The Jakarta Pandemic

by Steven Konkoly

  “You could make toast if we had any bread left,” Alex said.

  “Oh yeahhhh,” Ryan said and plopped down on one of the island stools.

  “Or if your mom ever dusted off the bread maker in the basement. We have everything we need to make it.”

  “How long do you think the power will be out, Dad?”

  “Pretty long time. Longer than we’re used to. I’d be willing to bet that the ice knocked down a bunch of lines. With the flu out there, I’d be surprised if CMP had the manpower to make a dent in repairing the downed lines.”

  “So…can I play Xbox?”

  “Not all day. We’re gonna try to figure out how much battery power basic stuff like that will drain from the system. Right now, let’s shoot for an hour of playtime, then we’ll see about adding time. Who knows? We might be able to run the TV up there all day and not have to worry. Right now all we’re running is the fridge, which we really don’t need, the furnace and some computer equipment. Everything else is unplugged for now,” Alex said.

  “Have you tried the cable?”

  “Sorry, buddy. Cable TV is dead. Good news is that the internet still works. I’m still running power to our router,” he said optimistically.

  “Good, I can still go live on the Xbox,” Ryan said.

  “I don’t know how many other people will be on there anymore.”

  “There should still be a bunch of people outside of New England. There’s usually people from all over.”

  “Maybe, but probably not for long. Most experts estimate that large portions of the country’s electrical grid will fail within the next few days anyway. Fuel deliveries to the power plants have been sporadic or non-existent for the past few weeks, and most plants are using up all of their reserve coal to keep operating,” Alex told him.

  “We’re really gonna be here for a long time, aren’t we?” Ryan replied wistfully, staring out at the near-blizzard conditions.

  Alex nodded his head.

  **

  Alex put the last empty tin can on the plank resting against the basement door. Several minutes earlier, he’d finished a sweep of the basement, checking the bulkhead door and taking a look at any of the basement nooks that could conceal an intruder. He opened the door to the bunker and removed the Uniden scanners, which now sat in his office, charging. New information from internet sources and the radio was sparse at best.

  From what he could tell, the power failures were widespread throughout New England, sparing few communities in southern or central Maine. All efforts to return power were directed toward the reestablishment of permanent power links to hospitals, triage centers, and local law enforcement systems, which meant that the populace was extremely unlikely to see power any time soon.

  Finished with the cans, he turned and looked at the kitchen window, which was now covered by an old dark blue towel. He had nailed the top corners of the towel to the trim just before dinner. This was the last window on the ground floor that needed to be covered. He’d finished a similar project on the mudroom door earlier in the afternoon. He glanced around at the kitchen and great room, which was scarcely illuminated by the stove light’s lowest setting. He planned to turn it off later when everyone was asleep.

  He headed upstairs and saw empty tin cans, assorted wood planks and a folding chair to the left of the railing, sitting in the darkened hallway to his office. He planned to create another early warning trap on the stairs.

  He turned left toward the master bedroom, which was faintly lit by a small lamp on Kate’s dresser. He heard the shower running as he approached the bedroom door, thought about joining Kate in the shower, and began to feel excited, but the stirrings were immediately quelled as he stepped up to the bathroom door.

  “Hi, Daddy. Mommy’s taking a shower,” he heard from the bedroom.

  He turned and walked toward Emily, who was reading a book, buried under a pink and purple checkered fleece blanket on the couch.

  So much for that.

  “Sweetie, you can turn another light on in here. I don’t want your eyes to fall out of your head,” he said, ruffling her hair.

  “I don’t want to use up all of our electricity. Mommy said we could all watch a movie later if the batteries are charged up,” she squeaked.

  “Right now the batteries are fine, and we most certainly can still watch a movie together in here.”

  “But not on cable,” she stated flatly.

  All they’re worried about is the cable.

  “Nope. The cable probably won’t be on back for a while. Tomorrow, we can bring the DVR box up here from the downstairs. We have a ton of shows and movies stored on it, and as long as it has power, we can watch those shows,” he said.

  At least I hope so.

  Alex looked around at the room, seeing two inflated air mattresses and a large assortment of sleeping bags and blankets. From this point forward, the kids would stay in the master bedroom at night, with no exceptions. Even if an intruder tripped two of the alarms downstairs, he wasn’t convinced that he could react in time to put himself between the intruder and the kids’ rooms. With the threat of the Mansons looming, they’d both agreed that the best strategy was to keep everyone in the same place, with the door locked.

  “I’m gonna check on a few things, then we’ll get Ryan and watch a movie together,” he said to Emily.

  “Sounds good, Daddy,” she said, without lifting her head from the book.

  “Be back in a few.” He headed out of the bedroom toward his office, turned into the dark hallway leading to his office, and almost tripped on all of the junk he had dropped there earlier. He walked forward to the only window in the house that wasn’t covered, looking behind him to make sure that the background was dark enough not to create a silhouette of his body. There was barely enough light in the hallway to keep from stumbling, so he wasn’t overly concerned.

  He leaned on the windowsill with both hands and stared out into the complete darkness. He sensed heavy snowfall passing the window, blown by steady gusts of wind, and saw a crust of snow forming on the screen outside of the glass window. Through the Cimmerian murk, he strained to identify barely discernible dark patches in his front yard, where he remembered the trees stood, laughing to himself at the thought of anyone staking out his house tonight. Still, he wouldn’t take any chances because if he had to plan and execute an assault on one of the houses in the neighborhood, he’d pick a night like tonight.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Monday, December 2, 2013

  Alex stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to Kate’s deep rhythmic breathing, unable to find sleep. Despite feeling exhausted from the previous evening’s scattered sleep, he was still too anxious to drift away. Every time he felt himself start to slide into an unconscious haze, he involuntarily formed another paranoid thought, which triggered a small adrenaline rush. He continued to repeat this cycle, unable to sink under.

  The paranoia came in several forms, but mainly materialized as a desire to check and re-check the doors, the windows, and his Jerry-rigged alarm system. He knew that if he got up and actually checked that he’d start an even worse cycle of paranoia. So he lay there, accepting the finite amount of rest granted by almost falling asleep, over and over again.

  He started to drift off again, but jerked awake, fully convinced that he’d heard a noise from downstairs. He peeled away the blankets and comforter, careful not to wake Kate or Emily. He sat on his side of the bed and stared at the pistol on his nightstand.

  There’s nothing down there. I know it.

  “I’ll just listen at the top of the stairs,” he whispered to no one.

  Twenty minutes later, convinced that nothing was wrong, he sidestepped the alarm contraption next to the railing and entered his office, leaving the door open. He turned on the swing arm desk lamp and lowered the arm until it was only several inches off the desk. Most of the light was cast directly onto the desk, and not the rest of the room.

  If I can’t sleep, I’ll su
rf the web until my eyes fall out.

  Alex spent the next hour alternating between staring at his computer screen and listening intently to a completely silent house. From the computer he managed to assemble an ominous picture of the situation in the Northeast. The storm had swept along the eastern seaboard and tangled with arctic air north of New Jersey starting late Saturday night. Gradually, over the course of Saturday evening and early Sunday morning, the arctic air dominated most of the Northeast, wreaking havoc on New England.

  Widespread power outages were reported from Stamford to Bangor, and state authorities offered little hope that the power would be restored any time soon. ISPAC officials expected regional power grids to fail within a week as critical power plants ceased to generate power. Rolling blackouts prior to permanent darkness could be expected on a regional and then national level. ISPAC officials urged the Department of Energy to take steps to regionalize blackouts and prevent a nationwide failure.

  CDC and ISPAC officials predicted absenteeism to peak during that same week, topping 90% nationwide, as the population isolated itself in fear of the H16N1 virus.

  It’ll be higher up here with this storm.

  He couldn’t imagine anyone beyond the National Guard, medical community, or police leaving their homes. Beyond that, even if you wanted to go to work, he couldn’t imagine a business that was still open at this point.

  Hospitals, triage centers, police stations, radio stations? Casco Bay Lines ferry? What would be the point of leaving one of the islands?

  Alex turned off the computer screen and lifted the window shade up a few inches to stare out of the window.

  Nothing.

  He was astonished that he couldn’t see the trees less than forty feet from the house. He had only seen nature conspire to do this once before, on the other side of the world. He remembered being engulfed by thick sheets of impenetrable red sand, as his entire battalion lay sealed up and silent along an unpaved road north of the Euphrates River, the glass viewports on his armored vehicle affording him a dark red view of absolutely nothing.

  Visibility was limited to five feet in the worst surges of sand, and fifteen to twenty feet under the best circumstances during the storms. Vehicles were stacked within yards of each other along the road, and the marines rotated through perimeter security duty when they weren’t huddled inside their light armored vehicles.

  The infantry fought off several scattered waves of confused Fedayeen loyalists that had somehow eluded the battalion’s thermal sights and stumbled right into the marines’ fighting positions. They were dispatched quickly, but the brief firefights generated confusion and paranoia. The marines fired on a lot of “confirmed” enemy that day, and Alex had listened tensely to the battalion communications net for the friendly fire report that mercifully never materialized.

  He drifted back to the sheer impenetrable darkness in front of him, thinking about the criminals hunkered down at the Murrays’, burning Greg’s firewood, or maybe even his furniture for warmth.

  I don’t think he ever got a delivery of firewood this fall.

  Alex envisioned the Mansons sawing apart Greg’s dining room furniture to toss into the fire. He slowly shook his head.

  They’ll run out of furniture in a day or two, and then they’ll be on the prowl again.

  He shut the shade and resolved to get some desperately needed sleep.

  Alex felt Kate stir in the bed. She got up several seconds later, kissed him on the forehead, and replaced the covers. Bright sunlight poured into the bedroom from the transom windows, and Alex struggled to move, fighting the grogginess to check his watch.

  Ten. Jesus.

  He wasn’t surprised to see the time. He vaguely remembered glancing at his watch around three in the morning. He heard the toilet flush in the master bathroom, followed by water running in the sink, and Kate emerged from the bathroom. She walked over to the front windows and raised the shades.

  “Hey, looks like the plow made a run down the street. It’s all clear. We got a lot of snow,” she said.

  Alex rose up onto his elbow and squinted at her over the blankets. “Two feet, they thought. Is the street really cleared?”

  “Yeah, but you’re gonna have to do something about the driveway. The plow made a wall at the end,” she said and turned toward the open bedroom door.

  He knocked off the covers and sat on the side of the bed facing the door. “I never heard it come down the street. Usually sounds like a 747 crashing into the neighborhood.”

  “None of us had a chance to hear it through your snoring. You were dead to the world this morning. The kids got up early and went back to their rooms it was so bad,” Kate said.

  “Sorry. It’s been a long couple of nights,” he said apologetically.

  “You should really crash out some more. You need the rest.”

  “No, that’s okay, I need to get up and move around. If you get some coffee started, I’ll cook up some pancakes,” he promised.

  “You read my mind. I’ll get everything going,” she said and disappeared through the door.

  Alex stood at the side of the bed and raised his arms in the air, stretching his hands toward the ceiling. He leaned over and reached for the floor, coming nowhere remotely close to the carpet.

  I need to start stretching again.

  “Hey, hon?” he heard from somewhere down the hallway.

  “Yes?” he responded, pushing the stretch further.

  “Am I gonna get hurt trying to take this thing apart?” she asked.

  He straightened his back and walked toward the door. Down the hallway, he saw Kate standing at the top of the stairs.

  “No, just take the cans off, and step over the trip line. I’ll move the line in a minute,” he said.

  “Okay, I just didn’t want to get hit in the head with a paint can or something,” she said, walking down the stairs cautiously.

  “Very funny.”

  She stopped a quarter of the way down. Alex could still see her head. “Any other new surprises down here?”

  “No, but before you do anything down there, check all of the doors, and make sure nothing is disturbed.”

  “All right,” she replied, and he detected a shift in her tone, from playful to cautious.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sunday, December 8, 2013

  Alex stared out of the front great room window as the second snowstorm of the season tapered to a wispy indecisive powder. He sipped lukewarm coffee and tried to gauge the amount of fresh snowfall lying undisturbed on the street. He couldn’t imagine any circumstance that could bring one of the town’s few operating plows out to Durham Road again. He took another sip and looked in both directions down the street.

  Nothing.

  He walked toward the stairs in the foyer, steadying his coffee for the ascent. He reached the top just as Kate emerged from the master suite bathroom wearing a white knee-length cotton robe. Her black hair, still wet from a shower, draped over the robe and behind her shoulders. She nodded to him and met him at the bedroom door.

  “Nice shower?” he asked and hoped that his tone hadn’t come across wrong.

  They hadn’t seen more than a few hours of solid sunlight since the first storm, and Alex had watched the Power Cube battery status shrink at a predictable, yet slightly alarming rate. As of last night, the Power Cube’s LED showed the battery reserves at fifty-three percent, which was a marginally comfortable level for him, given six days of impenetrable cloud cover. With two or three clear days in the forecast, the system should regain most of the lost charge. Either way, he planned to make a few suggestions to stretch the battery life during long overcast stretches of time. Robbing Kate of a long, relaxing hot shower was not one of his immediate suggestions.

  “Beyond excellent. It’s amazing how good a hot shower feels after going a few days without one,” she said.

  “Yeah, we’re pretty lucky. There won’t be many hot showers in this neighborhood for quite a while,” he acknowl
edged and kissed her lips.

  He pushed his binoculars over to the right and under his armpit as he moved in further to hug her.

  “I’m not hugging your rifle,” she said, holding his shoulders and avoiding the AR-15 rifle slung barrel up behind his back.

  “Don’t worry. She doesn’t like anyone handling her but me.” He kissed her again.

  “I guess I have more in common with her than I thought. She still sleeps on the floor though,” Kate said.

  “Fair enough. Besides, there’s no more room in our bed with the kids,” he said and walked toward the front window next to the office.

  “No kidding. I keep expecting Ryan to crawl in next. How much snow did we get?” she asked.

  Alex reached the window and stared down at the street. “Easily another foot. Foot and a half maybe? It’s hard to tell from the house.” He peered between the Sheppards’ and Bradys’ houses with the binoculars.

  He could finally see the Murrays’ roofline, which had been obscured by the thick snowfall for most of the early morning hours. He zeroed in on the chimney visible to the far left of the roof.

  Nothing. No smoke. Well, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s still early.

  “What are you staring at?” she asked, moving up next to him.

  “Murrays’ house. See the other houses with chimneys? How most of them are puffing white smoke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there was smoke coming from their chimney yesterday afternoon, and now there’s nothing.”

  “Please don’t harass me when I ask this, but so what?” she asked and winced.

  “So what? So what?” he said mockingly. “Just kidding. I really don’t know actually. I’m so bored that this is the kind of shit I keep track of now. However, I do have a theory if you want to hear it.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I think they’re out of wood, and if they’re out of wood, there’s going to be trouble. I saw the Coopers out yesterday with Max, and I’m pretty sure they were moving their wood indoors. I guarantee they’re not the only ones that have spent a little time over the past few days safeguarding their only source of heat, especially after the Mansons’ daylight wood gathering foray,” he said.