EMP: Return of the Wild West | Book 1 | Survive The Fall

by Hamilton, Grace

  “They’ve been linked to various hacking attacks, thefts, and vandalism around the world, but do we have any reason to take their larger-scale threats seriously?”

  “Well, that is indeed the unanswered question. We don’t know what they have. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  Darryl finally roused himself. Scrubbing his face with his hands, he sat up on the edge of the bed. The old pundit’s voice was like fingernails scraping his eardrums, so he grabbed the cell phone and shut it off. Tucking the phone into his shirt pocket, he stumbled across his room, slipped on his shoes, and headed downstairs.

  His grandparents lived in an old, roomy ranch house with dark wood walls covered in nature-themed artwork. As he made his way down the broad stairs, he heard the clank of plates and silverware from the dining room. He saw his mother moving back and forth between the table and the kitchen.

  “Mom, you’re back,” he said. “Did you see them off?”

  She paused in the kitchen doorway, clutching a pitcher of iced tea. His mom was tall, like him, with curly black hair and a pinched face.

  “Yeah, just waiting for your dad’s call,” she said. “He’s supposed to check in once they set up the camp. Let’s just hope he’s got a signal on the sat phone up there. They are so far out in the wilderness.”

  “Untouched wilderness,” Darryl said, making his way across the spacious living room. He passed through the shadow of an enormous stuffed elk head and sat down at the dining room table. “That’ll be right up Grandpa’s alley.”

  Grandma came in next, carrying a gravy boat, which she set next to the large tub of mashed potatoes. She reached over, picked up Darryl’s cloth napkin, and tucked the corner under his collar.

  “I’ve got it, Grandma,” he said.

  “How’s the research going?” his mother asked as she took her seat at the head of the table.

  First question, right out of the box. Darryl sighed and scooped a heap of mashed potatoes onto his plate. It wasn’t going. Why did she have to keep harping on his college paper at every opportunity. He didn’t want to get into another argument about it.

  “Darryl, college is your future,” Mom said as she poured herself a glass of iced tea. “It may not seem like it, but the decisions you’re making now will have a long-lasting impact on your life.”

  “Did I say I wasn’t working on it?” he replied, trying not to sound as annoyed as he was.

  “Are you?”

  “I’m…” He dumped the serving spoon back into the mashed potatoes and reached for the gravy boat. “I’m thinking through some issues, okay? Preliminary work.”

  “Always an excuse,” his mother muttered.

  Before Darryl could reply, his grandmother cleared her throat loudly. “Can we please not fight about this over dinner? Food doesn’t digest well when you’re all worked up. Let’s eat in peace, and you two can discuss college research papers later.”

  “Fine,” Darryl’s mom said, “but my point remains.”

  And with that, she grabbed the big roast and dragged it toward her. The mention of college put a damper on dinner conversation, and Darryl ate mostly in silence. He didn’t mention the news report—he was afraid if he brought up anything related to his personal life, the conversation would naturally shift back toward his incomplete college work.

  When they were done eating, he offered to do the dishes, just to have something to do. All his college books were stacked up on the desk upstairs. He didn’t want to look at them, especially not now, so he took his time with the dishes. By the time he was done, they were cleaner than ever. He dried them meticulously with a towel, then placed them one by one in the cupboard.

  Finally, he could linger no longer in front of the kitchen sink. His fingertips were wrinkled from the hot water and soap. He dried his hands and headed back into the living room, where his grandmother was quietly knitting in the corner.

  “Thanks for dinner,” he said.

  “You’re welcome, hon,” she replied. “You headed to your room now?”

  He had been headed toward the stairs, but her question changed his mind. Instead, he went to the front door.

  “Actually, I’m going to get a little fresh air while there’s still some light,” he said. Before she could say anything else, he slipped outside and pulled the door shut behind him.

  His grandparents owned an enormous piece of property. Their rolling hills and pastures were surrounded on all sides by a towering forest. It was particularly beautiful in the early evening light, with the setting sun burnishing the tops of the trees in the west. Darryl stepped down off the porch and proceeded to wander.

  Enjoy it while you can, he told himself, heading for one of the large open pastures where he saw their cows far in the distance. His grandparents, Tuck and Tabitha, were planning to sell off some of the property. The farm had become too much for them to maintain. Darryl wished he had the money to buy it from them, if only to keep it in the family.

  He made an enormous loop of the property, killing at least an hour, before starting back toward the house. On the way, he spotted his grandmother in her golf cart. She’d stopped near the electric fence. Darryl headed toward her.

  “What are you doing, Grandma?” he asked.

  “I like to reel in the electric fence at night,” she said, “give the cows less room and see how they act.”

  It was not the answer he’d expected. “What’s the point?”

  “They’ll have half as much room after the sale,” she said. “I just want to see how the smaller space affects their demeanor.” She pulled a small notebook out of the pocket of her shirt and held it up. Darryl noted her gnarled and calloused hands. The woman had worked hard her entire life. “I’m keeping a daily log.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Darryl replied.

  She must have heard something in his voice because she stopped what she was doing and turned to him. She was so much smaller than him now, a shriveled little thing, but she reached up and put her hand on his shoulder, and suddenly he felt like a little kid again.

  “Now, listen here,” she said. “I know what you’re going through. I had pressure at your age—family expectations and so forth.”

  “I just wish Mom would ease off,” Darryl said with a sigh. “I get it. She’s an engineer. She’s designed airplanes and spaceships. And Dad fights for the environment. They’ve both done amazing things. They’re helping the whole world. The expectation that somehow I’m supposed to carry on that tradition sucks. That’s all.”

  His grandma nodded and gazed off into the field. The cows were mostly clustered together near a pond. They were Canadian Holstein, black-and-white dairy cows, sturdy and strong-limbed but relatively docile. When Darryl was younger, he used to enjoy bottle-feeding the calves.

  “Think about how those poor cows feel,” his grandmother said. “Time is running out. Their world is closing in. Poor creatures have no idea why the fences keep moving, why their world keeps shrinking. No idea what the future holds.”

  “If you’re trying to convince me it sucks to be a cow, you’ve succeeded,” Darryl said, watching as one of the young cows pranced and kicked through the high grass.

  “Cows don’t have to worry about college research papers,” Grandma said. “No, hon, I’m saying that’s how it is when life changes. Transitions are never easy. There’s always uncertainty, and it feels like the world is closing in. But you hang in there, and eventually you adjust.”

  “Okay.” If anything, her attempt at comfort only amplified the stress of his current situation. The world closing in around him. Time running out. Yes, that’s how it felt.

  “You’ll be okay,” she said, patting him gently on the back.

  She climbed into her golf cart, as Darryl fixed his gaze on the cows. When she turned the key, the radio she’d installed gave a little hiss as a news program played midstory. It was the same damn thing as before: ANPRIM.

  “But do you think they actually have the means to
carry out a threat of that magnitude?” the voice said. Nope, not his ASMR news anchor from before. This was just a plain old CBC Radio reporter. “They’ve caused trouble in countries all over the world, but can they really hit the whole world? Is it possible we’re just giving them the attention they crave by taking their messages seriously? Perhaps, if we ignore them, they’ll go away.”

  “You want a ride?” Grandma asked, turning down the radio. “I can drop you off at the house then come back and finish what I’m doing.”

  “No, thanks,” Darryl replied. “I sort of enjoy the walk.”

  She tipped him a little salute and sped off down the electric fence, as Darryl resumed his meandering walk toward the house. It was close to fully dark now, and the nearly cloudless sky looked as dazzling as ever, with the bright Milky Way visible to the south. The house was picture-perfect, nestled in the middle of the grassy field with forested mountains rising up in the background, a big barn to one side. Lights burned in the windows along the front of the house. He saw the silhouette of his mother in one of the upstairs bedrooms. She seemed to be gazing outside.

  Waiting for me to get back to the house and get to work, no doubt.

  He heard a loud buzzing coming from the pasture. Assuming his grandma had made a mistake with the electric fence, he glanced over his shoulder, and his breath hitched in his throat. Sparks were dancing along the electric fence, as if somehow the power had surged. This, in turn, freaked out the cows, and they charged. Darryl watched one of the older cows hit the fence straight on, as if attacking this sparking menace. Just before she got there, the sparks died, so when she hit the wires, they popped off the insulators.

  Darryl turned back around, trying to find his grandmother. Did she realize one of the cows had just destroyed the electric fence? Instead, his gaze went to the house. All the lights were out. The big floodlight in front of the barn was also out. Indeed, the whole ranch had gone utterly dark, lit only by the splash of stars overhead.

  “Grandma, what did you do?” Darryl muttered. Somehow, she must have overloaded the circuits by moving the electric fence.

  He heard cows lowing in the dark, heard their hooves in the field, and suddenly he was worried about getting trampled. Feeling a burst of anxiety, he starting picking his way toward the house. He made it about ten meters before a shadow swooped in from his right and someone suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders. Startled, he cried out, the sound of his voice echoing out over the pasture before a hand clamped over his mouth.

  “It’s me. It’s just me.” Grandma’s voice.

  Embarrassed, Darryl stepped back and moved her hand away from his mouth.

  “Darryl, the fence is down,” his grandma said. “I need your help with the cows! Come on.”

  And with that, she pushed past him, headed in the direction of the downed fence. Darryl turned to follow her.

  How are we going to wrangle a bunch of cows in the dark with no power?

  3

  Greg didn’t sleep well, his thoughts troubled by the broken satellite phone and the impending (and largely incompatible) dual missions of the camping trip. It was still dark when he awoke, and he tossed and turned for another hour or so. When he heard his daughter moving around outside, he finally gave up and dragged himself out of his sleeping bag. He shivered, feeling dwarfed inside the six-person enormous Coleman. He’d brought the family tent, initially intending to share it with his daughter, but she’d wanted a tent of her own. The extra emptiness meant his body heat hadn’t been quite enough to warm the interior during the night.

  Unzipping the tent flap, he gazed outside. Emma was the only one outside and was already getting the fire going, stoking it and adding sticks from the pile they’d made the night before. Greg climbed out of the tent to join her. Stiff and sore, he stretched his arms over his head, ran his hand through his hair, and walked toward the fire.

  “I hope you got some sleep last night,” he said to his daughter.

  “Not much,” she replied. “I was too excited. Also, it was pretty cold.”

  He marveled again at how big she’d gotten. She was going to be tall, that was clear, and her pudgy little-girl face was gone, had become a face he recognized and didn’t at the same time.

  “Look at what I did here,” she said, as flames began to lick the wood. “I banked coals from last night’s fire so it would be easier to start this morning.”

  She pointed into the fire where Greg could see that she’d carefully laid down the coals from the night before, built a kind of box on top with sticks, and stuffed some kindling in the center.

  “That’s smart,” he said, but he was thinking about the stupid satellite phone.

  Maybe Eustace was right. Maybe setting it out overnight had somehow recovered a charge. It made no sense, but he wanted it to be true. Greg went back to his tent and picked up the briefcase, worked it open, and pulled out the satellite phone. Instead of turning it on right away, he popped open the case and pried out the battery, checking and rechecking it for any sign of damage.

  “You got that fire going all by yourself, Emma?” At some point, Tuck had come out of his tent. Greg rarely heard him sound so enthusiastic. “That’s impressive.”

  “She’s like a fourteen-year-old survivalist,” his friend Tommy said. “Is her dad seeing this?”

  “I see it,” Greg replied, inserting the battery and shutting the phone case. He pressed the power button again and got no response. Suppressing an urge to curse loudly, he shoved the phone into his pocket.

  “She’s a smart kid,” Tuck said. “Must be related to me.”

  That made Emma laugh. When Greg turned back to the fire, he saw that his daughter was already preparing a pot of coffee. When it was ready, the campers stood around, bleary-eyed, and sipped from enamelware cups. It was a beautiful blue morning, with crisp air so fresh it made Greg feel clean and alive. There was nothing quite like being in the mountains in the middle of autumn.

  After finishing his coffee, Greg rinsed out the cup with water from one of their many plastic jugs. Then he filled his canteen. As he was doing that, his father wandered over. The man’s rough farmer’s build and leathery skin made him seem like a man who’d spent his life surviving in hostile places. He looked right at home in the wilderness.

  “We’re going for a hike this morning,” Tuck said. Not a question.

  “We are?” Greg asked.

  “Last night, when you were fiddling with that phone, Eustace and I decided we’d hike up the mountain,” Tuck replied. “You might get a better signal up there.”

  “I can’t get a better signal if I can’t turn it on.” Greg screwed the lid on his canteen and grabbed a pouch of trail mix. “It’s dead.”

  “Still a good idea, though,” Tuck said. “We could get a lay of the land. It’ll just be you, me, and Eustace. Tommy don’t want to go on account of his hip, so he can stay and keep an eye on the camp with Emma.”

  Greg looked at his father and saw a hint of a smile on his face. The old man’s tone of voice made him sound like he was trying to pick a fight, but the look on his face suggested he was in a good mood. The man was a walking contradiction.

  Maybe he truly has no idea how he comes across, Greg thought. It would explain a lot.

  And somehow, Greg’s wife, Marion, thought this trip could heal the rift between Greg and his father?

  “Okay, Dad, let’s go for a hike,” Greg said. “That’s fine. Emma, do you want to go on a hike with us up the mountain? We’ll probably have a really nice view.”

  “No, if it’s okay, I’ll stay here,” Emma said, scrubbing out the coffee pot. “I was going to set up a place to process the meat we catch when we go hunting. I read all about it before we left home.”

  “Okay, but you can hold off on that for now if you want,” he said. “There’s plenty of time.”

  “I’ll go ahead and set it up,” she said, giving him that withering look of hers. “We’re going hunting soon, aren’t we? That’s one of the mai
n reasons we’re here, right?” This would be Emma’s first time hunting, and Greg knew she was excited about it.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get our hunting in,” he replied.

  Within the hour, Greg, Tuck, and that red-bearded giant, Eustace, loaded up their packs and headed uphill. Just before heading into the trees, Greg glanced back and saw his daughter already setting up a curtained area around some big rocks at the edge of the camp.

  Poor kid. She just wants to hunt and fish, but she’s stuck with her father, who’s more concerned about this phone, he thought.

  As for Greg, he immediately felt awkward crunching along through the forest with his father and Eustace. He didn’t know either man very well, and more than that, he was essentially a double agent spying on Eustace for an environmental court case. Things were still ice-cold between Greg and his father. Tuck clearly wasn’t going to be the one to bridge the gap, and Greg honestly had no idea how to do it. Dad’s friend Tommy seemed to have a calming effect on him, but he’d stayed behind.

  This should be a fun little hike, Greg thought bitterly.

  And, indeed, none of the men said a single word as they picked their way through the trees and rocks up toward a higher clearing above the tree line. The loudest sound was Eustace’s breathing. The man was constantly snorting, coughing, making weird grunting noises, or just sucking in air like a bear sniffing garbage.

  They walked maybe two kilometers over the course of an hour, tying off nylon strips along the way to mark their path. When they reached a big rocky clearing above the trees, they finally stopped. Greg was out of breath and feeling the effects of thin air. He took a long swig of water from his canteen then sat down on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing.

  Surprisingly, Tuck plopped down beside him with a long whoosh of air. Greg munched on trail mix, Tuck enjoyed a granola bar, and Eustace produced a chocolate bar. But not a single word was spoken. Periodically, Greg tried to think of something to say, but then he resented having to break the silence.