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by Al Macy

  Charli jumped when the roar hit her. Because the plane was traveling near the speed of sound, the noise came all at once—more like an explosion than the sound of an approaching aircraft. No question about what it was. She'd been to air shows. She watched the plane fly past, low but not directly over the White House, then head almost straight up, turn and come roaring back, like a skateboarder on a half-pipe. What a wonderful sound. The plane headed directly for Ronald Reagan airport. I hope they got the oil barrels burning.

  This was a good sign. The whole world wasn't blacked out after all. She hurried down to the Oval Office. She'd think more about Jake later.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jake sat on an antique chair in the “Pineapple Bedroom,” staring at the floor. Sophia was on his lap and Boondoggle rested his muzzle on Jake’s knee. A stout candle burned on the dresser, and little light came in through the three large windows.

  After a few minutes Sophia looked at Jake and then put her hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “I think maybe is spoiling time.”

  Jake gave a start and stared at her. Had she really said that, or are my ears playing tricks on me? These were the first words she’d uttered since the kidnapping, four months ago. A huge grin spread across his face. He squeezed her hard and kissed her forehead. “Oh, that’s what you think, is it? You think maybe is spoiling time?”

  Boondoggle barked.

  Sophia giggled and nodded. When Jake had watched Sophia for three months, Renata had gone on and on about how he spoiled his goddaughter with ice cream, cookies, and frequent trips to the zoo. So, whenever Sophia had been sad or hurt herself, Jake would whisper in her ear, “I think maybe it’s spoiling time,” and they’d be off for some treat or special outing.

  He jumped up with Sophia attached to his neck. He ruffled the fur on Boondoggle’s head. “What do you think Boondoggle? Do you think it’s spoiling time, too?” After a pause, he said, “What? What’s that boy?” He looked at Sophia with mock puzzlement, “What did Boondoggle say?”

  Sophia had a big smile on her face but shook her head.

  “Well, you have to listen more closely!” He flipped Sophia over and held her upside down so that her ear was right at Boondoggle’s muzzle. The dog licked her ear like crazy, and Sophia giggled uncontrollably. He flipped her back up. “What did he say?”

  Sophia kept laughing and squealed “Again!”

  Jake repeated the flipping, and Boondoggle repeated the licking. Jake brought her up for air. “Did you catch it that time? No? Well, I think Boondoggle said we should go down to the kitchen and eat up the ice cream before it melts.”

  The past was dead. Jake was not. It was time to move forward. He had an obligation to get back to work. For Sophia, for himself, and for those who had survived his mistake and still needed his help. Would it haunt him for the rest of his life? Yes, but he wasn’t going to sit and mope. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t what a tough guy would do. A tough guy would keep trying. And he was a tough guy, wasn’t he?

  At that moment they heard a roar and the windows shook. Sounds like the cavalry has arrived.

  * * *

  Charli, Defense Secretary Guccio, and President Hallstrom shivered under the north portico of the White House, awaiting the arrival of whoever had come in that jet. They wore White House windbreakers against the cold breeze. Charli stomped her feet, paced, and kept her eyes on the security gate to the northeast. Yes, I could have waited inside, but I’m too eager to find out what’s happening with the rest of the world. Guccio smoked. Finally, a muscular guy in a flight suit rode up on a bicycle. He was cleared through security, marched up to the president, and saluted.

  “Major Frank Cobb reporting from Edwards Air Force Base. I have an official document for you, Mr. President.”

  Hallstrom saluted back then shook his hand. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, Major.” He read the one page memo then handed it to Charli who scanned it with Guccio reading over her shoulder.

  MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  FROM: AF/412th Test Wing, Edwards Air Force Base.

  SUBJECT: EMP-like Event

  Because you likely have no power, and because all electronic devices in your vicinity are in all probability no longer functioning, this memo advises you of the current world situation.

  An EMP-like event has damaged or destroyed all electronic devices in a circular region centered on Washington, DC and with a radius of 2,100 miles. All regions outside of said area are unaffected. All satellites within line-of-sight of Washington, DC are non-functional.

  A massive resupply operation is already under way. We will be dropping leaflets around the country to inform the citizenry, followed by portable radios, meals ready-to-eat, medical supplies, generators, and refrigeration units. The entire world is mobilizing for this operation. Cargo planes from California, Canada, and Europe are being loaded as I write this.

  We are dispatching passenger aircraft to evacuate patients and others whose health is dependent on electronic devices.

  This aircraft has brought you two shortwave transceivers, and we will be broadcasting and monitoring at 15,500 kHz, 17,500 kHz and multiple other frequencies. Please pass this information on to your technical officers.

  A B-1 bomber with additional supplies will be on its way shortly, to be followed by larger cargo aircraft.

  We will have more information for you when we contact you via shortwave.

  Major General Pace Stetson

  Commander, Edwards Air Force Base

  Hallstrom slapped Cobb on the back, and the four of them walked into the White House. Charli smiled. Things are looking up.

  * * *

  Earlier that day, before the EMP event, Marie had sat with her son in the Lipton Community Hospital, preparing to watch Cronkite’s Meet the Press broadcast. Sam was halfway through his first dialysis treatment. The small room held two hemodialysis units. The other one was idle.

  He’d had quite a story to tell Marie. When Sam’s neighbor and his three strapping sons perished in the die-off, the neighbor’s widow had asked Sam to help work the small farm. Retired at age fifty-one from a job in computer programming, Sam welcomed the opportunity to try something new. He’d always wanted to be a farmer.

  One day before the broadcast, with a straw hat on his head, a stick of grass in his teeth, and a song in his heart, he rode out on the neighbor’s antique tractor to “check on the crops.” He’d learned to trust that the tractor’s low center of gravity would keep it from tipping as he negotiated an angled section of the trail, but on this morning, his trust went too far.

  After a roll and the slide, the tractor’s left-rear wheel crushed his thigh against Maine bedrock. He tried everything to get his leg free with no luck. The tractor’s motor chugged on for four hours until it ran out of gas.

  Sam yelled for help, but the only returning sounds were from birds and squirrels. The widow was out of town, and no one would miss him.

  After seven hours, Sam saw a collie nosing along the trail. Edging toward delirium, he called out, “Lassie. Go get help, girl. Go get help.” The dog licked his face and peed on the front wheel of the tractor. But the two teenagers who had been walking with the dog rushed over, tilted the tractor, and pulled Sam out from underneath the wheel. Then they called 911.

  Had they called 911 first, things might have gone better for Sam. They would have been told not to shift the tractor before a doctor arrived. The instant the wheel stopped crushing his leg, a cascade of myoglobin molecules, resulting from the damage to his muscles, surged into Sam’s bloodstream.

  When the large myoglobin molecules hit the glomeruli of Sam’s kidneys they got stuck, and Sam’s kidneys failed.

  His doctor told him he would need two or three dialysis treatments, or he would die. With the treatments, however, his kidney would recover, and they might even be able to save the leg.

  During this first dialysis treatment, Marie said, “Sam, look, you’re going to
be okay. It’s time to tell Charli what happened. Let’s call her after the broadcast.”

  “Maybe.” Sam watched his blood being pumped through the machine and back into his body. “But she’s got enough to worry about. She’s literally saving the world, remember?”

  “If this first treatment is successful—”

  “Okay, I promise. I’ll call her tonight.” He held his hand up as if swearing to tell the truth.

  The broadcast was especially fascinating for them, knowing that Charli was sitting in the room on the other side of the cameras. When Cronkite smashed his fist down on the red button, the TV fizzled and all the lights went out. The dialysis machine whined for several seconds then made a popping noise, like a balloon breaking.

  “Holy shit!” Sam said. “Cronkite hit the button, and our power went out. Was that a coincidence?”

  “I’m guessing no.” Marie walked to the door and looked both ways down the hall. There was plenty of sunlight coming in the windows. She walked back to her son. “Shouldn’t an emergency generator be coming on about now?”

  “What happened? Did Corby say something bad? What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know, and right now, I don’t care. I’m going to look around. You can get yourself loose, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Marie went out the door and turned right. In the hall she checked her cell phone. It was dead.

  In the five-bed ICU, three patients who had been on ventilators minutes before were being kept alive with resuscitation bags. One of the nurses waved Marie over.

  “Are you a patient?” The nurse looked at Marie but kept pumping the bag.

  “Just visiting,” Marie said.

  “I need to find out what’s happening. Can you do this?”

  “Just tell me how.” This nurse is really going to let a visitor take over critical care?

  The nurse demonstrated how to hold the mask securely while pumping the bag. “I’ll try to find someone else to help. It’s easier with two people.”

  “How will I know if I’m squeezing too fast or too slowly?”

  “Just do one breath every five sec—” She looked at the blank face of her digital watch then at the stopped clock on the wall. “Watch the other nurses.”

  The nurse left. The hospital smell was still there, but the buzzes and beeps typical of an ICU were absent. The quiet conversation of the nurses and the hisses from the breathing bags were the only sounds in the room.

  Marie’s patient was a muscular teenage girl with a tan. She looked healthy if you ignored the facts that she was unconscious and unable to breathe on her own.

  After a long period of pumping Marie switched hands and tried sitting on the side of the bed. But she couldn’t do that and pump at the same time. In between pumps, she’d shake her arm. Finally a young-looking orderly came in and relieved her.

  Marie collapsed into the visitor chair and asked him, “What’s happening out there?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. Everything electronic is toast.”

  “I mean in the hospital.”

  “Well, we’re trying to keep the seriously sick patients alive,” he tilted his head toward Marie’s patient, “and keep the others calm. We went into each room and told them everything was under control, but of course …” He shook his head and pointed his thumb down.

  “Why didn’t the backup generator come on?”

  “Beats me. This ain’t no normal power outage, ma’am. We have a generator, and we test it every week, but it sure as hell didn’t work today. I just came from the ER. Tom’s ambulance was three blocks away when it died. They took the gurney out of the ambulance and rolled it along the street to the hospital, but they couldn’t do anything when he got here.”

  “He was dead? The patient, I mean.” Marie said.

  “No, but he was in v-fib. You know what that is?

  Marie nodded.

  “Well, they thought it was v-fib. Couldn’t verify without the ECG, right? They mighta brought him back with the paddles, but the paddles didn’t work neither.”

  “How many are dead so far?”

  “Five that I’ve seen.” He was a bit sloppy with the bag and looked around the room. “It will be eight when these go.”

  “Are they doomed?” Marie looked at “her” patient’s chart but her thoughts turned to Sam. He should be okay, but he’ll need more dialysis soon.

  “Depends on one, when we get power back, and two, if the machines can be fixed or replaced.” The orderly stopped holding the mask when he held up one and then two fingers. “Those things ain’t happening any time soon. Don’t be telling anyone I told you that.”

  A doctor with a full white beard rushed into the room and checked the three patients’ charts without looking up. He talked quietly with each nurse and the orderly, then left. They all stopped working the bags, and one of the nurses felt pulses and made notes, presumably recording the times of death.

  Well that was the end of that. Marie headed back to the dialysis room and soon located Sam in the waiting room, bundled up in a winter coat.

  “Still feeling cold, Sam?” she asked.

  “Yes, and tired. I was just hobbling around talking to people and I feel like I’ve been in a footrace.”

  “Any better after the treatment?”

  Sam both shook his head and waggled his hand.

  “Anyone know what’s happening?” Marie adjusted Sam’s wool cap, pulling it further over his ears.

  “It’s not just the hospital,” he said. “With the timing of Cronkite’s button press, I’m guessing the whole world has just gone paleo.” Sam had inherited Marie’s stoic personality

  Marie looked out the window. “Eight people in this tiny hospital died. How many more have died—will die—around the world?”

  “Yeah, and all because of something Corby said.”

  “True,” Marie said. “But we really should put the blame on Cronkite.”

  The double doors at the end of the hall burst open, and a man wearing nothing but a Foley catheter and a urine collection bag skipped down the hall.

  Sam looked at his mother. “May you live in interesting times.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  September 24, 2018

  Jake stood at the windows of the White House’s family dining room, watching the shortwave antenna being set up on the North Lawn. Sophia clung to his hand and leaned against him. Behind them, a huge breakfast was laid out, in part to use up the food that would otherwise spoil. Maybe to raise morale as well. Hallstrom sat at the head of the table, and the other advisers were all present.

  Jake turned around and walked over to the table. “Guys, I’d like to say something.”

  The others looked at him. Charli looked down at her scrambled eggs.

  “I’d like to apologize one more time. I will never forgive myself, never forget the consequences of my actions. But as with all of the other horror that has occurred, it is essential to look forward and I am ready to do so.”

  “I agree, Jake.” Hallstrom pointed with his fork. “You didn’t say it out loud. You didn’t realize he could read lips. I didn’t see your lips move. Did any of you see it?”

  No one said anything. Jake sat down and Sophia climbed into his lap.

  Hallstrom continued. “I accept your apology. It’s really no different from us not realizing that Cronkite was monitoring our videoconferences. So we both made the same kind of mistake. And Jake, I’d like to apologize for what I said afterward. You didn’t deserve that. And of course the ultimate responsibility lies with Cronkite, not you. He’s the one who pushed the button. Let’s try to forget that it happened.”

  Jake covered Sophia’s ears. “Forget that I may have killed tens of thousands of people?”

  Hallstrom shook his head. “No, you made a mistake that happened to have a bad outcome. Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine put on her brakes on an icy road. Perhaps she should have had a lighter touch, but the car skidded out of control. I’m sure that’s hap
pened to all of us. It’s happened to me. But in her case, the car skidded off the road and killed two pedestrians. A little mistake with a big consequence. She should only be blamed for the small error. She just had bad luck. That’s what’s going on here. Let’s move on.”

  Secretary of Defense Guccio clapped Jake on the shoulder. Jake looked at Charli, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

  Everyone turned when Major Frank Cobb made a noisy entrance with one arm around Salty Whitington’s shoulders. Everyone at the table applauded. Cobb pointed to Salty. “This is the hero. He’s the one who saved the mission.”

  Salty smiled and shook his head as he walked to the table with a rocking bowlegged gait. He had his sextant case with him.

  Hallstrom shook their hands. “I’m not sure how you justified using the Peregrine, but I’m glad you did.”

  “We were minutes away from a test flight to Florida anyway,” said Cobb. “So we simply got re-purposed.”

  Salty loaded his plate. “Nice plane, with a lot of kick, but I’d rather have my old Stearman biplane.”

  “Salty flew in World War Two,” Cobb said.

  “It’s okay for a test plane, though. And everything worked pretty well until our friend showed up.” Salty put his plate on the table.

  Jake looked up quickly. He had apparently been out of the loop on this.

  Salty launched into his story. “It happened over the Midwest. We start feeling this turbulence.” He took a seat.

  “Right,” said Cobb. “We’re going Mach 3.5, and the plane starts feeling … squirrelly. It’s like some strange turbulence or problem with the control surfaces. I’m thinking, uh-oh. Remember, we’re in a test plane and we have no support. We’re out of radio range, no chase planes.”

  Salty swallowed a bite of scrambled eggs. “So I get the feeling that someone is watching me. Crazy, right? I can’t shake it. So I start looking around.” Salty mimed looking around. “And folks, my neck ain’t what it used to be, so I can’t turn very far, but I turn as far as I can to the right, and I say ‘Ah, Frank … check out the tail. Right side.’”