The Grid Goes Black (Super Pulse Book 1)

by Dave Conifer

  “That’s harsh,” Nick said. “But I hear you.”

  “Harsh, but realistic,” Joe said.

  “Are Cronin’s men still in the Delaney house?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “And that complicates things. But we’ve got a plan. By the time you get there, they’ll be neutralized. And before you ask – don’t ask.”

  Nineteen

  “We missed you last night,” Sarah said from where she was sitting on the couch near Nick’s feet the next morning. Apparently she’d been waiting for him to wake up. “How’s your head? Need to sleep it off, or can we talk?”

  As his eyes focused on Sarah, he was reminded that as far as Grover was concerned, her fate still hung in the balance. That didn’t feel good at all. “No I’m okay,” he told Sarah. “What, do you think I have a hangover?”

  “It’s getting dark outside,” she said. She leaned far enough to reach the curtains. “Check out that sky. Looks like there’s a storm coming in.”

  “Good,” Nick said. “We can use the rain, if for nothing else but to wash the urine from the streets. I wish I’d reminded Matt about putting out rain barrels to collect water.”

  “I’ll send Jenny over there.”

  “Thanks. Can’t hurt to try,” Nick answered.

  “You know, the meeting last night was a disaster without you,” she said. “Even before your windbag friend showed up and made a jerk of himself. Nick, how could you set us up like that and then not show up? Where were you?”

  “I was around,” Nick said. “There’s always so much to do. I needed time. I had something on my mind.”

  “That’s the lamest excuse I ever heard,” she answered, with little sympathy. “Chuck’s even madder than I am. You better look out.”

  “Chuck? That’s exactly what was on my mind,” Nick said.

  “Say again?” Sarah replied.

  “Uh, nothing,” Nick said. “How about we wait to reschedule that meeting?”

  “There’s no point,” Sarah told him. “It’s dead. Nobody wants him in the group. We’ll just take our chances with who we have now.”

  “Sorry nobody liked him,” Nick said. “But that wasn’t the point.”

  “The only point most of us cared about was that you weren’t there.”

  ~~~

  Nick regretted rushing into a verbal agreement with Grover Monroe without clarifying the status of the rest of the Outhouse Coalition members. He’d still been buzzing from the Jack Daniel’s at the time, he rationalized. Now, the morning after, he needed answers. It was time to take a walk back over to the Water Tower Compound to get some. As soon as he saw a chance to slip away, he was out the door and on his way.

  Sarah wasn’t kidding about the sky, he thought as he started out. A wall of dark, angry clouds was advancing so quickly that he could see it moving. He’d be glad for the rain. As he’d mentioned to Sarah, it would help with the stench of the neighborhood. The break in the heat it would bring wouldn’t hurt, either.

  After finishing his survey of the sky he saw three unfamiliar men coming his way. A few weeks ago they might have been merely a lawyer, a computer programmer and a plumber. Now they could just as well be an armed posse looking for food and water for their families. He pitied occupants of whatever house they descended on, if it came to that, but knew there wasn’t much he could do about it, except to be glad for the rifle at the ready for Sarah and Dewey back in his own house. Instead of indulging his curiosity, he avoided trouble by changing direction and disappearing between two houses.

  The rest of the walk was uneventful, except for the gusts of wind kicking up wads of trash that whirled in the air around him. The compound looked quiet, with none of the comings and goings that he usually saw there. The first splatters of rain, flying horizontally in the wind, hit his face as he walked unchallenged up the sidewalk to the front porch.

  “Hi,” he said to the stone-faced guard. “I’m Nick Mercator. I was here last night. I need to see Grover Monroe. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know if he’s available,” the guard said. “I’ll check.” Nick tried not to roll his eyes as the man went inside without closing the door, leaving his post unattended and the entrance to the compound wide open. Must not have passed Security 101 yet, he thought.

  The rain was heavier now, so much that Nick was unable to find a place to keep dry on the porch. Far more startling, the winds had picked up significantly. Trees and bushes were bent backwards, losing leaves and branches as they quivered. This was no mere thundershower.

  The front door opened and a different man stuck his head out into the rain. “Grover can’t see you,” he said flatly. “He’s too busy.”

  Barely able to hear the man over the wind, Nick moved closer. “Look, I know he’s busy,” Nick said, “but this is important. Tell him – tell him I’m not going to do the job until he sees me. He’ll know what I mean. Go on. Deliver the message, okay? I don’t want to stand out here all day and get soaked.”

  A minute later, as bolts of lightning flashed in the sky, the door opened again. Nick was waved inside by a tall man with a scowl on his face. “I’m Ted Roethke,” he said. “Just call me ‘Roethke.’ Grover told me to deal with you.” He held up a folder. “What’s your problem? I have your file here.”

  “My what?”

  “Why are you here?” Roethke asked. “Can you get to it? We’re very busy here.”

  They were standing on a hardwood floor just inside the door, rainwater dripping from Nick’s clothes. Apparently he was going no further. “Look, I agreed to join the group last night. My first mission is to de-install some solar panels tonight.”

  Roethke’s hand whirled in the air. “Yeah, I know all that. So why are you here?”

  “I’m not doing it until I know if everybody in my group can join up, too, just like I am. So how do I confirm that? Do I need to bring them all here?”

  Roethke opened the folder and began flipping pages. “It’s already been decided.”

  “What?” Nick asked. He looked around and realized that the light was too steady to be coming from candles. How were they doing that?

  “We know them all,” Roethke said. “Four families. You’re the ones who built the outhouse, right? I’m a little behind. I just got back into town yesterday.”

  “How do you know all this?” Nick asked. A thought struck him. “You’re watching us? Did you have something to do with the shootout we had a couple nights ago?”

  “Yes, but not in the way you think,” Roethke said. “I heard about it. Listen, I’ll run through the list of candidates and tell you what we decided.”

  “Okay,” Nick said, his gut tingling with nerves. This was important. “Go ahead, then.”

  “Sarah, Jenny and Ashley McElligott-Cohen, we’ll take. Good lord, their names are a mouthful, aren’t they? We’re not sure how useful they’ll be, but we understand that you might feel an obligation to take care of them. Think of it as a favor to you.” He looked back down at the file. “We’ll also take Dewey Bishop. Is that his real name? Dewey? He’s a slacker, but he’s got potential. Plus, he’s young and single. No extra mouths to feed. We’ll put him to work.”

  So far, so good, Nick thought. Everybody under his roof was covered.

  “We’ll take the Shardlakes, too,” he continued. “We like what Matthew is doing with his clean water project. We have a team he can slide right into. So, of course, that includes his family, too.”

  “So it was you who raided his back yard and took his equipment!” Nick said angrily. “You know all about it!”

  “It was us,” Roethke allowed. “But only because somebody else was about to. We have all his gear here, safe and sound. Otherwise it would be gone.”

  Nick shook his head. “I’m completely lost.” He shifted his weight to the other foot. He could feel the rainwater squishing out of his socks. “How do so many people know what’s going on in Matt Shardlake’s back yard?”

  “You know a guy by the
name of Cronin? I’m betting you do,” Roethke said. “His men were going in to grab it all. So we decided it would be us, and not them, and we did something about it.”

  “Cronin? Yeah, I know him,” Nick said. “So he’s got a crystal ball just like your outfit?”

  “What he’s got is a mole in your group,” Roethke said.

  “A what?”

  “A plant,” Roethke explained. “A phony. Somebody you trust who’s telling Cronin everything you all are up to. A mole.”

  “Holy cow,” Nick breathed. He thought it through. “Chuck Jevik. It couldn’t be anybody else.”

  “It could be somebody else, but it isn’t,” Roethke said.

  “I knew it!” Nick said. “His story about the shootout that night was full of holes. And he kept talking about arming us, but so far, to this day, he hasn’t handed over a single gun.”

  “But I’ll bet he asks a lot of questions about your guns, right?” Roethke asked.

  “He sure does, now that you mention it.”

  “That would fit,” Roethke said. “The man is collecting information, and not just about you. I’m sure somebody wanted to know how well your group could protect itself when it comes to that.”

  “But if he’s working with Cronin, why would he let your group swoop in and steal that stuff?”

  Roethke shrugged. “Who said he let us do it? But we were long gone before any of the shooting started, anyway.”

  “This explains a lot,” Nick said. “The whole shootout was a fake. There was nobody else there. So now I don’t need to ask what your file says about Chuck and his girlfriend.”

  “We’re not interested,” Roethke said.

  “That just leaves the Helliksons. Tom and Penny. They’re welcome too, I assume?”

  Roethke turned another page in the file, and then looked up. “With the Helliksons, I’m afraid we have a problem. They’re not on the list.”

  “What does that mean?” Nick asked, although he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “It means we don’t want them,” Roethke replied bluntly, before pausing to read further. “They offer us nothing. No skills, they’re out of shape, they haven’t shown they have, you know, any kind of toughness or resourcefulness. No survival instinct. Yada yada yada. They have nothing we need.”

  “So that’s it?” Nick asked. “They’re out? We leave them here to fend for themselves? They’ll never make it.”

  “That’s the point, kind of. They don’t have what it takes. On top of that, they’ve got four young children. Or is it five? We’re still not quite sure, but either way, that’s a lot of unproductive mouths to feed, and a lot of bodies to lug around.”

  “But I’ve known them for ten years!” Nick protested. “Am I supposed to turn my back on them?”

  “You’re supposed to do whatever you want,” Roethke answered. “But just so you know, you’re not the only one in this situation. We’re all having to make the same tough choices.”

  “They’d be helpless!” Nick argued.

  “As I already said, that’s the point,” Roethke said. “If we load ourselves down with too many helpless people, it drags us all down.”

  “That’s cold, man,” Nick said. “Cold.”

  “Yes it is,” Roethke agreed. “By the way, there’s another problem. Tom Hellikson has loose lips,” he said as he jabbed a page in the file with a finger. “He’s told half a dozen people about the clean water project you’re working on.”

  “He’s ratting us out?”

  “Not intentionally,” Roethke said. “He just talks a lot. Without much discretion. We didn’t hear anything we didn’t already know, but it’s another nail in his coffin. We don’t need talkers.”

  “I need to get with Grover about this,” Nick said firmly. “Before I go ahead with the solar panel job.”

  “Grover’s the one who made the call,” Roethke said. “He’s a tough customer. Don’t let the manners fool you. He already said no to his next door neighbor. You’re not going to change his mind. But if you back off the solar panel job, you’ll be putting your own slot in jeopardy. Same for the rest of your group.”

  Nick started to argue, but he understood that he was fighting a losing battle. No, a lost battle. “Okay, I hear you,” he finally said. “So when’s the bugout?”

  “Sometime tomorrow, if everything goes well,” Roethke said. “Worst case scenario is the next day.”

  “So I have to move fast on all of this,” Nick said.

  “You do.”

  “The solar panel job might be a washout anyway,” Nick said. “We can’t go up on a wet roof.” Nick could hear heavy winds outside. Sheets of rain were hammering the front of the house. He was in no hurry to leave.

  “I’d strongly advise you to get it done,” Roethke said.

  “Do you have electricity in here?” Nick asked. “Sure seems like it.”

  “Yes, we do,” Roethke said. “All the houses in our group do, as a matter of fact.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Nothing fancy. We have an array of generators,” Roethke said. “The kind you can buy at Home Depot. That’s where we got them from, actually. We keep them running five hours during the day, and another two overnight.”

  “I’ve walked by here every day for three weeks and never heard them,” Nick said.

  “Of course not,” Roethke answered. “What do you think would happen if people found out? We found a way to keep the noise down. No use attracting unwanted attention. It’s a skill you’ll learn to appreciate if you join us.”

  “What do they run on?” Nick asked.

  “Plain old gasoline.”

  “But how can you get gas? Where?”

  Simple,” Roethke said. “You know all those crippled cars all over the roadways out there? They all have between ten and thirty gallons of gas just wasting away in their tanks. It’s almost an unlimited supply, and there’s no cost. We harvest about a thousand gallons a day. Although it’s getting trickier. Every time we go out there’s more competition for it.”

  “A thousand gallons a day,” Nick repeated softly. “You people are so far ahead of everybody else.”

  “For now we are,” Roethke said. “And we’re planning on getting out of here before that changes.”

  ~~~

  Surprisingly, the storm had largely blown itself out by the time Nick found himself being dismissed. The winds were dying down, as was the rain, when he returned to the porch. He shoved his hands in his pockets and set off for home. Once there, he’d huddle up with Dewey and Sarah, tell them about Grover’s offer, and hash out what they would do. Maybe they could include Matt in the discussion, but not the Helliksons. Definitely not the Helliksons.

  ~~~

  It didn’t take long for Nick to realize that the fast-moving storm had packed quite a punch while it lasted. Halfway down the block he came across a huge tree that had been blown down. Its dirt-encrusted root ball, which stood nearly ten feet high, had lifted a section of sidewalk clean out of the ground as it was ripped from the earth. Two men stood nearby, lackadaisically surveying the damage.

  Roof shingles and shards of siding had been torn from houses and were strewn haphazardly. Ragged tree limbs and fresh leaves littered the streets. There were several more downed trees along the way, one of which had fallen across a power line, causing the utility poles on either side to lean dangerously toward each other. If there’d been any power in that line, he knew he’d be looking at a dangerous situation. Funny the things we wish for, he thought.

  As he approached his own street, with the rain picking up again, he wondered what kind of damage he could expect. His back yard was clear of trees, which had made construction of the outhouse easier. But he’d left several large trees in the front yard, against his better judgment, after Val had objected to cutting them down. These oversized, aging giants that pre-dated the entire development were a lot like the uprooted ones he was seeing now. That didn’t bode well.

  At the
same time, he wondered if it even mattered. There was a good chance that he’d be leaving soon, maybe never to return. If he ever came back, the house might not even be there anymore. Life used to be so simple, he mused. Now I don’t even know what I want or where I live.

  Twenty

  As it turned out, there was damage back home, and it was worse than Nick imagined. He could already see it from a hundred yards away. He wondered if, in the old world before the EMP, the insurance company would have declared the house a total loss and sent a check and a demolition crew. All he could hope was that nobody had been hurt. The trunk of a huge oak had smashed through the roof at the front of the house where the bedrooms were. Another massive tree, this one entangled in a now-detached power line, had crushed the garage. Besides the structural damage, the rain was coming down hard again and was pouring inside the house, likely causing even more damage. The decision about leaving just got simpler.

  As he came closer, he counted heads. Much to his relief, everybody living in the house was now outside in the rain gaping at the catastrophe, but they all rushed to him when he arrived. “Sorry about your house, dude,” Dewey said.

  “How bad is it inside?” Nick asked.

  “The living room and kitchen are still standing,” Sarah said. “I thought we should get outside, just in case.”

  “Those parts will hold,” Nick said. “We should go back in. Or if you’re nervous, I’ll walk you over to Matt’s.”

  They followed him to the front door, which had been left open, and then inside. A lot of sheetrock had cracked and fallen away from the walls, and just about everything that had been hanging was now on the floor. A rivulet of water was flowing in the hallway. Things were in better shape in the kitchen. He pulled out a chair and settled in at the table. Everybody else filtered in behind him and gathered around. Only Nick knew what was coming.

  “How’s the outhouse holding up?” Nick asked, forcing a smile. “We might have to move in there.”

  “Seriously, I don’t think this place is livable anymore,” Sarah said.