Reese grunted. “Ahyup.”
She laughed again. "You sure you're not from around here? Sound like a Downeaster to me.“
“Um…Mrs. Ranger?” asked Aiden behind them.
Jo turned to face the teenager. "The name's Jo, Aiden. Not Mrs. Ranger, not anything but Jo, remember?
Aiden's red face turned three shades darker. “What are we gonna do?” He blinked. “Sorry—Jo.”
Jo stared at him. “Boy, you see that water out there? No one’s gettin’ off this rock till that goes away. Not unless you got a boat. And I wouldn’t risk it for a while, anyway—we gotta let the water recede a little, see?” She put both hands on her hips and faced Aiden square. “What are we gonna do?” she asked. “We’re gonna make sure everyone that made it to the summit here is safe and well cared for. We’re gonna make sure everyone stays hydrated, and we’re gonna make the best of it. Sound like a plan?” she asked.
Aiden opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,” Reese murmured.
“Teddy Roosevelt,” Jo quipped, not missing a beat. “Great man, good hunter, so-so president, lousy father.” She turned back to Aiden. “Of course, it sounds like a plan. Now come on you, follow me. We’re gonna go check on the families across the parking lot.” She turned to Reese. “Where’d you learn that quote, Georgia boy?”
Reese smiled. “My wife.”
“Smart woman,” Jo said with a nod. “You might wanna watch over your friend. If you want, see what you can find on the radio. Gimme a holler if you need anything.” She pointed at Aiden. “Let’s go, Richard Petty, time to work off that community service.”
“What—what community service?” squeaked Aiden. “And who’s Richard Petty?”
Jo stared at him, hands on her hips, balled into fists. “Who’s…? Boy, get your hide outside. Call it punishment for hitting someone with your daddy’s car.” Jo turned and swept through the front door like a force of nature. Aiden followed along, caught in her wake and sputtering apologies as he went. When the door shut behind her and the boy, the cool stillness of the lobby returned to Reese like a physical wave.
He exhaled, long and slow. “Do what you can…” He turned and went in search of the radio.
Chapter 10
Lavelle Homestead
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
By the time Cami pulled into her driveway, the sun was setting, and they’d used half a tank of gas just getting out of Charleston. What should have only taken 30 to 40 minutes on a normal day had taken almost four grueling hours. Despite a circuitous, southwesterly route away from Charleston--thus avoiding most of the traffic streaming west and north on the major highways--they were still mired in slow, bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Cami had never seen so many people on the roads before. Even during some of the worst hurricane evacuations, she'd never seen the sheer volume of cars that had taken to the roads since that morning.
She sighed as the garage door opened. They’d spent most of the time on the road dealing with the effects of the tsunami. Water, pushed more than 12 miles inland, flooded every creek, tributary, and river that flowed into the Ashley. Streams reversed their courses, sending saltwater rushing out onto yards, byways, and right of ways all along the coast. Bridges had been washed out, forcing costly delays to turn around and find alternate routes, and roads turned into rivers.
Cami, grateful that the house still had power, pulled into the garage, shifted into park, and killed the engine. The three of them sat in the car in total silence as the garage door closed behind them. Only then did the tension in Cami’s shoulders and back ease. She leaned against the seat and exhaled.
"You know, I think if we had left any later, we might not have made it…” Amber whispered.
"I just gotta say again, thank you for bringing me along," Mitch added from the back seat. He opened the door and stepped out into Cami's garage. "Wow, you guys got quite the hoard of camping supplies in here.”
"Comes with the territory," Amber said, exiting the passenger side of the car.
Cami stood and stretched, her back popping audibly. “I never know what I'm going to need on guides, and half the people that hire me have no idea what they're supposed to bring." She shrugged. "I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it, you know?”
Mitch nodded. "Words to live by, Cami-san.”
As the sun slipped behind the trees west of the house, bathing the neighborhood in darkness, Cami, Amber, and Mitch unloaded the car. It took them almost an hour to get everything from Walmart inside and squirreled away, but Cami wouldn't let them rest for anything other than bathroom breaks until the job was done. She grimaced and thought about the lost stuff from the camping store every time she picked up a Walmart bag. When everything had been stashed, either in the basement or out in the garage itself, Cami finally relented and allowed the two youngsters to relax.
"Now that we’re home, it doesn't feel all that bad out there, does it?” Amber stretched. “Ugh, I could sure go for a pizza right about now.”
The lights in the kitchen flickered. Cami looked up from her coffee mug. "You can try to order, but I have a feeling we need to start eating the stuff in the fridge."
"What's with the power?" asked Mitch, coming in from the bathroom. “We’re too far inland to be affected, right? I mean, the tsunami’s hitting the coast."
Cami drummed her fingers on the kitchen table for a moment. "This thing could have more effects than just coastal flooding, guys. Think about it," she said, reaching for the TV remote. The small flat-screen TV screen mounted to the kitchen wall underneath a cabinet came to life. The local evening news was on, and a harried reporter, who looked like he hadn’t left the desk all day, was in the middle of relaying facts and figures. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Carolinas were without power; 30,000 were people missing in Charleston alone. Homes destroyed, businesses leveled, entire sections of the coastline stripped bare. Traffic nightmares all up and down the East Coast. The destruction was biblical, and it was only beginning.
Cami kept the volume low but watched the scenes from news helicopters ported in from different states. It all looked the same: raging water frothing along the coastline, carrying debris and buildings and vehicles like sticks on a river. Boston looked just as bad as New York, which looked like Philadelphia. Even Washington, D.C. hadn’t been spared when the Potomac overflowed its banks and flooded everything in sight.
Smoke rose from fires as far as the eye could see, no matter what city the helicopters happened to be floating over. The scrolling marquee at the bottom of the screen continued to give updates of missing, and presumed killed, from major cities all along the coast.
The numbers were staggering. New York City was the anomaly, a total black hole of official counts, but there had been a massive, multi-car accident on one of the interstates exiting Manhattan. The resulting pileup, which had blocked traffic in pretty much every direction, occurred at just the worst possible moment. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people panicked and tried to escape all at once when the first wave hit.
Amber’s hands flew to her mouth, and her eyes grew wide. Mitch stood next to her, his mouth open, unable to speak. The remote dropped from Cami’s hands and clattered to the table.
When Cami's vision blurred, she turned away from the TV and wiped her face. She couldn’t—she couldn't look at the images of destruction and death, all up and down thousands of miles of coastline. She couldn't give in to the panic that threatened to rip her apart. She couldn't let go of the hope that Reese made it to the mainland. She had to be strong. She had to be strong for Reese and Amber…and now Mitch.
"I'm going to…” Cami cleared her throat. "I'm going to fire up the oven.” She wiped her face again and stepped away from the table. “We need some food, and I’ve got a couple frozen pizzas out there."
“I lost my appetite,” Amber mumbled, still staring at
the TV.
The lights flickered again, and the TV went black. "That's why," Cami said, pointing at the screen with a pizza cutter. "If the power goes out, we’ll need to eat or preserve the food in the fridge and freezers before it goes bad."
"That's what we have the generator for, mom," Amber muttered sourly.
"We don't have that much gas for the generator, sweetie,” Cami replied. “We've got enough to get us through a couple days—maybe a week—if we ration the power to just running the fridge and freezer long enough to keep things cold. But if we need to use lights or run the well pump to get water—all that's going to take electricity."
The lights dimmed almost to the point of going out and held there for a moment, before flaring back to full intensity.
“I don’t like this at all,” Cami said, hugging herself.
Amber turned the TV back on. "They didn't say anything about power outages—other than Charleston itself."
"Yeah, but I think your mom's onto something…” Mitch said, a pensive look on his face. “Everything’s interconnected—if there's a big surge or something that knocks out power to the coast, it could ripple back this way, right?"
Cami nodded, opening the freezer and pulling out a frozen pizza. "That's what I'm afraid of. You guys okay with veggie-max?" she asked, holding up the plastic wrapped pizza.
Mitch nodded enthusiastically, and Amber made a face. "Do we have one with pepperoni?"
Cami dug through the freezer, eventually pulling out a second pizza. "We'll fire up two. The leftovers will be good for tomorrow, too. And you're right, I think there’ll be a ripple effect—especially if the power is being affected all up and down the eastern seaboard." Cami turned on the oven to preheat, then shook her head, staring at the dial.
"Every time there's been a hurricane or…or a blizzard, or anything like that—even during Superstorm Sandy, people got service reestablished because volunteers and power companies further inland diverted repair crews to the coast.” Cami turned to face the others, leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. "When the power goes out, everybody knows it's eventually going to come back on. It's just a matter of time."
"Yeah," Mitch said, sitting down at the table. "But…what if the power goes out everywhere?”
“That would cause the power further inland to go out…” Amber said.
“Which forces the people that would've come to the coast to take care of their own communities first, right?” asked Mitch.
Cami frowned. "This could get bad guys. We may be out of the flood zone, but if power goes out…and it spreads inland, we could be looking at a cascading failure."
“A cascading…what?” asked Mitch.
"It's when systems break down, like the power grid,” Cami explained, “which causes other systems—like communications—to break down. A cascading failure intensifies as it grows, which allows it to intensify further…it just keeps getting worse. Like, for example, the tsunami hitting the coast."
"That's bad enough in itself," Amber muttered as she took a seat next to Mitch.
"Normally, I'd agree with you,” Cami said, pulling down three glasses from the cabinet. “But I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg here. Yeah, the waves probably killed hundreds of thousands of people," Cami said, her voice tightening as she tried not to think about Reese among those staggering numbers of dead and missing.
"But we’re not just talking about one state,” Amber added. “There could be thousands of businesses, millions of people displaced from their homes.”
“And now they’re all refugees,” Cami said. “There’s no way we have enough stockpiled resources to take care of that many people suddenly all in need of food, water, and shelter.” Cami opened the fridge and pulled out a 2-liter of Coke. "And if the power goes out and it spreads, that's going to be huge." She placed three plates on the table and looked at the others.
"Without power, we can't get gas. Factories can't make medicine. But no gas means no transportation, no transportation means no plane flights or overland trucking, and things come to a standstill really quick."
Mitch held his hands up. "Okay, okay—so things could get really bad. But say the electricity goes out all the way to the Mississippi. That's pretty bad, but that won’t take out power in California. People will still be able to ship supplies and help from the west coast, right?"
Cami sat down. "I don't know…I just don't know. If things ripple fast enough, in theory the power could end up being knocked out across the whole country. It would be no different than if we’d been hit with an EMP."
Amber rolled her eyes. "Here we go…”
"No, I'm serious," Cami said, finding it hard to resist the argument. "All it takes is one or two of the big transformers out there to be damaged from a power surge—we can't replace them through Amazon. They have to be custom made in factories in Germany or China or something. You know how long it takes to build those things? Let alone ship them and install them? If that's the extent of the power outage, we could be in the dark for months…or years."
"The lights flickered a little, mom. I hardly think that’s—”
All the lights in the house winked out at once, plunging them into darkness. Amber squeaked in surprise. Cami counted to ten, opened her mouth to say I told you so, but the lights came back on before she could speak.
"Okay,” Amber admitted. “I see your point." She crossed her arms. "That kind of actually sucked."
"So, what do we do?" Mitch asked.
A soft ding alerted Cami that the oven was ready. She ripped the plastic wrap off the pizzas and put them in the oven, then shut the door and set the timer. "First, we need to get these pizzas cooked." Cami pulled out a kitchen towel and wiped her hands. "While they’re cooking, I suggest we each gather flashlights and batteries. I wouldn't be surprised if the power goes out for good tonight."
"Sounds like a plan," Mitch said.
"Amber, I need you to get the first aid kit from the hallway closet and bring it in here into the kitchen."
"What do we need the first aid kit for? Nobody's hurt,” Amber replied as she stood from the table.
"It's not so much that anybody's hurt—I just want to make sure we have it in a convenient spot, so we don't have to go digging around in the dark looking for it—if we do need it. We'll just clear some space here on the counter and park it for the time being. Sound good?" Seeing no objection, Cami continued. "Good. I’ll go get the emergency preparedness binders. We've got some work to do if this gets as bad as I think it might.”
By the time the pizza was ready, Mitch and Amber had gathered the first aid kit and flashlights, along with spare batteries, and piled everything on the kitchen counter. Cami dusted off her emergency preparedness binder and brought it into the kitchen as well.
Reese had always thought it had been a good idea to have a binder of information, if nothing else than as an emergency reference for Amber should something happen during a hurricane. Once she grew old enough to care for herself, Reese's enthusiasm for keeping the emergency binder up to date waned. Cami had been the only one to touch the binder in the last year, and that had merely been to update emergency contacts when Reese received a new cell phone for work.
While Amber and Mitch ate, Cami absently chewed her slice and thumbed through the binder, in what turned out to be a cathartic experience. She likened it to catching up with a friend she hadn't seen in a long time. The waves of panic that had assaulted her as much as the tsunami had assaulted the coastline had calmed, her anxiety level returning to its natural, smooth surface. All the worries floating around in her head were clearly marked in the binder as individual categories and recommended courses of action were laid clear.
Just thumbing through the major sections on food, water, electrical supply, first-aid, and communications brought a sense of peace to Cami that she hadn't known since before Reese left on his corporate fishing trip. She closed the binder and sat back, sighing with contentment from both her stomach and
her nerves.
"Good book?" asked Mitch around a mouthful of veggie pizza.
Cami placed a protective hand on the thick binder. "The best kind. Reese and I did a lot of hard thinking in the past and put together action plans for just about anything. If something happens to me," she said, looking at Amber and Mitch.
"Mom, nothing's going to happen—we’re not even near the beach!"
Cami held up a hand to stop Amber’s interruption before she got started. "I'm just saying. If something were to happen to me, this book represents a lifetime of knowledge and information. Just flip to the right section, there's one for food, shelter, power—you name it, it's in here. I've got reference materials, suggested courses of action, checklists, and inventories.” She looked at the binder. “I’m not saying we need to break into it right this minute—but it’s here if you need it. I just want you guys to know where it's at. Okay?" Cami narrowed her eyes at Amber. "I'm not saying something's going to happen, honey, but it would make me feel better, and I would sleep better at night knowing that you know where this thing is. Understand?"
Amber's face slackened, and she nodded, offering a shy smile.
Cami smiled broadly. "Good. Now, this binder gave me an idea—I want to go check on our neighbors. Mr. Price is getting up in age. I just want to make sure he's okay."
Amber scoffed and leaned into Mitch to explain conspiratorially, "Mr. Price is a hard-core prepper. He's probably been waiting for something like this his whole life."
"He's also in his 80s," Cami said. She frowned. "I think. He's old, at any rate. And it's the neighborly thing to do. So," she said, standing up. “I’ll leave you two to handle the dishes, while I go walk through the neighborhood and see what's going on."
"You mind if I have a look-see through that?” asked Mitch, gesturing at the emergency binder with the crust of his pizza. He raised his hand in defense when Amber opened her mouth. "I'm not saying anything is going on either, I just kinda want to know what's in there. No harm in looking, right? Maybe I can add to whatever you've got on fishing or camping or something?“
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 11
