They drove their kids to be sensible, smart, and hard-working, and made sure to recognize it when they stepped up.
Giving them the autonomy to stay at the cabin for a few hours while mom and dad ran into town to hit the pharmacy and grocery store was how they chose to reward Cole and Jenny for keeping up on their chores and keeping their noses clean for the past couple of weeks.
The only real problem they’d been having was keeping Cole out of the water. The kid wouldn’t stay away from it. Ever since he’d been born, his parents joked that he was half-duck. He was on his school swim team and was counting the days until he was fifteen and could start lifeguard training.
He could water ski and roll a kayak and name every single fish found in Montana waters before he’d started middle school. Even though he was only fourteen, he was already planning on attending college somewhere on one of the coasts, where he could study marine biology and learn to scuba dive.
The Chandlers didn’t mess around with water, though. Bill had lost a brother to a drowning accident when he was a teen, so he was extremely strict about water safety. He insisted that there always be an adult around whenever Cole got in the water.
Their last stops before heading home were to fuel up the truck and hit the grocery store to cover their last few days at the cabin.
Less than a hundred feet from the gas station, the vehicle abruptly shut off and started to coast. The radio died, the power steering and brakes and air conditioning all went out.
The stoplights at the upcoming intersection simultaneously went dark, and the digital sign at the gas station went blank. The neon signs in the windows and the interior lights went straight out – no flicker or dimming.
Bill and Sally looked at each other while he pressed hard but steady on the brake pedal to bring the truck to a controlled stop and avoid plowing into two vehicles in front of him that had hit each other when their drivers panicked.
“It can’t be…” was the first thing out of Bill’s mouth when he got the truck stopped and looked around at the disabled cars and dark storefronts all around.
Nothing that took electricity appeared to be working.
“No,” Sally said. “We’ve got to get back to the cabin.”
She reached into the concealed carry pocket of her purse and touched the small .380 ACP pistol she kept inside, feeling just a little bit reassured by the cold weight of it. It wasn’t much comfort at that moment, but she’d take what she could get.
Bill noticed, and reached under his jacket to move his own holster out from where it was usually hidden, inside the waistband of his pants, and clipped it to his belt.
He usually preferred not to advertise that he was carrying, but there were times when it was good to make it very clear one was not going to be a soft target.
He looked at the empty gun rack in the back window. It would have been nice to have a rifle or shotgun right about then, but they’d left both of the long weapons back at the cabin. At least that gave the kids some protection.
“Situation,” Sally said.
That was their cue for each other to take a moment to figure out what they were facing and sort the best first course of action. Just before they kids were born, Sally had taken a wilderness rescue course.
One of the things they taught was that in almost no circumstances are you going to make things worse by taking ten or fifteen seconds to look at your situation and figure out what you’re dealing with before you act. Acting with purpose was always better than reacting out of desperation.
“EMP, maybe?” Bill said. “Two kids more than 40 minutes drive away from us, and our vehicle is disabled. Basic survival gear in the truck. Surrounded by people that might get real stupid at any moment.”
“We’re not equipped to deal with chaos. We do need to get to the kids,” Sally said.
“The truck’s not coming back online any time soon, so let’s get out of the stupidity zone.”
Bill and Sally emptied any important or vital items out of the glove box and console of the truck.
Back in the extended cab, they always kept a couple of bug-out bags, set up to keep a family of four going for 100 hours: tools, food, emergency blankets, first-aid, solid multitools, hand-cranked flashlight and radio, water filters and purification tabs.
“Think it’s safe to try to shop quick?” Sally asked.
Bill looked around him. There was already shouting happening at the gas station, and a crowd gathering near a convenience store across the street. They looked back at the drug store they’d just left, a couple blocks back. People were converging there as well.
Both Bill and Sally always carried cash instead of relying on plastic for everything, for exactly situations like this. But it looked like chaos was already starting to build all around them.
People that were completely unprepared were already looking scared and stupid. Some folks were clearly switching into a smash-and-grab mindset and were making others around them nervous and twitchy.
“No,” Bill said. “This could go ugly at any moment. Let’s make our way quietly out of here.”
Reflexively, he hit the button on his truck key the lock the doors. Nothing happened. He considered manually locking each door individually with the keys, but he didn’t want to linger any longer than he had to.
He was already feeling very conspicuous, with him and Sally each wearing a good-sized camouflaged backpack. There were way too many eyes looking their way as they turned their backs on the center of Eureka.
He could see people making their calculations, trying to figure out if they were desperate enough yet to try and roll a couple of people that were obviously ready for the situation.
Then a shot rang out behind them, a second and a third.
“Don’t run, but look alive,” Bill said. “Make eye contact with everybody that looks at you.”
Sally nodded. She remembered that from her self-defense classes. Confident eye contact was one of the best weapons a person could carry. Most predators like to prey on the weak, and would back off from the strong.
Chapter 2
“Hey, Mom and Dad should be back by now.”
Jenny looked at her wristwatch, and old analog that she had to wind every day.
She and Cole both wore them, gifts from their grandfather who believed a quality watch was one of the finest things anybody could own.
“They’re just an hour late. Probably got caught up chatting with somebody in town.”
“Not a chance, JJ. You know how paranoid they’ve been about leaving us alone out here. The last few times they went to town, they came back well before they told us they’d be back.”
“They just wanted to catch you out in the pond,” Jenny said, tossing a twig at her brother.
“Well, it’s not like them to be so late,” Cole said.
Jenny rolled her eyes at him.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s run up the ridge and see if they left a message for us.”
They rode their bikes the quarter mile down the hill to the family cabin and took their cell phones out of the bedroom. Since there was no electricity out in the cabin in addition to no signal, the family usually left the phones powered down unless they were going into town.
“Race you!” Jenny called over her back the second they’d closed the cabin door behind them.
Cole got the jump on her getting to his bike, but she quickly took over the lead on the steep switchbacks up out of the small valley.
“Mass to horsepower ratio!” she called over her shoulder as she easily passed her brother.
He was a good deal bigger than her, taller, stronger, and broader in build. But while he was a swimmer, she was a cross-country runner.
She didn’t weigh a lot, but there wasn’t a single ounce on her frame that was wasted. On the downhills, his weight gave him the advantage, but she could pedal all day long on level ground and would leave him in her dust on the uphills.
When they hit the top of the ridge, they dropp
ed their bikes at the side of the road and hit the power buttons on their phones.
Nothing happened.
“Odd,” Cole remarked. “We both had plenty of battery the other day when we all went into Rexford.”
“I let mine charge in the car on the way back. I know I was back up to a hundred percent.”
“Yeah,” Cole said. He poked at buttons a few more times, and popped the back off to look at the battery.
“So, should we ride down and pop these on the solar for a bit and try again?” Jenny asked.
“Race you,” Cole said, jumping for his bike.
Back down at the cabin, the indicator light on the battery attached to the portable solar panel was blank, despite it being a bright and sunny day. They checked all the connections, plugged their phones into it, and saw nothing.
“That is very odd,” Jenny said, frowning at their inert pieces of technology.
She looked at her watch again. Their parents were now coming up on two hours later than they said they’d be.
Cole went to the living room and flipped the switch on the radio to get nothing but silence.
He and Jenny both looked at each other when several more toggles of the knob on and off gave them nothing.
Jenny pulled the batteries out and pressed the little liquid crystal power indicator on them all.
“Plenty of life in these,” she said, while Cole grabbed a fresh pack of batteries they’d just picked up a couple of weeks ago.
The use by dates were several years into the future.
The radio and the most of the other electronic gadgets they had around the cabin still stubbornly refused to power on. Their flashlights were all that seemed to work.
“You just messing with me Cole?” Jenny finally asked.
“No,” he said, looking very confused.
Cole normally had a very dry sense of humor, and a tendency to keep a perfectly straight face when he was pranking anybody.
That he looked worried put any further thought of a practical joke on his part right out of Jenny’s mind.
“Think mom and dad are?” she asked. “Or maybe dad’s created a ‘scenario’ for us?”
Cole shook his head while looking around the cabin. “You couldn’t disable this many things like that. Even if they’d locked out our phones, we’d see something when plugging the battery charger in, wouldn’t’ we? And would dad really do something like short out the radio and the solar just to create a teaching moment?”
Jenny finally said what she’d been thinking ever since they tried to turn on the radio: “Suppose it’s actually one of those EMP things he’s always on about?”
“Why would it be?” Cole said. Jenny was taken aback by how sharply he’d said it, how dismissive.
“Well, we like coming out here to get away from all the news. Who knows who’s pissed off who in the last couple of days? And the symptoms are matching.”
“Look, JJ. Something like that is one of those worst case scenarios people prepare for but that never happens. Stockpiling beans and bullets is dad’s hobby, like swimming is mine and running is yours.”
“I’m open to whatever theory you have then, since you’ve ruled out jokes and EMPs. What do you say it is, wise and all-knowing big brother?”
“I don’t know yet. But it’s not the end of the world or anything.”
“The Wilkersons have a land line. We should go down there and see if they’ll let us call mom and dad, then,” Jenny said.
Cole looked at her for a long moment, chewing on some thoughts.
“No,” he said, slowly. “The Wilkersons are way too weird. They even make dad uncomfortable. Let’s fall back on the family plan. If we’re safe, we stay put where mom and dad last saw us, and they’ll come find us.”
“Come on, Cole. Which is it? Nothing to worry about, so we go down to the Wilkersons and make a call, or it’s time for the emergency plan?”
“I don’t know, JJ. I don’t know.”
Jenny went into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. She grabbed a protein bar and started pacing while she ate it.
Cole poured himself a glass of water. “If something happened to mom and dad, they would have somebody call the Wilkersons, and they’d come up here to let us know. So we can assume that mom and dad are OK.”
“We can’t,” Jenny said. “Like, what if they went off the bridge over the lake, or rolled off the road and nobody has found them yet? Or, what if they’re in Eureka and there’s been an EMP so nobody can communicate anything with anybody?”
“It’s not an EMP!” Cole shouted.
“It fits,” Jenny shouted back at her brother. “It fits better than anything you’ve come up with, dumbass.”
“Fine,” Cole said. “If you insist, we’ll pretend that’s what it is, and we shelter in place.”
“It’s twenty minutes to the Wilkersons,” Jenny said. We can leave a note here that we ran down to see if we could use their phone, and we come right back up when we’re done.”
“No,” Cole said. “If you’re right, we need to shelter in place. If you’re right, we shelter in place. We have no idea how people are reacting, and we have our basic needs met here.”
“Alright,” Jenny said.
She put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes.
Hearing Cole admit that she might be right about them being in a worst-case scenario brought the reality of it down with a weight it hadn’t had just a few minutes earlier.
“Alright. So what do we do first.”
“You get the guns. Field strip them, make sure everything’s clean and in shape. Inventory our ammunition so we know what we’re working with. I’m going out to the shed to see what all we have out there and start hauling things in.”
In addition to the rifle and the shotgun that the family kept in the truck when they went deeper out into the back country, there was a second rifle kept in a gun safe in the cabin from the time they opened it in the spring until they shut it up for the winter.
That was meant to make sure there was always at least one long arm in the cabin if somebody stayed behind while others were away.
The two rifles were both Winchester Model 70s, which chambered the easily available .308 Winchester round, and were equipped with hunting scopes. The shotgun was a Mossberg 500 12-gauge mounted with a tactical light.
Jenny counted out the ammunition she had, and the number of magazines for the two rifles. She had enough to pair each rifle up with three full magazines, with a hundred rounds of boxed ammunition left.
There were also sixty rounds for the shotgun, both shot and slug. She loaded one of the Mossberg’s magazines with shot, the other with slugs. She found some blue painters tape, and put a stripe around the slug magazine.
The last thing she did was close all the drapes. She had never noticed before, but they were all thick, heavy blackout curtains.
Chapter 3
Bill and Sally Chandler made their way to a quiet residential road two blocks west of the main commercial street through town.
Eureka was a small town, just over a thousand people, but it was already getting too chaotic for their comfort, even if they had been willing to stick around and not make their way straight back to the cabin.
People were closing in on the stores and the air was thick with tension.
“What route should we take to get back to the cabin?” Bill asked.
“The Pacific Northwest is most direct, and keeps us off the main roads,” Sally explained. “It’ll just be us and hikers. They’ve got food and gear of their own, and most of them probably don’t know anything’s really wrong yet, so there’s not much risk of running into trouble. I just don’t want to be on the highways out here right now. That’s where we’re going to run into people that are desperate and stupid.”
Bill couldn’t argue with his wife’s logic. “That will get us through Rexford and down towards the bridge.”
“If we keep moving, we can hit Rexford in a couple hours and reassess
what things look like from there.”
“Probably not going to get a warm welcome there, either,” Bill said.
“It’s a much smaller town, and fewer tourists in it. If things are quieter there, we’re less likely to have problems than here.”
They started walking south, toward the local park where the local leg of the Pacific Northwest hiking trail ran through.
Being in a residential neighborhood instead of on a commercial street kept them out of the growing mob of confused people and away from the places where looting was likely to break out first.
It surprised them both how quickly things were breaking down with the complete loss of electricity and communications.
A blackout would have been one thing, but when people’s cars all suddenly stopped and cell phones died as well, people knew there was something much bigger going on.
“A lot of folks that live up here think about these kinds of things,” Sally said, when Bill mentioned the increasing noise coming from the crowds forming just a couple of blocks away. “I guess people have gone straight to assuming the worst. Like we have.”
Looking around as they walked, they could see some people outside asking each other what was going on.
Other houses had curtains drawn, with somebody occasionally peeking out as they passed. Those were the houses that Bill found least threatening. Those were the homes of the folks that had probably laid in supplies for exactly such an event.
They knew they were secure, so they didn’t need the bug out bags he and his wife were carrying.
Leave them be, they’ll leave us be, Bill thought as he caught sight of someone pulling a curtain aside to watch them.
The Chandler home in Billings and their cabin were both set up to shelter in place. They kept much larger stocks of supplies down in Billings, whereas the cabin was configured more to sustain itself.
It was isolated, and had plenty of fresh water, wood, and game around it.
Bill just hoped the kids had figured out what had happened, and were buttoned down at the cabin waiting for him and Sally to arrive like they were supposed to.
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