Erik found himself looking at the framed hurricane chart from 2004 that hung on the wall above the desk. He was barely aware of the announcer as he ranted raving about terrorism and why people were going to really freak out this time. He looked at all the hurricane tracks as they cris-crossed Florida. He had plotted each one, patiently listening to NOAA Radio to get the exact hourly coordinates of the storms for days on end. He remembered all the devastation and confusion and suffering caused by those storms. A year for the record books.
Major cities on the east coast, the west coast, the mid-west…all lose power in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. There’s no hurricanes, no major storms. Far as I know, there’s no heat waves or anything like that going on. Well…maybe in Arizona and southern California, but nothing major. So what happened out there?
The radio host was talking about the 2003 Blackout again. Erik thought back to the news broadcasts from that largely regional event in New England. The country has three power grids, the east, west and Texas...
Erik’s mind raced. They said Houston was out. Texas is separate to some degree from the other two grids, if I remember correctly. So that means something—or someone—took down all three grids at the same time or close to it…it’s gotta be terrorism. Erik felt a sudden weight in his stomach. He leaned over the desk and closed his eyes. His imagination showed him images of riots and food rationing in the major cities after a week of no electricity.
If it’s terrorism, than this is big. Bigger than 9-11. Hell, they don’t even have to kill us this time…take out the power long enough, we’ll do the dirty work for ‘em when the shit hits the fan in the cities….it’ll be anarchy…oh my God. He opened his eyes and looked down at the radio, only then realizing that it was silent again.
The lights in the room went out with an audible click. The TV, which still blared reports from around the nation out in the living room fell quiet. Nothing but silence in the apartment, except for the battery powered wall clocks going, tick, tick, tick, tick. It sounded eerie to hear that tick noise coming from three different directions when normally he could hardly hear one over the normal background noise.
Erik’s heart felt like it skipped a beat. “Oh, shit.”
He heard the rasp of plastic on metal as the door to the screened in porch slid open before Brin stuck her head in the room, cell phone in hand. She lifted the sunglasses from her blue almond-shaped eyes and frowned at Erik. He almost smiled—even with a frown on her face, she was still the prettiest girl he had ever seen. And what made him want to smile even more was the fact that she would never admit that.
“What happened? I was talking to Mom—she said Uncle Bill saw two planes have a mid-air collision over Sacramento! They blew up right in the sky and one started to spiral down into the city! Can you believe it? He was out in his backyard and looked up and bam! He had already called Mom and was trying to get a hold of me because he thought that I was on a flight headed home—but that’s next weekend…and then my phone just disconnected. Now I can’t even call anyone. It just says some stupid thing about all circuits being busy…” her voice trailed off as she saw the look on Erik’s face, saw the lights out, the TV off, didn’t hear the air conditioning.
“Erik…sweetie, what’s going on?”
“Better shut the door, baby, we need to keep as much cool air inside as possible. It’s gonna be warm tonight, I think.” He tried a disarming smile and looked down again at the desk. The weather-alert alarm clock was dark. That wasn’t good.
Erik opened up the clock and connected the emergency 9volt battery inside. The voice of the talk show host came back. “—ay, it’s getting serious folks. We just got word of a plane crash in Maryland, near Andrews Air Force Base. That makes two—one in Sacramento and one in Maryland.
“More reports of power outages in the mid-west and even into Canada. Looks like our neighbors to the north are sharing in the fun again. It’s like the entire nation just shut down. I—hold on a minute, NBCRadio just announced there’s been a mid-air collision outside Sacramento…now it’s two airliners down in California. Christ, I’ve just been handed a report that…oh My God. Now there’s another airliner down. Outside Tampa. Something about—is this right, John? A missile? What’s going on? Are we under attack?” There was a slight pause. Brin’s hands went to her mouth in shock, cell phone forgotten on the floor where she dropped it.
“Dammit John, I know I’m on the air, but this is getting out of hand. Yeah, I know—look get the interns working on it, then. I don’t care—send someone out to get a remote setup or something. This is bigger than the FCC!” The host appeared more concerned with talking to people in his studio than to the listening public—or, at least those who had batteries.
Erik looked into his wife’s beautifully slanted eyes and changed stations a few times. Her lightly tanned skin took on a creamy tone darker than normal in the subdued light of the dim bedroom.
More reports of the same bad news filtered in over the radio. Nervous announcers reported on a half-dozen incidents of jetliners falling from the sky, major cities losing power and no explanation.
He glanced at his watch. It had taken roughly half an hour for all hell to break loose. He sat back in his chair and already noticed the fact that the air conditioner was off. Not that it was hot yet, only that the absence of cool air blowing around was conspicuous. It was only an hour or so after lunch and the heat would peak quickly . Is this it? He asked himself.
Has the shit finally hit the fan?
Out the window, all was quiet and peaceful and normal. He got up, went into the closet and pulled out his bug-out-bag. Brin followed him to the doorway, her bare feet softly padding across the tile floor. She said nothing, but moved quietly into the room and hugged herself as she watched her husband.
Erik took a quick glance and figured she must be a little cold in that tiny bikini at which a part of his mind was screaming for him to examine further. The rational, calculating part of his mind though was in firm control. Something major was going down and his ‘lizard brain’ had kicked into to survival mode.
After he opened the zipper, it only took a second to find his Grundig FR200 emergency radio. He zipped up the bag but left it on the spare bed, ready to go. Next he unplugged the battery from the little radio on the desk—he wasn’t sure when the power would be back on, but he figured it’d be better to conserve batteries. On that thought, he removed the batteries from all but one of the clocks in their apartment.
Then he went into the kitchen and brought the emergency radio with him. He set the radio on the counter, unlatched the dynamo hand crank and set to work ‘winding up’ the radio. After about a minute or so, he figured the battery was fully charged and he extended the antenna and turned it on. He quickly found the AM station he wanted and left the radio to run in the background. It give them news updates while he set out to write down everything they had in the freezer and fridge. Brin just watched, dazed, still in her bikini. She sat by the breakfast bar on a stool and watched the odd activity of her spouse. He moved in silence and did not offer explanations for his actions.
Erik opened the freezer door for a few seconds, took a quick look then shut it securely to keep the cold air in. He carefully wrote down everything that he saw, then did the same for the fridge. Then he posted the list on the fridge door with a magnet.
She could not stand it any longer. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice surprisingly loud in the tomb-like apartment. She looked around as if she suddenly found herself in a different world.
“I’m taking inventory,” he said with a glance over his shoulder as he finished the fridge list. “We should eat the stuff that would spoil fastest first. Gotta come from the fridge first, then the freezer.” He patted the list. “Knowing what we have inside will mean we won’t have to look and waste what cold is still inside now that we don’t have power.”
“Oh,” she replied in a neutral tone. She got up and moved to the fridge. “How did you kn
ow to do this?”
“Remember, I did this when we lost power during Hurricane Frances?” he asked gently, hands on her shoulders as she looked at the fridge. Her skin felt cool to the touch. He was starting to sweat. Before his hands started to warm her up, he had another thought streak through his mind like a meteor across a clear night sky.
“Damn…we’ve got to get to the store,” he said. “We might be able to get a little more food while people are still at work.” He walked over to the porch door and glanced outside, left the radio on the counter. Brin stood next to him, hugging herself again. Erik glanced at her again. She was unusually quiet. Brin had a smart comment to make about…well, just about everything. It was one of the reasons he fell in love with her.
It was a weekday, so there was little activity outside except for the noises coming from the back half of the complex where construction workers continued to work. In the distance someone was mowing a lawn with what sounded like a Sikorsky, but the echo of the lawnmower sound was hard to pinpoint. Evidently the power loss hadn’t affected everyone yet. Or they hadn’t realized it yet. Erik suppressed a rueful grin at the thought of the poor guy finishing up his yard work, only to come inside looking for air conditioning and a cold beer and finding neither.
“How much cash do you have?” he asked as he peered across the small pond to the other side of the apartment complex. Erik had suddenly discovered a major flaw in his preparations. He didn’t have more than $10 in his wallet, cash. Their savings was safely unreachable in the bank. He only hoped Brin had enough cash for them to get food to top off their supplies.
I should have thought of this! I should have had a cash reserve somewhere in the apartment…without power, the ATMs won’t work. I can’t get anything. Wait…how much gas do we have in the cars?
CHICAGO
Deceptive Alliance
IN CHICAGO, ALL was chaos. First, the power mysteriously winked out with no sign of a summer storm for a hundred miles. Then, in a matter of minutes, a large plane screamed in above Southside. It left a trail of flame and debris to rain out of the sky. Police cruisers raced about, lights flashing and sirens wailing as they tried to get to strategic points in the city to direct the already panic-fueled traffic.
The city planners had taken note of what had happened a few years back when New York had lost power. If that were to happen to Chicago, they realized there were going to be an awful lot of people hitting the streets in an attempt to get home. The first responders had to be ready. They had trained for every contingency, including terrorism. The police were prepared. However, an emergency of this magnitude was off the charts. They could not be ready for a fully loaded 747 raining destruction down out of the sky onto the city’s congested streets.
Millions of people at work saw what looked like a missile collide with a plane in the sky south and east of Chicago. The plane was obviously on approach going north to O’Hare; the missile streaked south riding atop a thin tendril of curling smoke. It had happened just after the power flickered and went out.
Most people in the office buildings began to speculate that there were two planes and they had lost radar or navigation instruments when the power went. Others, that terrorists had hijacked one plane and ran it into the other. Or that terrorists had hijacked both planes. Or, that it really was only one plane and it really had been shot down.
The panic spread. It boiled down to the fact that no one knew what was going on—but everyone knew it was time to move. It was as if there was a communal instinct inherent to commuters from the suburbs. They could tell when something bad was going down, like rats on a sinking ship. The first thought was to get out of the city. Rumors that the plane had carried deadly chemicals spread like wildfire and the mobs swelled. Everyone struggled to get to cars and fight already heavy traffic to escape the city. No decent person wanted to be trapped in Chicago in the middle of the summer, at night, without power.
Malcolm Abdul Rashid, formerly Jamal LeRay, stood quietly along with his group of eleven Black Muslims. They all suffered in the stagnant humidity of the living room of his mother’s row-house. The rowhouse was poorly ventilated in the best of circumstances. Without what functioning air conditioning it did have, the house turned into a sauna. Fast.
“Brother Malcolm, this is the sign you spoke of, is it not?” asked one of the older men after their opening prayer and a respectful silence. He went by the name Elijah. He was one of the Elders of the local Black Muslim community. Old Elijah had been around during the ‘60s, when the movement started. He was proud to have been a member of the Fruit of Islam, the semi-military “community self defense force”, second in prestige only to the famous Black Panthers. In fact, the two groups had often trained together, ostensibly to promote togetherness among the inner city urbanites. As the tumultuous decade wore on, however, rumors had spread that the Fruit of Islam was really just training young black militants for a racial war. When nothing came of it for more than thirty years, the Fruit of Islam was largely forgotten by the rest of America. Not by Abdul.
Malcolm nodded solemnly. “It is, Elder Brother.” Elijah was an old man to Malcolm, crusty and set in his ways. He was a relic of the ‘60s, when the brothers and sisters had come so close to realizing their dream of a truly equal society, only to hand it over to the White Man in the later half of the 20th Century. Malcolm considered that story, one of weakness and failure. To come so close, only to stand aside and lose all the ground they had gained.
It was a story Malcolm would not repeat.
“We have been given the opportunity, my Brothers, to finally free our people from the yoke of the Man’s oppression,” intoned Ali Majdy, from downtown. He was a bear of a man, tall, strong and imposing, made to look even more dangerous by his tailored trendy-looking dark suit and glasses. Outside their meeting, on the street, he was known as “Big Al”. He was Malcolm’s right-hand man. His enforcer.
“Brother Malcolm led us to join our Brothers in Islam from the Holy Land. While we may not agree with all our little Brothers have to say, they feel the same way about America that we do. The Whites in this country have been too long in charge—they have forced us to become soft and corrupt. They lack discipline and religion. With the help of Allah and our Middle Eastern Brothers, we will return America to glory. We will ensure our People turn from the current path leading back towards slavery of the mind, and head towards the light and knowledge of freedom.”
Several other men nodded and murmured thanks to Allah. Two of them stared at Malcolm with tight lipped grimaces. They were from back east, and not so easily moved by speeches and well-wishing.
“Brothers, why do you look at me so?” asked Malcolm, beginning to pour water into glasses for his guests.
One of the dissenters adjusted his bow-tie before he spoke. “Malcolm, Samir and I agree with you, about most everything.” His voice was strained with worry. The others grew quiet in order to hear. They were very polite, despite differing opinions on the matter at hand.
“And those Brothers and Sisters I represent in New York are with Allah and with you. Even now, I expect they have already mobilized, if the lights are out there as well. However," he glanced at his partner for support. The other man nodded. The speaker continued. "I cannot go forward without voicing my sincere concerns.” He looked around the gathered faces, clearly hoping someone else besides would back him up. No one showed the slightest bit of sympathy. All the various dark skinned, sweaty streaked faces were set in stone.
Raheeb Turner looked around and his spirits fell. He took on the visage of someone who wished he were anywhere else but there he was at the moment. Malcolm considered this man from New York. He had explained to Malcolm that he had never left New York before this trip. Malcolm knew. He had coordinated the meeting earlier in the summer. Black Muslim men from every state had been sent to Chicago, where they had gathered as a sort of Congress. A Black Congress.
Malcolm smiled. After the struggle, when the White Man was overthrown, this gr
oup of men in a Chicago row house would be the new Government. A Black Government. Not for the people, but for his People. They would be the core that would start over and bring racial justice, not equality, to America. Malcolm would lead them to glorious freedom. The other man from New York brought Malcolm back to the reality that the great struggle had literally just begun.
Raheeb’s friend from Brooklyn, Samir, chose to speak. “Malcolm, Elijah, everyone—“ began Samir, spreading his hands to include the group. “What Raheeb is trying to explain is simple." He paused and adjusted the glasses on his sweaty brow. "Quite simply, brothers, we are afraid. We have many supporters who are not black and we do not wish to alienate them.
A few of the others nodded. It was true, they were not a simple race based organization, as their forefathers had organized in the 1960s. But to the hardcore faithful, it was still a Blacks Only club. The way it should be.
Elijah smiled, the way only old men can, in a gentle fashion meant to reassure youth. “My Brothers, be not afraid, for we walk the path of the Prophet, in Allah’s Grace. Allah is with us. We shall fear nothing. If your white friends truly support us, they will not abandon us in our hour of triumph.”
Several men whispered, “Allah is merciful, Allah is good…” in response.
“I know you do not trust our new Arabic friends with your whole heart. After all, did they not slay many of our Brothers and Sisters on September 11th?” Elijah said gently. Then his voice grew stronger and seemed more like an Imam than a militant. “But those Brothers and Sisters were there because the Man oppressed them; wouldn’t let them have any other jobs—forced them to be the janitors and servants! Our little brothers had the courage to fight back where we have just rolled over.” More heads nodded around the circle. “The time for that is over.”
Elijah was on a tear now. He was beginning to feel like it was the ‘60s all over again. “My friends, we have been blessed by Allah to have another chance at greatness. In my time, we were given an opportunity to free our Brothers and Sisters. Sadly, we failed. I have held shame in my heart every day for decades because of that missed opportunity. Now, we have been given another chance…Allah is truly merciful. This time, we will not miss that chance!” The old man’s passion was heartening to the others.
Alea Jacta Est: A Novel of the Fall of America (Future History of America Book 1) Page 5