America Offline | Books 1 & 2 | The Day After Darkness

by Weber, William H.

  Carl stared at him blankly. “Unless the whole country has gone dark.” He changed frequencies and called out: “This is Kilo Niner Bravo Golf Golf, handle Two Bear, if anyone is out there.”

  The radio hummed static. Carl repeated the message and waited.

  “How long does it normally take?” Nate asked.

  “Depends. This isn’t a cell phone.”

  “No kidding. Have you considered that maybe no one’s listening?”

  Carl called out a third time when another voice came on.

  “Kilo Niner Bravo Golf Golf, this is Whiskey Seven Bravo Echo Foxtrot, handle Sharpie. You’re coming in at five over nine into Santa Maria, California.”

  “Thank you, Whiskey Seven Bravo Echo Foxtrot,” Carl replied. “Sharpie, we’re in Byron, Illinois, and wondering how things are going in your neck of the woods, over.”

  “Not very good, I’m afraid, Two Bear. Power seems to have gone out here at approximately twelve minutes past two am Pacific Time. All phone communication is also down, along with water. Besides a single police patrol, at this point, no real sign of government intervention. What about you? Over.”

  “Appreciate that, Sharpie,” Carl replied. “Over here in the Midwest, we are presently in the midst of a monstrous winter storm. Unlike you, we have yet to see any government response whatsoever. No doubt road conditions are likely hampering their efforts to check on folks and keep them informed. I’ll be honest with you, it’s quite disheartening to hear the outage stretches all the way to the Pacific, over.”

  “Not only us, I’m afraid, Two Bear. My understanding is the power is out from the northern tip of Canada to the southern tip of Mexico. Although I can’t independently confirm that assessment, it seems to be the consensus among the radio operators I’ve spoken to. Over in my neck of the woods, I’m afraid to say things are even more serious. The local nuclear power plant had a malfunction during shutdown procedures and forced a massive evacuation from the area. I’m just a few miles past the danger radius, but I’ve heard a number of people have already died.”

  Nate shook his head, reeling from what the man on the other end had just said. He felt his hands shaking and his chest squeezed tight. Kids nowadays had an expression for what Nate was feeling. As the kids liked to say these days, he’d been sunned. Shaken to his very core by the revelation Sharpie had just laid out for them. Carl was no better off. He continued to ask questions of the man in California in spite of the dry mouth hampering his speech.

  They finished up their conversation soon after, telling Sharpie to stay safe. Carl was about to shut the radio off when he heard a fresh voice calling out. Carl replied and the two men shared call signs.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Two Bear, this is Renegade in Illinois.”

  Nate asked if he could take over.

  Carl removed the earphones and handed them to Nate. “Be my guest.”

  “Hey, Renegade,” Nate replied, surprised and even happy. “This is, uh… Overseer. We’re also in Illinois—Byron, to be exact. What’s your 10-20?” The old cop call signs were flooding back in. Although they weren’t utilized in the ham radio code system, Renegade went with it.

  “I prefer not to say, if that’s all right, Overseer. I’ve got a well-provisioned setup where I am and don’t intend on giving away my coordinates. There’s no telling in times like these what some desperate nutjob might be willing to do.”

  Renegade’s voice was deep, and sounded cured from years of smoking and booze. He also sounded like an older man, somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties.

  “Overseer, you sound like a smart guy. I take it you’ve got a handle on our current situation?” he asked.

  “As good as can be expected,” Nate replied. He told Renegade about the nuclear power plant meltdown in California and that the one in Byron was currently facing the same possibility.

  “I’ve got nuclear and biological air filtration systems, so I should be fine either way. If I had a single red cent for all those doubting Thomases who snickered behind my back… I reckon it’s safe to say they aren’t laughing now.”

  “Roger that,” Nate agreed, smirking. “I reckon they aren’t. Prep for war and hope for peace, right?”

  “Right on, brother.”

  Nate was about to let Renegade go when the man said one last thing. “Should things get worse, and I have every reason to think they will, you need to realize we’re less than fifty miles from a number of ticking time bombs.” He was talking about the nuclear power plants in the immediate area.

  To the south were the Dresden, Braidwood and LaSalle plants. To the west was the Quad City plant. And to the east were the Cook and Palisades nuclear plants. All formed something of a ring around the greater Chicago area. That sinking feeling in his gut told Nate this was where Renegade was going.

  “Won’t matter whether or not the snow lets up,” Renegade went on. “The inner cities are already a powder keg on the best of days. Won’t be long before the refugees start fleeing the chaos of the city and heading for the country. Arm yourself, my brother. Once the God-fearing, law-abiding folks are dead and gone, the desperate and the depraved will be all that’s left.”

  Chapter 13

  The light was fading when Nate returned home, his progress slow not only because of the high winds and whipping snow. He couldn’t shake Renegade’s warning that it wouldn’t be long before the cities emptied out, bringing with them more than starving and half-frozen refugees. Mixed in with the desperate masses would be another group, this one far less worried about breaking laws, much less commandments. Nate’s only hope was that the Siberian conditions would act as something of a wall. An image came to him of the ice wall in Game of Thrones, holding back hordes of White Walkers. It wasn’t a pretty thought. And maybe Nate was even a little ashamed the visual had come to him at all. But if anyone arrived planning to harm him or his family, there would be no hesitation. And above all, there would be no mercy.

  Nate scoffed a cold hot dog before commissioning Hunter and Emmitt to help take some of the wood stacked by the front door and bring it inside. For the pieces on top, that meant knocking the snow off them. It also meant twenty percent of his stock would be kept dry.

  While he felt the food and water could be managed, Nate wasn’t as confident about his wood supplies. Depending on how long things lasted, he might need to chop down one or two of the small ash trees in his backyard. Trees lined most of the roads here as well, so finding them wouldn’t be hard. But knocking them down and sawing them up, well, that was another story. Especially in weather like this.

  The sun had already set by the time they sat for dinner. The flame from two candles made shadows dance across their faces, tired and fearful.

  “I wish Dad was here,” Emmitt moaned, stirring his food listlessly.

  Lauren patted his back. “We all miss your dad,” she assured him. “But he’s busy at the plant, making sure we’re safe.”

  “And trying to get the power back on,” Hunter added, a tinge of hope in his voice. “Maybe then I’ll be able to make the Deathmatch tournament.”

  “Don’t count on it, bud,” Nate told him. “If there’s a problem, he’ll call.” He turned to his wife, who had already finished her meal. She was probably the fastest eater he knew. “At least you kept your appetite.”

  She smiled. “I’m eating for two, don’t forget.”

  “How could I forget? Speaking of which, how are you feeling?” He didn’t want to worry about a baby scheduled to appear in two weeks’ time. At least not now with everything else on his mind. The look in Amy’s eyes made it clear she was feeling the same way.

  “I feel like I have someone else living inside of me.”

  He laughed and kissed her. “Good answer.”

  An hour later, Nate and Amy were getting ready for bed. He’d added some wood in the fire beforehand so that in the morning there would still be embers.

  Amy, dressed in jogging pants, a hoody and slippers, slid into b
ed and lay on her side.

  “Slippers in bed, really?” Nate couldn’t help but laugh.

  She giggled. “I hate it when my feet touch a cold floor.”

  “I thought you hated too much heat now.” He was confused.

  “From the neck up, I do. As far as I’m concerned, everything else is fair game. I thought you knew this already.”

  He leaned over and kissed the side of her head. “That’s what I love about you. Every day I learn something new.” He paused briefly. “The Colt I gave you earlier. Where did you put it? I don’t want either of those boys stumbling onto it and…”

  “It’s okay,” Amy said, trying to reassure him. She knew Nate’s past had turned him into something of a stickler. “I have it in the drawer next to my bed. In the morning I’ll return it to the safe.”

  He nodded, even though she had her back to him and couldn’t see the gesture. “That’s fine. I have mine here as well. This is pretty much how we’ll need to do things from here on out.”

  Amy rolled over and eyed him as he rested on one elbow. “You don’t think we’re in that kind of danger, do you? Byron’s one of the safest towns in the country.”

  “Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you,” he conceded. “But this situation is far from normal and may be worse than we originally thought.”

  “What do you mean? You’re scaring me.”

  Nate drew in a deep breath. The last thing he wanted to do was to freak her out, freak anyone out, for that matter. But his conversation with those two men over the shortwave earlier—Renegade in particular—had shattered any illusion of safety he’d been clinging to. It had also shattered any sense that this was a flash-in-the-pan sort of event. It was one thing when part of Illinois lost power and something else entirely when all of North America went dark. He told her what he’d learned over at Carl’s.

  “Oh, my God, why didn’t you tell us sooner?” She was now sitting up in bed, any hint of sleepiness long gone.

  “Because I knew all it would do is scare the crap out of everyone for no good reason. Besides, I was going to fill everyone in tomorrow. When we were fresh and rested.”

  Amy went quiet, biting her lower lip. “That means everyone we know is…”

  “In the same boat as us, yes. It also means we may get visitors from the city as things become inhospitable there. They’ll be a trickle at first, but as the weather gets warmer, who knows how many will come.”

  “If this lasts until spring,” Amy said, a quiver in her voice, “who knows how many will even survive?”

  Her question was rhetorical, but Nate had already run the numbers in his head. And the conclusion he came to was just as frightening every time. “Whoever hit us did so at the worst possible moment,” he acknowledged, his voice low with anger and wrath. “Come spring, some might survive—the industrious, the prepared and those willing to do whatever it takes. The real question is, when and if the dust settles, what, if anything, will be left of our great nation?”

  Chapter 14

  Day 3

  The sound of clomping had invaded Nate’s dream. A group of lumberjacks were swinging at a giant oak with the wrong end of their axes, swearing and jabbering at one another in muffled tones.

  Nate opened his eyes and sat up in bed only to realize although his dream had faded away, the lumberjacks hadn’t. There were people outside. Nate woke Amy from a sound sleep.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  Nate was already at the bedroom door when he fed the magazine into his pistol and pulled back the slide. He paused only long enough to instruct Amy to get hold of the gun in her bedside table and stay put.

  She nodded and did as he said.

  Moving down the hall, Nate noticed the voices had grown fainter. He moved into the living room and peered out the window. There he saw an SUV in the driveway, parked right behind Lauren’s truck. Then a pair of engines started—first the SUV, followed by another vehicle. Nate rushed for the front door. By the time he got it open, the SUV was leaving the driveway followed by Lauren’s pickup, the latter going in reverse. The thieves must have broken in and hotwired it.

  The pickup was about thirty yards out when Nate removed the safety and opened fire. He was aiming for the vague outline of a figure in the driver’s side window. Of that first volley, one went high, the second struck the back window, forming a small hole, and the third landed about the middle of the driver’s side door. The pickup swerved and then gained speed. Nate ran out into the deep snow. He wasn’t going to let someone come onto his property and take his stuff without a fight. The next four rounds went for the driver with limited success. Two shots hit the front windshield, spiderwebbing it. He aimed the remaining rounds at the tires, hoping he might pop one and disable the vehicle. Nate kept firing until the pistol ran empty, but the truck just sped off. He could have sworn he’d hit the driver, but outnumbered and probably outgunned, he knew it would have been foolish to give chase.

  Amy came to the door. “Nate, your feet! You’re gonna die of pneumonia, for heaven’s sake.”

  His empty pistol was still trained on the now empty road when he glanced down and realized he wasn’t wearing any shoes, nor a jacket. But the stabbing pain in his toes and along the soles of his feet paled in comparison to the searing anger he felt over being robbed. He'd emptied an entire magazine without neutralizing the driver.

  This was what happened when you didn’t spend enough time at the firing range, he admonished himself. He spun and waded through the deep snow on his way back to the house. That was when he realized the thieves had taken more than Lauren’s truck. They’d made off with a sizeable amount of his remaining woodpile.

  He cursed loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear him. Once inside, Amy closed the door. Lauren and the others were up and gathered around them. Not a surprise really, given he’d emptied a magazine at her fleeing truck.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren asked, pulling the edges of the knitted shawl she wore over her shoulders.

  Nate moved swiftly past them without saying a word, the legs of his pajamas wet and leaving droplets of water in his wake. He headed straight for the office where he kept the gun safe. He was a firm, almost fanatical advocate of storing weapons safely. He’d seen what could happen when the awesome power of firearms wasn’t respected. Which made it all the more surprising that he was about to break his own cardinal rule—never carry loaded weapons in the house. Even the pistol in his night table hadn’t been loaded. The distinction was a small one, but a distinction nonetheless.

  Now, after what had just happened, he saw that it wasn’t desperation that pushed people to turn on one another. It was opportunity. The men who had come to his house to steal his things weren’t starving, not a mere twenty-four hours after the power went out. And as Nate had noted yesterday, there were plenty of trees to go around for anyone willing to get an axe and start swinging. No, these men were thugs, parasites who made their living off of others’ hard work. Why chop a tree and go through all that effort when you could roll up and steal the finished product? Nate had known, had even been warned, that such people existed and that they’d be coming, but somehow he’d convinced himself living out here in the country bought him an extra day or two.

  What had also become clear from his encounter was that a pair of pistols just wasn’t going to cut it. Neither would a single shotgun, not at range. For now, however, it was all they had. Nate fed double-aught buck shells into the Remington, ensuring the safety was engaged.

  He heard shouting on his way back to the living room. Lauren had just discovered her truck was gone. But her voice wasn’t the one Nate heard. It was Hunter’s.

  “My iPad!” Hunter wailed in despair a second time, before becoming noticeably silent, as though he had suddenly realized he ought to keep his mouth shut.

  “Did they break into the house?” Emmitt asked.

  Hunter slumped onto the couch and buried his head under a pillow.

/>   Lauren and Amy were completely confused, but Nate thought he understood what had happened. “Hunter, you asked me yesterday if I would let you charge your iPad in my truck and I told you no.”

  Lauren’s eyes flared with sudden understanding. “Was that why you asked for the keys? You said you were going to grab something you forgot. Hunter, I’m talking to you.”

  His face reappeared, filled now with guilt. “The battery was running low and I wanted to charge it. I know there’s no internet, but all my songs are…”

  It was all starting to make far too much sense. “So you went out to charge the device you’re still addicted to, even though it’s practically useless. And let me guess, you left the car unlocked since you figured you’d be heading back to grab it anyway.”

  Hunter nodded with slow, painful reluctance.

  “You didn’t leave the keys in the car, too, did you?” his mother asked. “’Cause I don’t see them anywhere in my purse.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Lauren glared at her son. When a ten-year-old said they didn’t remember, it was about as close to a confession as you were gonna get. She was on the cusp of laying into him when a knock came at the door.

  With one hand on the pistol in his waistband, Nate approached the door and saw it was Carl, wide-eyed.

  He let his neighbor in. Carl’s pants were caked with snow from the thigh down to his boots. He removed the knitted cap he was wearing and slapped it against his leg. “I heard shooting and came as soon as I could.” The old man was out of breath and brandishing a military-issue Colt .45, the same service weapon he’d used during two tours of Vietnam, in ’66 and ’67.

  Nate invited him in. “We’re about to start on some breakfast if you care to join us. Getting busy might help to settle everyone’s nerves.”

  “Very kind of you,” Carl said, putting the gun away and hanging up his jacket. “But I promised the missus I’d make her favorite this morning. Eggs Benedict. That being said, how well the Hollandaise sauce turns out using the fireplace stove top may be a different story.”