Constant Danger (Book 1): Fight The Darkness

by Westfield, Ryan

  “But on this issue,” her dad was saying, as she tuned back in to his little speech. “You’ve got to listen to me. If you only listen to me on one thing in your life, let it be this.”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “Get on with it then.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Here it goes. All signs point to an EMP.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You know what it is?”

  “Of course I know what it is. Like in The Matrix. It’s real, though and it can knock out all electronics.”

  “Exactly,” said her dad. “And it’s very real. And it’s no joke. Now it doesn’t just turn off electronics. It ruins them. Mostly for good. Now it looks like your truck runs and starts and the headlights work. Now why that is, I don’t know. But there’s plenty on this truck that doesn’t work. Look at these overhead lights, for instance...”

  He punched the overhead lights and, sure enough, they still didn’t work.

  “And look at my watch. It’s a Casio. It’s never missed a beat in ten years. Now look at it. Dead as a doornail.”

  “So what?” she said. “I’m tired. It’s been a stressful day just trying to keep you alive. Why don’t you get to the point?”

  It may have been a rude way to speak to one’s father in any other part of the country. But here, in Western Mass, it was almost more caring and thoughtful to speak like that. It meant that they were as closely related as they could get.

  “The point is,” said her dad. “That all the signs point to a far-reaching EMP. How else can we account for the hospital generators not working? And, if it affected both the hospital, as well as the devices in this truck, which was at the time a considerable distance away, then it’s more than just a small-reaching EMP.”

  “It’s not that far,” she said.

  “When it comes to EMPs,” said her dad, “they’re either really small or really large. There aren’t a lot of causes that are going to cause medium-distance ranges.”

  “And you’re saying this EMP is responsible for all the houses here not having power? Normally this road is lined with lights ... it’s not exactly densely populated, but I know there are plenty of homes here, back behind the trees.”

  “There are plenty of homes back here. I’ve known a few families that used to live back here ... that was years ago.... anyway, I think the EMP would have fried the systems in the houses but, more importantly, the whole power grid is likely down. It’s like dominoes. Remember when it gets hot out West sometimes in the summer, like when there’s a heatwave and suddenly all the Californians are out of power...”

  “So what’s your point? That we’re going to be without air conditioning? I mean, it can be dangerous for some people without heat, but we’re a pretty tough bunch ... we can go without heat for a few days ... even a week.”

  “It’s not like that,” said her dad. “Think of it this way ... when the Californians lose power, the whole system goes down. It’s not like there’s any real damage done to the power grid ... but with this EMP, whole sections of the power grid could be busted. They’d need to be replaced. And that’s if it’s a more localized EMP. If it hit even most of the East Coast, I can’t see the entire country having power for, I don’t know, at least six months.”

  “Six months?” exclaimed Meg.

  “Six months at a minimum,” said her dad. “Think about it. All those parts are going to need wholesale replacement, not just repair. And it’s not like there are enough pieces just lying around in storage, ready to replace a massive section of the national power grid. No, the pieces are going to need to be fabricated ... and how are they going to do that without power?”

  “But this is all crazy,” said Meg. “First of all, I’m not saying this scenario is realistic, but even if it were, wouldn’t another country step in to help out? I mean, Canada and Mexico are right next door and we’re not exactly at war with them, are we? There’s plenty of trade between both countries.”

  “Who knows?” said her dad. “Crisis situations make people act differently. That I do know for sure. Something like this would be a huge blow to the US ... and I think it’d be naive to think that some foreign powers wouldn’t want to take advantage of the situation.”

  “You’re talking about what, some kind of invasion?”

  “Possibly. For all we know, the EMP was part of an invasion. Just the first leg.... think about it, you can essentially disarm an entire country, just like a nuclear attack. But the thing is, unlike a nuclear attack, the infrastructure isn’t destroyed ... the population is there, ready to be used for some purpose.”

  “The infrastructure is intact? You were just saying that an EMP would destroy pretty much everything.”

  “All the electronics,” said her dad. “Granted, it’s not a perfect system. But it’s as close to one as anything I’ve heard of. Think of it, all the armaments, all the defense and communication systems would be down. And what’s left? Plenty of vehicles. Plenty of buildings. Plenty of resources, like coal, fuel, etc. Plenty of gold and plenty of silver. Who knows, probably plenty of other things that I’m not thinking of.”

  “So that’s your theory? That we’re going to be in the dark for the next six months, or that we’re about to be invaded by Russia or someone else?”

  “I’m not dumb enough to think that I know what’s going to happen. But here’s one thing I do know and that’s that things are going to get rough. Pretty rough. Now it’s not one hundred percent, but then again, nothing in this world is.”

  “What’s not one hundred percent?”

  “Well, what I’m saying is that...”

  Meg sighed. It annoyed her that her dad talked like this sometimes, beating around the bush endlessly.

  Why didn’t he just get to the point?

  “What?” she snapped. “Just tell me!”

  “My guess is that whether we’re about to experience an invasion or not, we’re going to be lucky to survive.”

  “Lucky to survive? You mean lucky to live?”

  “Exactly. My guess is that close to ninety percent of the population isn’t going to make it.”

  “Now I know you’ve lost it.”

  “You’re just not looking at it the way I am.”

  “And how’s that? I wish Mom were alive to hear this. She’d agree with me that you’d finally gone nuts.”

  “Look at it this way.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Where does our food come from?”

  “Huh? The grocery store, right? What? You’re saying the power’s going to be off and the food’s going to spoil?”

  “More than that. The food comes from farms, right? How’s it get here?”

  “Highways. Trucks. Trains. And I feel like you’re about to say that none of that stuff is going to work, but look, my truck is working fine.”

  “Yeah, your truck is working fine for now. But how long until it’s empty, and then what? Do the pumps work? No. They won’t.”

  “Can’t you just siphon it up or something?”

  “Siphoning works on gravity, not magic. The gas is deep down in the ground, underneath the pumps. How are you going to get it up?”

  “Well, maybe I can’t. But I’m sure someone can.... someone can figure something out, get gas in those trucks and the get the food to us.”

  “And then how are they going to refrigerate it? And, going back, how do you think the gas gets to those pumps? It’s trucked to them. And processed in refineries, and brought in on ships...”

  “But these are all just little pieces,” protested Meg, her eyes still on the dark road. There still wasn’t a light in sight. “I don’t see how these little things can cause this wholesale collapse that you seem to be predicting.”

  “They’re anything but small,” said her dad. “I’m talking about the fundamental underpinnings of our country.... and if there’s anything I’m sure of it’s that we’re much more fragile than we’d like to think. In history, how many times did small errors cause
massive problems?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A lot,” said her dad.

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not going to sit here and list them. There’ll be time for that later. Plenty of time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about coming up with a plan. A plan for the next week. For the next month. For longer than that, if necessary.”

  “What is there to do? We’ll just head home and hope the power comes back on, right?”

  “What aren’t you getting, Meg? Didn’t you see the hospital back there? Didn’t you see the chaos?”

  “I did,” said Meg. “But that was there ... that’s people trying to get better ... they have something that they need to fight for. That’s why it was so crazy. Because they’re desperate and they’re sick.”

  “And how do you think the rest of society is going to act when the same thing happens to them? You think people aren’t going to be desperate and violent when they’re dying from dehydration and hunger, when their family members are sick and dying because they don’t have the medication they need to survive? You think people are going to be nice to each other when all it takes to survive is a quick burst of violence? You think people are going to choose watching their loved ones die in agony rather than go fight for rapidly dwindling resources?”

  Meg was starting to see his point. “Okay,” she said. “What you’re saying makes sense. I get it. But it seems like it’s still jumping the gun a bit, don’t you think? I mean, apart from the hospital there, everything looks pretty normal, just like a regular power outage. I’m with you on everything in theory, though.”

  “It’s not theory,” growled her dad. “It’s reality and we need to prepare for it.”

  “How are we going to do that? What is there to do? You want me to hang out at your house tonight instead of going back to my apartment?”

  “Neither are going to work. We’ll hit my place, grab what supplies we can. The basics. Water. Food. Camping gear. I have some extra gas in the shed. We’ll take your truck. It’s more reliable than mine.”

  “And just where are we going?” said Meg, not able to contain the skepticism in her voice.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here,” said her dad. “Western Mass may be more sparsely populated than around Boston, but there are still too many people.”

  “What’s the difference, though?” She already knew the answer but she felt like being somewhat annoying for some reason. This whole situation was bothering her, bugging her, as if some long-forgotten part of her mind and psyche were nagging at her current state of mind, trying to get her to remember something.

  “More people means more competition. And that means less chance of surviving. Now people say ‘Western’ Mass all the time, but it should really be called Center Mass. We’ve still got a good bit of state to the west of us before New York and all that nonsense over there.... now I definitely should have given this more thought over the years, but the best thing I can think of right now is the Berkshires.”

  “The Berkshires? Way out in the boonies? Up in the mountains, the weather is even worse. They might even have snow now.”

  “It’s a trade-off, the weather. It’s harder to deal with, sure, but it also keeps people away and like I said, the fewer people, the more likely we are to live.”

  “But aside from a couple little towns, there’s hardly anything up there.”

  “Exactly,” said her dad, sounding excited by the possibilities. “The old farm land is mostly defunct.... a lot of it is being replaced by vacation houses for rich people. Big, huge houses.”

  “Doesn’t sound good for what you’re talking about.”

  “No, listen. They’re not going to be inhabited. It’s perfect. You and I will head up there. Those houses are normally stocked to the gills. I’ve talked to contractors who’ve worked on them.... there’s plenty of stuff ... all that fancy camping gear.... probably a store room with tons of canned food.... and if we’re really lucky, hunting gear.”

  “We can’t just go take someone else’s house. That’s nuts.”

  “What’s nuts is what’s about to happen. A complete breakdown of law and order and anything resembling civil society will be just a distant memory. Pretty soon ownership isn’t going to have anything to do with some paper or digital records.... those will all be gone and the only thing that will matter is who’s on the property and who’s able to defend it.”

  “You’re really going off the deep end with all this,” said Meg. “Now we’re almost to your house. Are you going to insist that we start packing up the truck with a bunch of canned food or something? I mean, come on, Dad, you really think this is going on? That the whole country has suddenly decided to collapse?”

  “Not decided,” said her dad. “What’s that up there?”

  They were pulling into her dad’s neighborhood.

  The lights were all off.

  Up ahead, caught in Meg’s headlights, there was something blocking the road.

  “What the hell is that?” she muttered. “Just what I want to deal with.”

  She was driving slow, crawling along, having downshifted into second gear.

  She was squinting against the darkness. Her high beams were already on, but it was still hard to tell what was up ahead.

  “Looks like a couple of vehicles,” said her dad. “Blocking the road.”

  He sounded worried. Perhaps scared.

  And Meg soon realized that she was feeling the same way. She was feeling the way she had earlier, as if her blood were ice water, as if terror had taken over completely.

  And it was ridiculous to feel that way.

  She didn’t like feeling that way.

  There was no reason to feel that way. At least as far as she could tell.

  “I think we should turn around,” said her dad in a low voice, full of fear.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “This is ridiculous. You’ve got me terrified of everything now.... I don’t like being a victim like this.”

  And with that, she decided to drive right up to the vehicles that were blocking the road and demand that they move to let her through.

  After all, what right did they have to block the road?

  She had every right to drive on this road to get to her dad’s house.

  In the potential future world that her dad was describing, there’d be no rights whatsoever. Whoever had the physical power to do something would have the right to do that.

  She didn’t want to live in that world, that paranoid world of her dad’s imagination.

  But, even as she thought those things with increasing conviction, there was that nagging doubt in the back of her mind, like some memory from long ago that didn’t want to resurface.

  “Meg,” said her dad, his voice lower and lower. “You need to turn around.”

  She could see the vehicles clearly now. There were two large SUVs and one pickup truck, parked end to end, blocking the road, as well as almost all of the sidewalk and shoulder.

  There were men in the cab of the pickup, lit up in the harsh light of her high beams. The windows of the SUVs were heavily tinted.

  Two men stood tall and broad-shouldered beside the trucks. They had long guns in their hands.

  Meg’s heart started to pound.

  10

  James

  “So you couldn’t get into your house because the locks are all electronic?”

  “Exactly. And I don’t know who to call. Or, I guess I mean I don’t know how to call anyone.”

  They had driven just a little way down the block and were again sitting in front of Matt’s house.

  “Anyway, yeah,” Matt was saying, having abandoned his pompous professorial tones, retaining just a hint of them in his accent and cadence. “I think that cop must have been having a bad day or something.”

  “There he is, though. Look. Going door to door.”

  From where they sat, they could see the cop
down the street, illuminated by the headlights of his own car.

  “I don’t think they’re going to open the door for him, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “It has a history of being a rough neighborhood. The cop was right. I’m part of its gentrification.”

  James didn’t know what to say. Why was his professor changing his tune so much? He seemed to go from absolutely obnoxious and pretentious to just about all right.

  Suddenly, from out of sight, somewhere on a nearby block, there came the tremendously loud sound of screeching tires.

  James and Matt briefly exchanged a glance and then their eyes went right back, glued to the world outside the windshield.

  Light appeared down the street, at the intersection where Walnut Road dead-ended.

  It was a pair of headlights.

  Then, suddenly, the sound of screeching tires was right there, accompanied by an engine roaring.

  James could only see part of it, but he saw some sort of car, likely a sedan, rounding the corner at top speed.

  Now the vehicle was barreling down the road, heading right toward them.

  But long before it reached James’s truck, it screeched to a stop right by the cop car.

  The car’s position was such that it wasn’t quite in the light. James’s headlights didn’t reach all the way down there and the cop’s headlights were positioned the wrong way.

  James just had to go by sound.

  He heard a door slam.

  Then silence.

  Then shouting.

  Angry words were exchanged.

  Then a gunshot. Then another. Quick pops in the night. They sounded more like firecrackers than gunshots.

  A low, grunt of a scream, more like a wounded animal than a human.

  Another door slamming. Then another.

  Now two engines were roaring. Tires were squealing and the two sets of headlights were dancing around down the street.

  “What the hell was that?”

  One set of headlights disappeared down the street, rounding the corner and disappearing, leaving only more screeching tires and more engine noises.