Outage (Powerless Nation #1) (4 page)

“Listen Pete, you know how I've talked about preparing for the end of the world, right? How we've been helping Mom and Dad stock the cabin?”

Pete, not catching her grim mood, grinned at Dee and Mason, “You should see our bookshelves – full of books like
The Stand
and
Lucifer’s Hammer.
You ever heard of that show
Doomsday Preppers
? I’m surprised they haven’t made an episode about Jenn and her family.”

“Will you shut up, Pete, this is serious. I know what happened.”

“What's that, hon? That the plant burned down and the city lost power?”

“Stop being a jerk and I'll tell you
why
the power plant burned down. It was an EMP.” Jennifer pronounced it 'ee-em-pee.'

Dee had never heard of it, but she saw Mason slowly nodding his head.

“I don't know enough to get technical,” Mason said, “but I know it means electro-magnetic pulse.”

“Right,” said Jennifer, “and everything that's going on here today makes me think that's what happened at noon. An EMP sends shock waves through the air at different frequencies. Some of the waves burn out electronics like phones and computers, and others at lower frequencies will knock out radio and telecommunications. The lowest frequencies send huge currents through power lines,” she said this pointedly to Pete, “causing overloads and fires.”

“What causes an EMP?” Dee hoped it wasn’t a stupid question. She felt like she was in physical science class and hadn’t done the reading homework.

“There are a couple of things,” said Jennifer. “A really big solar flare facing the earth can send a burst of energy our way that would hit us with the type of waves that damage power lines. Luckily, they don’t travel at the speed of light, so scientists can see the solar flare ahead of time and give us enough time to prepare for it. Usually a couple of days. Power companies can shut down their grids to protect them from massive damage and outages.

“Some people are going to think that’s what caused this, but they’re wrong. Even a powerful solar flare wouldn’t knock out cell phones or radio. No, to cause this much damage you need a nuke.”

“As in a nuclear bomb?” Dee gasped.

Jennifer nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“No one would dare nuke the United States,” said Pete, shaking his head. “We’d annihilate them.”

“Not if they got in the first shot,” said Jennifer. “It only takes one nuke to create an EMP that would affect at least half the country. The trick is to detonate it in space above us. It would explode so far away we wouldn’t even see the blast, but the electro-magnetic pulse it created would affect everything for hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles.
 

“With just a few nukes someone could create an EMP attack that would take down all of the critical infrastructures in the country. Do you know what that means?” Jennifer didn’t wait for an answer. “No electricity, for starters.
 
No communications either. That includes cell phones, radios, satellites. No wi-fi, that’s for sure.”

She went on, “We take the transportation network for granted.
 
Apart from rescue workers being unable to function efficiently, big rigs and trains won’t be able to transport food. As a society we’re used to going to the store almost every day to pick up what we need, but without regular shipments of stock arriving, the stores will be cleaned out in a matter of days. I expect the majority of people will start running out of food either this week or next.

“Water will be a serious issue around here within a few days too. It takes electricity to treat and pressurize water for all the folks in town.
 
Without it, how will they get clean water to drink? No one is going to have a flushing toilet after today either.”

“Who could have done this?” asked Mason. “Russia? China?”

“I’d put my money on North Korea,” said Jennifer. “They might even be crazy enough to think they’ll get away with it.”

“So are we at war?” asked Dee.

Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably.”

Dee struggled to take it all in. It sounded like the plot of a low-budget movie, not like something that could really happen.
 

Mason seemed to be having an easier time absorbing the information. “There are a lot of cars stalled out on the roads right now, but some of them still work. Do you know why?”

“I read a report not long ago that said an EMP could stall a car and burn out its electronics, but likely wouldn't damage every single one. It could be that the body of the car protects the engine. I don’t know for sure.”

“And planes?” asked Mason. His question caused an alarm bell to start ringing in Dee's head.

Jennifer said, “Well, no one knows about planes. My bet is the pulse would stall their engines but they’d be okay if they could restart them. If not, they might just fall out of the sky. Either way, they'll have to set them down as soon as they can. Air control and the FAA are required to have back-up generators, but who knows if they're knocked out, or how long they'll last.”

“And boats?” whispered Dee. “What about boats?”

“With boats it depends,” said Jennifer, speaking more gently at the sight of Dee's stricken face, “but it might not be so bad. They don’t need electricity to float, so they aren't in immediate danger. The bigger ones have back-up power too, so they'll probably aim for a port. The problem for them will be trying to get close enough to dock. My bet is passenger ships will have to unload via small boats, and cargo ships won't be able to unload at all. The cranes on the docks won't have power, so all that cargo is just going to sit in the boats and rot while people starve.”

“Starve?” said Pete. “No one's going to starve. Everyone's just going to have to hunker down for a few weeks until the power companies can send in some crews to repair the lines.”

“Listen,” said Jennifer. “You saw what happened to the transformers today. Imagine all the transformers in the country blowing out like that. Without any power, how are we going to get them replaced?

“Hey, this is America. We’ll figure something out.”

“Look at me, Pete,” Jennifer put her hands on his cheeks and stared him in the face. “This is for real. In all likelihood, electricity and communications across the whole country are down. No one's coming to turn the power back on. People are going to starve, and they're going to get sick, and they're going to die. I need you to take this seriously. It’s the big one. This is it.”

Pete looked at her blankly. “What?”

“The apocalypse.”

CHAPTER FOUR

D
EE
'
S
MIND
WHIRLED
. E
VERYTHING
Jennifer was saying made sense, but she didn't want to believe it. She didn't want the world to end while she was on a run-down farm and her mom and dad were out in the middle of the ocean.

“Are you guys sticking around?” said Mason to Jennifer.

“No, we're bugging out.”

“We are?” said Pete.

Jennifer ignored him. “My parents live in a cabin about fifty miles north of here. We all help keep it stocked and ready. We just need to grab a few things and then we're out.”

“Thanks for the water,” said Mason. “And medicine. They mean even more, now that we know. Do you have any advice for a couple of non-preppers?”

Jennifer looked Mason up and down critically. “You might not be a prepper, but I recognize a survivor. You'll be okay. But I've got something for you just the same.” She opened a file folder and shuffled through some papers. “Have you got any cash on you?”

“Actually, I do,” said Dee, thinking of her bus money.

“Take this shopping list down to the Speedi-Mart and get everything on it you can. People are going to treat this like a regular power outage for now, so they’re going to be buying short-term supplies like milk and bread. Those things will all go bad in a week, but the stuff on this list will keep for a while. You should be able to get a lot of it if you go now before people realize how serious things are.”

“Thank you both,” said Dee. “And if you ever need a vet, come find my grandpa. He's Milton Kerns, up north of town.”

Pete nodded. “I'm sure we'll see you both again real soon.”

Jennifer just shook her head and called the children in. “Who wants to go visit grandma?”

Dee looked over the list while Mason drove them into downtown Lookout Falls. It wasn't much of a downtown, just a small market, a dollar store, and an antique shop. Down the street was a sporting goods shop.

Where were the stores? Did people really live like this? Townsfolk must do their shopping in Louisville. “
Loo-iss-ville
,” she mentally corrected herself.

“I think we should split up here, okay?” Mason's tone was casual. “I'm going to head over to the sporting good store, and you cover the shops here.” Dee wanted to argue, but Mason said, “It'll be more efficient this way. We can meet back at the truck when we're done.”

“Okay,” said Dee, “but you better not disappear on me. You're the only person I know in this town besides my grandpa.”

Mason's eyes were bright on hers as he leaned closer. Dee thought for a moment that he was going to kiss her, but he just brushed her hair back and traced the line of her cheek. “Be safe,” he said softly.

Inside the market, people had already grabbed all of the bottled water. Dee looked around and saw that milk, bread and toilet paper were pretty much sold out too. She picked up a four-pack of toilet paper and then had to shoulder her way to the bakery. They were out of sliced bread, but they still had a couple of bags of bagels, so Dee picked them up and went to look for a cart.

She was overwhelmed seeing how fast certain things were running out: fresh meat and produce, bread, milk and dairy products, junk food and soda. People weren't quite to the point of shoving or being openly rude, but they were definitely snatching things up. She saw a woman juggling three gallons of milk run into a man who couldn't see around the four cases of water he could barely lift. The whole scene reminded her of shopping in Maryland before a big ice storm. Certain shelves would be completely cleaned out because people knew they could be trapped at home by ice and power outages.

She looked down at Jennifer's list. It didn't mention bread; flour was listed instead. That made sense – they could make their own bread. There were lots of bags of flour on the shelves, so she got ten pounds of white and ten pounds of wheat, plus a big bag of cornmeal. Her cart was instantly heavy. On the same aisle she got ten pounds of white sugar and a few bags of brown, along with a gallon of honey. Was she supposed to know what to do with this stuff? She hoped Jennifer knew what she was talking about.

Dee added salt, vinegar, baking soda, yeast, powdered milk, coffee, dried fruit and five big bags of pinto beans to her cart and then had to get in line to ring up because nothing else would fit, and even if it did, she doubted she could push it. A hand-written sign above the register announced, “Cash only.” She hoped she had enough from her bus money to cover the groceries.

The cashier was a young man about her own age with sandy blonde hair and a scatter of freckles that suited him.
Very boy-next-door,
she thought. He looked flustered and distracted but he and the other cashiers were keeping the lines moving pretty well.

He looked over her purchases and sighed. “Do you remember how much any of this stuff was? The scanner is down and I can't remember the last time I rang up a super-size bag of beans. Also,” he added with a grin, ”I can tell you right now that you're going to hate yourself for buying twenty pounds of beans and no Bean-O.”
 

Dee told him the prices as best she could remember, but in the end he was in a hurry and charged her much less than what she knew she owed him. It wasn’t even half the cash she had.
 

“Listen, don't worry about it,” he said. “At least you're trying to pay. I've seen a lot of people sneaking out with stuff under their jackets.”

Dee thought about that as she unloaded her cart into the truck's storage box. Hopefully no one would try to rob her. She looked down the road toward the sporting good shop, but there was no sign of Mason. His pack was still in the truck.

She still had plenty of cash so she went back into the store and loaded up on rice, olive oil, and peanut butter before heading over to the canned goods. It was pretty picked over, the corn and beans were mostly gone, and there wasn't a single can of soup or fruit. She sighed and picked up creamed corn, spinach and asparagus. She lucked out when she got to the canned meat section. Canned fish wasn't her favorite, but they still had some chicken. She tossed in tuna and salmon and some sardines for Grandpa. Old people liked kipper snacks, right?

There was room underneath the basket for two giant bags of dog food. They were so heavy she grunted as she loaded them on her cart. Next she cruised the pharmacy area. There wasn't much left in the first aid section but she found a box of Tylenol mixed in with the vitamins. There were plenty of those and she tossed some in the cart along with two crumpled boxes of children's band-aids, shampoo, and soap. She didn't spend time looking at what the options were – she just got whichever container looked the biggest.
 

Good thing Jennifer put tampons on the list. She never would have thought of those. Dee also tossed a bottle of Bean-O into the cart for fun, along with a case of European dark chocolate bars (all of the familiar candy was sold out), a crushed bag of chips and a couple of pre-made sandwiches from the picked over deli. She and Grandpa could have a picnic for dinner.

Slowly, she noticed more and more people were crowding the aisles and things were starting to fly off the shelves. Dee quickened her pace. She had an epiphany and looked for the picnic aisle. She stocked up on paper plates, cups and plastic silverware. Then she roamed the store, randomly adding, among other things, a pair of reading glasses, coloring books, playing cards, flip-flops, a package of socks, and twenty toothbrushes to her haul. She realized her heart was pounding and she was close to panic.
 
Her cart was full and her choices didn't even make sense any more. Time to go.