by Harley Tate
Tracy swallowed. “Didn’t you see the Presidential Alert?”
“What are you talking about?”
“On your phone. Didn’t you get an alert?”
Wanda reached down between her feet and pulled up a zebra-print handbag. She fished out a little brick of a phone and powered it on. “I don’t turn my phone on during work hours.” She cast a sideways glance at Tracy. “It is the library.”
Tracy couldn’t have stared any harder. She doesn’t know? All the time they were driving, all the time Wanda had been standing at the bus stop, holding her purse and hoping for the bus…
Wanda didn’t know the whole world was about to change?
A shout from outside made them both look up. The sedan in front of them sat in the middle of the intersection, a wire draped across its roof. The couple inside were twisting about, looking out the windows and waving.
“What’s going on?” Wanda’s voice edged higher than its normal bubbly soprano.
A man on the street corner shouted again. “I can’t get through to 911!” He waved his arms at the couple in the car, but they weren’t paying attention.
Tracy looked at the wire, tracing it back to the telephone pole still on fire at the street corner. All at once it made sense. She laid on the horn until the woman in the car glanced up.
“Don’t get out.” Tracy made a motion with her hands to curl up in a ball, shrugging her shoulders and holding them tight. “The wire! It could be hot!” She pointed at the wire draped across their car.
The woman shook her head and grabbed her husband by the shoulder. He turned to face Tracy.
She tried again. “The wire!” She gesticulated, jabbing her index finger in the air toward the pole. “It could still have a charge. Stay inside the car!”
Wanda shook her head. “They should get out. Won’t they get electrocuted in there?”
“No. As long as they stay in the car and don’t touch any of the metal, they’ll be fine. It’s when they try to get out that they’ll get hurt.”
Tracy rolled down her window and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Don’t touch anything metal!”
The man on the corner stepped off the sidewalk and headed toward the car. Tracy tried to wave him off. “Don’t! You’ll get hurt!”
He stopped in the middle of the road. “They need help.”
“You’ll get electrocuted.”
“Are you sure?” Wanda peered out through the windshield, never once moving from her seat. “What if the car catches on fire?”
Tracy glanced over at her. “Then they’ll have to jump free. But until then, they should stay put. If the metal parts of the car have been charged, just touching it will be enough.”
Wanda scoffed. “You can’t expect them to just sit in there forever. They want to get home just like everyone else stuck here.” She waved around at the man in the street and the other cars facing them across the road.
“The car in front of us won’t go anywhere if that couple is dead.” Tracy turned back to the sedan just as the bystander reached the car. Tracy shoved her door open, standing up to yell. “No! Stay back!”
He paused, hand outstretched for the car. But it was too late. The woman inside reached for the door handle on her own. One touch of the metal handle and she jerked like a marionette on a string, flying backward and into her husband’s arms. He grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her as he turned to open his own door.
“No!” Tracy shouted again, but it all happened too fast. The bystander rushed in, waving his arms and yelling, but the passenger didn’t stand a chance.
Just as his wife had been electrocuted, so too, was he. His body jumped and twitched in the seat as the current passed through him. In moments it was over.
He slumped over in the front seat, torso draped over the body of his wife. Nothing but the tops of their heads and wisps of smoke were visible.
Tracy lowered herself back into her car and shut the door.
“A-are… t-they…?” Wanda couldn’t finish the question.
Tracy nodded. “I think so.”
“Wow. I guess you were right.”
Tracy cut Wanda a glance as she put the Suburban in reverse. She backed up until she was a safe distance away and turned around.
The man from the sidewalk still stood in the road, useless cell phone in his hand, staring in shock.
“Shouldn’t you go help them?”
Tracy put the SUV in drive and headed back the way they had come. “I tried. They didn’t listen. There’s nothing anyone can do for them now.”
“What about the police? Shouldn’t someone call?”
A million responses came to mind, but Tracy shoved them all down. She turned the corner onto another street without power and shrugged. “Knock yourself out. My guess is you won’t have much luck.”
Wanda turned on her phone and tinkered with it while Tracy tried to make sense of all that just happened. Every street she turned down looked the same. No lights. No sound.
Nothing but the rumble of the Suburban’s engine and its headlights as she navigated by memory home. The CME must have caused the EMP Joe warned about, frying the circuits and the transformers from here to the East Coast, if not more.
Maybe it was just a local outage, but Tracy didn’t think so. In the morning she could attempt to find out. Drive around, see what might not be impacted. But for now, they needed to get somewhere safe. Secure.
Wanda jabbed at her phone’s screen, red nail clicking with every poke. “Silly thing. It’s not connecting to anything. Says I have no service.” She frowned and glanced out the window. “I always have service here.”
Tracy didn’t have it in her to break the news to Wanda that night. Let the woman have one more good night’s sleep before she learned the world she knew and took for granted was gone.
If it really was true.
She turned down her own street and exhaled, hoping beyond hope that the rest of the country was blissfully unaware of the power outage here in Sacramento. Please let it be local. Small and manageable.
If the whole country were hit… Tracy didn’t know how long anyone would survive.
She pulled into her driveway and put the SUV in park before hopping out. “I’ll be right back.” Jogging up to her dark front step, she unlocked the door, rushed though the house and entered the garage. From there, she disengaged the power garage opener and pulled up the garage door by hand.
As she hopped back into the driver’s seat Wanda glanced over at her. “Do you have a microwave? I sure could do with a warm glass of milk.”
Tracy pulled into the garage and put the car in park before resting her head on the steering wheel. Explaining the future to Wanda wasn’t going to be easy.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRACY
Sacramento, CA
7:30 a.m.
Coffee. Hot, steaming coffee made from fresh ground beans that cost more per pound than organic, free-range, patted and petted and called-by-name chickens from the fancy market one neighborhood over.
It was the one thing above everything else Tracy would miss. She loved coffee. Sure, she would get used to the freeze-dried stuff mixed in a tepid cup of water, if she even had any water to spare, but darn.
Good coffee could turn a whole day around.
She tucked a leg up under her and looked over the list again. After she’d gotten Wanda tucked away in the guest bedroom with a portable lantern and shown her the shelf of books above the dresser, Tracy had unloaded the Suburban.
Cases of water and Gatorade. Giant packs of toilet paper and paper towels. Boxes of granola bars and big plastic tubs of protein powder. It all went into stacks along the wall of her bedroom. She’d done well, but no matter how much she stocked up, it would all run out.
And that was if no one found out she had it. She glanced down at the list. Everything she had in the kitchen. The food in the fridge. The extra supplies sequestered in her bedroom. All spelled out.
/> She could make it last.
The door to the guest bedroom squeezed open and a sleepy Wanda padded into the kitchen, wearing the same dress as the day before. Instead of her usual bun, Wanda’s hair trailed down her back in a loose braid, a few gray strands hanging free around her face.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did. It’s amazing how well you can sleep when there’s no noise. At my apartment, there’s always cars buzzing by, or the bus picking up, or people out late and talking on the street. You live in such a quiet neighborhood.”
Tracy leaned back in her chair. “It’s not the neighborhood. It’s the lack of electricity.”
Wanda perked up. “It still hasn’t come back on?”
“No. And I don’t think it will. Not for a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
Tracy motioned toward the chair. “You should sit down. I can’t make coffee, but I can get you a glass of water if you’d like. I have some apple juice we should drink in the fridge too, since it’s been opened.”
“Water would be great.”
Tracy stood up before pulling a glass from the cabinet above the sink. She filled it with a pitcher standing on the counter.
“What’s with all the water?” Wanda pointed at all the containers lining the counter. Every possible pitcher, vase, or decently sized Tupperware Tracy owned sat on the counter, full of water.
“If it’s bad as I think it is, the water will run out very soon. We need to save as much as we can.”
Wanda frowned and took the glass from Tracy. “I don’t understand. Isn’t it just a power outage?”
Tracy exhaled and lowered herself back into her chair. Now or never. “The Presidential Alert that went out yesterday warned of severe space weather. Told everyone to shelter in place.”
“Space weather?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I was an English major in college, Tracy. Not a scientist.”
Tracy exhaled. “Then I’ll start at the beginning. Stop me with questions.”
Half an hour later, Tracy and Wanda polished off a breakfast of yogurt and chopped fruit that wouldn’t last the day without power. But food only satisfied physical hunger, not concussion and curiosity.
Wanda ran her fingers up and down the near-empty water glass, brows knit in thought. “So you’re saying a giant electromagnetic pulse knocked out the power to possibly the entire country?”
Tracy held up her hands. “I don’t really know. It could be everywhere.”
Wanda shook her head, her lips opening and closing as she tried to process everything Tracy had said. “But surely the government has prepared for something like this. The military will come. Or the National Guard. Or FEMA. Someone will be here to help us, won’t they?”
“Maybe. After a while.” Tracy sipped her own water and glanced out the window to the street. The first rays of morning sun hit her front porch and a little wren landed on the railing. Did the animals notice the difference? The lack of electricity? Or was it just another beautiful day to them?
She turned back to Wanda. “Without power, how can they communicate?”
“Your car didn’t stop working. My cell phone still turns on. We’re not totally without power.”
“But the grid is down. When the battery runs out in your phone, how will you charge it?”
Wanda glanced down at her lap. “I don’t know.”
“What about the gas pumps? Without electricity, who will keep the gas flowing?”
“Some gas stations have backup power. Generators, that sort of thing.”
“Those will work for a while. But when they run out of fuel, then what? Think about it. There won’t be any electricity for grocery stores or hospitals. Police stations or prisons.”
Wanda’s eyes went wide.
“How long do you think the government can keep the peace if the very people who we rely on to protect us have their own families to think about?”
“You mean the police?”
Tracy nodded. “And the military and firefighters and EMTs. Everyone we rely on to keep us safe. They have families. Some of whom might not have any food in their house or water sitting on their counter.”
Wanda chewed on her lower lip, the tell of insecurity softening the wrinkles around her mouth. “I don’t think you’re giving the government enough credit. People won’t just abandon their posts. They’ll do their jobs. It might take a little while, but we’ll be fine.”
“Are you going to the library this morning?”
Wanda blinked. “The… the power’s out! How could I even open?”
Tracy shrugged. “Don’t you think other people are going to think the same thing?”
Wanda might not want to admit it, but police officers and firefighters and members of the military were just like them. Scared and confused and unsure what to do next.
If they were faced with making sure their family had food, shelter, and water to survive versus going to work and helping strangers, Tracy didn’t think it would be a hard choice. She knew Walt was doing everything he could to get home this very minute. Assuming he was all right.
She pushed the worry aside. Her husband was a strong, dependable man. If he could get back to her, he would. Now Madison on the other hand…
Tracy twisted her cup of water around on the table. At nineteen years old Madison didn’t have the life experience of her father. She didn’t know how to handle a disaster like this. Was she really on her way home? Had she changed her mind and stayed on campus?
How long before life at the university fell apart?
Thinking about her daughter was why she’d been up to watch the sunrise and why she’d been out on the roads to run into Wanda at all. She glanced up at the woman she barely knew.
Wanda had to be in her mid-fifties, about ten years older than Tracy, if she had to guess. But instead of staying in shape and active like Tracy made a point of being, Wanda had let herself go. Tracy wouldn’t get much help in the manual labor or self-defense department from Wanda, but maybe she had some other skills.
She smiled, hoping for the best. “I’ve inventoried the fridge and freezer. We have about a day or two before most everything goes bad. Mind helping me cook up the frozen meat? I’ve got a grill in the backyard and a smoker. We can use both to preserve at least some of it before we need to throw it away.”
Wanda cast a wary glance at the fridge. “I’m not much of a cook.”
Great. “It’s a good time to learn.”
The older woman’s brows knit even tighter. “I was hoping you could take me to my place today. I need to change clothes. Shower.”
Tracy sat still, forcing her face to not give away her internal shock. Did the woman not listen to anything she’d said this morning? She wouldn’t be able to take a shower. At least not a hot one.
The city water supply might still be operational, but how long would that last? They had to be running the filtration system on backup generators. Those wouldn’t last more than a day. Nothing was hooked up to solar power or wind turbines here.
Some of the small towns to the west between Sacramento and the Bay may still be up and running. If they shut down their systems before the EMP hit, the wind turbines might still function.
If Tracy had outfitted the roof with solar panels, they might have survived. But she hadn’t. Wanda’s apartment certainly hadn’t invested in any green energy, either. By the time she drove her home, any water still running would be ice cold and possibly not even clean.
But if that’s what the woman wanted…
Tracy could have used the extra pair of hands. But an unwilling pair might be worse than none at all. She puffed out a breath of air and glanced out the side window to the street beyond.
Leaving her house with all the supplies inside wasn’t ideal, but she would have to sooner or later. And she could fill up on gas before the local stations ran out of backup power. She knew the closest Shell had a generator: when the creek flooded and the power had
been out for days, it was the only place still open.
Maybe she could even check out the neighborhood and assess who could be an ally and who to watch out for. Tracy stood up. “Okay. I’ll take you home. But not one word to anyone about my supplies. Understood?”
Wanda tilted her head. “Okay. Sure. If that’s what you want.”
“It is.” Tracy finished her water and set the empty glass in the sink. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready.”
Wanda smiled. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me until we get there.” Tracy wasn’t sure they’d even make it down the street.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MADISON
Sacramento, CA
5:00 a.m.
The pounding wouldn’t quit. All those little hammers, jabbing away at her skull. Little pointed pick axes held by Snow White’s dwarves, searching for diamonds.
She begged them to stop. “Please, I’m not a diamond mine.”
But they only intensified their efforts, hammers becoming the beaks of a thousand woodpeckers, every one insistent on reaching her brain. They were starving and she was dinner.
Madison swiped at her head, trying to shoo them away. Go. Get out of here you nasty birds. Why won’t you listen?
“I said open up!”
The banging intensified. Madison swore one of the birds opened its beak and spoke. What the…?
“Shit.”
Brianna? What are you doing here? Consciousness threatened, but Madison liked the safety of the dark.
Someone shook her, tearing away the mask of sleep as a bright light hit her eyes. “Wake up. It’s the cops.”
Madison pried an eye open. The cops? She sat up, wincing as she moved her neck. Slumping over in the back seat of a Wrangler might not have been the best choice in beds. Rubbing at her stiff muscles, she blinked, bringing the interior of the Jeep into focus.
The light flashed in her eyes again and Madison’s brain finally kicked into gear. A police officer stood outside the Jeep, one hand on his hip, one holding a flashlight bright enough to illuminate the bottom of the ocean.
“What’s going on?”