Grid Attack (Cyber War #1) (5 page)

I realized he didn’t know the seriousness of what was coming. I pulled him over closer to his house, to make sure our voices didn’t carry far.

“Um, no, it’s worse than that. This isn’t short term. This could be indefinite.” I said.

He balked and laughed. “No way. That kinda shit only happens in the movies, man. Not here.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong buddy. It’s here. Now. Katherine is filling up everything that will hold water. I think it is a wise decision. If the power comes back on, then we can just dump it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Really dude? Your wife has been parroting those alternative news sites for years. Nothing has happened. And a little power outage has you on edge? What, did you give her your pants or something?”

His snide remarks made my blood boil. Yeah, Kat followed lots of sites. Some were legit and others not so much. She had been saying the sky was falling for quite a few years. But a year ago she just stopped because nothing was happening. So she decided to stop believing so much.

Now that something major had happened, I was wishing I had listened and done more.

“Let’s take a walk. Inside.” I said sternly. I didn’t want anyone overhearing me that didn’t need to. Plus, I was pissed.

“Chill man. Alright.” He said, unlocking his side door.

I closed the door behind me.

“Listen. My boss told me today that this isn’t just a local power outage. This is nationwide. There has been an attack on the grid. A cyber attack from what we know. It’s serious. This time, Kat was right.” I said.

His face changed as my words sunk in.

“No way!” he said.

“Yes, way.” I responded. “So yeah, Kat suggested I fill up as many things with water as possible. Not just for us, but for you, too. So I will let you get to taking care of your own shit.” I spouted before heading to the door to leave.

“Hey man, sorry. I didn’t know.” He apologized.

I just turned and left, disgusted. He was a friend, but his words about Kat were unnecessary. Especially, because she suggested this for him. To help HIS ass out. Undeserving prick.

Making my way back to the wood pile in our own back yard, I took the wheel barrow and filled it up with as much wood as I could and loaded up the side porch. We did this each winter because the porch was covered and right behind the fireplace and it made it easy to grab the dry wood and bring it inside.

I began to think more about what Kat had said about leaving now instead of waiting. I just didn’t think it would be that bad. She would let things stir around in her head and would think about things that might happen but hasn’t happened yet, and would scare herself.

Several years ago when she first started looking at the world differently, she would follow some really crazy shit. She went a little crazy at first, talking about the New World Order, the Illuminati and how the government was trying to cull the population.

There was so many more things she threw at me, I can’t remember them all. I just shut down and decided I couldn’t listen. There wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway, and I felt like worrying about something I couldn’t change didn’t help anyone. I needed to just focus on getting up and going to work every day and paying the mortgage.

I didn’t have time to think about the world ending. Plus, I didn’t like thinking that way. It really messed with me. So I just decided not to worry about something I couldn’t change.

She had convinced me to let her start buying extra food, batteries, toilet paper and saving filtered water. I figured it couldn’t hurt because those were things we used anyway. She didn’t go crazy with it, but she did stock us up nice on the food supplies.

I figured we had at least 3 months of edible food in the basement if for some reason we ever needed it. Plus, it helped her to relax knowing we had at least a few months of supplies.

I never in a million years thought that we would actually have to use it to live off of. It was so hard to believe that anything really bad could happen here. I just didn’t want to believe that it could. Not in America.

Standing outside, the city was eerily quiet. I could hear the cars on the highway, which was unusual.

The smell of the plane that had crashed was drifting our direction. Burnt aviation fuel and other smells made me gag, so I decided to go inside and check on Kat.

I figured she would be in the basement or upstairs doing something, but there was no movement in the house. I heard her sniffle and found her sitting on the couch, crying.

My heart couldn’t handle her crying, so I went over and sat down next to her, pulling her under my arm and hugging her tight.

I petted her head and tried to console her. Our new reality was already setting in and it was just the first day.

“We’ll make it through this babe, I promise. It will be okay.” I said, not knowing what else I should say.

She didn’t say anything at first. I could feel her tension in her body as I tried to calm her fears as best I could.

Socks jumped up and gave her his sleepy eyed look that always melted her heart. He could sense she was stressed and would put on the lovable charm to get her mind off of things. He was a smart little guy.

She reached over and petted his head as his purrs seemed to calm her down.

“Shit.” She said. “I hope I have enough cat food to last a while.”

She turned her face to mine. I could tell she was going through all the things in her head that she wished she’d done and was now feeling guilty for not being better prepared.

“Babe, it will be okay. We will make things work. It’s starting to get dark. Let’s get all the candles we can find and put them in here on the coffee table.” I said, hoping to get her back into preparing and to stop worrying so much.

When she was busy, she was productive and it helped her to manage the emotions better.

I could feel her calming down as she wiped her tears with a tissue.

“I just…there’s just so many things I didn’t do.” She said.

“Let’s not worry about that now, there’s nothing…” I was interrupted by a loud knock on the front door. It made both of us jump.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

I put my finger up to my mouth to make the “shhh” motion as I quietly made my way to the peephole. Looking through, I breathed a sigh and opened the door.

It was Dudley. He popped in the living room and pushed the door closed behind him.

He was wearing his pistol in his holster, out in the open.

“We have a big problem!” he said.

Chapter 7 - Katherine

I stood up as Dudley came into the living room. He was normally quite charismatic. However, at the moment he seemed quite stressed.

"The police department is no longer going to be available for you." He said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"There's too many things going on the police departments can't handle. The National Guard has been called out, but they will probably only be available for the most serious situations." He said."You guys are going to be on your own for quite some time. I just wanted to let you know in case you decided to leave the city."

He put his hand on the butt of his pistol and shook his head. I could tell he was struggling with what was going on. I guess we all had to deal with this in our own way.

"We've decided to go ahead and leave and go to her mothers. I just don't think it's going to be safe to stay here. We are older and we cannot defend ourselves like younger folks." He said. “You all take care of yourself. Hopefully, this will remedy itself and we can go back to normal.”

As Tony closed the door behind him, I felt my throat begin to tighten again. We needed to leave and it needed to be now. Or at least first thing in the morning. I looked at Tony, hoping he could see the stress in my face and would understand that leaving was the smartest thing to do.

"Don't worry babe, we’ll be fine." He said.

I knew he had already dug in his heels. He wasn't planning on leaving. So I needed to make the best of it. I actually contemplated leaving without him. But I couldn’t. He was my husband. My commitment was to him above all others.

I shrugged my shoulders. I just needed to get busy so that I wouldn't keep thinking about what was coming.

Tony had no idea what was in store for us. Hell, I only had a clue. I remember Katrina and how things ended up down there. At least this wasn’t a hurricane.

My mind shifted as I began to locate all the candles around the house. While I was at it, I located all the batteries I could find, taking them out of remote controls and other things we wouldn’t be needing. I hoped I could find enough to keep some flashlights going.

I remembered that I also had one of those shake flashlights in the truck as well as one of those wind-up ones that would charge the battery. I just wish I had put everything where I could find it.

As I went upstairs I stopped to answer the call of nature. Out of habit, I flushed the toilet. It dawned on me that the sewers would eventually back up once the pumps stopped as well.

“Ugh!” I said out loud to myself, not wanting to think about how to deal with our own wastes.

Camping. Pretend that we are camping. How would we deal with it if we were camping?

That was the easiest way for me to come to terms with how to do some of the things that I needed to do.

I decided for today, we were safe. As long as there was water to flush, then we could flush. But as soon as the water stopped, no more flushing. Then we would have to come up with something else.

If we had to, I would make a toilet in a bucket with the toilet seat. I had seen it done on a video and filed it away in my brain in case I ever needed it.

I had a container of cat litter. That could work as a substitute. We could also use the half bag of peat moss I had in the shed. Leaves and dirt were also an option. We had a ton of leaves we just raked up that were in a pile in the back yard. Worst case scenario, we would dig a large hole out in the yard and bury it, keeping it away from any water supplies.

Okay, I think we have enough options, but I will deal with it later. Right now, I just needed to try to figure out how to keep us fed and watered and clean.

There was so much to do. I kept wishing I had prepared better.

I went to see what Tony was doing. He had pulled out all of our ammunition and firearms and was taking an inventory of what we had.

We both paused and looked at each other in silence. The implications of having to actually use our weapons were something neither of us took lightly. But we both knew we would if we had to.

Let’s just hope we won’t have to.

It was starting to get dark now and I was having a hard time seeing what I was doing.

I went over and flipped on the light switch out of habit. Damn. We have become so used to having power so readily available that we have become a bit spoiled in this country.

I look for one of the lantern type lights and turn it on. The cold glow doesn’t do much to lighten up the room, but it is enough for me to finish finding all the remaining candles we have and take them downstairs.

“Do you think we should move our bed down here?” I ask Tony, thinking it would be easier to heat just the main floor instead of trying to heat the upstairs, too.

“Not tonight. It isn’t that cold tonight so we can stay upstairs. But yeah, I think we should do a little rearranging so the bed can be down here. It will be closer to the fireplace on the nights when it gets cold.” He said.

I nodded as I thought back to one winter when we had a power outage for about a week. It was bitterly cold, but we had the fireplace and we kept it going for days.

We also went through a lot of wood that week. A lot more since we were trying to use it to keep the whole house warm. We just piled the bed with blankets and used our body heat to sleep.

During that power outage we knew it was temporary, it was just an inconvenience. Now, things are going to be different.

Much different.

When it got completely dark, we pulled down the shades and lit up several candles. They actually looked pretty cool all over the coffee table.