by Thunboe, Bo
The cluster broke up and Beth Simpson came directly toward Mary’s house.
“Great.” Mary went to the front door and opened it.
Simpson looked up and smiled. She mounted the stoop. “Good morning, Mary.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the glass storm door.
“Beth.” The glass storm door radiated cold. Mary hugged herself.
“Is your family all home and okay?”
“What’s going on, Beth?”
“Can I come in? Talk for a minute?”
Opening the door would let heat out, but Mary wanted to know what Carson was up to. She opened the door, and felt the warm air rush past her. “Quickly, Beth.”
Beth slipped inside. “It’s nice and warm in here.”
Mary said nothing, waiting.
“It’s bad, Mary. Ben Carson—you know him, right? The divorced guy up the—”
“I know him.”
“Sorry. I know you don’t socialize much in the… anyway. He’s a volunteer with the city and went—”
“Just tell me.”
“It was an electromagnetic attack. Some kind of bomb that destroys electronics.”
She already knew this. “And?”
“And? Well, it’s serious. The power isn’t going to come back on until they replace some major components in the electrical grid. That will be hard to do because of transportation issues and the replacements parts themselves might be damaged. So—”
“Carson got this from someone who knows?”
“Yes. He went to a meeting where the city’s emergency management guy told them this.”
Mary was surprised the city hadn’t sugar-coated it. “What happens next?”
“Ben called a meeting of our court for noon at his house.”
“Toward what end?”
Simpson’s brow furrowed. “Maybe I didn’t explain it right, Mary, but this is serious. No electricity of any kind. Not from a plug. Not in your phone. Not in a car. We’re all alone. We need to stick together.”
So they could all die together?
“Ben said Dan isn’t home. We can help you guys—”
“Noon, then?”
“Yes.” Simpson put a hand on Mary’s shoulder; she fought the urge to shrug it off. “We need to stick together.”
When Simpson was gone, Mary sat on the coffee table staring into the fire. Sean had been right. The world they knew had ended. Her hands fluttered and the tingle started, running up her forearms. Not again. She clenched herself and focused on the fire, on a single ember that glowed a deep dark red. The tingle reached her elbows and started to rise up toward her head. The ember glowed, its shade of red wavering as it found air to breathe. She focused hard on it, and on her own breathing, and—
“Mom?”
Mary pulled her eyes off the fire. Sean had his coat on and a sheen of sweat made his face shine. “I heard what Mrs. Simpson said. Is Mr. Carson in charge of our neighborhood like he told me?”
“He’s not in charge of us.”
“I, uh…moved all the firewood into the garage. It should last a while. Maybe even a few weeks. I’m going to bring up all the good wood along the river. Okay?”
“Great idea. Dan will be proud of you when he gets home.”
Sean beamed. He was a pleaser. He’d sought Dan’s approval from the day he met him.
“Erin was house-siting for the Brady’s while they were on vacation,” Sean said. “Feeding the cat and watering the plants and bringing in the paper. Like that. She stuck me with it when she went to the tournament. Can you handle the cat while I gather wood? We can forget about the plants.”
“Where’re the Brady’s?”
“They flew down to Florida and aren’t due back until… well.”
They were both silent for a minute. The Brady family—and the others who’d been away for the holidays—were not coming back. The little group she’d seen on the sidewalk might be everyone left on the court. Carson’s empire was smaller than he likely planned, which gave him more time to devote to bothering the Fallons.
Sean pointed toward the mud room. “The keys are on top of the dryer. The ones with the red keychain thing. They open the back door into the laundry room. Just fill the food and water bowls. The cat food is in the cabinet above the washer. And Mom? Don’t worry. When Dan gets home, we’ll come up with a plan for everything. Getting Erin and staying warm and food and water.”
“I know.”
Sean left through the garage. She went to the patio door and watched for him. A minute later he appeared from the back of the garage, an ax in one hand and a bow saw in the other. He crossed their backyard and entered the stretch of trees between their house and the river. There were plenty of downed branches there, some as thick as her thigh. Some had fallen from the trees, but a lot were left behind after the spring floods. Sean set the tools down and started wrestling thick tree limbs out of the tangle. He stopped and looked up at the house, likely wishing Dan was there. “Me too, Sean. Me too.”
30
Dan tried to stay focused, but the monotony of the road rolling under his wheels let his mind wander.
He’d shot a man over a forty-year-old motorcycle.
As quickly as law and order was breaking down, a lot could have happened to him travelling on foot, and to Mary and the kids waiting for him back home. He hadn’t shot the man over the motorcycle—he’d shot him to survive and for his family. Mary and the kids were tough and resourceful but they needed him. The lawlessness he’d seen would reach Weston. It was only a matter of time.
Movement ahead. Or maybe just light reflecting off glass. He released the throttle and pulled in the clutch and let the Honda glide to a stop, dropping his feet from the pegs. He stood up, straddling the bike, flexing his buttocks and stretching his back. Without the rush of the wind, the silence pushed in on him. The sun was in the southeastern sky casting a soft light where it broke through the icy grey clouds.
In the near distance, a fat column of black smoke rose up.
Again. Light flashing off… something.
He flipped up the face shield and without the slight distortion from the curved plastic he could see what caused it. A car crossing over the highway on the Bliss Road overpass. An old car, like the Honda, made before vehicle electronics got complicated in the early seventies.
Dan waited until the car disappeared, then continued on, the smoke getting closer. Something in Kirwin was burning. After he passed under Bliss road, the outer residential sprawl of Kirwin sprouted up, first an old subdivision of one-story homes on big lots under towering trees to the south, then newer construction. After eastbound Route 56 merged into the highway the number of abandoned vehicles increased, some with their doors and trunks open and contents strewn on the ground around them.
Looters.
A Hostess delivery truck with its back doors open and hundreds of boxes of Ho-Hos littering the road. He slowed and wound his way through them. A mile later he surprised two men working a crowbar into the rear doors of a semi in the ditch. He slowed as he cruised by and one of them—a twenty-something Latino in a puffy down coat—gave Dan an evil eye then pulled a gun out of his waistband. Dan twisted the throttle and ducked down tight along the gas tank.
A bang, then a sharp ding that he felt through his hands. He looked down and saw the speedometer was shattered, loose bits of it bouncing off with every bump. Dan swerved around a UPS truck and checked his mirror. The men were out of sight.
The smoke was now directly south of him. A wide inferno below it, flames shooting up in multiple spots along a line. A plane must have gone down in a residential neighborhood. People in those houses likely never knew what happened to them. He wondered if the people on the plane had seen it coming and had a chance for a last thought or prayer.
A mile on, he spotted a crowd of men gathered around the back of a semi. Dan crossed the ditch and wove through the standing cars and rode along the outside shoulder of the westbound lanes—as far from the men as he
could get. The headlight was off and the engine made little noise so maybe he could sneak past.
As he approached the men, he caught glimpses of them between the stalled vehicles. At least ten of them, they had the doors open now and were handing down large flat boxes with colorful graphics. Televisions, which meant they didn’t understand what had happened. If they did, they’d be back there scooping up the Ho-Hos. He slowed further, the bike puttering along slow and quiet. As he passed them a shout rang out, but he twisted the throttle and was gone.
Maybe the tollway was a bad idea. The next exit would funnel him down the throat of Kirwin’s major retail road, a string of strip malls stretching all the way to the town’s center. If there were looters here on the tollway, the stores and restaurants along there would also be under siege. The tollway was still his best option.
He crossed back over to the eastbound lanes and slowed, hunched to shrink his profile, eyes scanning ahead for danger. He found it within a quarter mile. A semi had flipped over in the median and a swarm of looters was pulling white boxes from it and loading them into wagons and wheelbarrows. One antique pickup truck was already pulling away, a giant mound of boxes on back, two men draped over the load to keep it from tumbling off.
Dan stopped close up in the shadow of a stalled semi and flipped up his face shield. The boxes had the Apple logo. Every Apple device within range of the EMP was useless.
He stood up straddling the bike and scanned for a way ahead. The looters were stretched from one side of the tollway to the other. Several had broken off from the main group and were looking at the other vehicles abandoned on the road, long guns over their shoulders. He wouldn’t be able to slip past them. He had to get off the tollway after all. He lowered the face shield and sat back down.
“Look at this.” A man popped out from behind the truck Dan was using as cover. “We got ourselves a running motorcycle.”
31
Mary crossed the open space between their house and the Brady’s and mounted the small wood deck abutting the back door. Beyond it, the ground terraced down to a patio door that served the Brady’s walkout basement. She opened the storm door and unlocked the door and went inside. She’d barely gotten the door closed when the cat rushed around the corner. It stopped abruptly when it came into view, back arched and hair standing up. At least it didn’t hiss. Mary had been over to Sue Brady’s for coffee a few times over the years, so the cat knew her. It had a cutesy cat names like Mittens or Whiskers.
She filled the food bowl then tried to fill the water bowl at the laundry sink. A thin dribble, then nothing. She took the bowl into the powder room to dip into the toilet bowl but thought better of it. She got a cup from the kitchen, then took the lid off the back of the toilet and dipped clean water out of the toilet tank. With the heat off, the inside temperature would drop below freezing within a day or two. They would have to do something with the cat.
When she brought the water bowl back to the laundry room the cat was already done with the food and stood on its rear paws to meet the water dish as Mary lowered it to the floor.
“I guess you were thirsty.”
Mary ran her hand down the cat’s back. The cat ignored her. Mary left the cat there and went into the kitchen. The Brady family would not be coming home so didn’t need their food. When Carson figured this out, he might come for it. But Erin was house-sitting, so had dibs.
Unfortunately, Sue Brady didn’t keep a deep pantry and must have used up her perishables or tossed them before the trip to Florida so pickings were slim. Mary found two cloth grocery bags under the sink and filled one with canned and dried goods and the other with candles which, by the number of them Mary found, seemed to be Sue Brady’s obsession. When she crossed the backyards, she caught motion coming her way out of the corner of her eye. She hustled over and dropped the bags behind her own house, then went to meet whoever was coming.
32
Sean didn’t mind hard work, but every other time he’d cleared the downed wood from the end of the yard had been with Dan. They’d take turns with the saw and talk about something—sports or law or even girls. Then, before he knew it, they’d be done. Tired and sore, but happy about the work they’d done and the time spent together. He wondered if the last time they’d done this—it had to be two years ago now—was the last time they’d ever do it together. Sean stopped sawing, mad at himself for even thinking such a thing. Dan would get home. He had to.
Sean worked another big branch out of the flood-water tangle along the riverbank and dragged it up into the yard. One end was soft to the touch and the saw pulled tufts of wood fiber when he drew the blade across it. He sawed off the spongy part and threw it on the pile with the other rotten wood. Then he got to work sawing the rest into fireplace-length sections he would split with the ax.
Halfway through, he took a break. He took off his coat and hat, sweat dripping off his nose. His right shoulder stiff and sore. He had tried sawing left-handed but just couldn’t get the motion down. He rotated his arm and rubbed the shoulder while looking over his pile of wood. He scanned the back of the neighboring houses, suddenly worried that a neighbor, like Mr. Snick, might be eyeing the wood. He scooped up an armful and headed for the garage.
As he was climbing the shallow hill his mom came out of the Brady house carrying two cloth grocery bags, lumpy with whatever was inside them. She set the bags down behind their house then darted back to the gap between the houses. Her movements looked… sneaky. He dropped the wood and followed her.
When he got around the corner, he found her face-to-face with Carson.
“I caught you re-handed,” Carson said. He still wore the green vest but now wore a black knit hat pulled down over his ears. Ice crystals had clumped on his mustache. “You just robbed the Bradys.”
“I don’t know what you think you saw, but—”
“I saw you running from their house with two bags loaded with food.” Carson tried to get around her but she cut him off. Carson put his hands on his hips and spoke in a deeper voice. “Step aside, Mary Fallon. I am the authority on this court and I’m confiscating those bags for the good of the court.”
Sean joined his mom. She glanced his way, then stepped forward. Carson backed up.
“We’re house-sitting for the Brady family so will do whatever we think necessary to protect their belongings from looters.”
“There’re no looters on our court.”
“There’s you.”
“What? I’m not—”
“You robbed my son of his property and tried to coerce him into giving all of it to you.”
“I confiscated what your son had in that backpack pursuant to my CERT authority. That backpack still isn’t on my porch.”
“You stole energy bars from him. I want them back right now.” She held out her hand.
“Give me those bags!” Carson’s chest puffed out, then he lunged forward, trying to plow his way between Sean and his mom.
Sean moved as if to let Carson pass, then stuck his foot out. Carson tripped and sprawled awkwardly on the ground. Sean planted a knee in his back and pinned him to there.
“You need to leave us alone,” his mom said.
“You’re assaulting an official CERT member. I am the authority on this court.”
If Carson was right, they could be in deep shit. Sean looked up at his mom. She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He pressed his knee harder into Carson’s back as his mom squatted down and spoke softly in Carson’s ear, almost too softly for Sean to hear. “I’ve read about your CERT group and its noble mission to provide service to the community when disaster strikes. Disaster has struck, so now it’s time for you to provide your service. Service means responsibility. It does not mean authority. Go home and review your CERT pledge. It makes you responsible for the people on this court. It does not give you authority over them.”
“You’re wrong.” Carson twisted and thrashed. When Sean’s mom tapped his shoulder, he let Carson up. The man bru
shed snow off his jacket. “I do have power over you all and—”
“Prove it,” Sean said. “Show us the law or rule or whatever document you have that says so.”
“I—” Carson’s gaze swept around and past them. He stepped back. “I have another meeting of my CERT team right now. That’s where I was going when I saw you. When the mayor declares martial law, I’ll have all that power and more.”
“I doubt that.” Sean’s mom pointed toward the street. “Go.”
33
Erin and Cammie sat on the bed closest to the window, backs propped against the wall. Melinda had rolled the desk chair over and sat with her feet pulled up and her sweatshirt over her knees. The room was identical to Erin’s but warmer from the low afternoon sun coming through the window. A connecting door to the neighboring room was open and they could occasionally hear the chatter between Coach and the Twins. He was still trying to convince them the power would come back on any minute and everything would be fine. Melinda and Cammie agreed with Erin—whatever had happened was way beyond a power outage.
“My mom is for-sure freaking out,” Melinda said. “She’s ridiculous.”
Erin’s mom had her own issues but at least she wasn’t a drama queen. As long as Dan was there and she stayed on her meds she would be calm about whatever this was, but would not be calm about her ‘baby girl’ being out of touch.
“How are we going to get home?” Cammie asked. “Walk?”
Erin sat up straighter. “Dan—my stepdad—will come for us.”
“His car’s not going to work either,” Melinda said.
“He’ll come up the Wolf River Trail. My family rode our bikes up it to Saint Charles from our house last summer,” Erin explained. “When we turned around to go home, Dan showed me on the map that the trail continued all the way up here. I saw the sign for the trail when we walked around downtown Elgin after dinner last night. I texted a photo of it to Sean and he said that was the same trail.” Dan was a take-charge-kind-of-guy and coming up here would be the only way to calm Mom down. He was definitely coming.