“That's okay, honey. Love you,” Jenny yelled in response, unaffected by the lack of sincerity in Rae's apology.
Rae's mom was shooing the daycare kids into the backyard to play. Hearing her response to Rae's easy dismissal of her authority, I knew where Rae and Zach got their temperament. No sooner had Jenny scolded Rae for cursing around the little kids and she'd already moved on. Anger was not a trait this family cared to possess for long.
Before Jenny disappeared out the back door to mind the children, she blew a kiss to Rae and me, saying, “You girls be good and say hi to your folks for me please, Dakota.”
“I will,” I hollered back just as the door pulled closed behind her.
Rae rolled her eyes, though she showed no sign of irritation. “Geez, she still talks to us like we're babies. I guess that's what happens when you work in a daycare all day, huh?”
I knew Rae liked that her mom still blew her kisses and fretted about her, even when the daycare had her frazzle. Rae wasn't as close to her parents as I was to mine, but she didn't love them any less. I knew she'd take them at their worse just as long as they were still hers. Rae's family was important to her, like my family was to me.
Rae grabbed Zach, pinning him in a bear hug. Though he struggled some, he didn't really try to break free from her embrace. They both smiled and Rae kissed the top of her little brother's head.
“Be good,” she told Zach. “You know I'll come back and squash you like a bug if I hear anything bad about you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Zach replied.
When Rae released her hold on her brother, she once again ruffled his hair. “I love you, ass bag,” she told him affectionately.
Zach smiled brightly and said, “I love you, too. Now, get out of my house!”
Rae and I laughed. I waved good-bye and Rae called over her shoulder, “Later.”
The sun was dropping below the horizon as we drive towards my house. On the way, the traffic lights just blinked out. It was still too early for the street lamps to turn on, but we began to notice people coming out of their houses and businesses, looking confused.
“What's the hell is this about?” I wondered aloud.
“I don't know, but it's sort of freaking me out,” Rae commented.
It was freaking me out too. “Right.”
When we finally reached to my place, we parked in the driveway and ran inside. My family wasn't at the kitchen table, as I would have expected and the house was growing darker by the minute. My stomach felt knotted up and I called for my family, moving into the living room in search of them.
“Mom? Dad?” I called out. “Is anybody home?”
Rae looked spooked. “Where do you think they are?”
“I don't know,” I answered and then I called out again, moving back to the kitchen and heading towards the basement door. “Georgia? Carolina, where are you?”
Just as I reached for the door handle, the basement door opened, making Rae and I both jump in fright. The opened door exposed the darkening forms of my sisters as they worked to carry our moderately sized generator up from the basement. Apparently they were as surprised to see us as we were to see them because Carolina squealed in the stairwell.
“What the hell, Dakota,” Georgia snapped. “Don't sneak up on people like that. You scared the shit out of Carolina and she almost dropped the generator!”
“What happened?” my mother asked as she came in through the back door.
“Nothing,” I said while Georgia contradicted my words.
“Dakota and Rae snuck up on us,” she hissed in annoyance as she and Carolina put the generator down next to the refrigerator.
“We did not!” I denied in anger. “We came in looking for you. We even called your names!”
“You did not,” Georgia retorted.
“We did, too,” Rae jumped to my defense.
My mom sounded tired when she ordered us to stop bickering. “Girls, there's a major power outage happening, so please, just stop. I'm not in the mood.”
“Sorry, mom,” we all muttered.
“So do you know what happened?” Georgia asked our mom, Virginia. “Why is the power out?”
“I'm not sure. When I tried to call John on my cell phone to tell him I was heading home, it wasn't working either, so I stopped at the Air Reserve Station to see him,” she told us. “Security was really tight and that made me worry more.”
“What did dad say?” I asked feeling anxious.
“Is everything okay?” Carolina wanted to know.
Rae asked, “What happened to the power?”
Thankfully, that was when Georgia got the generator started. She began to get the necessities hooked into it, starting with the refrigerator and a small lamp. I was happy to see the faces of my loved ones and to have something stave the darkness off.
“Well, according to your dad, something happened that cause fluctuations in the voltage of our region of the power grids,” mom informed us.
“What?” Rae exclaimed as Georgia spit out an expletive.
I had a million questions I wanted to ask, but knowing my mother may not have the answers, I opted to ask, “Is it bad? Who's all affected?”
As mom started to tell us all she knew, we all sat down around the kitchen table. Though the lamp Georgia plugged into the generator was small, it flooded the whole room with a yellow light that made everything in the kitchen visible. The generator was a bit loud, but we did a good job ignoring it.
“They're still trying to figure things out, but they believe it was a GIC,” mom told us.
“What's a GIC?” Carolina asked.
“It's a geomagnetically induced current,” Georgia explained. “So that means this outage is the result of a solar event of some kind then, right?”
Our mom was nodding at Georgia. “Yes, that's exactly right. It seemed to have caused interferences in the eastern interconnection with outages in our area and in areas of Florida. They also mentioned some outages in India as well.”
“Wow,” Rae said. “Intense.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Georgia grabbed her cell to try making a call. “So your cell didn't work either?”
“No,” mom answered. “Apparently some of the satellites appear to have been damaged as well. They're still assessing the situation, so the extent of the problem isn't yet known.”
I looked at my mom in earnest. “Should we be afraid? I mean, what does this mean? Will everything be okay?”
My mom smiled in reassurance. “Everything will be fine. This is neither the first time something like this has happened nor the last. Don't you remember the bad outage in 2003?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
“Well, that didn't really impact our area as much as it did the east coast and Canada,” Georgia interjected.
“I remember that,” Carolina said.
Carolina got up and went over to the cupboard to grab some glasses. Then she poured everyone a glass of iced tea. She busied herself with putting together a plate of sandwiches for us all to eat. I appreciated her thoughtfulness, especially since I hadn't eaten since earlier that day.
“What about dad, where's he?” I asked.
“They're keeping him at the base until they know what all needs to be done,” she said. “He said they're trying to redirect lines and get back up systems going for the city.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “I know we've talked about this sort of thing before, but I never thought it would actually happen.”
“No one ever does,” my mother said as she got up from the table to dig something out of her bag. “Your dad gave me one of the 2-way radios so we could check in with him.”
“Sweet,” Georgia beamed. “Way to go, dad!”
It was good that we had a way to contact dad, but I couldn't help thinking about Chris. I wondered if he was okay and how David was fairing. Times like these made people do stupid things and I was sure we'd be hearing news of looters and robbers once all this was fi
xed and the news was being broadcasted again.
It wasn't long before the news of what was happening was available to us. Most of the radio and television stations had backup generators that supported them, though they weren't always clear or had to take breaks in broadcasting to conserve their resources.
Stations not in the region two section of the power grids were still able to transmit, but you'd have to have your own power source to be able to access them. Radio was more reliable than television simply because of the difference in technology used to distribute that media.
It wasn't until the next morning that some semblance of order and normalcy had been restored to the city. With overnight emergency crews tending to our region of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (or NERC) interconnection, things were being restored quickly. I was happy because dad had been retained at work, as expected and still hadn't made it home; having access to the news made me feel more comforted.
I felt better knowing what was happening and what was being done to continue repairs. Dad had talked with mom twice throughout the night, but briefly both times. He was working hard to help with various projects around the area, trying to keep order and peace.
I wasn't comforted by the absence of air traffic. Aviation in our area had been disrupted for about a twelve hour period of time. The calm of the skies was very eerie and the airport was too still for my liking. It didn't help that the only other time I remembered experiencing any prolonged suspension of flight was during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York and on the Pentagon.
The hum of the generator that had seemed so loud at first, eventually became nothing more than background noise by morning. It helped me to cope with the silence of the airport and the “white noise” quality of it seemed to help sooth my nerves. Sirens blared about outside now and then, generally speeding past on Crosstown Highway. I'd been right; the news was full of stories about people raiding and pillaging.
India faired far worse than we did. They had approximately 620 million people, or something like nine percent of the population, lose power! Though our services were largely restored, only about half of the Indian population was back to any kind of normalcy. I was thankful our area wasn't as badly damaged, though I prayed for the people in India.
Going one night without our expected comforts was bothersome enough; I couldn't imagine having to withstand the loss of electricity or mass communication for an extended period of time! As it was, a lot of vital systems were still offline. We had necessities, but we lacked many of the niceties we were so accustomed to and obviously, took for granted.
Some of the bank systems were down and not every gas station was able to function, leaving long lines at the gas pumps that were serviceable. Some of the region's transformers had been damaged and some of the issues ended up being problems with satellites that had been damaged by the geomagnetic disruptions. Solving some of the problems simply required rerouting or redirection of power or systems, but even that took time.
Cell phone operation was unreliable, but eventually useable. I was happy when they came back online enough to allow me to call Chris and Rae. David had received an alert from his security provider that there had been a malfunctions with their services, so he had gone over to the shop. Chris was minding their home for potential issues. Rae's family was safe, just scared. Though Chris decided he'd come over to my house, Rae opted to stay home to help support her family.
“Are you sure it's okay that you're here?” I asked Chris. “I mean, wouldn't you rather be at home or at the shop with your dad?”
We were sitting on the back step of the house together. Sharing one another's company helped ease all the problems of the last day, making them seem distant and unreal. The only reminder of pending disruptions to the normal flow of life that really remained was the lack of aircraft in motion, though even that seemed to be starting again. Life had begun to resume.
“No, it's fine,” Chris told me. “The house is secure and Dad said nothing's happening at the shop. He said he's just hanging out there in case people need help. He opened the vending machines and is handing things out to people who ask for food or drinks.”
“That's really cool of him,” I smiled.
“It's not a big deal,” Chris said, trying to down play his father's generosity, but I knew it was something Chris really admired about David. It was a character trait that Chris shared, which I loved about both of them.
“Maybe,” I acknowledged, “but it's pretty big to the people who might have had their food spoiled or maybe ran out of potable water.”
Chris just shrugged nonchalantly and changed the subject. He wasn't comfortable with praise for something he felt was just a decent act of kindness. I found myself wishing more people in the world were like David and Chris.
“It's so quiet,” Chris digressed as a means to introduce a new topic. “It's so weird.”
“Right,” I agreed. “I know some people complain about the airport noise, but I like it. I had a hard time sleeping without it. Still, it's been nice that there's still air traffic passing over in the upper atmosphere.”
“Yeah, too far and few to make much difference though,” Chris commented.
“Yeah, I guess, but at least it's a sign that things are okay. Remember how nothing was in the air after 9/11?” I replied.
Chris nodded and widened his eyes in response. “Thank God it's nothing like that causing it this time. It's bad enough that people are looting.”
“I just don't get that,” I admitted. “I get that some people might feel desperate in need of food, water, or emergency supplies, but how's a fucking television going to help you in a power outage?”
Chris laughed. “Right.”
“Sometimes people just don't make any sense to me,” I confessed.
“Me either,” Chris agreed. “I guess it's a 'priorities' thing.”
I replied by saying, “Yeah, I guess. I suppose some people are taking things they think will have value so they can try to sell it for money for necessities, but it still doesn't make sense. I mean, most people still can't access their bank accounts so it's not like money is helping either.”
“Trading goods?” Chris offered.
I shrugged in uncertainly. “Possibly, but again, what good is a big screen TV or iPad if you don't have electricity or services to support them?”
Chris smiled at me. “People do weird things.”
“Dad always says people will do irrational things or things out of character if they feel threatened, but this whole experience has been pretty easy to get through. I think it was harder for people during Hurricane Katrina than this.”
“Definitely.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” I teased. “Let's go steal a yard sprinkler and bean bag chair! That'll surely get us through this difficult time and make it more bearable as we do.”
“Ahh,” Chris teased me back. “I was hoping we could get a few hundred DVDs and maybe a riding lawnmower.”
“Oh, I got it!” I exclaimed. “Let's go looting for oriental rugs.”
We both laughed though we felt more frustration than humor. It was really distressful to think of people stealing, especially when they were taking things that had nothing to do with survival. Worse was the knowledge that some people weren't just looting from businesses, but from their neighbors. I just didn't understand why someone would want to make a bad situation worse.
“Are you still going to go camping this weekend?” I asked.
Chris was planning to camp out with his friend's Dan and Travis. Dan's parents had a place on Stark Lake near Aitkin, Minnesota. They were planning to do some fishing and boating.
“Yeah,” he answered. “We don't see any reason why not. It's not like we need any electricity and I can get fuel from dad's friend, Thomas.”
“Oh, right,” I recalled. “He's the guy who owns that Kwik Trip over in Apple Valley, huh?”
“Yep,” Chris confirmed. “He has his po
wer restored and if it goes out again, he has a big generator to keep things running.”
“Cool. Sounds good.”
Chris put his arm around me, pulling me into his side. “I wish you'd change your mind and come with us.”
“I appreciate the invite, I do, but no thank you,” I replied. “You need to have time with guys and besides, I don't think I can tolerate being with Travis that long.”
Chris laughed. “He's not that bad.”
I made a face at Chris, “No, he's not, at least not when you're his best friend, like you.”
“You two drive me crazy,” Chris mildly complained. “Why can't you two just get along?”
“We get along!” I protested. “I just don't like how he teases me because I can never tell if he's serious or not.”
“He's not,” Chris assured me.
“That's good to know, but no,” I told him firmly. “I'm still not going.”
Chris laughed and kissed the side of my head. “You're great, you know that?”
“Whatever,” I replied unbelieving his accolade.
“No, I'm being serious,” Chris told him. “Most of my friends have girlfriends who are really possessive and get mad when they want to do guy stuff.”
“Maybe I just want you out of my hair. Ever think of that?” I teased.
“I'll always be in your hair,” Chris countered.
Then he started to mess my hair up by running his hands all over my head. That lead into Chris attacking me with tickles and eventually, we were wrestling in the yard. I loved how easy it was to be with Chris and how we could talk about anything and everything.
The days that followed the grid outage and satellite damage that caused all the disruptions to regular life were very strange. Even though we were faring better than India, our country was in a subdued panic. The calamity of the situation just increased the paranoia and strain in our country. I could see the growing fear in our nation and its people.
Some doomsday preppers' idea of the pending apocalypse was the failing of the power grids and its ability to thrust us back into the pre-electronics era. This incident was just up their alley! Some people were convinced that the country was about to collapse and they had initiated their doomsday preparation plans.
A Ripple of Fear (Fear of Dakota #1) Page 18
