The Blackout

by Stephanie Erickson

  He walked to what he hoped was a little beyond the borders of D.C. and set up his camp for the second time that night.

  In the morning he knew he had to come up with a plan. He pulled out the map and considered his options: stick with I-95 all the way home, or follow the coast. After what he’d seen in D.C., and how hard it was to come by food away from the coast, he was leery of straying from it again. He looked more closely at his map and saw that a rural road skirted the shoreline pretty closely most of the way. Gary decided loosely following that was his best bet. He hoped staying away from the bigger cities would keep him under the military’s radar.

  He decided not to think too much about his long-term problems: supplies, the state of his shoes, how long he’d last on his own. To survive, he had to be concerned with now. Today. What was he going to do to get as far south as he could in that one day? That became his new mantra.

  He had learned to take it one day at a time during a special workshop on survival. He thought it was important to learn what to do if his plane ever did go down in the middle of nowhere, and he survived. It had been the longest five days of his life – up until the Blackout, at least. He and four others were dumped in the middle of the swamp with one instructor, who taught them how to hunt, how to start a fire, how to build a shelter, and how to stay alive. Gary was left bit to hell by mosquitoes, cut to hell by the thick brush they had to trudge through, and tired as hell after sleeping in hammocks made from palm fronds so they could get up off the ground at night. The first night, he hadn’t quite perfected his hammock construction yet, and he came crashing down into the swamp below around two a.m. Sputtering and scrambling to get out of the alligator-infested waters, he didn’t sleep much the rest of that night. But it was all worth it. Knowledge he hoped he’d never have to use was coming in very handy during this long journey.

  He made it into Virginia easily and stopped for the night inside a wildlife preserve. He thought back to some show he’d watched on the Discovery Channel before all this happened. That guy had made trapping animals look so easy. Gary tried his hand at a few snares before he went to bed, but came up empty in the morning.

  He frowned at the empty trap. Not as easy as I’d hoped.

  He ended up fishing the river again, and although he wasn’t hungry after the meal, he had been hoping to have something other than fish for breakfast.

  As he cast the bones and skin into the fire he said aloud, “I s’pose I should be grateful for the meal.” Gary sighed. He was grateful. It had been eighteen days since the Blackout. He was a Wanderer, but he was alive. He could only hope Molly’s conditions were a little better.

  15.

  Three weeks into the wall’s construction, a fire broke out. The alarm rousted everyone from their beds in the middle of the night. Molly caught up with Jimmy, standing on the edge of the blaze.

  It looked like a bonfire, near where they were constructing the third section of the wall. Molly was confused.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone set fire to the supplies,” Jimmy said, so flatly that it caught Molly off-guard.

  “What? Oh my God! We have to put it out! Maybe some of the ones in the middle of the pile are still usable!” She looked around. “Where’s Burt?”

  Jimmy gestured. “Over there.”

  Molly abandoned Jimmy’s nonchalance and ran to Burt. “Burt! What can I do? How can we get this out?”

  Burt looked mournfully at the blaze. “I don’t think we can. Best thing is to just let it burn out. The supplies are a loss.”

  “No! Come on! Maybe there’s some salvageable things in the middle that haven’t been burned yet! I’ll go get some buckets and we can put it out!” She looked at Burt, and lowered her voice. “Burt, please. Don’t give up like this.”

  He turned and simply looked at her.

  “Who did this?” she demanded.

  “We think it was a group of Wanderers.”

  Molly shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t Wanderers take the supplies, rather than destroy them?”

  Burt grunted a response.

  “Burt-“

  But he cut her off. “Molly, you know as much as I do. Now, I have things to do. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She was left standing alone in the moonlight. Jimmy approached quietly. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Honey, I’m not sure any of us do.”

  The next day, they scrambled to try and replace the lost supplies. While they scrounged, rumors flew about who was responsible. It turned neighbor against neighbor, as everyone suspected it was someone inside who’d done it. Otherwise, why not take the supplies, as Molly had suggested?

  Molly didn’t fully agree. Her theory was that Craig was behind the whole thing. She thought he’d gotten some of his cronies to help him sneak back into the town and start the fire.

  She was taking a break near the town square when a fight broke out. “Well, I’ll bet you started it!” someone yelled at another person standing nearby.

  “Why the hell would I do that? Because I love manual labor so much I wanted to extend our work?” The accused man was big and tan, an imposing sight to Molly.

  The accuser had sharp features, a pointed nose, and chin. Even his hair met in a point at the back of his neck. He just looked weasely to Molly, like a used-car salesmen. The closer she looked at him, the more he seemed like one of Craig’s cronies, but she couldn’t be sure. “You tell me!” he shouted.

  The big man began to close the distance between them. “You get this straight. I’ve been here every day helping to build this wall to keep my family and horse-shit like you safe.” By then he was on top of the weasel and jabbed his oversized finger into the smaller man’s scrawny chest. “Make no mistake. I didn’t have anything to do with that fire.”

  The tension was immense. Molly spotted Jimmy in the distance. He was supposed to be cutting trees into more manageable pieces, but he’d stopped to observe the fight. His ax dangled by his side as he scrutinized the scene.

  The men stared at each other, and Molly wasn’t sure what to do. The weasel wasn’t someone she would trust if a fight did break out. The accused had bulk though, and wasn’t someone she’d want to be in the way of, either.

  While she tried to decide if she should step in, the fight diffused itself. The weasel simply backed away from the big man. He made no apology, but he didn’t make any more threats either. The big man just watched him walk away.

  She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and tried to get back to work. It was hard, though, with people’s anger simmering just below the surface.

  Quiet

  16.

  “It is so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, for some betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it may not be premature! That it may not be premature!”

  - Jack London, Iron Heel

  The quiet that enveloped the world was suffocating. There was no whisper of what happened. No hum of machinery. No song of hope. And in that quiet, all a body can do is think.

  17.

  It took about a week to recoup the supplies. They had to go farther out of town to get trees, which took longer to bring back, and made them all nervous.

  Once their pile was restored, Burt called a town meeting.

  “Now look, everyone,” he started. “We need a serious attitude adjustment.” Murmuring spread through the crowd. “We do! What happened was a minor setback, but if we let it, it will poison us. We can’t turn on each other over it! No one was hurt, and that’s what’s important. There’s no way to prove or disprove what happened, although I’ve heard a lot of theories floating around, and far too many accusations.” He looked hard at someone in the crowd. Molly followed his gaze to the weasel. “We’ve been able to recover nicely from the incident, an
d I don’t want to hear any more about it, is that clear?”

  The weasel spoke up. “I don’t have to stand here and be chastised like a child. Who appointed you the leader of this band of misfits? Maybe Craig had the right idea!”

  Burt bristled. “If you want to follow in Craig’s footsteps, be my guest.”

  A voice spoke up. “Burt, he may have a point. Might be we should take a vote for who should serve as our leader.” Molly’s mouth hung open at Jimmy’s words, shocked that he was finally getting involved.

  “And I suppose you would like the job, Jimmy?”

  “Hell no, I don’t. I think you’re doing the best you can with what you’ve been given. But, if you were fairly elected by the majority, it would certainly shut these idiots up.” He gestured towards the weasel when he said it.

  Burt considered. “Jimmy, you may have a point. Tomorrow, we’ll vote on who should lead this town, since there have been so many complaints. Each person is to bring a piece of paper with a name on it. Whoever has the most votes in the end wins, and can take over. Sound good to everyone?”

  Heads bobbed in nervous ascension. Molly frowned. What if the weasel gets elected? We’ll self-destruct before the power has a chance to come back.

  Molly spent a restless night trying to decide what she would do if the weasel did get elected. If she left, how would Gary find her? If she stayed, would she survive the coming weeks? She’d wanted to talk to Jimmy about it, but he’d left before she could catch up to him. What would he do? she wondered.

  The next day, she walked to the square with her scrap of paper in hand. They’d decided to tally the votes there. She felt Jimmy would do a better job than Burt, but knew he didn’t want the job. So, she’d scribbled Burt’s name on the scrap before she left the house, and jammed it into the jar filled with other slips of paper. Voting would conclude at sunset. Then the votes would be counted, and a winner announced. In the meantime, everyone was to stick to their tasks, unless they were going to vote.

  That evening, everyone gathered at the square. Molly had been chosen to help count the votes, and she read the results to the crowd.

  “Burt won by a landslide. He took over eighty percent of the votes.”

  A cheer rose up. When it died down, the weasel had something to say. “Who came in second?”

  “Does it really matter? It wasn’t even close,” Molly responded.

  “It matters to me!” He shouted.

  “Fine. Jimmy Jean took ten percent, and the rest were just single votes, or people who just had a few. Happy?”

  Jimmy looked surprised, and the weasel was enraged. She guessed that was her answer.

  “Look, Burt is a former police officer. He’s the most qualified for the job.” Molly paused. “Certainly more qualified than you,” she said under her breath.

  The weasel took a step forward, but the crowd closed around him, barring his way.

  Burt quickly moved beside Molly at the front of the crowd and cleared his throat. “OK. Now that that is done, tomorrow we get back to work. I want this wall done, and I want it done yesterday.”

  Most everyone cheered, except the weasel.

  In the end, it was about five weeks before the wall was totally finished. The fire only set them back a week, and they were left with a wall that made them proud. It was something Molly knew would keep them safe. But for how long? She couldn’t believe the power was still out when they finished.

  It had been fifty-one days since the Blackout. Fifty-one days of silence. Fifty-one days without hearing from Gary. Fifty-one days of not knowing.

  Once the wall was finished, they allowed themselves a small celebration. It was only a few days until Thanksgiving, so the festivities were set for the same time. They roasted a wild boar someone had shot outside the wall, someone played music on their guitar, and they sang. It boosted morale remarkably.

  At the same time, though, it was depressing for Molly. It wasn’t her first Thanksgiving without Gary by any stretch of the imagination. They’d been married nearly ten years, and for all of them he’d been a pilot. Quite frankly, she was lucky to get any holidays with him. But it was her first Thanksgiving totally alone, and her first without any communication at all from him. If he was going to be gone for a holiday, he usually did something special, to remind Molly that even though he loved his job and it was important to him, he really wanted to be with her on that special day. One year he sent a bouquet of daisies with a nice note. Another year he left a copy of Pride and Prejudice for her to watch – Molly’s favorite movie – and a Post-It that said, Wish I was here to watch it with you, Mrs. Darcy. Over the years, she’d come to depend on his love.

  But this year, she’d get nothing. No call, no flowers, not even a text message. And despite the fact that Molly knew that going into the day, she still felt like crying when she went to bed that night.

  Burt decided the next big project post-wall-building should be a town well. He wanted to build it in the center of town, so everyone had access to it, and could get fresh water without having to boil it. The well didn’t take very long though, and was finished in under a week.

  In the days that followed they were all given tasks. Some guarded the wall. Others farmed a small plot inside the wall, and a larger one on the outside. They debated the placement of these farms, as Wanderers could take food as they wanted. In the end though, there wasn’t enough space inside the wall for everyone to be well-fed, and they figured sacrificing some food to the Wanderers was better than being malnourished for the duration.

  Jimmy was appointed to the post of Watcher, to defend the wall, and Molly worked the farm on the inside of the wall. Because of its size, there were only two that tended it. The weather was cooling off with the start of December, so Molly didn’t really mind working outside every day. They plowed, planted, weeded, carried water from the well daily to make sure the crops didn’t get too dried out, and tried to keep bunnies and other small pests away from it. She even asked Jimmy to show her how to set up traps, so she could catch them if any came too close. As more time passed, it seemed a waste to just scare them away. Meat was scarce, and rabbit was good eating, if you could get past how cute they were.

  Tending the farm wasn’t really an all-day job, but it kept them busy. And since everything else seemed to take longer without the comforts of electricity, Molly was fine with less than a full day of work. By the time she got home, stoked a fire, cooked a hot meal, washed clothes, cleaned the house, and anything else that needed to be done, it was dark and time for bed.

  It was a mundane life, but at least it was safe. No one had been hurt by a Wanderer since the wall’s completion. There had been plenty of attacks, and the farm outside of the wall had been looted a number of times, but everyone was safe.

  It was around day sixty-two when Burt approached Molly about a school.

  “Listen, Molly. Some of the parents have been talking. We’re getting well into December here, and haven’t had any news of when things will be getting back to normal. So we were thinking maybe we should start teaching the kids on our own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shifted his weight, nervous about approaching her on the subject. “Well, like having a school, ya know? So the kids don’t get too far behind?”

  “Burt, first of all, that’s a fairly permanent solution to a fluid problem. The power could come back on tomorrow.”

  He raised his right eyebrow, but Molly persisted. “Second, you’ve got such a wide variety of ages in town. How could you accommodate them all?”

  “We just thought that something would be better than nothing.”

  Molly sighed, really thinking about this idea. It was ridiculous. If they did this, it was like admitting the power was never coming back, that they were truly on their own.

  “Hey, if the power comes back -”

  Molly interrupted him. “When the power comes back.”

  He cleared his throat. “Right. When the power comes back, the kids c
an go back to school. No harm done. It’ll just give them something to do during the day besides chasing rabbits, and building rope swings, which, by the way, I think every yard in the neighborhood is equipped with at this point.”

  Molly smiled. Last week they’d hung one in her yard, and she didn’t even have kids.

  “Where do you intend to hold the school? It’d have to be someplace large enough to house them all.”

  “Well, when it comes down to it, there really aren’t that many school-aged kids inside the wall. Forty, maybe fifty tops. So I was hoping maybe we could do it at someone’s house.”

  Now it was Molly’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Whose house did you have in mind?”

  He cleared his throat again. Molly would’ve thought he was coming down with something if he wasn’t so nervous-looking. “Yours, maybe?”

  “What? Whoa, Burt, hold your horses here. I’m a college English professor. I don’t know anything about teaching little kids, especially teaching them math or science or social studies! Plus, who can handle fifty little bur-heads on their own?” Molly shouted at him, not really wanting an answer.

  “Well –”

  She interrupted him before he could protest. “Plus, where are you going to get the materials for this? Teaching guides? Books for the kids? Paper, pencils, calculators, stuff like that, Burt? I can’t just go off the cuff on this. They might actually remember what I teach them – not that I’m saying I’ll do it – and what if it’s wrong information? I can teach them about how politics impacted literature in the nineteenth century, not how to divide fractions!”

  “Well, we thought we’d get materials from each other’s stockpiles, and hoped maybe the kids and their parents could give you an idea of what they were learning right before the Blackout, and point you in the right direction.”