by Don Shift
The plan was straight forward, but the conspirators erred in assuming that, like themselves, the Sibleys would be without much artificial light and would go to bed soon after dark. It was expected that only the Sibley family itself would be present at the house and the attackers would hold a six-to-one advantage against the men. What would become of the women was not mentioned. Sam did not elaborate on how he was certain that the rogue police raiders had committed their entire force that night. Only young children and the women remained at home.
“Does it bother you having to kill cops?” Sam asked David.
“No. They stopped being cops the moment they went down that path. It’s not the badge and the uniform that makes somebody a cop. I’m pissed they made the choice they did. I hate them for it.”
A deep pit was dug with a backhoe in the clearing where old trees and brush had been burned last year. Everything useful except clothing was stripped off the bodies and tossed into the pit, then buried under chunks of broken concrete and ten feet of dirt. Mr. Sibley revealed an engraved placard he made in the metal shop and mounted it on a small stake. It read: Here lies raiders who came to steal and kill. All died without honor. By dusk, the two wrecked vehicles had been carefully loaded onto a flatbed trailer and then dumped off Balcom Canyon Road, adding two more hulks to rust at the bottom of Car Crash Canyon.
“Wonder what the neighbors think,” Mr. Palmer said to Mr. Sibley.
The retired commando spoke without looking up. “Don’t mess with the Sibleys.”
Millisieverts
The displaced sheriff’s office employees at Todd Road had settled into their own routine. Deputies and family members were all organized into work parties beyond just guard duty. Gardening and tending the orchards were vital to survival. Low water pressure created plumbing nightmares. Lack of personal space caused fights. Teenagers were sneaking off together to have sex. Villareal felt more like a principal than a sheriff. Keeping busy did have the advantage of reducing the time that everyone had to focus on more depressing matters.
More than just a few employees had been turned away or refused to come in because they couldn’t invite their extended families. The policy was only spouses and children. It was impossible to support everyone. Some in-laws were allowed who had special skills, like firefighters, doctors, and even a dentist.
Communication with the outside world was poor. Ham operators had dropped off the air precipitously mainly because many of them were elderly and died without medication, malnourishment, or the stress of the times. The manned stations and cops guarding wells occasionally radioed in at designated times, but with little more than unwelcome reports of having to drive off rioters or bandits. Couriers brought in written reports and messages once a week on horseback.
One of those messengers was a female deputy who had formerly been on the Mounted Posse, now riding out from Hidalgo’s place. She brought news and reports from Camarillo; mainly a log of incidents and numbers of the known dead. One interesting item was an obsolescent microcassette tape for the old portable recorders deputies used to wear on their belts ten years ago. It came from Alex Hidalgo, who seemed to favor talking into the things rather than writing a letter.
A month ago, the appearance of his first tape caused a search tearing the jail apart in order to find a working tape recorder. With the advent of iPhones for each deputy and digital recorders, not even the cadets and report writers used the ancient tapes anymore. Fortunately, a small cache of new-in-the-box recorders were found in a cabinet, squirrelled away by someone who couldn’t throw away the new and unused devices.
Villareal actually suggested using any remaining recorders and tapes to pass on information from multiple people or things that would have ordinarily said in conversation. It was also a secure format because none of the couriers had the cassette players.
The sheriff popped the tape in and pressed play. Hidalgo got right to the point.
“Kyle Sibley and his family came across a portable radio used by some bandits that were looting his in-law’s street. Sibley passed it along to me because I’ve got a radio tech with a background in signals intelligence. Based on the description of the shooter’s bodies, all Hispanics that frankly look like gang members, our assumption is that they are Mexican gangsters, but let me get the wonky stuff out of the way. The channels they were using were space channels.”
Someone in the background said, “No, no, no. That’s not it at all.”
“Fine, you tell him,” Hidalgo said. It became clear this was his personal nerd he was talking to.
The new voice said: “They were using frequencies in the 137 to 138-megahertz range. These are frequencies allocated to satellite downlink communications. Of course, thanks to the EMP there are no satellites still communicating with the Earth, at least in America. So that frees up this range for them to talk with little chance that anyone would tune in to the frequency.”
Hidalgo interrupted. “What happened to the satellites?”
“So the EMP shoots out radiation into space and creates artificial radiation belts. The radiation damages the solar panels or the electronics of the satellites as they pass through the radiation, on average of once every ninety minutes. Satellites in range of the explosion may have been fried outright. Those further out in space, if they’re operational, are disconnected from downlinks and ground control, which means no adjustments in orbit and they just drift away or re-enter and burn up.”
“Oh, okay.”
“As I was saying about the radio, someone doesn’t want to be listened to, but doesn’t have the ability to encrypt their radio traffic. I programmed our radios to be encrypted, it’s not hard if you know what you’re doing and have computers that weren’t fried out. Whoever these guys are, they’re pro-am.”
Hidalgo spoke again. “My radio guys have been monitoring radio traffic off the programmed frequencies and we’ve reached the conclusion that they are a gang of organized bandits. We’re still working on it and trying to track them, but it seems like they’ve gotten smart and are shifting frequencies to avoid surveillance. Or they have left the area, we’re not sure.
“What we are certain of is that there are people out there, speaking Spanish, using semi-sophisticated procedures to ransack neighborhoods with a large number of men.” Hidalgo summarized the attack on the Palmers’ street. “I don’t know who, or what, but your deputies from the Camarillo station gave their opinion as these guys are not your average local gang members.”
Hidalgo moved on, talking about more general items and bits of gossip around the Las Posas and Pleasant Valleys. Villareal tuned the tape out, thinking instead about the sporadic reports of large-scale, organized raids in the county. None of it was a surprise, but the details added color and depth to an alarming picture that had formed in his head a while ago. With fundamentally no police on the street, such things were to be expected.
A deputy knocked on the door. Villareal had a visitor. Dr. Foret, who was in charge of the county medical center, the last functioning hospital in the county, rode his bike along with an armed escort of three Ventura city police officers. A fire department captain had come along with him.
“Well this is unusual,” the sheriff said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“It’s not a courtesy call,” the doctor was slightly out of breath and needed a moment. “I came to give the news to you personally and explain a few things. I got a message from Santa Barbara just this morning.”
“And?”
“There has been a nuclear accident. You know where the Diablo Canyon Power Plant is?” the fire captain said.
“Yeah, San Luis Obispo County, right above Avila Beach. I thought it was decommissioned.”
Dr. Foret shook his head. “In the process of. They’ve had a meltdown. That’s contained, but the stored fuel outside in the spent fuel ponds melted down and sent clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere.”
Villareal sat up straight as if he were struck by lightning. “
Fallout?”
“No, fallout is irradiated debris sucked into a mushroom cloud after a nuclear weapon detonates. This is essentially ash from a nuclear fire. It’s a bad analogy, but it paints the picture.” He went on to explain.
Insult to injury, were the words echoing in Villareal’s mind. Each day brought another new wound cutting just a little bit deeper. EMP’s power as a weapon lay not in an instant ability to turn back time on a nation. It was not an instant killer. It was far more diabolical, more insidious than a nuclear bomb. A nuke would devastate a city, kill with fire and blast, and poison with radiation. But the radiation would fade. Unaffected infrastructure would survive. The country would recover. EMP was an onion that pulled back one terrible layer after another.
He held in his hand a map showing expected radiation contamination. The spent fuel ponds were dry, and some had burned. The reactor itself had also gone into China Syndrome—so named because it would “melt all the way down to China”—but was contained from the atmosphere. The nearby fish wouldn’t be so lucky.
Even with the concrete protecting the reactor, it had already blown out part of its cooling system. With the power grid down and a finite supply of diesel fuel, the auxiliary pumps and generators finally ran dry and failed. The cooling water turned to steam, the pressure built, and a steam explosion occurred. The partial containment breach came when the massive reaction broke loose a pipe that vented harmless steam to the atmosphere allowing radioactive steam and debris to leak out. Some heroes took on a fatal dose of radiation to seal the breach, but it was too late.
The spent fuel sitting in ponds of water also dried up their coolant, which was seawater, the freshwater supply having been used up. As the water evaporated, the rods were exposed to the air and started a fire as they turned to molten metal. Sea breezes carried dust and smoke inland before the ponds could be sealed. More men who were either heroes or suicidal poured concrete over the fuel and buried it all under many feet of dirt. It was Chernobyl in the backyard.
Not actually that bad, as the fire department hazmat officer explained, but pretty bad. It was the worst radiation accident the US had seen. Luckily, the wind had been blowing offshore during the worst part of the accident. Even so, the nearest cities including Paso Robles and Santa Maria were getting 5 milliSieverts of radiation or double the yearly normal background radiation level one got for simply being alive. Avila Beach and some of the ranch land immediately to the east ranged between 10-20 mSv, about as much as a full-body CT scan. People were still at the plant itself, getting their yearly maximum dose of 50 mSv in just a few days.
“Are we safe here?”
“Oh yes, very much so. We tried detecting some of the radiation but were unable to find any trace here. Up there is a different story. They say a lot of people evacuated north towards Hearst Castle. There is a large refugee community there.”
“None of this is likely to produce any radiation sickness,” Dr. Foret explained. Long-term cancer risk would be elevated, but “most of those people are going to die early anyway.”
“You can take the lead in announcing that.”
How would the authorities explain to an already distraught public that this new danger was more theoretical than anything else? A child who has seen the existence of one monster was not going believe that other monsters weren’t also lurking under the bed. First you said EMP wasn’t real and now you’re telling us radiation isn’t a danger? Any radiation that did manage to blow south would be so weak it would require specialist instruments to measure. Trying to convince the public they were in no danger would be as impossible as convincing Medieval villagers that a dragon two counties away was too weak to fly and didn’t breathe fire anymore.
Villareal wasn’t concerned about long term factors. Time and rain would reduce the radiation danger to nil by spring. Fear was the far more dangerous disease. He was thankful that broadcast radio was non-existent. The assumption was that someone—military or police—took the last remaining commercial transmitter offline weeks ago somehow to avoid spreading panic. For that, as wrong as it might have been, made him grateful.
Fire
Life on the ranch was not all prepper-porn fantasy patrols around the perimeter and surrounding orchards after dark. Most of it was farm work and manual chores. The garden still needed weeding, the irrigation system needed constant TLC, and food preparation had become more tedious without grocery stores. Most annoying of all was trying to pick 50 acres of the last of Haas avocados before they fell to the ground to rot and attract rats. This task fell to Sam and the Sibley boys, while the more mechanically adept David fixed whatever was broken that day.
“I’m so sick of avocados,” Sean said dumping a basketful into a small trailer. “Avocados with egg, avocados sandwiches for lunch, avocado with crackers, guacamole.”
“Be grateful,” Tyler said. “People are killing each other over these things.”
Starving suburbanites were walking upwards of ten miles to fill backpacks with purloined fruits to get something to eat. Small orchards in the unincorporated areas on the outskirts of the cities had already been pillaged of their fruits, ripe or not. It was a regular occurrence to hear shots as farmers tried to fend off thieves. The few neighbors the Sibleys spoke with told them about seeing people on their land daily. One even witnessed what was clearly a professional operation drive up in several trucks, unload a picking crew, then drive off with the collected fruit, abandoning the pickers to walk back home. As much as the fencing and barbed wire seemed like overkill, it was a blessing now.
“Why is it that everyone in survival fiction survives every bad thing that happens?” Tyler asked.
“Excuse me?”
“All these end of the world books, they’re prepared, they have bunkers, a million guns, night vision, kinda like us. You never read about the people who were passed by walking out of town. Except when the hero is forced to shoot them or run them over…” he said, trailing off.
“You don’t read survivor fiction from the perspective of someone who has no skills, no luck, and nowhere to go because those people are dead already, whether they know it or not. Nobody wants to read a story where all the wrong decisions are made, and people pay the awful price for it.”
“Thank God Dad is a rich, crazy nutjob.”
“Amen.”
It was nearing eleven o’clock in the morning and the three men had been at it since sunrise. Sean and Tyler sat down in the shade to escape the heat that the Santa Ana winds made intolerable. Sam guzzled water down, letting it spill down his dusty shirt. The dry east wind always made his skin feel itchy.
“You smell that?” Sam asked.
“Smell what?”
Sean stood up and sniffed the air. “Smoke. So what?”
“What’s burning?” While agricultural burns were nothing new, no one ever did them when the volatile east winds were blowing. Wood smoke and garbage fires had become common in the past few months, but again, it was unlikely anyone was burning in this weather. “Come on,” Sam beckoned as he started to move through the trees to the east.
Not far away was Mr. Sibley’s explosive and fireworks magazines, two large earthen berms with doors and vents sticking out of the earth. They were in a far corner of the property near where the strawberries had been grown. Climbing on top of a magazine, the three were able to see over the neighboring orchards. A pall of brown smoke was climbing into the sky. Without a word, the three began to run back to the house.
Minutes later, they arrived breathlessly back at the house where Mr. Sibley and Mr. Palmer were shoveling compost into the garden.
“Dad, fire!” Sean pointed east.
Both fathers looked up and saw that the sun was turning orange.
“I thought it was the dust.”
“We got up on the magazine. I can’t tell how far away it is.”
Mr. Palmer smirked. “I guess we can put my drone to work.”
“Will it work without GPS?”
“Sur
e it will.” Ten minutes later, the quadcopter was lifting off the back patio and climbing to five hundred feet. “Okay, I’ve got it. It’s to the northwest, in the hills. About two miles.”
“How fast is it moving?”
“Not too quickly, thankfully.” The Thomas Fire a few years earlier, during its initial spread, grew at an acre a second, covering fifteen miles in just one evening. Today, the winds were fairly light, gusting just after dawn to 20 miles per hour or so.
Mr. Sibley was looking over Mr. Palmer’s shoulder at the video feed. “How long do you think? I’m guessing an hour.”
“Something like that, depending on the wind.” The Santa Anas usually moderated mid-day. “Might miss us.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Mr. Sibley said. “Look at the smoke, it’s coming directly at us. Not going to burn across South Mountain and go north of us like in 2003. All of those orchards in between are as dry as ours, drier actually. And if it gets into the barranca, that’ll be a highway to our backdoor.”
“Fire preps, Dad?” Sean asked.
“Yeah. Stow that drone and get everybody up.”
Sam went and woke up Auggie and Marco, who had night watch. Once everyone was rounded up in the living room, Mr. Sibley gave out orders. He handed out hard hats, which were from his blasting company, but would have to serve as fire helmets. Everyone got a pair of thick gloves, goggles if they didn’t have them already, and a paper mask. Anyone who wasn’t wearing sturdy shoes, pants, and long sleeves was told to change.
“Sean and Tyler, you take a pickup and put a sprayer tank in the back. Fill it up and you cover the magazines. There’s not a lot of explosives in there but keep an eye on them. Sam, I need you to get a ladder and get on the roof. There’s an extra fifty feet of hose in my shop you can attach to the front yard hose.