by Harley Tate
“Penny?”
“Oh, it is you! Thank goodness. Tracy asked me to look out for you and I was just about to go to bed. If you’d arrived any later, I’d have missed you.”
He blinked. “Tracy? She’s alive?”
“Oh, heavens, yes.” She paused and looked past him at what was left of his house. “You didn’t think—oh, no, Tracy and the kids are fine.”
“The kids?”
“Mm-hmm, all those nice college friends of your daughter’s. That one boy who looks like a football player, wow, he sure can lift some heavy things.”
Walter had no idea if Penny had lost her mind or what, but he’d cling to the hope she offered. “My daughter was here? Madison was here?”
“Oh, yes. With three of her friends.” Penny tucked a strand of hair up into the sleeping cap on her head. “I’m not so sure about the teeny blonde; she’s a bit of a spitfire. But the other boy seems nice.”
Walter exhaled. His wife and daughter were alive. He didn’t care whether they had taken in the entire UC Davis Agriculture Department as long as they were still breathing.
“Do you know where they went?”
“Tracy said something about Truckee. She’s driving a little foreign car and the blonde girl is in a bright yellow Jeep. It looks like a mini school bus.” Penny dug one hand in her pocket and fished out a crumpled up piece of paper. She held it out to Walter. “Here. Tracy told me to give you this.”
Walter took the piece of paper and opened it.
Hi, Babe.
If you’re reading this, then I’m the happiest woman in the whole world. As you can see, we had to move out. A bit of a problem with the roof and whatnot. We are headed up to a cabin in Truckee. We’ll be taking back roads.
Come find us.
Love you,
Tracy
Walter choked back a sob. She was alive. It didn’t matter if he had to spend the rest of his life tracking her down. He would.
Walter tucked the precious piece of paper in his pocket and smiled. “Thank you, Penny. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.” He reached out and wrapped the tiny woman up in a hug, almost picking her up off the ground in his thanks.
“Oooh. That’s okay.” She patted him on the arm and Walter let her go. “Just go find your family. I know they miss you.”
“I miss them, too. Thank you, again. If there’s anything I can do…”
“No. Just go. I’ll be fine.”
Walter smiled and thanked Penny once more before rushing back to the car. He slid into the driver’s seat and turned to Drew.
He took one look at the man and froze. “What the hell is that?”
Drew glanced down at the orange fur ball snuggled up on his lap. “It’s a cat.”
“What’s it doing in our car?”
Drew raised an eyebrow. “First, it’s my car. Second, he’s sleeping. I opened the door to get some air while you were… busy… and he hopped right in. Didn’t seem right to kick him out.”
Walter exhaled. His daughter did love pets. “All right. He can stay. But he stays on your side of the car.”
“Fine by me.” Drew glanced out the window at the house. “I don’t know how to ask, but… your family?”
“Are alive. They left this afternoon for Truckee.”
Drew nodded and looked away.
Walter frowned. He couldn’t imagine what Drew must be going through after losing his fiancée, but from the few minutes of panic and despair he’d just suffered through, it had to be almost unbearable. “I’m sorry about Anne, Drew. I know this must be hard.”
He nodded. “It is. But you were right. I need to keep going. She wouldn’t have wanted me to quit.”
“So you’re fine with going to find them?”
Drew shrugged. “Where else am I going to go?”
Walter turned the car back on and smiled. “All right. Road trip it is. Still buckled?”
“With you driving? You better believe it.”
Walter pulled out from the curb. “Then let’s go find my family.”
DAY SEVEN
Chapter Thirty
MADISON
Somewhere North of Sacramento, CA
5:00 a.m.
Madison couldn’t sleep even if she wanted to. All she could think about was the fire. Every time she closed her eyes, flames leapt across the blackness and her eyelids popped back open.
She walked around the cars, pacing along the faded parking spot lines. The sun would be up soon, but until then, her mom and friends needed to sleep.
As she leaned against the fender of the dead electric car, she started a running tally in her head of all the things she used to take for granted and would never get to do again. No more radio or television. No more late nights cramming for a test with her friends over cold pizza and soda. No more pizza, period.
First dates and homecoming games. School plays and art exhibits. Ice cream. So many more fun things. But then there were the basics. Running water and flushing toilets. Trash pickup. Antibiotics.
All of that was simple. The rest boggled her mind. The technology the country relied on every single day. The stock exchange. The modern banking system. Email and text messages and everything else they did with the power of electricity.
The economy would never come back from this.
A week without power and even the most stalwart supporters of the government must be doubting their sanity. No FEMA trucks rolled by. No military personnel were out patrolling the streets or delivering cases of water and MREs.
This wasn’t like a hurricane or an earthquake or a flash flood. The worst natural disaster their county had faced in recent years didn’t wipe out the entire power grid for thousands of miles. There was always someone, somewhere, who could help.
Between the Red Cross, local charities, churches, and friendly neighbors, people survived for a while without power. But not this time.
How many children were hungry that very minute? How many would die in the next week or month or year? She couldn’t hazard a guess. In one of their down moments, Tucker had pulled up a copy of a US House of Representatives hearing almost a decade old on his phone. He’d saved it the day he received the notice of a potential solar storm.
With his solar panels charging up his electronics, he could pull up anything stored locally on his computer or phone and he was always checking to see if he could connect with the outside world. A few pages into reading the hearing transcription and it confirmed all of Madison’s worst fears.
Ninety percent of the country’s population would be dead within a year if an EMP destroyed the power grid. That’s what the experts predicted: 90 percent. Everything was there, in black and white. Most of the 300 million people living in the United States couldn’t provide for their own food or other needs.
They stopped living like that years ago.
To go back to a rural economy—one where people grew what they needed to survive instead of relying on others—they estimated the country would only support 30 million people at the most. Ten percent of the current population.
The hearing had taken place a decade a ago. The government knew and it did nothing. Nothing to shore up the power grid. Nothing to put backup generators in place or shield the grid from the effects of an EMP.
They sat by and let the country become more and more dependent on technology and further and further removed from basic subsistence living.
Madison rubbed at her eyes. Thanks to modernity, no one knew how to survive anymore. But that didn’t mean some people wouldn’t make it. In a year, when most had failed, there would be the survivors. The ones who adapted and overcame would still be there. Living.
She would be one of those people. So would her mom and friends and hopefully… her dad. She thought about all the times she took her family and her life for granted.
The weekends she didn’t come home from college. The days she didn’t hug her father before he left on an international flight. All the missed opportuni
ties to tell them she loved them.
For so many years everyone around her only cared about the next new thing. Money. Cars. Clothes. Success.
It had all been an illusion.
Madison closed her eyes for a moment. She had to put the past behind her. Forget about the bad things and hold onto the good memories. The ones that would push her on.
Something flashed across her vision. Did I fall asleep? She blinked her eyes open. Oh, no.
It wasn’t her nightmares of flames that caught her eye. A pair of headlights glowed in the distance.
Madison eased the shotgun strap off her shoulder and brought the gun into position. Not a single car had come this way in twenty-four hours. The chances of it being someone friendly were slim.
She eased around the side of the Nissan, crouching behind the far fender before propping her elbow up on the top for support. If they drove on by, she would stay hidden. But if they stopped…
With bated breath, she waited. The headlights grew in size, bobbing and weaving through the abandoned vehicles and debris left on the road. As the light bounced off the back of the Nissan and the top of the Jeep just beyond, the approaching car slowed.
Madison exhaled and steadied the gun.
The car eased into the parking lot, stopping twenty feet or so from the Nissan. Madison squinted into the headlights, the brightness blinding her. The engine shut off.
No one was stealing what they had left.
Madison lowered her head to catch the front sight of the gun.
Chapter Thirty-One
WALTER
North of Sacramento, CA
6:00 a.m.
“So you’re just going to go out there? You don’t know if it’s them.”
“It’s a yellow Jeep and a Nissan, Drew. It has to be them.”
“What if it’s not? What if it’s some bad dude with a gun and you’re shot before you even say a word?”
Walter rubbed his hair back and forth on the top of his head. He needed a haircut and for Drew to get off his back. “I’m telling you. My wife and daughter are in those cars.”
Drew leaned toward the dashboard until the damn cat meowed on his lap. “I can’t see anything inside. They’ve got a whole bunch of crap in the back seat.”
“That’s what happens when your house burns down. You have to put everything in the car.” He reached for the door handle. “I’m getting out.”
“I can’t drive with this shoulder. If you get shot, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
Walter ran his tongue over his lip. “Grow a pair. That might help.” Before Drew could say another word, Walter pushed open the driver’s side door.
He eased out and stood behind it. For all that Drew pissed him off, he had a point. The last thing he needed was his own wife shooting at him. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Tracy! Madison!”
A voice he feared he would never hear again called out. “Kill the lights!”
“Madison, honey! It’s your dad!”
“I said, kill the lights or I’ll take you out.”
He heard a shotgun bolt move forward. Walter’s mouth fell open. Madison? His baby girl was threatening to kill him? The lights from the Jetta blinked out and Walter spun around.
Drew held up his hands. “What? You want to get shot?”
Walter exhaled and turned back around. “Madison! It’s Walter, your father. Please don’t shoot me.”
He stood behind the door to the car, waiting. After a moment, a flashlight beam hit him square in the face. He blinked and held up his hands.
“Dad!” The light left his face and came bounding at him, bouncing all over the place. “Oh my God, Dad!”
His daughter barreled into him, practically knocking him down as she wrapped her arms around him and held tight. Walter reached out to hug her back but ended up palming the barrel of a shotgun instead.
She pulled back and smiled. Up close, he could see the tears streaking down her dirty cheeks and the happiness beneath. “You’re all right.”
“I am now.” Walter glanced up. “Where’s your mom?”
“In the car. That thing is seriously soundproof. She probably doesn’t even know you’re here.”
“But she’s okay?”
Madison nodded. “She got burned pretty bad in the fire, but it’s just her hand. She’s taking meds and getting better.” His daughter patted his arms up and down. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“For the most part.” He motioned to Drew in the passenger seat. “My co-pilot here took a bullet to the shoulder, but he’ll live.”
Madison ducked to look in the car and shrieked. “Fireball!” She popped back up. “Dad! You found him!” She crouched down again next to the driver’s seat and the little cat stretched on Drew’s lap and made his slow way over to her. Madison scooped him up and nuzzled his fur.
“Thanks for rescuing him. We thought he died in the fire.”
Walter looked down at her in confusion. “When did you get a cat?”
His daughter smiled. “It’s a long story.” She motioned toward the Nissan. “Come on. Let’s wake up Mom.”
Walter exhaled. His family was alive.
He followed his daughter to the Nissan and she pulled open the passenger-side door. “Mom, wake up.”
His wife jolted awake in the driver’s seat. “Is something wrong? Are you okay?” She blinked hard as she focused on the cat. “Is that Fireball? Where did he come from?”
Madison smiled. “From this guy.” She stepped out of the way and Walter leaned down to catch the first glimpse of his wife in way, way too long.
“Walter!” Tracy screamed and reached for the door.
As she scrambled out, Madison tugged on his arm. “Watch her left hand, okay?”
He nodded and held himself still as Tracy rushed around the back of the car to practically jump into his arms. God, it felt good to hug his wife again.
“You’re alive!” She patted him all over with her one good hand just like his daughter had, tears flowing even faster than Madison’s a few minutes before.
“I am. And so are you, although I heard you hurt your hand.”
Tracy glanced down at her left hand and Walter’s eyes followed. He sucked in a breath. Where soft, pale skin used to be, angry weeping blisters took up residence. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Penny gave me some old antibiotics. They’re expired, but they seem to be working.”
Walter exhaled in relief. “Drew needs antibiotics, too. We’ll have to deal with that soon.”
Tracy’s brow knitted. “Who’s Drew?”
Walter pointed at the Jetta. “My co-pilot from the flight. We took off together after the crash landing. His fiancée didn’t make it though, so—”
“Whoa, hold up.” His wife held up her hands. “What crash landing?”
Walter laughed. “I think we have a lot to fill each other in on.”
“You better believe it.” Madison chimed in, still holding the little cat and smiling. “I’m going to wake everyone up, okay?”
Tracy nodded. “You do that, honey. Then we can all have some breakfast and figure out what to do next.”
Walter watched his daughter walk away before turning to his wife. Slipping his arms around her waist, he pulled her close and kissed her. Her lips still fit against his so well.
Everything he’d been through the past week. Everything he did and all the sacrifices he made were worth it. He’d found his family.
Twenty years together, multiple tours of duty, the birth of his daughter and everything that followed were nothing compared to the journey ahead. Walter knew they would struggle. But together, they would survive.
He pulled back as a ragtag assortment of kids Madison’s age all tumbled out of the Jeep and made their way toward the Nissan.
A teeny blonde girl who barely cleared Walter’s shoulder stuck out her hand. “Brianna Clifton. I’m Madison’s roommate. Well, former roommate, anyway.”
Walter
shook her hand before turning to a kid wearing space T-shirt with hair in desperate need of a good trim. “Tucker Eldrin. Good to meet you, sir.”
The sir got him a few extra points, Walter had to admit.
Lastly, he smiled at the young man who outweighed him by a good thirty pounds and stuck out his hand. “Good to see you, Peyton.”
“Good to see you, too, Mr. Sloane.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” Drew ambled up to the lot of them, favoring his shoulder as he stopped beside Walter.
Walter smiled. “Everyone, this is Drew Jenkins. He was my co-pilot the day the grid failed. Without him, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Drew shook each person’s hand as the introductions went around again. “Walter has saved my life more than once in the last week. You all are lucky he’s here.”
“Don’t we know it.” Tracy smiled up at him, her big eyes brighter than the bluest ocean. “Now who’s hungry? We don’t have a lot to choose from, but I’m sure we can make do.”
She turned to the car and began tasking each college kid with something to do. In minutes, a spread of various granola bars and bottles of water and Gatorade sat on the hood of the trunk. Each person picked out a few items and assembled in a makeshift circle in the parking lot.
Walter eased himself down between his wife and daughter and stretched out his legs. The first bite of the granola bar was the start of the best meal he’d had in years. It didn’t matter that they were homeless and sitting on broken asphalt in an abandoned parking lot.
His wife sat on his left and his daughter on his right. They were surrounded by friends, had food and water, and two working cars. What more could anyone ask for?
It might not be the future he imagined—no vacations to Italy or evenings out on the back porch with a beer and the setting sun—but it was more than he needed to survive. The power may never come back on, at least not in the way it did before, but they could still have a pretty good life.
