by Tom Abrahams
Candace held up a finger. “There’s the Red Cross.”
Jackie nodded. “That’s right. But here and now there isn’t any of that. There’s no support, and there’s no end in sight. We don’t even know what happened last night.”
“It was a solar storm,” Pop stated.
“Maybe,” said Jackie. “It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Solar storm, nuclear attack, computer hack, Revelations…”
Pop bristled. “It does matter. And it was a solar storm.”
Jackie softened. “Okay,” she relented, “it was a solar storm. Let’s go with that.”
Pop folded his arms and sat back in his chair, a twin to his wife. “Fine. It’s a fact.”
“That doesn’t change the uncertainty of everything else,” Jackie continued. “Those families, the ones from the apartment complex, have no idea how long this will last. They know at some point they’ll run out of baby formula, food, water, soap, and everything else. They also know we’ll eventually run out. But we have more of everything, in their minds. So they’re better to come hit us up now, while we still have a lot, than when our supplies have dwindled three days or three weeks or three months from now.”
The others stood there silently, presumably absorbing what Jackie had suggested. She knew she was right. She looked over her shoulder at the crowds working their way along the street. Some neighbors were helping; others weren’t.
“The problem will be,” she went on, “when they run out of everything and come back in desperation.”
“Like feeding a stray cat,” said Pop.
Jackie frowned. “I don’t really like that analogy, Pop. These are people like you and me. But, yes. The analogy fits.”
Candace blinked through a stream of tears coursing down her face. Her eyes pleaded with Jackie for some modicum of comfort where she knew there was likely none. “I hope it isn’t what you think,” she said while catching her breath. “Desperation is a bad thing. It’s a very bad thing.”
Jackie was so engrossed in Candace’s emotion she didn’t hear the footsteps pounding the street behind her. She spun around, surprised to see Marie standing at the curb.
“Mom, I saw you down here. What’s going on? I thought you went to NASA?”
“I did. I’ll fill you in when we get home.”
Marie appeared clearly frustrated by the nonanswer. Jackie noticed the bruise-colored circles surrounding her eyes. Her mouth was drawn into a resting frown, deep lines framing the inside edges of both cheeks.
“There’s not much to tell you,” Jackie added.
Marie looked over her shoulder toward their home. “I didn’t come here to ask you about Dad anyhow.”
Jackie frowned. “Oh?”
Marie turned back to her mother. “We have a new visitor at the house. She just showed up. She’s waiting for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Kenny’s mom.”
Jackie heart skipped. “Has she heard from the boys? Does she know if they’re okay?”
Marie shook her head. “No. That’s why she walked over. She’s panicking.”
Jackie excused herself from the conversation with the Vickerses and walked her bike back to her house. Marie and Candace flanked her. She tried to keep her attention away from the blackened heap of homes to the left as she approached the cul-de-sac, but they drew her eyes like a magnet.
In the mess, somewhere, she knew there were bodies: bodies of parents, children, babies. Her stomach lurched. Her gaze stuck to one large piece of charred wood. It was part of the home’s frame. It was long and narrow, two by six or longer. The fire hadn’t just burned it. It had cracked it in a way that made the solid wood look crinkled, like a freshly pulled straw wrapper dampened with a droplet of water.
“Jackie?”
She turned away from the char to see Kenny’s mother in the driveway. She had her arms folded and was rubbing them as if she were cold.
Jackie walked the bike over the threshold of the driveway where it met the street. She stopped next to the woman, who appeared more fragile than normal.
Karen Walsh was a waif. She’d always been wiry, but now she appeared sickly. Her thin, ashy blonde hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, revealing a large, pinched forehead. There was a large vein running close to the surface from her hairline to her brow. A stain of mascara was thick under her eyes. Her cheekbones strained against her nearly translucent skin. The divorce had worsened issues Jackie imagined already existed.
“Karen,” she said, popping the kickstand on the bike and offering the woman a wide embrace. Karen reciprocated and Jackie’s fingers found the woman’s rib cage. No doubt she was sick.
“How are you?” Jackie asked.
“Worried. Have you heard from Rick or from Chris? My phones aren’t working. The power’s out at the house. I don’t know what to think.”
Jackie pulled away from Karen and shook her head. “No, nothing so far. I was hoping you had news.”
“I’m just sick,” she said. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and I couldn’t sit in that house alone for a minute longer. I had to do something. I hope you don’t mind I came here.”
Jackie gave her a reassuring smile. “Of course not. Why don’t we go inside and I can fix you something to eat.”
“You’ve already got a houseful,” said Karen. “I didn’t know that when I decided to come over.”
“Not a problem,” said Jackie. “One more person won’t make a difference. Plus, it’ll make me feel better having you here. We can count down the minutes until we see the boys together.”
Karen nodded and wiped her eyes with the tips of her fingers. She tried to smile, but it looked to Jackie more like someone showing a dentist their teeth.
Jackie led her to the house. One more. What was one more person? Until it was two more. Or three more. There was only so much she could handle. She calmed herself, telling herself to stay strong. She left the bike on the porch and walked into her home. The waxy, vanilla scent of candles greeted her and masked the odor of stagnant smoke outside. The eyes of her guests followed her from the foyer and into the great room.
They were all sitting there expectantly. Reggie and Lana Buck sat together. Betty and Brian Brown were there. Marie was already plopped at the kitchen island, leaning on her elbows with her head in her hands. Candace walked in from the garage and took a seat next to Marie. Karen was standing next to the fireplace, chewing on her fingernails.
Reggie leaned forward on the sofa, scooting to the edge of his seat. “What’s the news?”
Jackie opened her mouth to answer, but she hesitated. She still had to tell her daughter what she’d learned, or hadn’t, about Clay. She needed to do that alone, without everyone else hearing it at the same time. The conversation wouldn’t be easy, not with Marie, not with the rest of them. Looking at the people depending on her, Jackie realized that nothing was easy now.
In less than a day, easy was a word she couldn’t find in her vocabulary. The world had changed overnight. Something deep inside her gut told her it was true.
It was apparent on the faces of the people in her home. It was breeding in the feral gang of boys on the street. It was spreading through the throng of apartment families looking for help before they needed it. It ate at what was left of Karen Walsh’s body.
Jackie’s eyes shifted from person to person. She measured them measuring her. Perhaps it was just her world that had changed, but she doubted it. Whether Clayton came home or not, whether Chris walked in the door in a minute or in a day, things had changed. She found Candace at the island and thought about what the young woman had said minutes earlier.
“Desperation is a very bad thing.”
CHAPTER 15
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2020, 4:32 PM CST
I-45 SOUTH NEAR HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS
“Are we getting close?” Kenny asked for the third time in five minutes.
“Closer,” said Rick. It had taken a lot longer to reach Huntsville than he�
�d anticipated. Driving at forty miles per hour saved fuel, but it made for a grueling trip.
There were less than two hours until sundown. Rick didn’t want to be on the road in the dark, but he knew he wasn’t going to have a choice. He was a good forty-five miles from Mumphrey’s home in Spring and twice that distance from Clear Lake.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” said Kenny. “Really bad. Can we please stop?”
“I can pull over here in a second. You can hop out and—”
“I can’t go on the side of the road, Dad.”
“Sure you can. We’ll turn our heads and—”
“Dad,” Kenny stressed. “I. Can’t. Go. On. The. Side. Of. The. Road.”
“Oh,” Rick said. “I get it. How urgent is it?”
“Urgent.”
Rick scanned the horizon. There wasn’t much but thickets of pine trees and sloping grassland. He’d seen a sign for an exit a half mile back, so he knew one was coming up.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll stop. If we find a bathroom, everybody needs to go.” He drove into the right lane and approached exit 118. It was a good choice. There was a pair of truck stops on the southbound feeder road as soon as he pulled off the interstate.
There were easily a half dozen big rigs parked at both of the stops. At the first stop, men and women were sitting in folding camping chairs, guarding their livelihoods. One group of men was standing under an awning near the building, flicking ashes off cigarettes in between long, cheek-sucking drags. Another couple was grilling on a portable propane grill. The man had a handgun holstered to his denim-clad thigh. All of them turned their attention to the Jeep when Rick pulled into the expansive parking lot.
“I don’t know that I like the idea of mingling with a bunch of truckers,” Nikki said nervously.
“Why? That sounds classist.”
Nikki rolled her eyes. “The last truckers we met weren’t the greatest.”
“That shouldn’t be an indictment against all of them.”
Mumphrey piped in. “I get both sides of what you’re saying. That father-son duo was pretty awful. I follow you, Nikki. But the boy here has to go to the toilet. We gotta help him out.”
Rick eased the Jeep into a parking spot and shifted the SUV into park. “Plus,” he said, “I’m not worried. I’ve got Deep Six Nikki on my side.”
Nikki shouldered open the door and hung her right leg outside. She turned back and smirked. “So you think.”
She led the group toward the main building. Rick walked behind her, paying attention to the sway of her hips, until the man at the grill interrupted his fantasy.
“Hey, y’all,” he said, a spatula in his hand. “Where y’all from?”
Rick motioned for the group to continue to the building and the bathrooms. He stepped toward the griller, gratefully inhaling the cooking odor from the grill. “Houston area. You?”
“Oklahoma,” he replied. “We got stuck here, just like the rest of these drivers. Guess it’s better than being stuck on the road.”
“Guess so. Are there working bathrooms in there?”
“For now,” said the griller. “Probably only a matter of time before they get too nasty to use. Can’t buy any food in there unless you got cash. Credit card system is down.”
Rick looked over at the building. The lights were on; people were shopping up and down the aisles. There were three people working behind the counter.
“They have power?”
“Generator.”
Rick stepped closer to the griller and the woman sitting in front of the truck. She was engrossed in the pages of a romance novel. She hadn’t looked at Rick yet.
The griller turned back to prod a burger on the grill. He had a filthy white towel draped around his neck like a scarf. The gun strapped to his right leg was semiautomatic, either a 9mm or a .40 cal.
The griller glanced over his shoulder. “I’m Gary,” he said. “This here’s Fran.”
The woman peeked over the top of the book and smiled. “Hey,” she said.
Rick waved a hello. “Have you seen any police since the power went out?”
Gary flipped a burger. “Not a one.” He pointed with the spatula toward the highway. “We seen a couple speed by on 45. That’s it.”
“Your trucks won’t start?”
“Nope.”
“Any idea what caused it?”
“The Russians or the Chinese,” said Gary the Griller. “No doubt in my mind. They dropped one of them EMPs, killed off everything.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait here for now,” he said. “We’ve got access to food, a place to sleep. We’re good for a couple weeks at least. No sense in risking anything on the road.”
“I get it.”
“Your Jeep is good though, huh? I’m guessing it’s because it’s old school. No electronics for the EMP to hit.”
Rick motioned with his head to the group of smokers near the entrance of the building. “What do the others think?”
Gary laughed. “Everybody knows it’s an enemy. There’s one fella who thinks it’s a false-flag operation.”
“False flag?”
“Yeah. You know, a government conspiracy. They make us think it’s a convenient enemy, but it’s really our own government that’s responsible. Like 9/11 and Sandy Hook.”
“Never heard of it.”
Gary shrugged. “I don’t buy into it. I wasn’t a birther either. But that’s just me.”
“Rick!” Nikki called from the building, holding open the door. “We need you in here.”
Rick waved at her. “I gotta go,” he said to Gary. “I wish you luck. Hope everything works out.”
“Nothing we can do about it,” he said and then laughed. “Just make the best of it while we can. Then we fight like hell.”
Rick offered an understanding smile then marched toward the building. Nikki stood there, holding the door for him. He was surprised at the dichotomy of the emotional reaction to the apocalypse. On one hand there was a group of “doomsdayers” bent on some sort of Revelations-style salvation. Then there were those, some of whom claimed to be cops, using the chaos as an excuse for violence and thievery. At the other end of the spectrum there were these truckers—salt-of-the-earth, hardworking men and women who were taking the punches as they came. They seemed unfazed.
He thought about where he fell along that spectrum. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t believe the conspiracy theorists. This wasn’t a false flag. It wasn’t the Chinese or Russians, at least he didn’t think so. That undulating red aurora at the park made Rick believe it was a solar storm.
He couldn’t know how long they’d have to live without power. Even if it came back at the snap of a finger, all of the cars and trucks littering the roads were dead.
What did that mean?
What would happen to his 401k? Would there still be money in his financial accounts, or would the surge have destroyed the banking computers that held all of his money?
He’d been so focused on getting everyone home, he hadn’t really considered what they’d face once they got there. A chill ran along his spine and he shuddered involuntarily. He tried to shake the thoughts of what might still lie ahead. It was too much to consider.
He thanked Nikki for holding the door and started to move past her and away from the suffocating odor of stale cigarette smoke, then stopped in the entry when she whispered to him.
“Hey,” she said, “I know you were looking at me when I was walking ahead of you. Your eyes were a little lower than they should have been.”
A rush of heat rushed Rick’s face. The blast of warm embarrassment replaced the chill still radiating through him. “I…uh…I…”
She winked, offering him a reprieve. “No need to apologize, I just wanted you to know I noticed.”
Rick swallowed hard. “Still. Sorry. I’ll try to keep my eyes up.”
Nikki laughed. “Good luck with that. By the way, your son’s shopping for snacks. You
have any cash?”
“A little. Everyone finished in the bathroom?”
“Yep,” she said, leading him to the candy aisle. “Except for you. What did that guy say? You were talking to him for a while.”
Rick still couldn’t look her in the eyes, or anywhere else, so he kept his gaze on his shoes as he answered. “He floated a couple of theories about the power loss. He said they haven’t seen any police presence. He also said this place only takes cash and that the bathrooms are good for now.”
“I knew the last two things already,” she said. “I could have guessed about the police. Everybody seems pretty chill here, like they’re okay with everything. You get that vibe?”
Rick nodded and raised his head. He looked off to the left as he talked. “I do. Kinda weird.”
“What’s their theory?”
“Most of them are pretty sure it was an attack. One guy thinks our own government did it.”
“You buy that?”
Rick watched his son pick a fifth chocolate bar from the shelf. His arms were full. “No. I’m with Mumphrey. I think it’s weather related. It doesn’t change anything though.”
“How so?” Nikki asked.
Rick finally looked at her, drawn into her eyes. She was searching him for an explanation, her mouth drawn tight with worry. Deep Six Nikki was a badass, but she was human.
“No matter how we lost power,” he said, “we have the same issues facing us. When’s it coming back? And if it does, what damage is left behind?”
“You think it’s a long-term issue?”
Rick shrugged. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He imagined nobody knew. Even the government, which might know the extent of the damage, couldn’t be sure how long it would be before the power was back.
“I think we need to be prepared for the long haul.”
Nikki’s eyes left his and she looked past him, her mind seemingly drifting with her gaze. She nodded slowly then blinked back to the present and led Rick to his son.
Kenny and Chris both clung to more candy than they could comfortably hold. Kenny also had a pleading look on his face, his brows arched high with the desperation of a child asking for something he knew his parent would likely deny.