America Offline (Book 2): America Offline [System Failure]

by Weber, William H.

  The man closest to them wore a puffy black winter coat. He raised a hand and pointed down the street. “There’s a rabid fox over there, so mind your own business if you know what’s good for you.” His words came out slurred, which was hardly a surprise given the sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser in his other hand.

  “That’s not a fox, you idiot,” Dakota shouted. “It’s a wolf. Our wolf.” She raised her pistol, aiming it at them.

  They laughed and went back to what they were doing.

  Nate’s senses all perked up at once. Scanning down the road, he saw Shadow dart between snow drifts as the men rattled off fresh shots. The wolf appeared unharmed. Nate raised his rifle and fired two warning rounds in the air. The drunken men might not have taken Dakota seriously, but the crack of his G36 certainly got their attention.

  “You like shooting at things that can’t fire back?” Nate shouted. “That’s our wolf you’re trying to kill. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll holster those pea-shooters and head home because the only ones in danger out here are you.”

  Nate could see the rage building behind their glassy eyes. Could see these men wanted nothing more than to raise their pistols and gun both of them down. And yet the only thing stopping them was the high-powered rifle in Nate’s hand. He suspected that even sober, sound judgment wasn’t their strongest trait, which didn’t bode well for the present moment, nor, as a matter of fact, for the country’s rather uncertain future. But if Nate could make it to the end of the day without killing another human being, he would fall asleep a happy man.

  Both groups stood less than twenty yards apart, holding weapons, glaring at one another. The man next to Puffy Jacket wore a grey hoodie, the edges of his face lost in shadow. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, old man. I should shoot you and make your daughter my new girlfriend. What do you think of that?”

  These were two punky white guys who were desperately trying to be gangsters. It made them laughable, but their eagerness to prove themselves also made them incredibly dangerous. The guy in the hoodie bobbed his head and raised his free hand, shaking it at them. It looked to Nate like he was posturing in an effort to save face. But Nate would never know for sure because just then three shots rang out from Dakota’s pistol. Two of the three rounds found their mark and Hoodie collapsed into a cloud of powdery snow.

  Puffy Jacket’s eyes flared to whites as he watched his friend die. He fumbled with his weapon to shoot back. This time it was Nate who put him down.

  “Dammit!” Nate shouted, after the second man fell. He went over to them, eyeing both figures, now lying one on top of the other. He turned to her. “Why on earth did you pull the trigger? Couldn’t you see they were about to disengage?”

  Dakota’s hands were shaking. “They were shooting at Shadow and when I saw his hand come up…” Her voice trailed off.

  These weren’t good people. Nate knew that. Knew that in a society devoid of law and order, idiots like this would be free to mix two things that didn’t go well together: alcohol and firearms. It was a sure-fire way for innocent people to get hurt. Maybe it was his background in law enforcement that accentuated the sting. Regardless, every encounter, no matter how tense or charged with emotion, held the possibility of a peaceful resolution.

  “He threatened to kill you and to take me,” Dakota said, still processing what had transpired.

  Around the campfire on the way to Rockford, she had hesitated to act. Then later with Five Dakota had overcome that fear. And proud as he was, Nate was starting to wonder if she hadn’t overcome it a little too much. When to put someone down and when to let them walk away with a modicum of their pride intact was a difficult balance to learn. He glanced down and saw the turmoil on her face. Nate pulled her into a hug.

  Maybe the girl was less to blame than he thought. The moment the lights had gone out, had the world not changed in ways both dramatic and frightening? The shift in American society had been sudden and in many ways violent, sure, but the optimist in him didn’t think it would last forever.

  Still, the old rules of engagement had been drawn up for life in a civilized society, a world buttressed by the rule of law where folks went to work and mostly paid their taxes. But it was looking more and more as though the old familiar America was giving way to a new America, one where might made right and those with the most powerful weapons and greatest numbers dictated the terms. Had those thugs been wielding rifles rather than pistols, would they have hesitated to pull the trigger? Nate didn’t think so.

  Maybe Dakota’s seemingly impulsive act wasn’t the problem at all. Maybe it was the solution. The new norm. The criminal court’s ability to deliver justice in any meaningful way had been shattered. And the consequences of that were becoming increasingly clear. It meant now that everyone with a firearm had suddenly become judge, jury and executioner. He’d been raised to believe that all lives were sacrosanct, worthy of preservation and salvation. Except the mechanism for punishing the guilty and enforcing the nation’s laws currently lay dormant. Would it ever wake? That was a question for which Nate still didn’t have an answer.

  He led a rather somber Dakota back to Wayne and helped her climb onto the horse, feeling a little more certain he had as much to learn from this young girl as she did from him. He also knew they weren’t the only ones struggling to adjust. Out there across the state and maybe even the entire country were clusters of frightened people, fighting for survival. Fighting to make sense of a world with a new set of rules, both harsh and unforgiving.

  Chapter 3

  Chicago O’Hare International Airport

  Some seventy-five miles away, ‘harsh’ and ‘unforgiving’ were two words also on the mind of Holly Andrews as she waited in a never-ending line to use the women’s washroom. Her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, Holly was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with dazzling coral-blue eyes and a pleasant voice. She scratched at the tiny scar on her forehead, a nearly imperceptible blemish which, for reasons unknown, always started to itch when she was annoyed. And annoyance was in no short supply at present. Especially after spending nearly a week trapped at the airport in a rapidly deteriorating situation. In that time, it had become clear that their only chance of survival rested with escaping this hellhole as soon as humanly possible.

  Six days earlier, she and her twelve-year-old son, Dillon, had landed in the middle of the night only to find the rental car they had booked a week earlier had been given away to someone else. There would be a replacement in the morning, she’d been assured by the cold and rather uninterested woman behind the desk at the Budget Rent-a-Car kiosk. They would even offer her an upgrade from a compact to a midsize for her trouble. That might have helped in tackling the snow already on the ground. But the worsening weather had thwarted their attempts to find a room in any of the nearby hotels. She must have called a dozen places and gotten the same answer each and every time.

  Taking one on the chin was Holly’s strong suit, and she didn’t mean that figuratively. Just ask her soon-to-be ex-husband, Travis. His slow descent into physical abuse had been one of the driving reasons she and Dillon had fled Seattle in the first place.

  The other had been something completely different. She’d come to Illinois to find a man named Nate Bauer.

  Snowed in, that first night they had opted to set themselves each a place on a row of bench seats inside the airport. The debacle with the car rental had already brought them out of airport security, barring them from returning to gates where spots to lie down were plentiful. She and Dillon had no sooner found a decent place to lay their heads than the lights had gone out, plunging the airport into darkness. At once, the emergency lights had come on, bathing the structure’s cavernous ticketing area with an eerie glow. But it had been the growing cacophony of nervous voices that had pulled Holly from her long and much-needed sleep.

  Back in the present, still in line for the washroom, Holly shifted uncomfortably from one leg to another, recalling those earl
y days with something approaching incredulity. How naïve she had been, watching the snow piling up against the large airport windows, wondering how long it would be before things once again returned to normal. That first night, no one had known what was going on. The lights were bound to flicker back on at any moment—eavesdrop on any of the hushed conversations going on around them and that was precisely the prediction you might have overheard.

  By day two, when the power still hadn’t returned, the airport’s population had begun to thin out. Several Chicago residents who lived nearby had decided to cut their losses and return home while they still could. What Holly assumed would be a few inches of snowfall overnight had instead turned into several feet, surely a meteorological record, although hailing from Washington State, she had no way of knowing just how right she was. A quick trip back to the rental agencies on day two had made something else perfectly clear. Not only would she not get a car, all of the kiosks were now empty. In other words, she and Dillon found themselves completely and utterly stranded.

  An older man with a salt and pepper beard had told her why. Credit and debit cards were no longer working. Whatever was going on, it was on a far bigger scale than she or anyone else had imagined.

  It was then that the panic had threatened to seize complete and utter control of her. With her heartbeat hammering in her neck, all she could see was Dillon’s deep blue eyes staring up at her. In them had been a mix of vague concern and absolute trust. She was still a few inches taller than he was, although she suspected that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. And yet the Asperger’s he’d been born with lent his stare another quality, one of calmness and detachment. It was one of the side effects of his condition, nowadays called Autism Spectrum Disorder. People like Dillon didn’t interact with the world the same way the rest of us did. Some considered it strange and maybe even a curse. For Holly, in that very moment, she couldn’t have been more thankful. The serenity on her son’s face had helped to settle her in a way little else could have.

  And yet her son’s own apparent calmness was aided by the small doses of Zoloft he’d been prescribed to regulate his moods and anxiety, a prescription which was set to soon run out.

  If there was a saving grace in all this, it lay in Holly’s conviction that the lights couldn’t stay off forever. Sooner or later the government would get its act together and end this nightmare. Her belief was not a terribly unreasonable one. Over the past few decades, America had faced its fair share of trials and tribulations. The bigger the blow, the more folks had come together to set things right. Inefficient as they were, many of those efforts were organized and spearheaded by governments both local and federal.

  One thing her father had always tried to instill in her was self-sufficiency. It was a muscle she’d strived to exercise throughout most of her life. After too many lousy and costly experiences at the salon, she had sworn off hairdressers. She’d also decided to take a weekend car mechanic’s course after being overcharged at her local garage. Next on her list was learning to hunt so she could put food on the table. She had already taken the shooting courses.

  Somewhere along the line, our society had become inundated with middlemen. While we had benefited from the convenience, we had also lost touch with something important, perhaps even something sacred: the ability to clothe, feed and shelter ourselves under any circumstances. And although Holly had the heart and determination, by the third day of being stranded at the Chicago O’Hare airport, she was beginning to see her reeducation was far from complete.

  One of the most noticeable changes was with the TSA agents. Those who remained had gone from a security arm to something closer to law enforcement. They travelled along the wide corridors in groups of threes and fours, detaining anyone who broke the law. Their new role meant the barrier between the secured and unsecured areas of the airport had disappeared. Thousands of people still remained in one of the country’s largest international travel hubs and now they could largely go wherever they wanted to. Quasi-neighborhoods began to form at each of the many gates as folks similarly trapped tried to stake out a place to sleep and protect their possessions.

  The airport itself was divided into five terminals. Within each of those was anywhere from two to four concourses. For the last six days, the crowded confines of Gate 25, Concourse C had been home. But the truth was, nowhere was safe.

  Holly had overheard stories of theft as early as day one. Lone travelers were the most vulnerable, especially when nature called. They could take their luggage with them to the bathroom and risk returning to find their ‘home’ occupied by someone else, or they could leave it behind and hope their possessions were still there when they got back. In a strange twist of irony, the ever-increasing baggage fees airliners were charging passengers these days meant many had arrived with two carry-ons, so during those first few days many folks had had toiletries. But it was food and water that soon became a problem. Shortly after the power had gone out, the shops inside the airport had closed and locked their doors. On day two, angry and rather hungry members of a high-school football team had smashed one of the windows. The looting of the store had been one of the reasons the TSA had been deputized to do what they could to maintain some semblance of law and order. With the snow continuing to pile up outside, it had also become clear by days two and three that escape was not an option.

  The first rape had occurred on day four. A female backpacker in her early twenties had been pulled into a restricted area by two men and violated. They would have killed her too had a woman not heard her screams. One of the rapists had been caught and beaten to death, his body left on the cold floor near Gate C-16 for hours. But his accomplice had gotten away. And since then everyone in Terminal One had been on edge. It was said that airports were microcosms of a small city. Here the truth of that statement was playing out before Holly’s eyes.

  Day four had marked another key turning point in two other important respects. The first was that the emergency lights finally gave out. The consequence was that once the sun set―some time around four pm―the airport was largely plunged into darkness. Sure, the snow outside helped reflect some ambient light to the folks inside, but still, the corridors were webbed with pockets of deep, impenetrable shadow. What frightened Holly most wasn’t the dark itself, but what might be lurking inside of it. The lack of any available weapons only made a bad situation worse. Airports were gun-free zones and before the power had died that might have been considered a good thing. But not now. Not when you had to go pee at three in the morning.

  Holly’s answer had been to arm herself with a can of hairspray in one hand and her house keys in the other. She would slide the largest key between her middle fingers with the sharp end facing out and the base pressed tightly against the palm of her hand. It might not be as effective as a pistol or a knife, but she figured that anyone stupid enough to attack her wouldn’t dare try it again.

  The other turning point on that fourth day was that the toilets stopped flushing. Before long, a nose-curling septic odor hovered thirty yards around each bathroom. Many men had taken to going outside in the snow, but not everyone had that luxury.

  On day five Holly met a shuttle driver named Doug who, like many other employees, had stayed too long and been cut off from leaving. Doug had also grown up in Washington State, a fact that had helped them bond. It also didn’t hurt that he brought her and Dillon bits of food whenever he could. On day four it turned out to be two chocolate muffins.

  “It’s all I could get,” he told her apologetically, as he settled down in the corner of Gate C-25 next to them.

  Holly shook her head and took a large bite before she could fully thank him. It was all she could do to squelch the grumbling in her belly. Next to her, Dillon picked at the chocolate chips.

  “Go on, honey,” she encouraged him. “You’ll like it.”

  Dillon regarded her with uncertainty. He was hungry, she could tell, and yet that still couldn’t overcome his strange suspicion of dark s
pots on his food.

  “Quite a setup you’ve got here,” Doug said, looking around. Gate C-25 housed fifty people, which was fairly empty by current standards.

  She hadn’t known Doug long, but it was clear by the funny look on his face that he was hiding something. Several things in fact.

  Holly took a break from the muffin for a second. “What is it?”

  The puffy features on Doug’s ruddy face tensed. “My friends in the TSA tell me there were nearly fifteen deaths yesterday. And only two of those appear to have been from natural causes.”

  “That’s a lot more than yesterday,” Holly said, feeling a hot flush of concern rise into her cheeks.

  “Sixty-six point six six six six percent more,” Dillon clarified, his sky-blue eyes suddenly alight.

  “It’s already dangerous enough as it is without folks killing one another,” she said, unable to fathom how little it took for people to revert to being animals.

  “Right now, it’s mostly about food,” he explained. “The staff has been rationing out what’s already at the airport. But someone’s always going to want more.”

  “Sure, although I can see that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  Doug’s dark brown eyes met hers. He leaned in and whispered: “The food’s nearly all gone. I mean, we’ve cleaned out every restaurant and snack shop in the place. Hell, we’ve even cracked open any vending machines that haven’t already been vandalized. In two days we’ll have nothing left.”

  A silence descended between them. With the heat off, the airport was chilled, no doubt, but suddenly Holly could feel threads of ice creeping into her bones.

  “A buddy who does runway maintenance for the airport thinks he can get access to a snowcat.”

  Her head did a little dance. “Snowcat?”

  “Yeah, they’re used to clear the runways. His plan is to drive it into the city center.”