Digital Winter (22 page)

“Yes, sir, I can come up with something. I didn't bring my Bible. I didn't anticipate the day's events.”

Holt chuckled. “If you had, you'd be a prophet, and I think that outranks me.”

Jill Sherwin stepped to the table and came to attention.

“As you were, Colonel.”

“Thank you, sir. If the generals have a moment, I have something to show you.”

Holt tilted his head an inch. “Am I going to like it?”

“Yes, sir. It's a car. And it runs.”

J
eremy and Holt rode to the surface in one of Sherwin's electric carts. Although it had been less than a day, Jeremy felt he had been underground for weeks. Of course, he hadn't slept, he had eaten very little, he was overwhelmed with the situation, and he was worried about Roni. None of those things helped.

The January air was crisp, and a sharp breeze blew from the north. He wondered if bad weather was on the way. That's all they would need. The setting moon hung a few degrees over the horizon, still red, still ominous. Bright streaks of white cut the obsidian night.

The sound of running engines hung in the thick, cold air. “You got the generators up here working?”

“No, sir,” Sherwin said. “We store several portable generators below grade for emergencies. I had them brought up here to power the portable work lights. Asking my men to repair the antennas by flashlight seemed a bit much.”

“A bit?”

“They're resilient and dedicated.” She stood a little straighter, like any officer proud of her charges. “If I asked them to work by candlelight, they'd do it without complaint. Of course, if more of the space bombs go off, the generators are toast.”

Jeremy heard another motor. Its pitch was different from those of the portable generators. He stepped from the cart the moment Sherwin slowed it to a stop. In front of them was a classic VW bug. It was running. Next to it stood a man who couldn't be more than an inch taller than the minimum 58-inch height requirement to serve in the military. The man came to attention, his spine straight and eyes fixed straight ahead. Since Holt was the senior officer present, Jeremy let him put the man at ease.

“This is Staff Sergeant Joel Tate. His assignment is generator maintenance. He's proficient in diesel and gas generators as well as other things. He's also a bit of a gearhead with a useful hobby. He rebuilds old cars.”

“I'm interested in hearing what you have to say, Staff Sergeant,” Holt said.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I was just…The idea came to me…I mean…” He looked as if he lost the ability to breathe. Jeremy assumed the young man had never stood before so many officers at once, two with the rank of general.

“Inhale,” Sherwin ordered. The man did. “Now focus.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Better?” Sherwin studied her soldier.

“Yes, ma'am. I guess I'm a little off my game.”

“We all are, son,” Holt said. “Tell me about your car.”

“Yes, sir. This is a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. It has a 1500 cc engine. It belonged to my grandfather. I've been restoring it for several years. It's a hobby. Fixing old cars, I mean.” He smiled, a man in love with autos. Jeremy could appreciate that, although he preferred CPUs and keyboards. “The colonel briefed us on the problem. The EMP pulse, I mean. That got me thinking. I figured that my old bug might be the easiest thing to fix.”

“It was affected?” Jeremy asked.

“Yes, sir, it was, but not to the same extent. The electrical took a beating. The pulse burned out the fuses and fried some of the wiring, including the battery cables, the ignition wires, and a few others.”

“But it's running,” Holt said.

“Yes, sir. That's the beauty. Modern cars and trucks have computer chips and sensors and the like. They're complicated. Not these old cars. These were built in the day when a man could—excuse me, Colonel—when a person could gap the points with a matchbook cover and adjust the timing by ear. I found a bunch of wire that wasn't connected to anything, so the sudden current didn't hurt it. I was able to rewire the ignition and a few other things to make the engine run. I bypassed the fuses with some metal slugs I cut down in the shop. I had to do that by hand, so it took a while, but I was able to jump the fuses that ran to the engine. I'll need to cut down a few more if we want lights and radio.”

“What about the spark plug wires?” Jeremy asked.

“I stole them from our supply room.”

Jeremy blinked a few times. “You keep Volkswagen parts in the shop?”

“No, sir, but we do keep some for the gas generators and some for the big diesel units. I, um…improvised.”

Jeremy didn't ask how. He wasn't sure he'd understand. “And the battery?”

“The one in my car was rendered inoperable, but those in the storage weren't. They're not connected to anything, therefore no current flow. No current flow, no damage. We have several 12-volt batteries that are used to replace bad units in the electric carts. In '67, Volkswagen switched to 12-volt systems. So we're golden.”

“What about the other vehicles on the lots?” Holt asked.

“I think we can get a few of them running. Not the radios. That's a completely different animal. We'll have to be creative with some of the wiring. The real problem is bypassing computer systems in the vehicles. The older the engine, the better. The new vehicles will require new chips, or we'll need to rework the whole electrical system.”

“Can that be done?” Jeremy stepped closer to the idling vehicle and wondered when he had last seen anything so beautiful.

The sergeant shuffled his feet. “I wish I had more good news for you, sirs, and maybe I will. It's going to take a long time to get anywhere near normal around here.”

“Or anywhere.” Jeremy turned to Holt. “What do you think, sir?”

“I think I want to shake this man's hand.”

Jeremy turned his attention skyward again. More white hot streaks scratched the black sky.

“Meteor shower, sir?” It was Jill Sherwin.

“I don't think so, Colonel.” He watched another light cross the sky. “The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Something from the Gospel of Mark, Colonel. The Bible.”

Roni Matisse had managed a ninety-minute nap, but her mind wouldn't let her rest. It sent one bizarre dream after another bouncing around her mind. Her subconscious was taking out the trash by creating a train of nonsensical dreams. In one, she was performing surgery while traveling on an airline. A female flight attendant was cranky because the operating table kept her from moving the goody cart through the aisle. To make matters worse, Roni was operating on the pilot and was losing him.

In another dream she wandered a distant field, lost and alone. Above her a red moon flicked on and off as if a child were playing with a light switch. When the moon was off, the stygian black kept her from moving. When it was on, she could see only the green field awash in bloodred light.

An hour and a half of that had been enough. She might have been sleeping, but she wasn't resting. Her nap ended an hour or two before sunrise, and she left the tiny office she had used for a bedroom, scrunched down in a side chair. Next time, she decided, she'd abscond with a hospital pillow and a blanket and make the floor her bed. Hopefully everything would be back to normal soon.

Not one part of her believed that.

She wandered the hospital, helping where she could, and then made her way up the four-story stairway onto the roof. She was not alone. Several hospital staff had staked off areas to smoke or to be alone with their thoughts.

One was more sociable. Dr. August Pickett, the hospital administrator, was a stout man with an intelligent, black face. Harvard trained, he was one of the smartest physicians Roni had ever met. His fifty-five years had been good to him. His short, tight hair was going gray, making him look even more distinguished. He had come to the hospital from a position in San Francisco and had proven himself as adept at administration as he had in cardiac surgery. He still scrubbed in from time to time.

“Doctor.” His voice was a rich bass, smooth, and his words came easily. “I want to thank you for your work. You've gone above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Thank you. I heard you helped in pediatrics and ob/gyn.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I don't know how much help I was in the latter. I haven't delivered a baby in twenty years. Fortunately, we had enough people to cover the few cases we had here. Mostly I helped the nurses and physician's assistants. I assisted in a couple of surgeries. Mostly I patrolled the CCU.”

“Not many administrators would do that.”

“I don't know about that. We all have to pull together until this is all over.”

“Over. That's a great word.” She looked up and watched the falling stars. “Normally, seeing a falling star would bring joy. Doesn't feel that way.”

“I don't think they're meteors.”

“What else would it be?”

“Space debris. Did you see the flashes in the sky?”

Roni nodded. “What's that got to do…” It hit her. “You mean something from space did this? Like a comet or something else?”

“I don't know about such things.” Pickett pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked as weary as she felt. Her primary concerned had been trauma surgeries. He had the whole hospital to worry about. “I know my way around the human body, but anything above the roof of this building is foreign to me. I don't even like to fly.”

Her mind shuffled possibilities, and she didn't like any of them. Terrorist attack, war, aliens in spaceships, and the one nagging fear she hadn't wanted to talk about. “Jeremy would know more about this.”

“Is he at home?”

“No, he's…” she paused. “He's up north. Working.”

“He's military, right? Sorry, I can't keep up with all the doctors and nurses we have. Throw in their spouses and kids, and I get lost.”

“Yes. Air Force. He's in computers.” Saying Jeremy was in computers was like saying van Gogh liked art.

There were questions in his eyes, but he didn't ask them. Instead, he turned his attention to the cityscape. “It's quiet now, but if this goes on for more than a day, things will get out of hand.” He stepped closer to the parapet that rimmed the building. “Power outages are never good, but in cities with large areas of low-income housing, it gets bad. I've seen it before. Two days, there will be looting and injuries. Three days, there will be deaths. The National Guard will be called in, assuming anyone has a way of calling them in, but I suspect that much of their work will be protecting government buildings. Pity the mom-and-pop shop.”

“And here I thought you were the eternal optimist.” She moved to his side. “Do you think it will get that bad?”

He looked at the sky again. “My gut tells me yes.”

“How often is your gut right?”

“It has a pretty good record.”

“Any word when the generators might be online again?” She folded her arms. The lab coat did little to ward off the chill of the wee hours.

“Our building manager has had a look at them. He says they're all but destroyed. They're not coming back online anytime soon.”

“How will we function?” An ache spread through her.

“Function? Not well, I'm afraid.” He lowered his head and looked at his shoes. “Some of our doctors and nurses are here and can't get home, and some are home and can't get here. We have a hospital that looks twenty-first century, but at the moment it's early twentieth at best. The staff is worn to the bone. I'm setting up shifts so people can get rest, but that means splitting the staff so only a portion of what we have will be caring for patients.”

He let the words hang in the cold air, and then he continued. “My father used to say, ‘Son, do what you can, when you can, where you are. It's all you can do.' That's all we can do. That and pray.”