it towards delicate electronics like water through a straw, and he could live without drive time radio for the sake of a working ignition system.
Shepherd backed the truck up against the rear door of the house, hopped out and popped the trunk. Already he was kicking himself for not thinking ahead and preparing his supplies for a quick getaway. All he had ready to go was his bug out bag, a canvas Duluth canoe pack he kept by the back door filled with enough supplies to last a week or two at a pinch, but everything else was stacked up in the messy, overcrowded garage at the front of the house. He’d never even considered the possibility that he might need to load up the truck covertly, and now he was about to pay for it in sweat.
He started with the fuel and water, lugging out Jerry cans and five gallon bottles two at a time on his shoulders, and after four trips he was already drenched from head to toe. There’s another thing he hadn’t considered: with the AC out the house was growing warmer by the second, the air thick with moisture, and by the time he’d loaded his two month emergency water supply he felt like he’d lost a gallon through his shirt alone.
The weapons and ammo came next, in a surprisingly lightweight bag. Shepherd knew plenty of guys who owned so much hardware they could pick a new gun for every day of the month, but his philosophy on firearms was simple: if you can’t carry them all on your back you’re just collecting weapons for the guy who'll take them from you. An enormous arsenal makes you a target. It compels you to defend a fixed position even when it no longer makes strategic sense, and Shepherd believed that those who’d survive the collapse would be those who could move and adapt quickly; those who could slip away from danger and live to fight rather than go out in a blaze of glory.