Nate went to a large bay window that peered out onto the street, watching with dread as the snow continued piling up. The cold hand closing around his heart was making it hard to breathe. His initial instinct, the one he’d prepared for all these years, was to hunker down and wait it out. They had enough food, water and ammunition to keep them going for a few weeks. Staying put was also generally smarter than hightailing it into the woods. For one, you would be exposed to immense danger during the journey. Second, there was no telling what you’d find once you got to your destination, assuming you even had one. Living in the woods sure sounded romantic, but even that took a hardiness most did not possess. Besides, it wasn’t a sustainable solution.
But the real dealbreaker they were facing was the weather. Grabbing a go-bag and fleeing into the woods in the dead of summer might be challenging, but at least you could sleep out under the stars. In winter, all bets were off. And Nate had to admit, every single one of his evacuation scenarios had taken for granted it would occur some time in the summer. Could that be because the vast majority of the research he had done tended to address that very scenario? Sadly, fleeing your home in the dead of winter, let alone during one of the biggest snowstorms in decades, was not a scenario often covered by members of the prepping community. And perhaps for good reason. If our enemies attacked us during the coldest months of the year, tens of millions would never live to see the following spring.
That very thought helped to crystalize another disturbing realization. None of what he’d witnessed over the last twelve to fifteen hours was coincidental. The country was under the largest and potentially the most devastating attack in its history.
But this latest stage involving the Byron nuclear power plant was beyond evil. Against all odds, the culprits had somehow managed to insert malware into the plant’s security network. Lacking details, Nate could only speculate, but this had been precisely the reason he’d fought so hard to wargame such a scenario. It didn’t matter that our nuclear plants weren’t connected to the internet. Neither was the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran and nation states had still managed to infect their systems with a worm called Stuxnet and destroy about a thousand centrifuges.
The theory was that the malware had been inserted via a corrupt thumb drive. It was a point Nate had brought up more than once to the executives in charge. After the company’s president had ordered him to drop it, Nate had taken his concerns to the board of directors. The following day he’d been terminated from the company.
But that wouldn’t change the deficiencies in his plant’s cyber-security protocol Nate had witnessed. Even after the successful Iranian attack, Nate had seen thumb drives with the company’s logo being used to move information from laptops to desktops within the complex. How hard would it have been for a bad actor working a low-level admin position to slip a corrupted drive onto someone’s desk? All it took was for some overworked and unsuspecting schlub to plug it in and the worm would do the rest.
Another potential access point he’d identified was the hardware itself. Programmable logic controllers or PLCs are digital computer components imbedded inside hardware that’s designed to control industrial processes. In 2007, during the Aurora Generator Test, a group of hackers took control of a generator and sent instructions via its PLC, causing it to explode. That should have been a wake-up call to the world that industrial sabotage no longer required throwing monkey wrenches into the works. The wrench was obsolete and with powerful tools like Stuxnet, the works could be destroyed from almost anywhere.
The attack on Iran’s uranium production back in 2007 had been a clear victory for the good guys. But with Stuxnet’s release, a Pandora’s box of sorts had been swung wide open. Soon the same malicious code that had worked to such devastating effect against the Iranians was being retooled by our enemies and used against us. In a strange twist of irony, we had armed them with the very weapons with which to destroy us.
Chapter 7
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” Amy asked. She was standing behind him, the comforter wrapped tightly around her. A white plume escaped her lips as she spoke.
Nate stared outside at the blowing snow, weighing his options. Slowly, he turned and laid out the situation as he understood it.
“I just knew something was going on,” Amy said, her blonde ponytail swinging about her shoulders as she shook her head. “I could feel it in my bones.”
“And in my knee,” Nate replied, trying on a weak smile and finding it didn’t quite fit.
“Who have you talked to?”
He shook his head. “No one yet. I tried Evan, who was doing an overnight shift at the plant. But I haven’t heard back. Cell calls aren’t going through. What about you?”
“I got a text from my dad,” Amy told him. “Looks like the power’s also out in Nebraska.”
Nate’s own folks had both passed five years ago, their lives claimed in a car crash in Arizona.
“For now, we have plenty of chopped wood and a stove we can use to cook food on,” he said, swallowing a sudden lump in his throat and heading into the living room. Once there, Nate stoked the dying embers and threw a few logs on and closed the door. The fireplace itself was an insert, which was more heat-efficient than an open fireplace and also provided a ledge that could be used for preparing meals.
“If we end up leaving, we could head for my parents’ place,” Amy suggested.
Nate wasn’t sure. “To be honest, we aren’t there yet. We should get ready in case we need to bug out, but I want to hear from Evan first. If anyone can get things at the plant under control it’s him.”
“And what if he’s stuck there and can’t get through to us?”
Nate could see Amy’s mind was also reeling with frightening possibilities.
“I mean, Nate, this is beyond the worst-case scenario.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” he said, calmly, doing his very best to reassure her. The reminder that he was dealing with a pregnant wife carrying his unborn daughter was never far from his mind. He would never let anything happen to them, even if that meant laying down his own life.
“So what now then?” she asked, approaching the fire and holding out her hands in search of warmth.
“We need to grab Lauren and the twins. She’s at home alone and there’s no telling when Evan will be back. I can only imagine how freaked out they’ll be once they figure out what’s going on. You and I will swing by, fill up both trucks with as many supplies as we can and escort them back here.”
“You want her to drive back here in her own truck in this weather? The cab in the Dodge has enough room for all five of us.”
“Hey, I know Lauren,” Nate said, frowning. “She and Hunter don’t pack light. Besides, we’ll need room for the rest of the food. With four extra mouths to feed, the supplies I put aside won’t last long. If we go slow, we should be fine. The alternative is I leave my pregnant wife at home alone and I’m simply not prepared to do that.”
Amy nodded, staring at the fire with a mix of fear and dread for what lay ahead.
•••
Shortly after, Nate was outside by the pickup, bundled against the elements and furiously shoveling snow from the driveway. The accumulation was somewhere past his knees with no end in sight. He paused for a moment to catch his breath and relieve the pinch building in his lower back. The sky was diffuse, as though they were under a dome of old, weather-beaten glass. A bright spot above the nearby tree line marked the rising sun. It was still early, no later than seven am, but he also knew it would be dark somewhere around four pm.
As soon as he’d cleared a rough path from the house to the truck, he went to the garage. A gas can he kept for the lawnmower was about a quarter full and he dumped that into the pickup. Needless to say, the idea of cutting grass months from now felt incredibly remote.
While he was busy outside, Amy was in the house getting ready and, more importantly, reaching out to Lauren. The two women spoke frequently over the phone.
Nate had learned from experience that if he told his high-strung sister-in-law to move her tush, it would only magnify any anxiety she was already feeling. He seemed to have that effect on people. Nate wasn’t sure if it was the combination of his goatee and shaved head—a thought he pondered as he pulled the wool cap down over his frozen ears—or the timbre of his voice that could just as quickly lower to a growl in moments of danger. His wife thought of him as a teddy bear, but she also knew it didn’t take much for that teddy to become a grizzly.
Amy appeared, dressed in a long winter jacket and boots with matching hat and gloves.
“Did you manage to get a hold of her?” he asked as they headed for the truck.
She nodded. “Cell phones still aren’t working. But I got her on the landline, thank God. She’d just seen a text from Evan and was freaking out.”
“I’m not surprised,” Nate said.
“Well, you can’t blame her.”
That was true, he admitted to himself as they climbed into the truck. He started the engine, the dashboard lights flickering on as the beast roared to life. His eyes found the gas gauge at once, willing that little needle to move just a little bit higher. It sat somewhere around a fifth of a tank. Enough for the trip they were about to take. His brother’s place wasn’t more than a few minutes away by car. Unfortunately, without power, the pumps at the gas station had stopped working as well, which meant all that precious fuel was as good as useless.
Nate backed the truck up, rolling her hefty thirty-three-inch tires over the peaks of blowing snow layering the street like waves on the ocean. Nate grunted. “I sure hope they aren’t packing for a trip to Cozumel.”
“Be patient,” she admonished him. “I know you wanna keep everyone safe. Lauren understands how serious the situation is.” She reached out to rub the back of his neck when she spotted the pistol in the center console. “Is that really necessary?”
Nate grit his teeth as the truck fishtailed through the heavy snow. “I hope not.”
Chapter 8
Nate and Amy drove through the blinding snow. The wipers flicked back and forth at full speed and even that wasn’t enough to keep the windshield free from the incessant accumulation. If a grown man were to fall over out there, chances were good he’d be covered over in a matter of minutes.
Adding to the mayhem was the sorry state of the roads. They hadn’t been plowed, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Neither was the ghostly absence of vehicles. It was early enough that some folks were still in bed. The rest, the ones already up, could no doubt see that the power was out. But a simple glance through their windows would offer a perfectly reasonable explanation why that was so. Had the sequence of events played out differently, had Evan not texted him about the cyber-attack and the problems they were having at the plant, Nate too might have joined them in their blissful ignorance.
Part of him was sad, but a larger part of him was thankful. The panic that was surely on its way would likely manifest in two distinct ways. The first group would choose to shelter in place. Given the weather, it was a response that made sense, assuming, that was, one had the supplies to outlast whatever this was. The second would be to flee. Not because of the reactor. Oh, no, Nate had full confidence Evan and his men would soon get the core safely shut down. After rushing out for additional supplies and finding the shops closed, and after suppressing the urge to break in and simply take what they needed—the rules of civility enjoying a somewhat longer life out here in the country—they would speed home and probably end up in a snow-covered ditch where they would soon freeze to death. On the other hand, were the dice to fall in their favor, they would likely pack up and head to a remote family cabin or a distant relative’s place. Either way they’d be charting a path for a place well beyond the range of their vehicle’s finite gas tank. Once again, they would likely freeze to death.
It didn’t matter how many ways Nate played out the scenario in his mind. Up in this part of the country, the lack of power was nothing but an accomplice. The weather, that was the real killer.
After braving the deteriorating conditions another mile or so, they arrived at his brother’s place. Nate cut the engine and watched his own gas gauge with no small amount of concern. The needle appeared to be a little lower. Was that possible? Yes, she was a thirsty girl, but they hadn’t gone all that far.
“Fighting the snow and all that wind’ll do it,” Amy said, seeming to read his thoughts. He’d never understood the eerie way she was able to peer into his mind. He might have called it hogwash if, over the years, she hadn’t demonstrated her ability beyond any doubt.
Nate slid the Sig into the concealed-carry holster at his side. The Colt Defender was in the center console. That one he hadn’t mentioned to her. They got out, locked the truck and headed up what they assumed were the steps and stopped before Lauren’s front entrance. Amy rang the bell and struggled with the screen door, wedged shut by a snow drift.
The door swung open a moment later. A wide-eyed and clearly panicked Lauren helped them inside.
“Don’t worry about your boots,” she told them.
Nate and Amy stomped their feet, casting off sheets of snow onto the entryway rug, shrapnel from the fifteen-foot journey between the pickup and the front door.
But the nervous expression on Lauren’s face wasn’t the only sign his sister-in-law wasn’t being herself. Suggesting she was a neat freak was like saying Jack the Ripper had a fondness for knives. It didn’t begin to capture the totality of her obsession.
Lauren stood before them in a clear state of confusion, white-knuckling a plastic laundry basket filled with clothes. Her thin brown hair was tangled about her as though she’d just been through the washing machine spin cycle. She was still in her pajamas: a well-worn, baggy pair of grey sweatpants topped by a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. Lauren was fit for her age. Went to CrossFit classes every Tuesday and Thursday. Said it helped to declutter her mind. But you would never know that now, staring at the woman before them.
“Where are the boys?” Amy asked, her voice calm and diplomatic.
“Upstairs packing,” Lauren replied, touching her forehead, before peeling off for the stairs.
“Ma, where’s my Battle Arena shirt?” Hunter called out from upstairs.
“The blue one?” Lauren asked, one foot on the bottom riser as she rifled through the laundry basket with her free hand.
“No, the black one.”
“I have no clue, honey. Wear your blue one.”
Born five minutes before his brother Emmitt, Hunter had recently become something of an internet sensation. It had started after uploading a video of himself to YouTube, playing a popular videogame. It didn’t seem to matter he was only nine years old at the time and obviously too young to post on the website. At least not to the one point two million fans who now followed him, hungry for new videos every day.
Over the past year, the kid’s natural charisma and love for a game called Battle Arena—where groups of players fought one another to the death on a virtual island—had somehow managed to translate into a tidy little business, enough for the family to move out of their old bungalow and into a two-story job with a finished basement and a dedicated games room, what Hunter called his office. Nate wasn’t sure how playing video games could make you money, but it was hard to argue with the results. It was also hard to argue Hunter’s success hadn’t done something to alter and maybe even warp the existing family dynamic. Forget that now, as a ten-year-old, he was pulling in close to Evan’s yearly salary as a nuclear engineer. Interestingly, most of that warping was affecting Hunter’s younger brother, Emmitt.
As if on cue, Emmitt appeared, lugging a heavy duffel bag down the stairs. On the bag was an image of a cartoon character wielding two silver pistols. He set it by the front door.
“That your bag?” Amy asked.
Emmitt shook his head. He was a redhead, like his brother, with pale, delicate skin and freckles. But where Hunter had a modern haircut, long on top and
shaved on the sides, Emmitt’s hair looked more like a red mop without the broom handle.
“It’s Hunter’s,” he replied. “At least, the fuh-fuh-first of many.”
Emmitt had recently developed a stutter. Curiously, it only came out when he tried to say numbers.
Nate felt a surge of frustration rise up his neck and into his cheeks. He had read somewhere that children tend to balance each other out. If one sibling was irresponsible, the other would become more dependable. If one was crass and rude, the other would be kind and polite.
If there were any fundamental differences between the two boys, Hunter’s parents had only served to magnify them. The way they indulged the kid had effectively turned him into a diva. It was a trend Nate had seen more and more these days. Parents afraid of disciplining their children, some even trying to be best friends with their kids. He might not be one to talk yet, given his daughter hadn’t even been born, but already he knew that wasn’t the way he would do things. When your kid’s the one telling you what to do, something’s wrong. In normal times, divas could be irritating. In the present circumstances, they could be downright dangerous.
America Offline | Books 1 & 2 | The Day After Darkness Page 3
