168 Hours- Zero Hour

by Raylan Kane

  INGRID & URSULA ODENSHAW

  HARPA CONFERENCE CENTER

  REYKJAVIK, ICELAND

  5:05 PM LOCAL TIME

  The event host, Mika Sturm, smiled speaking the First Lady's name. Ingrid rose from her seat. The heat of every eye on her. Warm applause. She thanked Mika and took her place behind the podium, cue cards set in front of her. Much of the assembled were in obscured by the stage lights. Ingrid squinted but caught sight of her daughter flanked by Secret Service at the front of the room, in the corner. Seeing Ursula calmed her.

  “Thank you,” Ingrid said into the microphone, hearing her voice carry through the vast black cavern. “Before I begin, I would just like to acknowledge the efforts-”

  Gasps as the room fell dark. Urgent whispers and chatter filled the void where the hum of electronic devices had once been. No one could raise the screen on their phones. Coughing and sneezing took hold, a few cries. Ingrid's lungs burned and her face felt cold with the sudden disappearance of the lights. A commotion erupted in the distance, at the back of the hall. The other speakers remained in their chairs on stage, struggling to breathe. An organizer screamed. Watering eyes adjusted to the gray dimness, some small bit of daylight illuminated things just enough to see where you were going. Ingrid snapped a look left, only enough time to see Ursula no longer in her chair before Secret Service agents swarmed her, sweeping her from stage.

  “Where is Ursula?” Ingrid said. “Where's my daughter?”

  “She's safe, Mrs. Odenshaw,” she heard one of the agents say. “We're taking you to her now.”

  “What's happening?”

  None of the agents answered, they just kept moving. Ingrid's feet barely touched the floor.

  WES POLLARD

  RAWLIE'S SEAFOOD, 123 WATER STREET

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  1:05 PM LOCAL TIME

  Wes decided not to finish his lobster sandwich. The bread was dry. He sipped from his pint glass while waiting for the bill. TV screens over the bar filled with tickers featured talking heads he could barely hear over the lunch rush. Pete Klein and the rest of the traders on his floor at Rose Atlantic were upstairs on the roof patio. Wes wanted to get back to the office. Gold was making a move.

  A pretty blonde got closer to him than she meant to, handing him his bill, holding a card reader. Patrons squeezed by them, there wasn't much room to walk.

  “Sorry,” she said, her cheeks went rosy.

  “It's fine.” Wes wasn't about to complain. He had his wallet out, reached for his Visa when TV screens snapped to black, the lights went out and a collective holler echoed from the back of the restaurant.

  The young server looked at Wes with confusion on her face, but then anguish as a horrid odor spread throughout the room. A hundred people choking. Wes rubbed his eyes, the corners of his mouth stinging. Patrons flooded the exits sneezing gobs of snot and saliva as they went. Wes held out the card reader to the girl, she took it in hand.

  “I've got no cash!” Is all Wes could get out between coughs. The young server disappeared into the throng. Customers flowed in a stream down the stairs from the rooftop patio, out into the street. As the restaurant emptied Wes could see through the windows Water Street was full of people. Stranger than that, Lower Manhattan had become quieter. People coughed and sneezed and choked and cried, but the constant symphony of vehicle engines, sirens and horns had stopped. Wes made his way out into the open air with no relief from the terrible smell. He rubbed his eyes again and stepped aside the torrent of humanity rushing down Water Street like lemmings. He was stunned to see the street plugged with vehicles. Not one engine ran. Not one horn honked. In every restaurant, in every business, every brokerage, it was the same. People hurried out of buildings into the street. In the distance he saw a uniformed NYPD officer confronted by two hysterical men in suits.

  A nervousness gripped Wes's gut. Unsure whether to follow the crowd or to struggle his way back up to his office. He pulled out his phone and couldn't get it to turn on. No one could. The pain behind his eyes became milder. An ache around his armpits dulled. Yet the sense of foreboding grew deeper. As much as he tried to think positive, images, memories from that morning in 2001 flashed in front of him. A hand landed on his shoulder. He swung right, relieved to see Pete Klein's face.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah. What the hell is this?”

  The two men stepped out of the on-rush of people, in between the back of one yellow cab and the front bumper of another.

  “Wish I knew,” Pete said. “Your phone working?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone's headed to the bridge.”

  “Why Brooklyn?”

  “Safer than here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think it's like this everywhere?”

  Pete looked around. The mad dash thousands of people were making, like a massive sporting event or concert had just let out and everyone needed to catch the same train.

  “I don't know,” Pete said, “this is nuts.”

  A giant bang sounded from two blocks over. Steel meeting concrete with heavy impact. They couldn't see the source, but it left a ring in their ears. Screams from the distance. People instinctively dropped to their knees if only for a moment. It's happening again, was all Wes could think.

  “Go!” Pete yelled to Wes, and they joined the crowd rushing for the Brooklyn Bridge. “Just go!”

  DARLA STARR

  5TH AVENUE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  10:05 AM LOCAL TIME

  The audience was mostly men. They made the strangest faces, Darla thought. Some of them chose to show other things on their webcams instead of their faces while they watched her, while they fantasized about being with her. Darla had grown used to seeing it. She preferred her female customers, they never appeared as creepy. Darla never trusted men anyway, not since childhood.

  One live stream had ended and she had begun another. Voyeurs linked to the feed from around the world. Darla could see a small sampling represented by small squares along the right side of her screen. Customers in various stages of self-pleasure ranging in locales from Singapore to Moscow to Qatar. Naked, her porcelain skin glowing in the morning light, Darla ran her fingers along the inside of her thigh. She let out a soft moan and tossed her head back, her black hair cascading across the white duvet. The cameras murmured as the autofocus on each buzzed to keep the center of the action clear. Darla only used her fingers in the beginning. She made sure to place herself in front of the cameras in such a way to give her viewers every detail, everything they wanted to see.

  The buzzing ceased. The laptop died along with the stream. Darla could no longer hear her fridge running quietly in the background nor water through the pipes in the wall and a nasty aroma had filled her condo.

  She cursed and she coughed and her skin felt like it was being pricked by thorns. A terrible acid burned at her crotch. She groaned, jumping from her bed, alarmed by the drool uncontrollably flowing out of her mouth. Darla pulled on white boxers and a tank top. The stinging on her body caused her to seek relief. She ran to the sink in her bathroom. Water came out in a slight trickle that dwindled to a drip. Then it donned on her the power was out. It was the first time she'd experienced an outage in her new building. Management would hear about it. Coughing up phlegm, she spit it into the sink and jogged back into her bedroom to grab her cell. Before she picked it up she thought about the interrupted live stream and worried how many members she could lose over this inconvenience. Angered by the notion, Darla pressed the button beneath her phone's screen. Nothing. Again she pushed it. Five times she pressed it, hard. Her phone would not respond.

  “Come on.”

  Darla looked out over the city. Dozens of ants, more than usual were out on the street. Not one vehicle appeared to be moving, including a city bus. She slid open one of her windows expecting to hear horns, but she did not. Then, to her south, horror. Maybe five blocks away, a helicopter, black with a red i
nsignia plunged from the sky. The craft hit the roof corner of a high rise. Darla's eyes widened watching it ricochet off the building top then falling far to the street below, out of her view.

  “Oh my God.”

  She could hear the echo of the impact, the faint screams of people many floors below. Darla ran to her door and took a step out into the hall. Three other building residents stood dumbfounded. A middle-aged man from two doors down looked at Darla as she'd entered the corridor. He had wanted to speak, but then was compelled to lower his head facing the floor as though someone had sprayed mace into his eyes. Darla twisted her face as the burning in her nostrils trailed down into her throat. The smell was stronger than ever. A woman came out into the hall and saw the middle-aged man doubled over.

  “Are you okay?” The woman said to the man. The man did not answer, he groaned and kept rubbing his eyes. He spit up a little on the carpet. The woman turned and looked at Darla, before she spoke she let out a little belch. “I tried to call 9-1-1. Nothing's working.”

  “I know,” Darla said.

  “Did you see the helicopter?”

  Darla didn't want to engage in conversation, she just wanted relief.

  “Hello?”

  Ignoring the woman, Darla pushed her condo door with her bare foot and went back inside and engaged the secondary lock. Just in case. A feeling of vulnerability washed over her and she went to her bed. Darla put her lifeless laptop on the floor along with her toys. The acidic aches and the skin pricks became more mild, but the smell, she couldn't take it. Darla pulled the duvet to her face and tried to breathe through the thick material. Her breath became hot and labored and the wider she opened her mouth to draw in bigger breaths the more she worried she was causing herself to hyperventilate. What if help could not come? That helicopter? What happened?

  Relax, she told herself, drawing her knees up. She laid on her side looking out at the tops of buildings and the sunny sky. Thoughts of disgruntled customers pushed farther and farther from her mind. She hoped power would be restored soon. She tried not to think about the helicopter falling, smashing into that building.

  THE HOLDEMAN FAMILY

  HIGHWAY 598

  15 km EAST OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE, ALBERTA

  11:05 AM LOCAL TIME

  Bryan wandered over to Terry's car. The constable was seated behind the wheel, his engine idling. He watched the firefighters blast the barn fire with powerful ropes of white water.

  “I'm taking off, brother,” Bryan said, raising his voice to be heard over the fire tanker's engines. “I'll talk to ya.”

  “Drive safe,” Terry said, “give Cassie my best.”

  “You bet.”

  Bryan looked back over his shoulder at the thick yellow-gray smoke stubbornly rising above the water jets. No sooner had he turned to face his cruiser when the roar from the tanker truck's engine cut out, the water dropped and the hoses fell limp in the fighters' hands. Terry's car died too. The men across the road shouted to one another, and two of them clambered onto the tanker to restart it.

  Bryan frowned. Curious, he thought. Then the noxious aroma hit him. It hit everyone. He swallowed hard and something attacked his airway. He coughed and snot bubbled from his nose. Bryan took the pain for a moment, trying to get his bearings. Through his watery eyes he saw Terry exit his vehicle, walking toward him.

  “Tear gas,” Bryan bellowed. Terry nodded in agreement. Both men went to the trunks of their respective cars and retrieved gas masks. Once they'd each purged and gotten a clean seal, they looked across the road to see the firefighters had beaten them to it. All were wearing their masks working like mad to get their trucks working again.

  “You alright, brother?” Terry said.

  Bryan gave him the thumbs up.

  “What the hell was in that barn?” The constable laughed in response to his own question.

  The two officers walked to the Fire Chief, Doug Reardon. The men shouted at one another to be heard through the masks.

  “Trouble with the trucks, Chief?” Terry said.

  “All died at once,” Doug said, “don't know what's going on. Dealing with a chemical fire though. You'll want to close off this road.”

  “I'll call it in,” Bryan said.

  “Good luck with that,” Doug said, “radios on ours aren't working.”

  “They don't run off the engines.”

  “Nope. Don't seem to matter though.”

  Bryan jogged back across the highway. He got behind the wheel of his cruiser and keyed the CB radio. No response, no static, nothing. His cellphone was also dead and sure enough he couldn't start his vehicle. His eyebrows pushed down over his upper eyelids. His cop's sixth sense worked overdrive. What in the hell is this? He got out and went back to the others.

  “You're right,” Bryan said. “No radio. No cell. Car won't start.”

  The three men looked at each other trying to make sense of the situation. Meanwhile the fire started picking up again, orange flames rose higher inside the blackened structure. Chief Reardon's men kept trying to start the trucks to no avail. Reardon looked at the police officers squinting as though in deep thought, lips pursed. Maybe this wasn't just a chemical fire. That was the thought creeping through the Chief's brain.

  “You know what this could be, right?” The Chief said.

  Terry folded his arms and noted the stinging from his armpits had lessened in intensity. He looked at Doug and shook his head, understanding where the man was going with his thought. “What, a damned EMP?” Terry said. “I don't think so.”

  “Let's not get carried away here,” Bryan said. “Probably dealing with something nasty that was in that barn.”

  “That knocked out our engines?” Doug said. “Knocked out the radios? The phones? Show me a chemical that can do that.”

  Bryan looked at Constable Allen. The two men recognized worry on the other's face. Neither wanted to to admit to themselves that such a thing was even possible outside of the movies or on websites devoted to conspiracy theories. Bryan turned back to the Fire Chief. “Let's not jump to any conclusions yet,” he said. “First things first, let's double-check make sure everyone here, all of your crew, that everyone's alright. Same for us. Then we'll worry about securing the scene.”

  “I think we're all fine, but how you going to secure the scene when you can't even move your vehicle? Can't even radio for help?” Doug said.

  “Let's check on your men, make sure everyone's feeling alright. One step at a time,” Bryan said. “We'll worry about the rest after.”

  HELENA HILLEN

  PAWEO PALMS ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY

  KAUMAKANI, HAWAII

  7:05 AM LOCAL TIME

  He knows that which I don't know. Helena repeated the sentence three times staring up at the silver horse head on the shelf above her bed. He sees what I see. What I cannot see. The silver stallion gives me strength. Carries me to see my children.

  Outside her window she could hear a commotion.

  It had taken nearly an hour for a tow truck to arrive. Nancy stood holding onto Libby who held onto her puppy, Rico. Two Palms security guards waited nearby. The tow truck driver attached the booster cables to the battery in Nancy's car. She had left the headlights on overnight. Security staff, under Max Tremell's orders, told her to take a taxi home. Nancy refused. The guards decided calling someone in to get her car started was better than calling the police.

  Max was not pleased. The assistant director walked out to the lot where the guards were standing. “What's taking so long?”

  “He just got here,” one of the guards responded.

  The tow truck driver spoke loud so Nancy could hear him over his engine. “Get in and try it now.”

  Nancy nodded, then she looked at her little girl. “You stay right here. Got it? I'm just going to the car for a minute. Right over there. Okay?” The little girl smiled and Nancy walked to her vehicle.

  The tow truck fell silent. An ugly scent took hold. No one could take in enou
gh air. Pain erupted behind the eyes and inside their noses. Max Tremell dropped his clipboard and grabbed his knees spitting up with a sharp cough.

  “Mommy,” Libby cried. She drew in shallow breaths, her puppy blinked over and over shaking his head, wiping his snout with his tiny paw.

  Nancy went to her daughter and pulled her close. She sneezed four times in quick succession. The tow truck driver ran around and jumped in behind the wheel of his rig. His armpits and the back of his neck were on fire. He tried to start up his truck, but it would not turn over.

  Max spun around to his guards who were having trouble breathing themselves. “Check the rooms,” he said, “I don't see the backup lights.”

  “Power's out,” sputtered one of guards.

  “If the generator's out too, that's a problem. Go.”

  The guards ran inside, but could not escape the odor. They agreed to split up. The one taking the East Wing noticed two residents laying in the long corridor. No pulse for either one. Max waited to hear a status report on his radio. He knocked the thing with his hand failing to get a signal.

  “Call it in right away!” The guard shouted to his compatriot. “Code Red East Wing, times two! My radio's out!” His shouts were loud enough that they echoed through one of the resident's windows to the parking lot.

  The guard looked in on Walter Johnson. Walter's machines had stopped and the elderly man gargled drawing in a thin, weak breath.

  Nancy looked at Max after hearing the guard's words. She frowned at the assistant director, “what's code red?” She asked.

  “It's nothing for you to worry about.”

  Their breathing became easier and the stinging sensation softened. Max glared at the tow truck driver. “What's the issue?”

  “Won't start,” the driver said.

  “Well, hurry up and fix it.”

  “What does code red mean?” Nancy repeated.

  “Mind your own business,” Max said, “we have a lot going on right now.”