by Jayne, Chris
Lori stood up. “Come on.” She started moving towards the gate of the dog yard. “You guys stay here,” she called to Brandon and Grace. “We’re going to make lunch.” She looked at the owner of the dachshund who was standing near the romping dogs and children. “Is it OK,” she called out, “if I leave them?”
“Sure, no problem,” the woman called back. Lori noticed for the first time that the woman was quite obviously pregnant. She patted her belly. “Guess I better get used to it!” she said with a smile.
Lori and Simone walked over to the where the two drivers and the couple in the car were talking. Just minutes before, the silence left by the cessation of the diesel motors had been pleasant, but suddenly it felt ominous. She heard nothing but the voices of the four people talking, the chatter of Brandon and Grace and the two dogs, and some birds.
She approached the group. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The driver, an Asian man is his forties, looked at her helplessly. “It just died. Just rolled to a stop.”
One of the drivers chimed in. “Our trucks too. ‘Bout five minutes ago.”
“What?” Lori was trying to make sense of it. “But that’s when my phone died.”
At Lori’s mention of her phone, a shocked look passed over the woman’s face. She got back into the car and came out immediately with her phone in her hand. “Mine dead too,” she said slowly, showing the black glass face of her phone to everyone. She had a strong accent and then she said something to her husband in what Lori thought was Japanese.
“She wants to know what’s happening,” he said.
One of the truck drivers, wearing a uniform shirt with an embroidered nametag that read Morgan, fished his phone out of his trousers pocket. The look on his face told the same tale without his having to speak a word.
After a long moment of silence, the second driver said, “I’m going up to the main building. See what’s happening there.”
To hide her confusion, Lori responded, “Yes. Please do. I’m… uhh… going to make some lunch for my kids,” and before anyone could say any more, she walked over to the Escalade, drawing Simone with her in a way that she hoped was not too obvious.
Lori had no idea what was going on but her intuition was telling her that something was very wrong. For a moment, as she walked, she fought down what was quite nearly a panic attack.
Glancing up at the restroom building, just visible through the trees, she could see that the windows in the exterior of the building were dark. So the electricity was out too. She was no scientist but there was no explanation that she understood for peoples’ cars and their phones, neither of which depended on the electrical system, to die simultaneously along with the electrical power.
Except maybe there was one.
A couple of months previous, she had seen a television program that discussed a phenomenon very much like what was happening. When she and Simone reached the back of the Escalade, she was so overwhelmed that for a long moment, she could only rest against the back of the car, warm from the sun, and stare numbly through the window at… nothing. Her thoughts raced.
Finally, Simone, disturbed by Lori’s silence, reached out. “Lori?” she questioned tentatively, her hand on her employer’s shoulder.
“I don’t know if I can take any more,” Lori hissed. “First Saldata, and now this.” All week Lori had been trying to spare Simone, who at barely twenty years old, was closer to Grace’s age than her own, but now she felt she just could not hold her emotions together any longer.
“I don’t understand what is happening.” Simone started to cry.
More exhausted than she’d ever been, Lori said nothing. First Saldata and now this. She thought they’d made it. Barely two hours to go. One hundred and thirty miles out of an almost 2500 mile trip. So close.
Lori popped the hatchback of the Escalade, trying to decide what to say to Simone, but then suddenly something caught her attention. That was odd. The interior light in the Escalade was coming on. A wave of relief crashed over her. They were all just stupidly paranoid; maybe everything was fine. She walked around and opened the driver’s door and the chime indicating that the keys were in the ignition dinged to life. So did this mean her car would run? Hoping against hope it had been nothing but a series of odd coincidences, which had led to a completely foolish conclusion, she quickly got her answer. Slipping into the driver’s seat, she turned the key. The car chugged and tried to start, just as if she’d run out of gas, but it never successfully turned over. After a few tries, she stopped, the sinking feeling in her stomach returning instantly.
Glancing back nervously, she saw both the Asian couple and the truck driver watching her. Their expressions were more blank confusion than threat. The Japanese couple in particular looked as if they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. She went back to the rear of the Escalade. “Call me crazy,” she said to Simone, her voice just above a whisper, “ but I think I know what might have happened.”
“What? I don’t understand. How can the car and phone not work together?”
Lori should her head. “I saw something about this on television a couple of months ago. An interview with a scientist. That something in the atmosphere could turn everything off at once.”
“Atmosphere?”
“Up in the sky. Really far up. Farther up than planes fly.”
Simone digested that. “Turn off?” She looked confused. Simone had lived with Lori for more than a year now, and had spoken passable English when she’d arrived, so now her English was quite good, but she still struggled with idiomatic expressions occasionally.
“Like a light switch,” Lori clarified.
Simone seemed to get it. “When will it run again?”
“That was just it. It never comes back on.” Lori tried to remember the details, but she could recall few specifics. The show had probably been on the same cable channel that specialized in alien abductions, the Loch Ness monster, and Nostradamus. She enjoyed watching programming like this for a light-hearted break while she was cooking but if it had been a typical night she would been interrupted with at least one phone call from work and three or four homework requests from Grace during the course of a single half hour. In fact, she realized she could remember almost nothing other than whoever was interviewing the scientist had treated some of the predictions very skeptically.
“What?” Simone asked. “This is possible?”
“I don’t know. Just that once everything is fried, it can’t be fixed.”
“Fried?” Simone looked completely confused. “Comme frite?”
Simone used the French word for “fried” that meant - literally - cooked in oil, and Lori realized again idiom didn’t translate. “No, like destroyed. Broken.”
“This is possible?” The au pair repeated her question.
Lori glanced over to where the kids were still playing. The pregnant woman had walked up to the fence and was looking at them. She held up her phone, a baffled expression on her face. “Is something going on?” she called out. “My phone just died out of the blue. It’s brand new and I know it’s charged.”
“Yeah,” Lori called back. “It seems to be happening to everyone. Mine’s dead too.”
The woman glanced back at her phone, puzzled, and shook it a few times.
Lori turned to Simone, decisive, because suddenly a few more facts from the television program were coming back to her. Lori’s career was feeding people. Because of that, certain information had caught her attention in spite of interruptions. The vast majority of Americans had less than a week’s worth supply of food, the scientist had claimed, and in a full scale collapse of the food transport chain, half of the population of America would be rioting in a week and starving within a month. When Lori had heard that, she had glanced idly at her pantry and freezer and wondered how long she could feed her family on what she had in the house.
She mulled over the prediction again. Half rioting in a week, and starving in a month. Lori
had no idea if the prediction was accurate but if there was even a chance that it was, she needed to act now.
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said to Simone. “I’m not sure how it happens. But I’m not taking any chances.” She grabbed the camp stove out of the back of the car. “Follow me with the coffee pot.”
They walked to a picnic table outside of the dog pen. As they walked, she gave low-voiced instructions to Simone. “I’m going to bring the hamburger meat and the buns out here. And the coffee stuff. Hopefully people will be watching me. Once they are distracted, I want you to take everything out of the cooler except one or two things and hide all the food under the back panel, by the spare tire.”
“Hide it?” From Simone’s face, it was clear she wasn’t sure she was hearing correctly.
“Yes,” Lori affirmed. And then just to make absolutely sure, she switched to French. “Cache tout. Absolutement tout. The stuff that’s in the grocery bags too. The instant oatmeal, the cereal boxes, everything. Leave maybe half a loaf of bread, the empty jar of peanut butter, and those brown bananas in the cooler.” She paused. “So if someone looks in the cooler, that is all they will find.” She paused again, hoping that her whole meaning had sunk in. “Got it?” Even as she said it, a chill passed through her. Was she really acknowledging that someone might look in her cooler and try to confiscate her food?
Simone gazed back at her with wide eyes, but she nodded in agreement.
Lori made one more trip to the car and loaded the one remaining package of raw hamburger meat, the sleeve of buns, a small bottle of cooking oil, the ketchup, plus the percolator, a frying pan, and the coffee into the small laundry basket she’d bought.
As she predicted, the Japanese couple and Morgan the truck driver watched her warily. Every minute or so, the Japanese man tried to start his car again, with the same non-result. Pretending to be oblivious to the scrutiny, she set up her cooking area on a picnic table. For one terrible second she wondered if somehow the Coleman stove too would not function, but with no issues the little stove jumped into flame. Casually she walked over to the freestanding spigot beside the picnic tables, and gave a sigh of relief when the water flowed with a full stream, clear and cold. What caused the water to pump she had no idea, but at least for now that seemed to be fine.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lori saw Simone lingering at the back of the Escalade. It was in straight line of sight from where Morgan stood with the confused couple, and there was no way Simone could follow the instructions with them standing there.
“Come on over.” Lori motioned to them. “I’m cooking hamburgers and I’ve got enough for everyone. Plus coffee. Anyone want lunch?”
Chapter 2
Deacon
Monday 11:30 AM
Near Moccasin, Montana
* * *
Roger and Deacon stood in silence, staring numbly. A large plane had just disappeared behind the mountain. Roger slanted a look towards his brother. “Did we just see that?”
“Yeah,” Deacon allowed. “I think we did, but…” He paused a long moment. “I don’t hear anything. I don’t see any smoke.” Those who knew Deacon well would probably never have described him as speaking in “hushed tones,” but right now, that's exactly what he was doing. “How far away do you think that was?”
“I don’t know. Ten, fifteen miles.”
“Maybe the pilot managed to land. In a field or on a road.”
“That’s where the real mountains start, Deke. There aren’t any fields. Or roads.”
“Right.” Deacon drew the word out. Frustrated that nothing seemed to be making sense, he raked his hand through his short-cropped hair. Deacon’s military training kicked in and his first thought was that he should rush to the scene. In spite of Roger’s assessment, if the pilot had managed an emergency landing, there would now be dozens, if not hundreds, of people who needed help. As quickly as he had the thought, however, he rejected it.
Roger had said it could be as much as fifteen miles away, and even that, he could tell from his brother’s demeanor, was nothing more than a guess. Even if they wanted to help, the first barrier was transportation. They had no way of getting there, other than on foot and no guarantees that wherever the aircraft had come down, it was even accessible. If it was in, as Roger had said, the “real mountains,” the crash could be miles off of a road.
Desperately, almost absurdly, Roger jumped back into his pick-up and tried again to start it. The result was the same as it had been minutes before. Suddenly, Roger sprinted towards the barn.
Throwing a quick glance at the children, Deacon followed. The two boys and Hannah had started playing with the ball again, but eleven-year-old Beth was continued to watch the two men with a worried look.
Roger’s tractor was parked in a covered shelter by the side of the barn; he jumped into the driver’s seat now, fetched the keys from under the seat, and within one second the diesel engine had chugged into life. As quickly as he had started it, he shut it off and jumped down. “So that works.”
Deacon looked at the tractor. He didn’t know much about farm equipment but saw immediately that it was an older model. “How old is it?” he asked.
Roger snorted. “Came with the farm. It’s a classic,” he snapped cynically. “1960s I think.”
“So no electronics,” Deacon commented slowly.
Roger moved closer to him. “What do we do now?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure.” Deacon’s head was spinning. He didn’t know where to start. There were so many variables and even more unknowns.
Silence stretched between them. Finally, Roger spoke again. “It has to be an EMP, Deke. Has to be. What else could it be with the phones, the car,” he gestured vaguely to the sky, “the airplanes? Don’t you train for stuff like this all the time?”
“EMPs?” He snorted. “Not really. If you think I’ve attended a class entitled EMP 101, the answer is no.” That wasn’t entirely accurate however. Deacon had heard about EMPs… more than once. He tried to remember the last time it had come up in the classroom; it had to be more than a year. One thing did stand out in his memory, however. Depending on who was doing the talking, there was a lot of disagreement on how bad it would be.
“Let’s go back inside,” said Roger. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do.” As they walked, Deacon looked at his phone again. Maybe he was wrong, he thought, and thumbed the on-off switch on the side. Maybe he had somehow managed to turn it off. Maybe, he hoped, this was all just a power outage and a lot of paranoia, but, as deep down he knew it would, turning it off and then back on again produced no different result.
Beth Kaplan approached them. At eleven, she was a tall girl, over five feet, already as tall as a smaller woman. Her face was somber. “Mr. Roger,” she asked, “is everything okay?” The other three children, two six-year-old boys and a three-year-old girl, were running and screaming outside the house as if nothing had happened, but Beth, who already had been anxious because of her sister’s accident, was far more observant and worried.
“Listen, Beth,” started Roger, “the power’s gone out and we’re trying to figure out what’s going on.” Roger stopped in front of the girl. “Right now, honey, I really need you to step up and help me with the others. ’Til your mom and Louise get back. Play outside with them, but if they start getting cold or hungry come on in and…” Roger looked at Beth. Could eleven-year-olds cook? “Can you make them grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly? Heat up some soup?” As he said it, he said a quick prayer of thanks that at least their stove, running off a propane tank, should work.
Beth nodded and hurried off after the younger three, who had disappeared around the house.
“Thank God she didn’t see the plane,” Deacon said, his voice low as the young girl moved away.
The two men entered the kitchen, and then Roger disappeared into the front room, calling out over his shoulder. “I think I have an article about EMPs here somewhere. Preparing for eve
nts like this was one of the things Bill Bowen talked about. He even ran monthly seminars.” In a few moment, though he returned empty-handed. “I don’t know where it is. I had a whole folder of material, but it might still be in some of the boxes we brought just the other day. I don’t have time to look for it now.”
“If Bowen talked about it, why are you asking me? You probably know more than I do.”
Roger shook his head. “This was three, four years ago while the old man was still alive. Then he got sick, and Willie Bowen took over and his seminars got more and more extreme. Stupid really. Government takeovers, coming plagues, poisoned water, alien invasions. I stopped going, I’m afraid. I do know one thing, though. Old Man Bowen took EMPs seriously. A lot of the essential electrical infrastructure in Bowenville is supposedly shielded. Everyone in Bowenville was supposed to have a Faraday cage in their basement with some critical supplies, a hand crank radio, emergency flashlight, HAM radio. That sort of thing.”
Deacon knew what a Faraday cage was: a shielded container that prevented electronic signals or waves from passing through. “Did people do it?” Deacon asked.
Roger shrugged. “Some did, some didn’t.”
Now, the million-dollar question. “Did you?”
“I did…” He paused. “Four years ago. But one of the things we were supposed to do is check the supplies every year and I didn’t. You’re not going to believe this, but the other day when we were there, I glanced around the basement and… I think I left it. It was back in the corner with half-empty cans of paint and…” Roger closed his eyes as a wave of disgust passed across his face, then he reopened them and looked at his brother honestly. “I’m pretty sure I left it.”
“Lovely.” Deacon snapped. “Fucking lovely. No help for it now.” He glanced over at the kitchen counter. “And no goddam coffee.” The popular brand single cup coffee maker he’d bought for Louise less than a week ago had just become a paperweight. “I don’t suppose you have an old-fashioned coffee pot? You know, the kind that boils water.” For a second, he couldn’t remember what they were called and then it came to him. “A percolator.”