He rushed out of the room, smoothing his thinning hair back as he went. Immediately, all three guests turned and looked at Elna.
Waiting for someone to tell them what to do, she realized. It was a bit more responsibility than she was comfortable with.
“Okay, uh…let’s wait until the others get back,” she said, moving across the room to stand at the end of the bar. “It won’t take more than a few minutes. Then we can decide what to do.”
Selene shook her head, loosening the sisal flower scrunchie holding her long brown hair. She held her dog a little tighter. The Bichon Frise gave a bark of disapproval. “Are we not going to consider the possibility that this is some kind of prank? When someone gets on TV and says that all of North America is about to be nuked, are we just supposed to accept it? Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“It’s not one person,” Malin said, flipping through screens on his phone. “It’s every single news source on the web, plus a message from the Emergency Alert System.” He turned the phone to show her the screen, but she didn’t look at it. “It’s real.”
“But we’re on an island,” Selene said. “Surely it won’t reach us.”
“We’re ten miles off the California coast,” Malin said. “They’re saying the EMP blast could reach all the way up to Northern Canada and as far south as Mexico City. I don’t think ten miles of water is going to protect us.”
“EMPs are bad news,” Garret said. He picked up a half-filled glass of red wine and downed it in a single gulp. “I’ve read a thing or two about them. How did this happen without us knowing in advance? What has the CIA been doing? Twiddling their greasy thumbs?”
“I don’t know,” Malin replied, “but I’ve gotta get back to the mainland. I need to be with Claire.”
He stood up, as if he intended to leave right then and there.
“Just wait,” Elna said. “Don’t go anywhere. Let’s get everyone together first, okay?”
He glanced at her, frowned, then sat down again, defeated. “Thirty minutes would get me across the causeway to the mainland, but then what? I’ll never get on a plane in time. Oh, man, this is bad.” Following his best man’s example, he downed his glass of wine.
A few quiet minutes passed before she heard the door in the lobby open and close, voices moving down the hall toward the tasting room. Soon, her father came into the room, leading three chattering guests.
They had just turned toward the bar when the lights flickered rapidly—as if someone were turning them on and off repeatedly. After a couple seconds, they went out completely. Then the refrigerator behind the bar gave a soft sigh and went silent, and a flash of yellow shone through the east-facing windows. Outside the windows, Elna saw a shower of sparks raining down from the power lines that fed into the guesthouse.
In the silence that followed, the late afternoon sun seemed to burn with a peculiar strength, casting the room in a fiery orange light. The silence was broken when Selene suddenly screamed and pushed away from the bar, stumbling backward with her dog wrapped in both arms.
“No, it hasn’t been thirty minutes,” she said. “They said thirty minutes. It can’t happen yet! It can’t be real!”
This set her dog off, who began to bark like he was being killed. The frantic barking was ear-piercing in the small room, and Elna had to fight an urge to cover her ears.
“Please, someone shut that dog up,” Garret snarled. “It’s hard to think with all that yapping.”
“He can’t help it,” Selene said. “He’s afraid!”
“We’re all afraid,” Garret snapped, “but we’re not screaming at the top of our lungs for no reason.”
As Selene petted the dog in an attempt to get him to calm down, Elna reached under the bar and picked up the landline phone that was stored on a shelf there. She lifted the receiver to her ear but got no dial tone. She turned on the nearby FM radio, but it didn’t work either. No static, no response, the little red light didn’t even come on.
“I’m telling you, that dog is driving me nuts,” Garret said.
Malin placed a hand on his best man’s arm, but Garret shook it off. Elna’s father pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and stared at the blank screen, as if he were unaware of the tension. Clearly, he still intended Elna to take charge of the room. With a sigh, she stepped up on a small footstool behind the bar so all of the guests could see her. She wasn’t sure what to say, and her heart was pounding so fiercely that she’d become light-headed.
Pop, say something. Do something. Put away the stupid phone and get a handle on this situation.
“Um…okay, everyone,” she said, but her voice cracked. “Let’s not panic.”
The barking of the Bichon Frise had finally stopped, but only because Selene had covered her dog’s mouth with her hand. Elna heard muttering, whimpering, and cursing all over the room. Only Malin was dead silent now, clenching and unclenching his fists on the bar top.
“We need to come up with a plan,” Elna said. A task which would have been a lot easier if there hadn’t been so many chattering people in the room. She could scarcely think.
Her father tossed his cell phone onto the bar. “It’s dead,” he said. “Can’t call out. Can’t even get the screen to light up.”
She was about to ask him what they should do when he signaled for her to continue.
“We need a plan,” she said again, all too aware that every eye was on her.
“Can we get off the island?” Malin asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Elna said. “The drawbridges are designed so that if the power goes out, counterweights cause them to automatically rise. It’s so boats can pass.”
Malin clapped a hand to his own forehead. “So we’re stuck here for how long?”
“Until power is restored,” Elna said.
At this, the room went dead silent. Even the dog had finally stopped making noise, as Selene paced back and forth in front of the west-facing windows, drawing her long shadow across the room. Afternoon was giving way to evening all too quickly, the orange light taking on a slight purplish hue.
“We need a—” Elna almost said it a third time but caught herself.
“It’s no use,” Garret said, interrupting her. “It’ll be night soon. We can’t do anything but light candles. If the power’s not restored by tomorrow morning—and it won’t be—then we can take inventory of what you’ve got on the island.”
“We have a powered water pump system,” Elna said, “with a backup generator. We’ve got canned food.”
“How much?” Garret asked.
Elna pictured the food pantry in her mind. How much would it last the handful of people on the island? “Maybe a week’s worth,” she said. “Plus, we have a stocked freezer and a small garden. We’re not a big operation here, as you all know, but we’re not without means.”
“And we have plenty of wine,” her father added.
Selene groaned loudly. “So we just have to stay put for the night with no idea what’s happened in the rest of the country? With no electricity? No phones?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Elna replied, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. She almost succeeded. All of this would have been so much easier without the guests. She dreaded having to deal with them if the problem persisted. She wasn’t good around people. “I’m afraid so. I think Garret’s right. In the morning, we can figure out what to do.”
“We get off this island is what we do,” Malin said. “We swim, we float on a log, we do whatever we have to do, but we get off this island. That’s it. I have a fiancée to return to. She’s all the way in Las Vegas, and she’s waiting for me.” To punctuate his point, he smacked the bar with his hand loudly enough to make Elna flinch.
Dabbing a sheen of sweat off her upper lip, she gazed through the west windows. The sun was dropping too fast. Night was in a hurry to arrive, ready to cast them into its hopeless dark. She shuddered at the thought.
Reassure the guests, dummy, she scolded herself. That’s your job.<
br />
“It’s okay, folks,” she said. “We have comfortable accommodations for you tonight. We’ll figure this all out in the morning.”
Her father had an uneasy smile plastered on his face, but he nodded at her and gave her a thumbs-up. Clearly, he wanted to reassure her that she’d handled it well, but she didn’t feel reassured. Not at all.
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EMP Catastrophe | Book 3 | Erupting Chaos Page 26