CyberStorm (12 page)

Just opening the back door was an adventure, with all the snow piled against it. I was barely able to squeeze out, and I’d spent twenty minutes digging the snow away from the outside of the door enough to open it properly.

“Come on then, let’s go,” I told Chuck as I scraped away the last of it. Opening the door, he scrambled into the snow outside, and we began waddling through the waist-deep drifts to the nearest car. On the inside of all my layers of clothing I was sweating, prickly, and uncomfortable, while my hands and face and feet were numb from cold.

“Remind me to add snowshoes to my shopping list for the next disaster,” laughed Chuck.

After brushing away two feet of snow from the top of the first car, we found it had a locked gas cap, so we moved to the next one. With that one we had more luck. After ten minutes of digging out a trench, we positioned the empty gas canister as low as we could and inserted a length of rubber tubing into the gas tank.

“I remember buying this medical tubing and wondering what on Earth I’d ever use it for,” mused Chuck, kneeling in the snow. “Now I know.”

I held the end of the tube up to him. “I did all the digging. I believe the sucking is your job.”

I’d never siphoned anything in my life.

“Great.”

He leaned down and put his lips around the tube and began sucking. With each few inhalations he’d stop to cough out the fumes, holding his thumb over the end of the tube as he did. Finally, he hit pay dirt.

“Merry Christmas!” I teased as he doubled over, coughing and retching out a mouthful of gasoline.

Carefully, he leaned down and inserted the end of the tube into the canister, releasing his thumb as he did. The satisfying sound of running liquid echoed out from the container. It was working.

“You’re pretty good at this sucking stuff.”

I was impressed.

Wiping spittle from the side of his mouth with his club hand, he smiled at me. “By the way, congrats on getting pregnant.”

Sitting there in the snow, I had a sudden flashback of being a child, of the days my brothers and I would go out back of our small house in Pittsburgh to build snow forts after a storm. I was the youngest, and I remembered my mother coming out on the back stoop all the time to check on us. She was really checking on me, making sure I wasn’t buried under the snow by my roughhousing brothers.

I had my own family to protect now. Perhaps I could tramp off into the wilderness with a backpack, survive, and figure out whatever came my way, but with children everything became dramatically different.

Taking a deep breath, I looked up into the falling snow.

“Seriously, congratulations. I know it’s what you wanted.” Chuck leaned over and put a hand on my shoulder.

I looked down into the four-gallon canister wedged into the snow. It was about a third full.

“But not what she wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

How much do I want to share?
But there was no sense in bottling it up.

“She was going to get an abortion.”

Chuck’s hand dropped from my shoulder. Snowflakes settled gently around us. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment and anger.

“I don’t know. That’s what she told me. She was waiting till after the holidays.”

“How pregnant is she?”

“Maybe ten weeks. She knew when we had the Thanksgiving party, when her family was here and her dad offered that position with the firm in Boston.”

Chuck pursed his lips, not saying anything.

“Luke was an accident, a happy accident, but still an accident. Lauren’s father was expecting her to be the first female senator for Massachusetts or something. She was under massive pressure, and I guess I wasn’t listening.”

“And having another baby now—”

“She wasn’t going to tell anyone. She was going to Boston in the New Year.”

“You agreed to go to Boston?”

“She was going to go by herself, get a separation if I wouldn’t.”

Chuck looked away from me as a tear ran down my face. It froze halfway.

“Sorry, man.”

I straightened up and shook my head. “Anyway, all that’s over, at least for now.”

The container was almost full.

“She’s going to be thirty next month,” said Chuck. “It can stir up a lot of confusion in people, about what’s important.”

“She obviously decided what was important,” I said angrily, pulling the tube out of the container. Gasoline sprayed up onto me and soaked my glove. I swore and began screwing the cap onto the container to seal it. It jammed, and I swore again.

Chuck leaned over and put his gloved hand on mine, stopping me.

“Take it easy, Mike. Take it easy on yourself, and more important, take it easy on her. She didn’t do anything. She just
thought
about doing something. I bet there are a lot of things you’ve thought of doing that people wouldn’t be too impressed with.”

“But to think about doing something like that—”

“She’s confused, and she didn’t do anything. She
needs
you now.
Luke
needs you now.”

He picked up the container with his good hand and stood up, sinking back into the snow and falling sideways. Looking at me, he added, “
I
need you now.”

Shaking my head, I took the container from him. We started shuffling back toward our building.

“Why do you think CNN didn’t come back on last night?” asked Chuck.

“Local carrier networks are probably jammed,” I speculated. “Or generators ran out of power.”

“Or CNN was bombed,” joked Chuck. “Not that I would be entirely against that.”

“Big data centers usually keep a hundred hours of fuel for backup generators. Isn’t that what Rory said?”

“I think he said the
New York Times
had that much.” He looked around at the deep snow on the streets. “Won’t be any refuelling for a while.”

Reaching the door of our building, we saw that snow had already drifted up against the door.
We better come and clear this regularly if we want to get out.
Tony was still at his post at the other end of the main-floor hallway. He waved to us.

Reassuringly, we heard the rumble of a big plow coming down Ninth Avenue and saw it sweep by in the distance between the buildings. It was nearly the only evidence that the city was still operating on some level.

When the power had gone out, the local radio stations were still operating, but this morning many of them were static. The radio stations still transmitting were now filled with wild speculation about what had happened, but they were just as much in the dark as we were.

The only consistent information between all of them was that this second blackout had affected not just New England, but the entire United States, and a hundred million people or more were without power. The best the radio announcers could do was report on local conditions. We had no idea what was happening in the world, or if it even existed anymore.

It was as if New York had been disconnected from the rest of the planet and was floating alone, soundlessly, in a snowy gray cloud.

8:45 p
.
m
.

THE FACES BEFORE me glowed in dazzling bright green, and then the green spotlight swept down the hallway, flashing off doorframes.

“Cool, huh?”

“Very cool,” I replied, taking off the night-vision goggles. “Lights please?”

With a click the lights we’d jury-rigged in the hallway, connected to Chuck’s generator, turned back on.

“I can’t believe you have ten thousand dollars’ worth of night-vision goggles and infrared flashlights.” I looked around at the military paraphernalia stacked around Chuck. “And you don’t have a shortwave radio.”

“I’ve got one, but it’s in Virginia at the hideaway.”

Same place he should be, he didn’t add.

“Thanks again for staying,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, thanks for staying,” said Ryan, one of our neighbors from further down the hallway. He raised a steaming cup of buttered rum.

His partner, Rex, raised his glass as well.

“A toast to our well-prepared friend, Chuck!”

“Hear, hear!” came a halfhearted cheer from the rest of the people crowded in the hallway, nearly twenty people packed together on chairs and couches pulled out from their apartments.

We all raised our cups to drink.

Susie decided on hosting a hot rum toddy party for Christmas, and all of our neighbors were bundled and cuddled up together, holding steaming-hot cups of alcohol in their hands.

The building was retaining heat but cooling quickly.

We’d switched to using electric heaters in Chuck’s apartment. The kerosene heater was more powerful but produced carbon monoxide, and Susie was worried about the kids. For this gathering we’d pulled the kerosene heater out and placed it in the center of the hallway. People were warming themselves around it as if it were a campfire.

The hallway had become our communal living room, a place to gather together and chat. We’d wired up a radio that played news in the background, mostly just listing off emergency shelter locations around the city and saying that the power would be back on soon and to stay indoors. Most of the roads and highways were impassable, in any case.

Everyone was sitting in more or less the same positions as where their apartments were located along the hallway. The Chinese couple from down the hall near Richard had finally come out and were bunched up together on one couch together with their parents, who’d come for a visit before everything fell apart. It was a bad time to have chosen to visit America for the first time, and none of them spoke English very well.

The Chinese family were sitting together with a Japanese couple, Hiro was the husband’s name, who in turn were sitting across from Rex and Ryan. The Borodins were sitting to my right. Aleksandr was awake for once, but just barely as he sipped the hot rum drink, with Irena beside him. Chuck, Susie, Pam, and Rory were to my left, and little Ellarose was sitting up on Tony’s lap.

The only one missing was Lauren.

I wasn’t sure what to say to her, and she hadn’t wanted to talk. I’d tried holding her, asking her to come out, but she wanted to be alone. She was in Susie’s room, sleeping, or at least, being by herself.

Luke had no idea what was going on. To him, this was all a big game, a party, and he was running around, dressed up in his snowsuit, saying hello to everyone and showing off a red fire engine toy he’d gotten for Christmas. It lit up and made noises and would have been annoying, but it was somehow comforting. I wasn’t sure how long the batteries would last.

Richard walked over from his end of the gathering to sit down on the arm of the leather chair I’d dragged out from my place. “So can we have it?”

He’d been badgering us all day about taking the kerosene heater.

“I’ve got some food I could trade.”

Somehow he’d acquired a large load of cans and groceries, probably by offering someone a small fortune.

“If it keeps getting colder, we’re going to freeze to death if we all keep in our own places. I’ll take in that Chinese family and the gay guys and Hiro and his wife. Sarah and I will organize a shelter at our end, and you guys do the same at your end. All I need is the kerosene heater and a few other things.”

I was impressed that he was offering to create a shelter in his apartment for other people on the floor.
Maybe I have this guy wrong.

“You need to talk to Chuck,” I replied.

Richard looked up at Chuck, who I was sure could hear our conversation. He was adamant that we needed to keep everything we had for ourselves, but Susie was just as adamant that we needed to share.

“Charles Mumford,” whispered Susie to Chuck, “we don’t need that thing. You go on now.”

“Fine, yes,” said Chuck finally, sighing and looking back at Richard, “and I’ll collect some other stuff for you guys. That’s a good idea doing a shelter for the floor.”

“And can we get a cable for electricity?”

Chuck sighed deeper this time. We’d snaked an extension into Pam and Rory’s next door to run a small electric heater and light. Their place was tiny, smaller than mine, so it was workable, but we’d opened a can of worms. Everyone wanted a connection.

“The generator is only six thousand watts, and we’re already running three heaters.”

Susie kicked his foot.

“Ah, forget it. Sure. Only for lighting? At nights? And everyone does siphon duty?”

“You bet,” agreed Richard. “Good man.”

Getting up to leave, he turned to me.

“Is Lauren okay?”

“Yeah, she’s good,” I replied without enthusiasm.

Richard frowned, but then shrugged and returned to his wife, Sarah, who was sitting and trying to talk to the Chinese family. Luke was over with them, and the Chinese grandfather was admiring his new fire engine. I smiled at them, and the grandfather smiled back. We’d decided the bird flu warning was a hoax.

Just then the stairwell door opened, giving everyone a start.

A face slowly appeared, smiling awkwardly. It was Paul, the suspected intruder from the day before. Chuck’s eyes narrowed. He whispered to Tony, who looked up at Paul, wagged his head slightly, and shrugged back at Chuck.

“Hey, guys,” said Paul with a small wave. The light from his headlamp flashed in my eyes. “Wow. Cozy up here.”

Squinting, I raised one hand. “Could you turn that off?”

“Sorry, forgot. You’re the only ones with real lights.”

“Paul, from 514, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Chuck leaned toward me and whispered, “Tony locked the front door hours ago, and he says this guy sort of looks familiar. I guess I was wrong.”

Everyone in the hallway was quiet, waiting on us. I smiled back at Paul.

“Want a drink?”

“That’d be great.”

Conversations resumed, and I quickly introduced Paul around while Susie fetched him a hot toddy. Paul shook everyone’s hand, exchanging enthusiastic Merry Christmases until he got to Irena and Aleksandr.

“Merry Christmas!” he said, outstretching his hand. Irena looked up at him, pressing her lips together and frowning.