“Did you hear about Robin’s dad?” I asked Skylar after I had regained my composure.
“Yeah, Mr. Jenkins told everyone not long after it happened. How’s Robin doing now?”
“She’s doing pretty well. She’s been a lot of help around our house.” I paused and studied her face. “Did you hear that she and Alex are getting married?”
“You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. “Are your parents letting them?”
“Well, they said it would be fine in another year or so,” I answered. “Oh, by the way, I made you a Christmas present. I guess I can give it to you for an early birthday present, even though it’s a month away.” I reached in the pocket of my insulated coat and pulled out her gift, wrapped in paper on which I had drawn figures of horses. It looked kind of childish, but Skylar grabbed it out of my hand and squealed in delight.
“Merry Christmas, happy Valentine’s Day, and happy early birthday, Sky,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” she gushed. “That’s the prettiest wrapping paper I’ve ever seen! Did you draw this? It’s so good!”
“Well, don’t get too excited. I didn’t have much to work with,” I said, embarrassed, while she unwrapped the package, being careful not to rip the paper. As she held the object in her hand, she whispered, “Ohhh,” and then was silent for a few moments as she looked at it.
I wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or touched, but then she clasped it to her heart and looked at me with tears in her eyes. Then she put her arms around me and held me tight, whispering in my ear, “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.”
I had carved her a tiny galloping horse out of a piece of wood I’d found in the barn. The way two of its legs came together at the bottom formed a softly rounded heart in the open space under its belly. I had painted it with cherry stain to make it match the reddish brown of Jenny’s horse and rubbed it all over with Tung oil so it was smooth and shiny. Then I had fashioned a little wire loop that I screwed into its back and attached it to a delicate silver chain that Robin had given me when I told her what I was making. I thought it had turned out rather well, and I was pleased that Skylar seemed to love it.
I knew she loved it because of how she kissed me afterward. We made out for a long time, which was great, and then we just sat on the steps to the side door of the school and talked. Skylar told me more about how life had been in town during the winter. She said that a couple of guys in town, who were machinists by trade, had made dozens of homemade, wood-burning stoves out of old water heaters for the people who didn’t have fireplaces in their houses.
Several farmers who lived on the outskirts of town had loaded up 200-gallon truck tanks with water and brought them to town daily in wagons pulled by horses or mules. It got harder and harder to do in January and February because of the snowstorms and the sub-zero temperatures, so everyone had to melt snow for water in those few weeks.
Skylar said that everyone in the town was very kind and helpful toward one another. It didn’t surprise me; our town had always been generous. She spoke of how everyone pitched in to try to keep the senior citizens warm and well fed, but they still weren’t able to save many of them. Again, I was struck by how lucky I was to have all my family, including my grandparents, alive and well.
Skylar also said that last week, an army truck had arrived with the parts needed to replace some transformers and fix the windmills. The soldiers had told the townspeople that electricity was gradually being restored to most of the cities and even some of the smaller towns like ours. Unfortunately, though, they said it could take another couple of months before electricity could reach those of us living in the country.
That was all right, though. I was kind of getting used to life without power and even starting to like it. It was hard to imagine going back to the way things were before, going back to school and wasting our lives away playing video games and watching TV. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be so dependent on those kinds of entertainment even if I had them literally at my fingertips. I have to say, that was a good feeling.
According to the soldiers, the country, and probably the rest of the world, was in financial ruin because of the CME. I had never thought about it, but our nation had virtually stopped, in terms of manufacturing and business, for almost six months. World markets had collapsed and most countries would be bankrupt after this. The only good thing was that, since virtually every country was in the same boat, there could be a chance to wipe the slate clean, in a sense, and start rebuilding the treasuries.
That day was the first time I heard the name “PF Day.” Skylar said that was what the soldiers had called the day of the CME—short for Power Failure Day. I didn’t think it was a very clever term, but it is descriptive, at least. It’s also easy to say, easy to remember, and easy to write. The name is growing on me.
Skylar took me to her house for a cold lunch of canned pork and beans. It was odd that Mr. and Mrs. Tipton hadn’t been cooking anything since they closed the diner. Skylar explained that they hadn’t had the heart to cook for just the three of them. They’d been living on the few cans of food they had left from the diner. That explained Skylar’s weight loss. I hoped that the return of electricity would restore the Tiptons’ enthusiasm for cooking, both for their sakes and for the sake of everybody who liked to eat at their diner, including me.
I had promised Mom and Dad that I would meet them back at the wagon by two o’clock so we could get home before dark. Skylar assured me that she and Jenny would ride the horses out to our house as soon as they could, and I said I’d try to borrow one of our own horses to come see her too.
To my amazement, she said, “Bring Calvin too. I think Jenny kind of likes him.” Who would have thought that a sophomore in high school would like an eighth grader? I mean, it was only two years apart, and it’s true that Calvin was smarter than most of the sophomores in our school, but still.
I didn’t want to leave Skylar and she didn’t want to let me go either, but after an intense make-out session in the shed behind her house, I left to join my family at the school. There were still many people trading food and supplies in the gym. Mom and Dad had been able to trade some of our stuff for some farm supplies, but there was very little to be had in the way of food or necessities like toilet paper.
In the end, Dad donated quite a bit of grain to people who were hungry. He said that he didn’t want to haul it back home, but everyone knew he was just being generous. When I asked him about it later, he just smiled and said, “What goes around comes around.”
I’d heard that phrase before, but it wasn’t until just then that I figured out the true meaning of it. As I said before, my Dad is quite a guy.
Chapter 10
Things started happening kind of fast after our visit to town. First, we started seeing cars whiz by on the highway in front of our house again—one or two a day at first, and then gradually increasing to a dozen or more a day. A couple of people from town—friends of my Mom and Dad—came out to visit us in their cars and told us that some places in town had electricity again, including Riley’s Gas Station. A gas tanker had even driven from Kansas City and filled the gas station’s tanks so people could buy gas again. Even so, the price was higher than anything we’d ever seen before—$8 a gallon, over twice what it was before PF Day!
Other businesses were able to open back up in town, like the banks, so people could now get some of their money out, and the grocery store, although they still didn’t have much to sell. The Electric Co-op was open too, but Mom had decided not to go back to work and had given Mr. Jenkins her resignation when we were last in town. I was particularly excited to hear that Tipton’s Diner had reopened and were serving a limited number of dishes while waiting for more supplies to arrive.
The phone company was open, but there were many repairs that needed to be done to get the phone lines back to working order. This was accomplished in a couple of weeks and I soon got the first phone call
to the house in almost six months—it was from Skylar.
The week before my birthday, which is May 15th, I woke up before dawn one morning because of a strange glow beside me. It was my alarm clock, which I had forgotten to unplug.
The electricity was on!
I flipped the light switch to my room and then ran through the house, switching on lights and hollering to everybody that the electricity was back on. Everyone jumped out of bed, and the first thing Mom did was turn on the faucet, but Dad had to go out to the well and reset the pump. When the water was on and had run for several minutes to get the air and gunk out of the line, Mom plugged in the microwave and warmed up some water to make tea. We then all sat around, drinking our tea and wondering what would happen next.
Would we have to go back to school? Would Granny and Gram and Papa move back to the assisted living apartments? Would all of our hard work fixing up the wood stove, the place for the horses, the cooking grate for the fireplace, the bicycle-powered mill, and the homemade washing machine be wasted? Would we keep the horses and the wagon? The sudden change was harder to get our heads around than PF Day had been.
After we drank our tea and ate some breakfast, Dad turned on the TV and, though it came on, there was no signal, only an annoying static sound. Alex turned on a radio instead and got a scratchy signal of a station playing some country song. We all gathered around it, amazed to hear music again. We listened for a while and then left it on while we went about our chores.
The return of electricity didn’t make too much of a difference in our lives those first few days, except for the fact that we didn’t have to pump water or pour water in the toilet to flush it. Mom benefited the most from having the power back, because now she could use the dishwasher, washing machine, stove, microwave, toaster, and the vacuum cleaner. If we’d had any coffee, she could have used the coffeepot too, and just the idea that she could made her and Dad mighty thirsty for coffee.
The refrigerator would come in handy too with the coming warmer weather. I must say that having the furnace back on was kind of strange. We had gotten used to dressing warmly in the house and having the temperature at 60°, so it seemed awfully hot inside. We decided to turn off the furnace to save money and just burn our firewood until it was warm out.
We were lucky, I know; we had money in the bank and plenty of grain to sell when we got enough diesel fuel for the semi to haul it. We had proven to ourselves for the past six months that we could be totally self-sufficient without too much hardship. Lots of people weren’t so lucky. Many businesses had gone bankrupt during the shutdown, and others had to spend so much money to reopen that they didn’t have enough to pay their entire workforce, so there were hundreds and hundreds of layoffs.
I heard that the two machinists, who had kept so many people warm by making them wood-burning stoves, were laid off, but everyone in town was supporting them and their families. Many people lived from paycheck to paycheck and, without having a paycheck for several months, they didn’t have money to buy groceries or gas or to pay their bills.
A big question on everyone’s minds was if they would have to repay the banks for the months they couldn’t pay their mortgages. Our old farmhouse and the 840 acres it sits on had been in my Dad’s family for years, so we didn’t owe anything on it. Skylar said that her family was in fairly good shape too, however they had a mortgage on the house and their restaurant, so her parents were worried about having to pay the past-due mortgage amounts.
On my birthday, my 16th birthday, Gram and Granny made me a special, made-from-scratch chocolate cake and, boy, did it taste good. They had to use the whole-wheat flour that Dad ground on the bicycle-powered mill and honey from Mrs. Caruthers’ son since there still wasn’t much in the way of groceries to buy, but it tasted great anyway.
I didn’t get a lot of presents, considering there weren’t many stores open to buy gifts from, but Dad let me drive the car to town with some of the gasoline he had saved and we all ate lunch at Tipton’s Diner. That was the best present I could have imagined. Skylar waited on us, and then her parents let her go with me to the school to get re-registered so I could start back the next week. It seemed weird being at school again, but I was happy and proud to be seen with Skylar hanging on my arm.
Alex, Robin, and Calvin had to re-register for school as well. Alex tried to convince Mom and Dad that he should just drop out of school and stay home to help Dad on the farm, but they wouldn’t have it. Dad said Alex would need to get an Ag degree in college if he wanted to be a competitive farmer these days, and that meant staying in school. Mom said she’d hate to have one of her sons be a dropout. Finally, Robin talked him into going so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Of course, she wouldn’t really be alone—Calvin and I would be riding to school with her—but I’m sure she meant without Alex.
The school counselor explained that we might have to go to school through the summer unless Congress decided to make a special waiver for the number of days required for us to attend that particular school year. I sure didn’t want to have to do that!
I mean, it would have been nice to see Skylar every day, but it would have been even nicer to see her anywhere other than school. We told the counselor that we had carried on with our schooling at home during the winter, and she was very pleased to hear that. She said that she wished every parent had had the foresight to do that; then we could just say we’d been homeschooled for six months, and all could go back to normal.
That got me thinking about being homeschooled. Now that Mom wasn’t working, I wondered if she would consider it. I had really enjoyed it while we were at home that winter, and I was sure that Alex and Robin would jump at the chance; maybe even Calvin. The only problem was that Skylar would be at school all day, miles away from me.
After we registered, I walked Skylar back to the diner. Skylar needed to stop by her house on the way, and she came out holding a small box and an envelope. She handed them to me and said, “These are for you. Happy birthday, Brack.”
I started to open the envelope first, but she stopped me and said, “Open that at home.” Then she put her hand on mine and added shyly, “When you’re alone.”
That really intrigued me and made me want to open it right then, but I promised her I’d wait. Instead, I opened the small box to find a religious token on a silver chain. I was kind of confused. I never knew Skylar and her family were Catholic; I didn’t even think they were very religious at all.
I must have had a strange look on my face because she quickly explained, “It’s St. Valentine, the patron saint of lovers.”
I grabbed her and kissed her then and we made out for a while before she had to leave to get back to the diner.
That evening, we ate at Tipton’s again—I said it was all I wanted for my birthday—and Dad let me drive home afterward. When we got home, Dad flipped on the TV as he had been doing every night to check for any programming, and we were excited to have a couple of channels from Kansas City come in. They were showing reruns until nine o’clock, when a special news broadcast came on. We all gathered around the TV in the family room to watch since we hadn’t seen any news about anywhere other than our county for months.
The news was grim. On PF Day, several planes had crashed because of the onslaught of geomagnetic particles disrupting their instruments and the control towers. There were also many train wrecks, especially in countries with high-speed trains. With the crashes, the fires, the cold, the lack of food and water, and the lack of medicine, millions of people worldwide had died on or in the months following PF Day.
According to the latest count in Kansas City, there were at least 15,600 people dead from the power failure. And that was just Kansas City. We could only imagine what the total was for the entire country — or the world. One thing that really struck us as tragic was that there had been no contact with the astronauts on the International Space Station, and no one knew for sure if they were alive or dead. I don’t know why that seemed more tragic than all t
he other terrible things, but somehow, the thought of them abandoned out in space seemed especially disheartening.
There were so many unknowns, like how long would it take for everything to be back to normal? When was the manufacturing industry going to get back online? When were stores going to start having products again? When would they get satellites back in space again, so we could have cell phones and satellite TV? When would they begin to drill for oil again and to refine it into gasoline? Would the banks and the stock markets collapse? Would we be in a depression? There were too many questions that couldn’t be answered yet.
After soaking in the news, I went to my room and locked the door. I didn’t want Alex to come in while I was reading the card from Skylar. I won’t reveal everything it said, but the gist of it was that she loved me. She said that I had changed her life. Imagine that—at a time when PF Day changed the world, she believed I was the one who had changed hers.
Despite the bad news on the TV, it had been a wonderful birthday.
Chapter 11
The next week, we started back to school. The school district couldn’t afford the fuel for the busses, so it was up to each family to get their kids to school. A lot of people couldn’t afford the gas either, so some of the families who lived outside of town decided to homeschool. Others rode their horses in, but only the ones who lived close enough. The school had to set up a place to keep the horses while we were in school. Since Mom didn’t work in town anymore, Alex drove us to school in Mom’s car.
It was so weird, sitting there in class and listening to the teachers and trying to act like everything was normal. We all knew it wasn’t. Even the teachers found it hard to stay on topic. The classes often ended up talking about PF Day, what had happened since, and what might happen in the future. Our normal subjects just seemed so irrelevant now, and we struggled through until the end of the school year.
Teenage Survivalist Series [Books 1-3] Page 7
