The Long Dark

by Billy Farmer

  I’d like to think I’m a decently smart guy, but I didn’t understand what Avery was getting at. I think he assumed everyone knew as much as he did and would instantly make the connection he was making. The problem was, we didn’t. All I heard was gibberish. "Just tell me what all of this means."

  “I was not finished, William. The difference between the older incandescent and the newer LED lights is the incandescent lights do not have the sensitive components that LED lights have.”

  I shook my head. I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Jack was up on his feet and putting on his gloves. “Men, I think I’m going to go check on things at the Commons, throw up, and take a piss, but not necessarily in that order.”

  “Jack, it wouldn’t hurt to have the Polar Bear gun around just in case,” I said.

  “Will do,” he said, giving me a nod, before leaving.

  Jack’s departure seemed to alleviate some of Avery’s anxiety. “Do you know what they call me here?”

  I hesitated. “Well, I know some of the names--”

  “The nickname.”

  My first instinct was to think about the baby seal I saw being eaten the first day I stepped foot on the Patch. Even as stressed out as I was, thinking about Sam talk about "Ol' Faux Mulder" made me laugh nearly every time he said it. "Yeah, I’m not completely sure, bud."

  “They call me Faux Mulder, but you know that.”

  “Well, I knew something about you and the X-files, but I wasn’t for sure.”

  He knew most people working on the Patch wouldn't be receptive to some of the ideas he had about things, or at least I thought he knew. But at the beginning of the rotation, Avery would sit in the Commons and talk about his theories on aliens and who knows what all else. By about day three, a few guys had started making fun of him, causing him to spend most of his time alone in the COM shack.

  “One scenario.” He paused several more seconds, contemplating his next words, before finally saying, “An EMP attack is the only scenario I can think of that could do the damage we are seeing. I have racked my brain trying to come up with an alternative, but I simply cannot. Everything I see leads me to that conclusion.”

  “A what?”

  "I knew you would react this way," he said, rolling his eyes and flailing his arms towards the sky like a thirteen-year-old girl who had her cell phone taken away. "I suppose you think I am crazy like everybody else."

  “I’m not making fun of you, Avery. I frankly don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  He couldn’t believe I didn’t know what an EMP was. The fact of the matter was, I didn’t. I mean, I had heard of it, yes, but I’d also heard of nuclear fission as well, but I sure as hell didn’t know how to explain it or even casually understand it.

  “You do not know?”

  Exacerbated, I said, “No. I honestly don’t.”

  Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, “EMP stands for Electromagnetic Pulse. It can be man-made or natural. Lightning, for example, is a form of EMP. An example of a man-made EMP would be a high-altitude nuclear explosion--”

  I stopped him. I tried hard not to shake my head in disgust, but I failed miserably. "Not been too many lighting strikes here at the Patch lately. That only leaves the other option, right?"

  “Can you think of any alternatives?”

  “Not at the moment. But I’m just as inclined to believe snow pixies sabotaged our generators because global warming was melting their snow pixie homes as I am of someone nuking us. Besides, even if your theory was reasonable, and I can’t see how it is, we would’ve heard it or seen it.” I paused. I told myself not to say it, but I had too much bundled up frustration not to. “This is just more conspiracy shit. That’s all this is.”

  If what I said had bothered him, he didn’t show it. “Depending on the altitude of the detonation, we might not have heard it. Besides, the Northern Lights have been extra vivid lately, which could be a telltale sign of magnetic field perturbation. When the US government detonated Starfish Prime in 1969, the effect X-ray and gamma rays had when interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field produced, to observers on the ground, an effect that looked almost exactly like the Northern Lights. I am not crazy, William. There is evidence here to justify my hypothesis.”

  My eyes glazed over thinking about what he said. “I know you believe your… hypothesis. Just like Fox Mulder believed aliens were real. I think you are rationalizing here. This isn’t the X-Files.”

  “Well, if you are using the X-Files to prove your point, you realize aliens were proved to be real during the series’ run. Fox ended up being vindicated. Besides, I am clearly able, much to yours and everyone else’s chagrin, to separate reality from fiction. I am dead serious.”

  I had to get away from him before I said something I would regret. I breathed deeply before saying, “I’ll take everything you said into consideration. I need to go talk to everyone, and I’m pretty sure I can’t tell them we’ve been nuked.”

  Avery was like a dam getting ready to explode if he couldn’t bleed off some of the pressure. “It would not have to be a nuclear blast. An EMP attack could be a ground-based attack. The United States military has working EMP weapons…”

  I picked up my by then toasty mitts off the floor. I zipped and buttoned up my parka. I walked to the door and started to pull on the handle when I looked back at Avery and said, “If what you say is true, why are our batteries still working? I don’t want to hear about any of the other shit. Answer that specific question.”

  I got the you’re a dumb ass stink eye for that one. Another thing I guess I should’ve known. "An EMP would not destroy our batteries. In fact, an EMP should have the effect of charging our batteries.”

  I pulled my hood over my head. “Okay. I gotta go.”

  “William,” Avery said, losing the stink eye, “If this was an EMP attack, it had to be in close proximity to damage the phones and smaller electronics.”

  I thought about asking him to explain why the attack had to be so close but chose not to because of the potential colloquy I'd have to endure. Instead, I nodded, took a breath, and told Avery to meet at the commons in thirty minutes.

  The wind and snow were ferocious. I nearly dropped my lamp when I was assaulted by a particularly strong gust. Visibility was as low as my spirits were. The look on Avery’s face as he made his case didn’t exactly bolster my emotional state. Normally, conspiracy-type things made Avery giddy with delight, but he wasn’t giddy. Hell, he was frightened, and that in of itself was scary to me. I couldn’t make myself buy the EMP nonsense, but I decided not to wall myself off from it should there be evidence to support it. Sure, an EMP attack was far-fetched as hell, but so was what was happening to us at the Patch.

  ***

  “I was told you would be in here. Why aren’t you over at the commons with everyone else, Sam?”

  He pulled at one side of his handlebar mustache before saying, “Son, ‘ere is some pissed off and scared people over ‘ere. ‘At and it’s too damn crowded for my likin, ‘specially with your boy Tit over ‘ere. I got ‘is here heater. I’ll be just fine.”

  I exhaled a giant gulp of air. The cloud of frozen particulates clearly showed it was too cold in what essentially was an enclosed, thinly insulated lean-to to be comfortable, and probably too cold to be safe for that matter.

  He ignored my show. “Why would they be scared? Not exactly the first time the power has been down.”

  “You don’t reckon ‘ese people ain’t got electric watches and tablets? Surely ya don’t thank we as dumb as ol’ Tit does, do ya? With ‘em all dyin at once, and everybody talkin ‘bout it, ya lucky people ain’t beatin on ol’ Faux’s door over ‘ere lookin for answers.”

  “Yeah, there are a few things down… It’s probably just static electricity or something like that, and you know I don’t think like Titouan does. I love you dick heads. Besides, if I were like Titouan, I would’ve asked you what the hell an electric watc
h was.”

  I had heard Avery talking about static electricity causing issues with working on electronics, especially in the Arctic. He said it was something about how cold and dry the air was. I knew Sam probably wouldn't buy it, but I honestly didn't know what else to say. The truth was off limits because I wasn't even sure at that point what the actual truth was. I knew on one hand the failure of the generators and almost all our electronics for no good reason. On the other hand, there was the nuclear EMP option. I decided to not concentrate on the potential causes because I didn’t want to go crazy. Instead, I concentrated on the main event: we were screwed.

  Sam gave me exactly the look I’d expected from him. The look of him knowing damn well I was full of shit. We went all the way back to my first weeks in Texas after leaving Indiana. I was pretty much penniless and living in a single-room dive when we met. You know, the kind of dive you pay by the week and one where you share a bathroom with however many other people lived there. Anyway, Sam lived there too. He had started working for Miley Construction Company two days before I had. Yes, the same Miley who owns the Patch – the one percenters own all kinds of shit. The point being, he knew me from way back.

  "You don't have a clue ‘bout what the fuck ya just said, do ya? Ya probably heard Faux talkin ‘bout it."

  “Yeah, I gotta say, it did sound better when he said it.”

  Sam moved his chair closer to the heater before saying, “Since we done ‘liminated static electricity, what else does ‘at leave?”

  Sam had a knack of wading through the bull shit. “We’re not exactly sure. Avery does have at least one theory about what possibly could’ve happened.”

  “Yeah, what might ‘at be? Little gray men turn our lights out – dittle our buttholes when we was sleepin?”

  “Only your butthole,” I said.

  “Seriously, what does Avery think? I gotta know, son.”

  I said the following in rapid succession, “He thinks someone exploded a nuke in space and that was supposed to have caused our stuff to go tits up.”

  Sam stared at the floor for a few moments shaking his head. Through a single open eye and with a cocked head and a shit-eating grin, he said, “I guess the nuke created the static ‘lectricity you was talkin ‘bout too?”

  It wasn't so much I believed what Avery said. It was more about feeling inadequate and helpless about not knowing what else to believe. We were helpless in the damn middle of the Arctic, for Christ’s sake. Yes, I was at the mercy of a highly flawed theory, but I knew my own limits. The fact of the matter was, and this still sounds ridiculous, I couldn't come up with a better explanation for what had happened. Shit normally doesn't stop working like we saw during that period. I didn't reply because I didn't know anything that would satisfy him. Maybe I shrugged. I don't remember.

  “Holy hell and nervous Mother Mary. Ya don’t buy ‘at shit, do ya?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what the hell to buy or believe at this point.”

  I was more than ready to change the subject. A dark mood was sweeping over me, and I needed to get a grip on it. I needed to keep moving. I couldn’t sit there and dwell on things that were simply out of my control. I had to concentrate on those things I could, and hope Titouan wouldn’t try to get in my way as I trudged through them.

  “The reason I came over here, besides being worried about you being in here, is I need to know when the next supply truck is due?”

  I could tell he wasn’t ready to leave the conversation, but he acquiesced. He wheeled his chair back over to his desk and shuffled through some paperwork. “Looks like next Wednesday.”

  “Five damn days, Sam? You have to be kidding me.”

  “Son, thangs are fixin ta get whole lot worse. Are you sure you can’t get ‘em generators runnin?”

  “Pretty damn positive. I assume you’re going to give me more bad news?”

  “’Member when you asked me to check on the kerosene? Well, I did. We might have ‘nough for a couple days if we stretch it out. Maybe. None of ‘em stooges at corporate imagined us ever needin ta heat ‘is place with just kerosene.”

  “We should’ve stayed in East Texas.”

  He nodded in agreement and then asked, “What’s the plan?”

  “Round up all the kerosene you have and put it under lock and key. I’ll put Jack in charge of making sure it’s used most efficiently. Then bring this heater over to the commons. You don’t know it yet, but you have to come to Barrow with me.”

  “I got yer back, son.”

  “If that’s the case, you want to go over to the Commons and tell everybody how screwed they are?”

  He patted me on the back. “Nah, but if ‘ey start beatin ya up or somethin, I’ll call the police.”

  “I feel better already.”

  Chapter 3

  The structure of authority is durable when things go as planned. Add some chaos into the situation and see how quickly authority erodes. After a few months working construction, Miley must’ve seen something in me. That or I was the only sucker who would do it. He made me his closer. When the performance of an operation was below Miley’s high expectations, I would go in and try to meet them. If I couldn't, we closed it down and let everyone go. I'm not especially proud of those days, but if I'm gleaning something positive out of them, it would be the insight I gained from people in those types of situations.

  In almost every instance, employees assumed I was there to close the operation down, and no matter how much I explained how that was the last resort, they didn’t buy it. Everyone hated me because I was the big, mean closer, and they sure as hell weren’t going to put forth any more effort than they had to. That would make my job too easy, and, most importantly, they would gain nothing from it. They would take long breaks, slack off instead of working, and essentially lay down. Hell, some of them would go ahead and quit, leaving me with empty positions I couldn’t fill because no one wanted to board an already sinking ship. It was essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

  When I got to the Commons, Titouan was locked outside. He was getting a small taste of what I went through, and I wasn’t in the same league of asshole as he was. Everyone was already upset that I had been demoted. Those most displeased by this turn of events were the loyal, senior workers who worked with me in East Texas. Couple that anger they had from his unexpected ascension with supply shortages, horrible work environment, and, at that point, a complete power outage, and what you had was a bonafide shitty situation for everyone involved.

  You’re probably thinking, well, if they were loyal to you, then it makes sense they would treat Titouan like dirt. I was their friend, no doubt about that. Most of them had a family and kids, though. They wouldn’t give up their paycheck out of loyalty to me, and I wouldn’t have wanted them to. Loyalty wasn’t the problem.

  The issues were driven almost exclusively because of Titouan. He was one of the most arrogant people I had ever known, and there were a lot of dickheads in the oil business. Imagine, if you will, listening to a person who is at least fifteen years your junior, who never worked a day in his life prior to coming to work at the Patch, drone on about “The ethics of work.” He liked to give speeches before, during, and after he bitched you out. Besides hearing himself talk, he loved to talk about his ancestry. “Charles de Gaulle is my fourth cousin,” he would say. The first time he namedropped de Gaulle, Sam was unsure why he should care. “Who the hell’s ‘at sonofabitch? Is he French? No wonder Tit’s such a dick.” Long story short, Titouan was his own worst enemy and should've never been running an operation as big as the Patch.

  “Fuck you and fuck them, William. They all hate me, and it’s all your fault.”

  “I’m not sure that’s an accurate appraisal, but if it makes you feel better, run with it. Don’t let reality spoil it for you.”

  “I wouldn’t have hired any of those Cretans from East Texas. They’re your people. Not mine.”

  He was deluded. All I wanted to do was go into the C
ommons and explain to people what I believed needed to be done. I didn’t want to litigate things with him, again. I told him on numerous occasions how he had to make relationships with his (not my) employees, and I wouldn’t stand in his way or make things difficult for him. It was his job to make or break things, and, well, he broke the hell out of them.

  Titouan was hilariously fuming by that point. Almost to the level of six-year-old didn’t get his toy at Wal-Mart fuming. I thought he’d stomp his feet at any moment, so I gloriously waited him out. I wanted to hear the unadulterated, unfiltered reason why he was standing outside. It almost made the power being out worth it.

  He finally couldn't hold it in any longer. "I let them know even though the power was out, there were things that needed to be done. They didn't like what I said, so they threatened to kick my ass if I didn't leave."

  “You really think now is the best time for all of that?”

  “They don’t have anything better to do.”

  A sardonic laugh quietly escaped my lips before I could stop it. I quickly covered it up with a derisive sigh which wasn’t much better, but I doubt he even noticed. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to go tell everyone what’s going on, and you’re going to go in with me, but you aren’t going to say a damn word. You fucked that up. I won’t let you make things worse than they already are because you have a gigantic chip on your shoulder. Got it?”

  He didn’t say a word to me. He gave me this weird shake of the head. It wasn’t an okay I got it head shake. It was a big fat I hate your fucking guts palsy of a head shake, but to his credit, he at least didn’t argue with me.

  The Commons had a gray haze and an acrid smell to it. There were too many kerosene heaters in too small of a space, but even then it was not comfortably warm. For whatever reason, the Commons had the thinnest walls of any living space on the patch. Most of the other buildings, especially the bunkrooms, had walls bordering on a foot thick. The walls in the Commons were less by a quarter inch or more. Compounding things, it had two large windows. It was the best we could do, given all the shittier options.