Last Light (27 page)

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Here’s what it said.”

Everyone seemed to lean in, holding their breath. “Use the megaphone, Hank!” someone shouted.

He brought the megaphone to his lips and yelled through it. “ ‘Dear Citizens, the government of the United States of America has been diligently working to determine the cause of the failure in technology across our continent. Though we haven’t determined the exact cause, we do not believe it was the result of any terrorist activity, and in fact, it is our informed belief that this outage extends to the far reaches of the globe. It is not unique to the United States.’ ”

A rumble went over the crowd. Deni stared up at him. The whole world? How could that be? She wanted to stand up and scream, “NO!” But she sat speechless, waiting for more.

“ ‘The scientific community agrees that this was caused by an atmospheric event, never seen before. Though it is similar to the effect produced by an Electromagnetic Pulse, nonlethal radiation continues to damage new equipment, meaning that it lingers in the atmosphere. The damage to electronics is likely irreversible. For this reason, we see no resolution to this event in the near future.

“ ‘To avert economic collapse in our country, we are ordering our financial institutions to remain closed until solutions are found to the inevitable problems generated by a run on US banks. We realize this creates extreme hardship for our citizens, but it cannot be avoided.

“ ‘For now, we ask that all our citizens do their best to help themselves and those who are in need. God bless you, and God bless America.’ And it’s signed by the president of the United States.”

An angry roar swept over the crowd as they took in the horrible news. It hit Deni like a death in the family. It was one thing to hear her father say it, but to hear it from the government . . . Tears came to her eyes as she gaped at the man on the stage.

The rest of the neighbors seemed caught in the same reaction. She heard a lady sob behind her. Others yelled at the messenger.

Deni sought out her family, and saw Logan and Beth sitting with her parents next to the Caldwells. Beth was crying, and Logan’s face had turned blotchy red. Her dad didn’t seem that surprised, but she could see her mother struggling with her own emotions. Worry narrowed Kay’s eyes, and she rubbed Beth’s back, as if to comfort her.

“Why can’t they open the banks?” someone shouted. “It’s our money in there! They can’t keep it from us!”

“They’re trying to protect it,” Hank said. “Think about it. With computers down, they’re hard-pressed to even know what customers have in the banks. And banks don’t keep all the money we deposit in a vault somewhere. They use it. They loan it out, invest it. But now, who can pay their loans back? We won’t even be able to pay our mortgage payments. We’re talking massive loan defaults. There’s no way banks can give everyone the money they’ve deposited. The banks would fail, and everything we’ve put in would be lost. The only way to protect that is to keep the banks closed.”

“But we have to have cash!” a woman cried. “We can’t survive without it!”

“We can survive.” Hank’s firm tone gave Deni some comfort. “I came most of the way here without any cash and I made it. I used the last of my money to buy a bicycle, and I went up through Pennsylvania to check on our son who’s in college in Philadelphia. He had a bike and joined me on my trip home. We tried to get a horse and carriage from an Amish family, but I didn’t have enough cash and had nothing to trade. It’s bad for them up there. People are ripping them off left and right, taking advantage of them. It’s even gotten violent. Though they’re not that impacted by the outage, since they aren’t dependent on technology, anyway, they’re becoming the victims of lots of burglaries.

“Anyway, my son and I made it home on our bikes. We slept in stalled cars, hunted for water, and ate whatever we could find or convince someone to give us. I thought we’d never make it home, but finally we did. Boy, was Stella glad to see us.”

Deni bit her lip, trying not to cry. If this was true, then this could go on for months, even years.

She stood up and waved her arm. “Mr. Huckabee, besides the president’s message, did you see any sign that the government is up and running?”

“I went to the Capitol Building one day and saw some activity. But anything they do now is largely ineffective with no communication. Some of the senators and congressmen were there, though. I didn’t get to talk to any of them.”

She sat down, hoping she could ask him later if he’d seen Senator Crawford or any of his aids.

“Hank,” someone else asked, “can we believe what the government says about it not being an attack? Are you sure they’re not just hiding some kind of nuclear explosion in the atmosphere?”

“I did go over to the Pentagon the day after it happened, to see what I could find out. I didn’t get the feeling they were hiding anything, or that they were on high alert. I talked to several reporters who were there, and they had found no reason to suspect any kind of attack. The most common refrain was that it was some kind of astronomic event, such as radiation from a nearby star, with catastrophic effects on our atmosphere. Even the military’s hardened equipment didn’t survive. And without power and computers, they can’t use their high-powered telescopes and they can’t measure the radiation. They’re pretty sure it’s not damaging to humans, but that’s about
all
they’re sure of.”

If this was true, their technology, finances, communication, entertainment, transportation—everything that made their lives easy and rich—were gone. And there seemed no hope of getting any of them back. Now they had to wonder if the scientists were right about this thing not damaging their health. How would they know? Would it take an epidemic of cancer sweeping across the land?

No, this couldn’t be true. It was too absurd. It was the twenty-first century, not the Dark Ages. That sign had to be a hoax that someone put up for kicks. Either that, or Hank Huckabee was just trying to look important. Maybe he hadn’t come from Washington at all. Anger flushed her cheeks, and she thought of springing back up and accusing him in front of everyone.

Uncertainty paralyzed her.

“I wish I had some answers,” Hank said. “But all I can suggest is that you settle in and do what’s necessary to cope long-term. Be glad you’re home with your families. They made it for hundreds and thousands of years before Edison revolutionized our lives, and we can make it, too. It’s just going to be a challenge. And it’s going to take all the strength and ingenuity we’ve got. Personally, I like a challenge. And compared to what I’ve been through the last two weeks, anything that happens here is going to be a piece of cake.”

“But we’re running out of food!”

Deni turned and saw a weeping woman standing there, her hands on her little boy’s shoulders. “We have no money. What are we going to feed our families?”

“We’ll have to fish and hunt for our food,” Hank said. “We’ll have to learn to grow it.”

“On what?” a young man asked. “We live on half-acre lots. Where are we going to farm? Our backyards aren’t that big.”

“Then we’ll need to plow up our front yards. And once everyone gets the message and starts settling in, the better part of our nature will kick in. We’ll figure out a way to get commerce up and running again. Steamboats and steam locomotives will still be able to run. I’m thinking antique cars—the ones built before they started using computer chips in the seventies—might run, if you could get gas and clear the stalled cars from the roads. We’ll make a way to get merchandise in, get the banks open, revive the postal system. Little by little, we’ll make it work. But it’s not going to happen that way until we all accept that we’re in for a long ride.”

When Hank finished and left the truck bed, Doug took the stage and faced the angry crowd. “Well, given that news . . . I guess our need to share is even more grave. It looks like our list of needs is a lot longer than our list of things to share. We’re all going to have to chip in. Help our neighbors who are in trouble. Trust me, if you sacrifice to help someone else, they’ll be more willing to sacrifice to help you.”

After her dad dismissed the meeting, Deni sat there a moment as those around her folded up their chairs, speaking to each other in soft exchanges. Some of them cried, others looked frantic.

They believed what Hank said, but Deni wouldn’t. Technology didn’t just come to a screeching halt. The world didn’t just shut down, with no real explanation.

She saw Chris walking toward her through the people, tears rolling down her face. “You believe that?” she said, plopping down on the grass at Deni’s feet.

“No,” Deni bit out. “I don’t.”

“I can’t take this. It’s too much.”

“You don’t
have
to take it, because it’s not true.” The words came out through Deni’s tight lips. “This is America. We’ll get the power back on. The government has safeguards, crisis plans. They’re not going to let this go on that long.”

Chris smeared her tears across her face. “What can they do? Not even the government really knows what happened. Even the smartest people in the country.”

“They’re not smart. They’re idiots. And here we sit just listening to it all like a bunch of hypnotized fools.” Deni got up, and snapped her chair shut. “That Hank probably made the whole thing up. He’s probably been with his mistress on the other side of town for the last two weeks.”

“Deni, I don’t think so.”

She swung around to her friend. “Then you’re a fool, too.” She didn’t wait for Chris’s response. She just started home, hatred and rage pounding in her heart.

thirty-four

Deni was the first one home. While the rest of the family were gluttons for punishment and stayed at the lake to rehash Hank’s news, Deni refused to listen to another word. Hank Huckabee may have hoped to hammer the last nail into the coffin, but she saw through his story.

If Hank had really come all the way here from Washington, D.C., then Craig could have made it by now, too. Since he hadn’t, she could only assume that Hank was full of hot air. And if he’d lied about that, then he’d probably lied about everything.

She despised the darkness as she made her way to her room, but she let it swallow her as she slammed the door and sat down in the overstuffed chair facing the useless television. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she started to cry—angry, hot, helpless tears that only made her madder.

What if he was right?

No, she couldn’t face that. The idea that they’d be living in this primitive limbo for weeks . . . months . . . even years, was more than she could take.

Would she ever see Craig again?

Smearing her tears across her face, she jerked back the curtain, letting in what was left of the light. She grabbed a legal pad and pen off of her bed table and, in the twilight, started a new letter to Craig. Tears dropped onto the page as she wrote.

Dear Craig
,

She threw her head back on the chair, and sat there crying like an abandoned child. Maybe she was being hard on Craig. Maybe he was trying to get to her. Maybe he hadn’t had as good luck on his journey as Hank had. Maybe he was sick.

She closed her eyes and imagined him doing everything he could to reach her, starving and scrounging for food, having to stop somewhere each day and work for a meal. With his determined spirit, she knew he would stop at nothing to get to her—if he was inclined to come.

But that was just it. She wasn’t sure he was.

That was silly. Of
course
he was. He was going to marry her, wasn’t he? Covenant to spend the rest of his life with her?

Then why had she had no word from him?

Had it even crossed his mind that she was in a plane about the time the power went out? Was he content to wait and see if she was dead?

Biting her lip, she flung the legal pad across the room, watched it land facedown. It didn’t matter, since she couldn’t send the letter anyway. The good old US postal service couldn’t get its act together enough to get the mail up and running. So much for
neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom . . .