America Offline (Book 1): America Offline [Zero Day]

by Weber, William H.

  Nate let out a hearty laugh, appreciating the much-needed release of tension.

  After greeting the others, Carl turned to Nate. “Is there anywhere we can talk?”

  “Of course. Let’s go to my office.”

  Amy and Lauren were already heading to the kitchen to start breakfast. Emmitt wasn’t far behind. Hunter, however, sat on the couch, a pained expression on his face. He looked like a wounded puppy. If he was hoping to evoke any sympathy for what he’d done, it wasn’t going to come from Nate. “There are three people heading to the kitchen to help make breakfast. Everyone needs to step up, now more than ever.”

  “Okay,” Hunter said, pushing himself up off the couch, his slippered feet whispering along the wood floor as he went past them.

  “Not easy being a kid nowadays,” Carl commented once Hunter was out of earshot.

  “Really?” Nate replied, a little shocked by the comment. “I’d say it was quite the opposite.”

  “From a comfort point of view, you have a point,” his neighbor conceded. “But the pressure they’re under nowadays, neither of us had anything comparable. My son David says his little boy is already working on his college application strategy. The kid’s at least a year younger than Hunter. And didn’t you say your nephew has a website with a million followers?”

  “A YouTube channel, yeah.”

  Both men shook their head.

  “I don’t remember having a million of anything when I was his age.” Carl released a wet gale of laughter. “But seriously, think of it, Nate. He’s still a kid and he’s got a business that makes nearly as much as his dad. There’s something unnatural about that. He needs a firm hand, no doubt about that, but maybe also a little understanding.”

  A slow smile spread over Nate’s weathered features. “Be careful now, you’re starting to sound like my wife.”

  That laugh again, followed by a pat on Nate’s shoulder. “Hate to tell you, Nate, but in the smarts and looks department, Amy’s got you beat.”

  Nate nodded. “Can’t argue there.”

  Nate scooped up the shotgun and the two men headed to the office. They passed the kitchen and living room when everyone else was busy preparing breakfast.

  “If anyone sees anything unusual,” Nate told them as he passed by, “anything at all, you holler out and let someone know.”

  Hunter and Emmitt stopped what they were doing and nodded.

  Chapter 15

  Nate closed the office door behind him and set the shotgun down inside the safe, but made sure to leave it ajar.

  “The reason I wanted to meet again was that since your visit last night, I spent some time on the shortwave radio, reaching out for people in the area. Seems some parts of the local government are still attempting to hold things together. Managing the town’s response to the dangers posed by the nuclear plant has been one of their top concerns.”

  “Excelsior Energy has a whole special team there now,” Nate said, wondering where all of this was going. “I don’t see how a bunch of local bureaucrats can help.”

  “They can by putting together a backup plan.”

  The two men’s eyes met. “What backup plan?”

  “More of an escape plan really,” Carl told him. “In case the worst happens.” Carl rubbed his red-tipped fingers together. “They’ve assembled a number of school buses at the Byron Middle School on Colfax.”

  Nate scratched his chin. “I don’t see what good that’ll do if no one knows about it.”

  “No doubt, the blackout’s made that difficult,” Carl acknowledged. “From what I heard, they plan to send vehicles through the streets checking on folks and giving them the instructions in person. Not sure how well that’s going to work given the snow isn’t letting up and the roads are barely passable as they are. Either way, you can imagine they’ve got their hands full just getting the water back up and the generators up and running.”

  “Where will the townsfolk be evacuated to?” Nate asked. A pencil sat on his desk and he started spinning it, a habit from childhood.

  Carl looked at him, incredulous. “What does it matter? How about anywhere but here? If the core melts down…”

  “If there’s a shelter nearby, we can get there on our own…” he started to say before he considered they were now down to one truck, which was dangerously low on gas and only had room for two. “We had two trucks up until this morning,” he lamented.

  “I saw they took a bunch of the firewood you had sitting out front.”

  Nate nodded. “We got a chunk of it moved inside yesterday, but not nearly enough. I’ve read many of the same books you did on preparing for the worst. Heck, you were the one who got me onto setting up a few preps here and there. Renegade said it too, over the radio. Once things get too dicey in town, folks will start heading for the country, whether or not they should.”

  “It’s human nature, Nate. They did the same thing when the Nazis pushed into France during World War Two. Clogged the roads out of Paris. Ended up slowing down the very troops sent to defend the city. It was a disaster all around, but that’s what people do when the brown stuff hits the fan. They clog up the works, even if doing so damns everyone else to hell.”

  “I just thought I had more time.”

  “You mean before the lowlifes came out and started wreaking havoc?” Carl eyed him. “I see why you’d say that. This isn’t Chicago. Compared to its crime-ridden neighbor, Byron might as well be in a different country. You might have been more prepared than the average citizen, but you didn’t count on the full reality of the situation. It’s fine to have loose rounds in your pocket, but they won’t do you much good if someone’s charging at you from a few feet away. You see what I mean?”

  “First thing I gotta do is keep note of my essentials and make sure I do everything I can to protect them.”

  Carl nodded with enthusiasm. “That’s right. Store what’s left of your wood inside somewhere. Keep a weapon on you at all times. Make sure your family’s always on the lookout for danger and sleep with one eye open.”

  Nate was taking mental notes.

  “From now on, someone approaches the house, you greet them with the barrel of that shotgun. This is your castle. Assume they’re friendly and you could end up dead. And make no mistake, if someone comes here intending to do your family harm, you’re the first one they need out of the way. Once you’re down for the count, they can have their fun.”

  “Don’t underestimate Amy,” Nate warned him, only half-joking. “She’s more than a pretty face.”

  “Well, her pregnancy might complicate her lethality…” Carl began.

  “No, I can attest, she’s far more lethal now.”

  The two men shared a smile. “So these buses you mentioned,” Nate continued, bringing the conversation back to the subject at hand. “Where will they go? Chicago?”

  “Goodness, no. No one’s that cruel or stupid. The plan will be to head to Rockford. It’s about twelve miles away, just outside the plant’s danger zone should the worst happen.”

  Nate considered this. “Rockford’s twelve miles in a straight line. By road it represents a twenty-five-minute drive.”

  “Perhaps under normal conditions. Doesn’t normally take me more than a minute to walk from my front door to yours. But just now it took me five full minutes and I was dead tired by the time I arrived. Also, none of the roads have been plowed or salted. If you’re thinking of getting your family out by truck, you run the risk of getting stuck on the highway. And if you do, it’s not like you can call AAA to come bail you out. Those days are over, my friend. There’s also a more obvious issue. With Lauren’s truck gone, you’ve only got your Dodge left and it’s a two-seater.”

  Nate shook his head. “Would you believe we were supposed to go test-drive a used Bronco down at Billy’s car lot two days from now? We could have fit all our stuff and five or six people, no sweat. I’d consider driving to his house now, except I can’t access any of my cash and either way, I couldn’t
fill the tank even if the truck was sitting in my driveway.”

  Carl’s eyes were warm and compassionate. They were eyes that said, Emergencies always seem to strike at the worst possible time. “Well, the wife has insisted if push comes to shove and we leave Byron, we won’t be chancing it on the highway.”

  “You’ll get on the bus with the others?” Nate sounded surprised.

  “Under different, much warmer, conditions, I wouldn’t be caught dead on that bus. But that wasn’t the hand we’ve been dealt. It’s very possible the country’s major highways have already become unofficial graveyards for many a poor fool who chose to flee his home and spun out or ended up in a ditch. That’s all it would take.” Carl made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I have room for three in my car if need be.”

  Nate thanked him. He didn’t see any other way of making it work. All he could do now was to harden the defenses around his house and pray Evan and his people would keep them from needing to evacuate.

  Chapter 16

  Following breakfast, Nate assembled the twins to help with moving the remaining wood inside. They stacked it by the fireplace and when that filled up, Nate set some old towels on the floor and kept the pile going. An hour and a half later they were done. Hunter might have messed up earlier, but at least he was making up for past mistakes with hard work.

  Amy brought them all a mug of water, which they gulped down greedily. On the fireplace ledge was a pot where she’d melted snow, bringing what was left to a boil. She’d then filled the mugs and let them cool to room temperature.

  Boiled water tasted different from regular tap water, but Nate and the twins were thankful. It always seemed like a strange thing to be sweating when the weather outside was this cold.

  Next, Nate planned to reinforce the front door. He had a metal rod lying around in the garage somewhere, remnants from a home renovation he’d started last year. He would use it to fashion a door jammer. The concept was simple, but incredibly effective. One end was normally wedged under the door handle while the other end was secured in a bracket on the ground one to two feet from the lip. Once properly installed, a jammer could even give a SWAT team with a battering ram a run for their money. And although some determined bad guy might eventually succeed, he was sure to stir up such a racket, he would alert the entire house. All in all, it was a low-tech and highly effective solution.

  Nate was in the garage fishing around for a bracket when Lauren appeared.

  “Listen,” she began in that universal tone that promised an unpleasant conversation to come. “What are the chances we can get our hands on a generator? I looked around and was surprised you didn’t have one.”

  Nate shook his head. “Generators make noise. Noise has a bad habit of attracting attention. That’s the last thing we need right now. Look what happened this morning.”

  “Hunter messed up. I’ll be the first to admit it.” Her thin lips formed into a weak smile. She was trying to lighten the mood by pleading guilty right off the bat, but it wasn’t working. “Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for…” She paused, apparently not sure what to say.

  Nate folded his gloved hands over the top of the metal rod and let it take his weight. “Lauren, I’ve never told you how to raise your kids, have I?”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  “And I shouldn’t. Not simply because you’re their parent and I’m not. But also for the most obvious reason. I don’t have a child, at least not yet. So I’ve been careful not to overstep those bounds. What happened today was not all Hunter’s fault. He didn’t tell those guys to rob us. He asked me earlier if he could use my truck to recharge his tablet. I told him no, after which he probably went and asked you the same thing.”

  She nodded. “You know kids these days. They can’t live without their electronic devices.”

  “Maybe,” Nate replied, working to keep his heartbeat steady. “But now we have to live without an extra vehicle. And mine only fits two. So if push comes to shove, we’re three seats short of being able to make it out of here. Yes, it might just be a truck. Maybe with Hunter’s salary he could afford to buy you all a new one. But it’s looking more and more like that old world is gone. That truck might have been your ticket out of here. And now it’s gone too.”

  “You think we’ve spoiled him, don’t you?”

  Nate wasn’t sure if it was a question or an accusation. “I think you’ve been trying to make up for Evan being at work all the time. I think for a while, it probably felt like the right play. Who knows, maybe ten years from now, we’ll be having the same conversation, except you’ll be telling me I’ve been spoiling my daughter. Hunter’s got a lazy streak and it’s best to nip that in the bud sooner than later. He also put us all in danger. We need to start thinking like a group instead of everyone for themselves.”

  Amy appeared at the door leading into the house. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

  Lauren spun around. “No, not at all. Nate and I were just discussing Hunter.”

  Amy’s eyes fell, as though she had a good idea how that had gone. “I wanted to let you know I’ll be with the boys for a little bit. We’ll be sealing the windows upstairs with clear plastic.” Doing so would help keep out the cold and minimize the heat needed to warm the house.

  “Sealing the windows?” Lauren repeated, as though Amy had been speaking in a foreign language.

  His wife giggled. “Maybe you should join us.”

  He caught Amy’s eye and he winked a moment before both women disappeared inside.

  She was something special. She could keep a cool head in a crisis and help rally the troops after the dust settled. Looking back, it was really rather unnerving to consider how chance had brought them together. For years, the loss of Nate’s sister had left a gaping wound in his soul. He’d been in university at the time, studying computer science and a rising star on the judo team. When she was alive, his mother liked to remind him how stubborn he could be. And he supposed if by stubborn she meant determined and never willing to give up until the job was done, then yes, sometimes he could be as stubborn as hell.

  Which made his fall from grace all the more remarkable. Less than two months after his sister’s disappearance, Nate had finally reached his goal and become head of the judo team. It didn’t only mean a certain level of prestige, it also opened the door to the Olympics and after that sponsorship and an abundance of other possibilities.

  The match where everything changed hadn’t been particularly noteworthy. Nate had been mopping the floor with one opponent after another. Throw your enemy off his feet and onto his keester—in a nutshell, that was the goal. Nate could sweep in either direction. His shaved head—yes, even by then—and menacing appearance only worked to his advantage. His final match was a large guy named Peter Alexander. He hated people with two first names. There was no real logic to the feeling, especially since given names are given and we don’t usually have much say in the matter, if at all. Pete was a heavyweight, just like Nate, except he was close to three hundred pounds, little of it muscle. Flipping a guy that big was doable, but your technique had to be flawless or bad things tended to happen.

  A young girl in the crowd. That was all it had taken. She was the spitting image of his sister. Maybe it was her ghost, come back to him the way Banquo had appeared to Macbeth. Nate had seen her right as he had grabbed Pete by the lapels of his gi and was making to fling the big man over his hip and onto the mat. It should have been one big Pete mess on the floor, like flinging the Kool-Aid guy and watching him shatter. Except Nate had been the one who shattered. His left knee to be precise, pinned under all three hundred pounds of Peter Alexander.

  That day his dreams of Olympic gold had also ended. As soon as the three surgeries on his knee were done, Nate had packed up all his stuff into a VW camper van and left Illinois, never a hundred percent sure why. Perhaps it was because he had lost the two most important things in his life. Day to day, he found himself searching for a reason to ge
t up in the morning, maybe even a reason to live. He’d discovered that reason three weeks later while working on a family farm in Nebraska. Or rather, that reason had discovered him. Amy had been a lot younger then and far more naive. They both had been.

  When his work on the farm was done, he’d convinced her to travel with him. He had gotten to know the family in the months he’d been working there and Amy’s father knew him as an honorable man who would defend his daughter with his dying breath. The two of them had left to see the rest of the country. There was a big old world out there and to a couple of kids approaching their mid-twenties, it seemed an awful shame to let it go to waste.

  Still physically in the garage, but wavering somewhere between past and present, Nate heard a voice call out from somewhere far away. He turned and saw his sister’s face, smiling back at him. She looked happy, proud that he’d travelled through that dark night of the soul and come out the other side. Life was a series of tests. That was a lesson Nate had learned early on. Some passed, some failed, but everyone played the game, whether they wanted to or not. Nate could see that life was at it again. They were being tested and this time, it would be the biggest test of all.

  Chapter 17

  Nate was standing on the front porch, testing out the small white Geiger counter he’d bought at an online prepping depot two months ago. A cord led from the device to a five-inch wand. After inserting a fresh set of batteries, Nate turned the knob on the Geiger counter and held the wand out. The device made a few tiny crackling sounds. The dial twitched ever so slightly.

  Footsteps thudded from inside the house a second before the door swung open. It was Amy and she was out of breath. “Evan’s on the phone.”

  Nate slid the device into his jacket pocket and hurried to the phone. “Tell me you have good news.” Nate said, trying to steady his own breathing.