by Akart, Bobby
However, her rational mind ruled out those two possibilities. Others would’ve noticed another refugee sneaking a cigarette. She even wandered toward the latrine, hoping to catch a whiff. There was nothing.
Until she returned to the supply closet, as the coach called it. It was stronger than a cigarette. It had a burnt chemical odor mixed with the smell of their fireplace after a long weekend of split oak logs and pine kindling being turned into ash.
Lacey had no idea what time it was. Those with wind-up watches had stopped announcing the time on the hour out of respect for those asleep. She assumed it was nighttime, as so many were sleeping, their biological clocks dictating when it was time for rest.
She found a folding chair stashed between the boxes of MREs. She opened it up and set it under the vent. After a look around, she climbed onto the seat and stretched as high as she could on her tiptoes without falling over. That was when she confirmed her suspicions.
There was a strong odor of smoke coming through the vent. She wasn’t sure if it applied to all the ventilation in the system, such that it was, in the shelter. She only hoped it was coming from outside and not due to the gymnasium being on fire.
Owen finally stirred awake and sat up against the wall. After rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings, Lacey explained what she’d learned. He stood and made his way to the chair that she’d left under the vent. He took in a deep breath and smelled the odor. He closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. Owen took another deep breath and furrowed his brow.
He lovingly placed his hand behind Lacey’s head and placed his cheek on hers. He whispered, “It reminds me of the East Bay fires in the summer of 2020. The smell is exactly the same.”
That summer, dozens of fires had burned out of control in Santa Clara County and Alameda County near their home in Hayward. Twenty-two vegetation fires and seven structure fires kept emergency teams busy as they fought to protect the neighborhoods along the ridge overlooking the Bay Area. It was nip and tuck for the McDowells for a while until the East Bay firefighters, together with volunteers from all over the state, got the blazes under control. Owen would never forget the smell of the danger that had approached them that July.
“It’s not the building, right?” she asked.
“I don’t think so, but it might not be that far away.”
Tucker woke up and stood next to his parents. “What’s going on?”
Owen held a single finger to his lips to encourage him to keep his voice down. “Don’t react. Okay?”
Tucker nodded his head, indicating he understood.
Owen whispered to his son, “There may be a fire nearby.”
Tucker grimaced and scratched his shaggy hair. “That sucks.” Two words that spoke volumes.
“What should we do?” asked Lacey.
Owen looked around and then responded, “Let’s make our way to the front door. Be discreet about it. When the rest of these people smell the smoke, they’re gonna lose it.”
Lacey didn’t hesitate. She was the first to begin winding through the bodies of people sleeping on the floor or sitting cross-legged with their chin rested in the palm of their hand.
Tucker was next, and Owen followed close behind. Lacey had arrived at the front, and Tucker was almost there. Owen shuffled past a man, who suddenly grabbed him by the ankle.
“Where ya goin’, buddy?”
Owen looked nervously around him. He was only twenty feet or so from the front of the shelter.
“Um, my wife was creeped out about that guy dying,” Owen replied unconvincingly. “I promised we could get as far away as possible.”
“That was a while ago. Why all of a sudden-like?” The man pressed Owen for answers.
Owen wanted to respond that it was none of the nosy man’s business, but he knew that would be counterproductive and result in an argument. He opted to throw Lacey under the bus.
“Listen, I think she’s overreacting, but what can I say? Happy wife, happy life. Right?”
Owen’s tone of voice sold the lie.
“Don’t I know it. My old lady insisted upon coming down here. I wanted to head up the highway toward Tahoe. She might’ve been right, but I’ll never admit it. She’d throw it in my face for years.” The man released Owen’s ankle.
Owen smirked in the dim light. The guy was a douchebag.
“Yeah, I guess. Um, take it easy.”
Seconds later, he was standing next to the entry door with his family.
Forty minutes later, the first occupant voiced concerns about smelling smoke. After several baseless smoking accusations against a teenager who’d just used the latrine, the coach and police officer huddled in the supply storage room.
The basketball coach, who was nearly six feet three, stood on the chair. He reached over his head to grasp a steel girder, and with the help of the officer, he pulled himself up. He was able to place his face directly under the vent, where he confirmed his suspicions from earlier. He sniffed the air hesitantly at first. He grimaced and then took a deeper breath. There was no mistaking the source of the smoky odor.
His plan was to slowly make his way to the front of the shelter. However, he’d barely stepped off the chair when the strong odor of smoke began to permeate the room through the other vents. Soon, everyone could smell the charred remains of the firestorm raging across the Sacramento River toward Rio Linda and into Citrus Heights.
The massive blaze dwarfed anything the State of California had ever witnessed, and it was barely fifteen miles away.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday, October 26
Mount Weather Operations Center
Northern Virginia
Mount Weather, which was located near Bluemont in Northern Virginia, was designed to hold the civilian leadership of the U.S. government, including the Supreme Court, cabinet officials, and senior congressional leaders. In addition to the president and his immediate staff, Mount Weather housed an exclusive list of nearly sixty-five hundred survivors viewed as vital to maintaining essential and uninterrupted services during a catastrophic event.
Some of these civilians came into Mount Weather after the nuclear bombs struck America. No one could say with absolute certainty that China wouldn’t respond to the total destruction of North Korea. The Beijing government was known for disinformation campaigns and breaking their word. Accordingly, military helicopters that were hardened against the effects of an EMP were dispatched around the Eastern United States to gather up these business leaders and professionals who were key to implementing the nation’s recovery plan.
Included in those who’d assist the nation’s recovery effort were top level executives from Duke Energy, which serviced the Mid-Atlantic states and Florida; Commonwealth Edison in Illinois; and ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which managed the flow of electric power to the wholly independent Texas Interconnection.
Upon arrival, following an initial briefing led by the secretary of Homeland Security, the three senior executives of their respective utilities gathered in the Balloon Shed, an aboveground bar within the secured grounds of Mount Weather. The name was a nod back to the site’s original use as a weather balloon launch station.
The three men spoke about the difficulties maintaining the Texas, Eastern, and Western Interconnections that make up America’s power grid. As they spoke, they were cognizant of the fact that a siren could be triggered at any moment, forcing them back underground.
“We’ve always worked under the two-and-sixty premise,” explained the president of Charlotte-based Duke Energy. “With the current structure of the grid, a failure in two percent of the transmission substations could cause a cascading effect resulting in a loss of sixty percent in all power connectivity.”
In terms of electric energy distribution, a cascading failure resulted in the failure of a few parts that in turn could trigger other failed parts of the grid and so on. One of the most significant examples of this in recent times occurred in India in 2012.
Two severe blackouts resulted in a power loss to most of eastern and northern India. Over four hundred million people were affected by the outage. After circuit breakers in a major transmission facility were tripped, breakers at other stations followed suit as the power failures cascaded through India’s power grid.
In the United States, negligent system operators working for regional electric supplier Akron-based FirstEnergy caused a blackout that cascaded from New York City across the American Midwest and into Canada’s Ontario Province. They’d been experiencing nuisance alarms and made the decision to turn down the volume on the warning signals. When a valid warning sounded, engineers at FirstEnergy were unaware and failed to act. As a result, for almost three days, some of the most densely populated cities in North America were without power during the heat of August. Rioting, looting, and other forms of criminal activity swept through the cities.
“We’re immune from what happens to you guys and the Western Interconnection grid,” said the ERCOT CEO. “We do have some outages reported in the Panhandle because of its proximity to Denver, where the EMP was initiated.”
The Texas power grid was not connected to the rest of the country, so the cascading failures endured in the East and West would not directly affect Texas.
The Duke Energy representative took a sip of his drink. “Here in the east, we support most of the nation’s population and deliver seventy-five percent of its energy. The western states are already dragging on our reserves. Between the EMP effect resulting from the bomb blasts in DC and New York, plus the Western Interconnection sucking the life out of us, our rolling brownouts will soon be blackouts.”
The three men shook their heads as they contemplated their predicament. The president would be meeting with them later, and he was expecting them to offer a solution to the power outages being experienced by areas outside the blast zone.
“We could sever our ties to the West,” suggested the president of Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison.
The ERCOT CEO threw his head back and chuckled. “You can’t be serious. Do you know what you’re suggesting?”
“Absolutely,” the Chicagoan replied. “I know you Duke boys have thought the same thing. We’ve identified certain transmission stations and the high-voltage power lines that run from them. If we were to cut the lines, literally, the Western grid would be on their own.”
The president of Duke Energy weighed in. “I’m aware. That said, I can’t advocate it. You’re talking about sentencing a third of the country to an extended period without power. As the EMP Commission found, ninety percent of those affected will die within a year due to lack of water and food, among other things.”
“They’re going to anyway,” the president of Comm Edison shot back. “You heard the reports of these superfires during our briefing. They’ll be in the dark soon from the smoke and soot.”
“Have you looked at the skies lately?” asked the ERCOT attendee. “It’s happening here, too.”
“All the more reason to protect our own power supply,” said the Comm Edison president. “In a crisis, you help the most the best you can. If we don’t cut off the dead weight, my apologies for the crass reference, we’re sentencing our own customers to death.”
The men sat in silence for a moment as a strong wind blew past the building. The sun was beginning to set although, from the darkness of the skies, that process seemed to have begun hours prior. Finally, the ERCOT CEO spoke up.
“Since I don’t have a dog in the hunt, I’ll tell you what I think. We Texans are fiercely independent. If the president called on us to connect to the Eastern or Western Interconnection, I can’t say with certainty that we’d do it. He’d have to send in the military to force us, and they’d better pack a lunch. Virtually every Texan has a gun or three.
“That said, it’s not our or, shall I say, your job to make the president’s decision for him. You should lay out the options without leading him in one direction or another. He volunteered for the job, and as they say, with great power comes great responsibility.”
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday, October 26
Fair Oaks Mall
Fairfax, Virginia
As day turned to night on the second day following the nuclear attacks, the atmosphere within the mall changed dramatically. After picking up a duffel bag and a few more things from the sporting goods store, Peter remained inside the storeroom in an effort to stay concealed from others and to avoid unnecessary exposure to any radioactive fallout. Thus far, other than the two young men who’d wandered into the store early on, he’d been left alone.
Everything changed that night. He’d been studying an Atlas that contained campground information he’d found at Dick’s Sporting Goods when gunshots rang out inside the mall. Screams filled the air as the shots continued. The gunmen suddenly stopped shooting. The cessation didn’t prevent people from screaming in abject panic.
Peter retrieved his weapon and rushed to the storeroom door. He cracked it slightly so he could hear better. A voice was bellowing loud enough that he could distinctly make out the words.
“Yo! Shut up! I got somethin’ to say!”
The man paused, waiting for compliance. When people continued to cry and talk to one another, shots were fired again, this time into the skylights above the center of the mall. Peter heard glass raining down on the tent city that had been established by refugees with young families. He gripped his pistol angrily, wanting to put the mouthy bully in his place.
“Do I have your attention now? Listen to me!” he continued to shout.
Peter slipped around the plastic and eased along the wall between the destroyed display cabinets until he reached the front entrance. There were a few people standing in front of the store, but their attention was directed toward the center of the mall. Peter couldn’t see past several obstacles, but he could certainly hear better now.
“Everybody needs to leave. This is our mall, and you’re being evicted. Got it?”
“We have no place to go,” a man complained.
A shot rang out, and a chorus of screams filled the entire mall. The people standing in front of the store fell to the floor and covered their heads. Peter didn’t have to step into the open to find out what had happened.
“Anybody else want to argue?” the gunman asked. He fired off several rounds into the air, drawing more screams. “Good. I think we understand each other. Now get off your asses and get out of here!”
“Where will we go?” asked a woman.
No shots were fired this time. “Well, you can go back to DC if you want. Or you can stay here and play with us. Or I don’t give a damn. Your choice. If you argue, you’ll end up like him!” This time, he fired off a round to act as an exclamation point on his statement.
At that point, people began racing for the exits. Peter did the same although he had no intention of carrying his gear through the front door. He rushed in the dark back to the storeroom. He frantically crammed everything he’d acquired into the backpack and duffels. He inwardly chastised himself for not being ready to escape the space on a moment’s notice. Now he had to find a way out of the mall without being seen with his supplies and weapons.
Once packed, Peter made his way in the dark to the rear emergency exit. He expected it to lead into an alley or even the parking lot. With a deep breath, he slowly leaned his hip against the steel plate attached to the alarmed exit device. He assumed the EMP had disabled the alarm.
He was wrong.
Once the push bar opened the lock mechanism, the hundred-decibel alarm began to wail, piercing the silence at his end of the mall.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” he cursed without trying to lower his voice, not that anybody could hear him. In the relative silence of the eight-hundred-thousand-square-foot shopping complex, the alarm filled the air and echoed off the concrete corridor he’d entered.
He moved carefully in the darkened hallway normally used by mall employees to access the dumpsters and t
o accept deliveries. Allowing his left elbow rubbing along the painted block wall to guide him, he tried to avoid stumbling over empty boxes that had been left out the night before. After tripping over a folding chair that caused him to lose his balance slightly, Peter gave up on stealth in favor of speed. He powered up his flashlight and picked up the pace.
Suddenly, a door in front of him flung open. Peter’s weapons were stowed away in his sling pack. In his hasty exit, he hadn’t armed himself. If the gunmen fired on him, he’d be dead. He had to make the first move in order to defend himself, taking a page out of the gun battle in Abu Dhabi.
He ran toward the door and body-slammed it in an attempt to knock down the person who’d opened it. The person on the other side was smacked in the back and knocked into the steel and concrete doorjamb.
A woman moaned in pain and fell to the ground. She was unrelated to the gunmen.
Peter felt terrible. He set his bags down and knelt down next to her. “Dammit! I’m so sorry.”
“My head,” she groaned as she held her hand up to her forehead. Blood dripped between her fingers.
Peter heard shouting coming from the front of the store where the woman emerged. He shined his flashlight ahead and saw an exit door.
“Come on!” He reached down and ran his hand through her armpit. He forcefully lifted her up without regard to her pain. If they didn’t leave, they’d both be dead soon.
She gathered herself and stood on her own. “Okay,” she mumbled.
Peter grabbed his gear, and they began to run down the corridor until they reached another push-bar entrance, only this one didn’t have an alarm. Seconds later, they emerged from the mall into the cool, smoky air, gasping for breath.
The young woman didn’t hesitate. She rushed off into the darkness without Peter. Despite the blood gushing out of her forehead, she was able to run on her own and easily outpaced Peter as he lugged the duffel bags along with his backpacks. They stayed close to the wall of Dick’s Sporting Goods and then found themselves in the middle of the parking lot. Peter didn’t like the lack of cover, but the pitch blackness that surrounded him prevented their pursuers from seeing them standing in the middle of the predominantly empty space.
