“Can we turn on the TV for a few minutes?” asked Amber.
“Well, I don’t think it’ll hurt. But then we need to shut it down so the batteries can charge the rest of the day and we can keep the fridge and freezer cool tonight.” Cami switched the outlet from the coffee maker to the TV and powered it on.
“…for the few viewers out there who still have power, the scene in Charleston is grim, as you can imagine…”
“Well that’s not very promising,” Mitch muttered.
“Sssh!” Amber hissed.
Cami turned up the volume. Devastation filled the screen on a scale she’d never seen outside of books about World War II. Buildings reduced to rubble, rooftops lifted and scattered like dandelion seeds, cars jumbled on top of each other, and on top of buildings—some with headlights or taillights still glowing in the afternoon sun—no matter where the camera panned, the scene was the same: unbelievable and heartbreaking.
Amber was silent, both hands to her mouth, eyes watering. Mitch looked away when they zoomed in on his father’s marina. Boats had been scattered by the waves, and more than one impaled in the upper stories of businesses and homes. As the helicopter moved closer to the shore, the destruction grew more severe.
For a few miles near the ocean, nothing remained of Charleston except concrete foundations, still damp from the receding waters. Most of the debris had been pushed miles inland, and very little had been sucked back out to the ocean. Mounds of broken homes, buildings, and cars clustered here and there, but as the camera panned south and east, a vast wasteland opened up.
“It’s like Hiroshima and Katrina all rolled into one,” the voice on the TV intoned.
The marquee along the bottom of the screen scrolled by with an incessant list of missing, killed, and injured, from Miami to Boston. The numbers had skyrocketed since yesterday, and they included warnings that most communications with authorities in the affected areas had been disrupted, so the actual numbers were likely higher.
“Three hundred thousand presumed dead…” gasped Cami.
“This can’t be happening,” Amber whispered. She turned and ran from the kitchen, sobbing.
Mitch looked after her, then at Cami.
“Go,” Cami croaked, her voice tight with emotion. “She needs a friend.”
Mitch got up and walked away, silent as a ghost. He stopped in the hallway and took a last look at the TV, then lowered his head and followed Amber.
Cami kept her eyes on the screen, her vision blurring as the news team switched to scenes from Baltimore, recorded earlier in the day. Fires had erupted in the larger skyscrapers, blotting the sky with ugly black plumes. Trash swirled in the air currents and created what looked like flocks of white birds, funneled down the ruined streets and concrete canyons of the old city.
Like Charleston, most of the buildings lining the bay had been utterly wiped off the earth. Water still streamed over ramparts and wharves, pooling back into the eerily calm harbor, but everywhere the land had been stripped bare.
The scene shifted to New York, and Cami let out a sob of shock. Several taller skyscrapers had fallen and crushed the smaller surrounding buildings. Smoke billowed up into the sky, reminiscent of 9-11, and helicopters buzzed over the mess as if a hornet’s nest had been overturned by a careless teenager. Boats littered the streets and a handful of somber gray Navy ships dotted Long Island Sound, moving to and fro on missions Cami couldn’t fathom.
“What about Boston? And Maine?” she begged the TV, but the reporter droned on about the unimaginable destruction to some of America’s largest cities. “This can’t be happening…”
She grabbed her cellphone with shaking hands to tap out messages to Reese. She told him she loved him, that she missed him, and that she begged him to be safe and come home as soon as possible. She told him that she and Amber were safe at home and that Mitch was with them and…
Cami dropped the phone and let it skitter across the table. Her eyes spilled over with tears and she collapsed into a chair, sobbing. Everything she’d been holding in for the past 36 hours exploded to the surface and she gave up trying to keep it in check. She let the anger and fear flow through her and cried it all out.
She didn’t know how long she’d allowed herself to wallow, but it was the sound of a strong voice, a confident voice, proclaiming that America would get through the disaster like it had all others, which finally grabbed Cami’s attention. She looked up, wiped tears from her face, and flipped a lock of wet hair out of her bleary eyes.
The TV had switched to a press conference in Denver while she’d cried, and an older man in a severe suit stood before an array of microphones, with a phalanx of serious-looking people behind him. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. The label at the bottom of the screen said Jack Faulkner, President Pro-Tem.
“President Pro-Tem?” Cami muttered, sniffing. As his speech died down, he turned and left the stage, followed by all the people behind him. The reporter picked up where the politician had ended.
“There you have it folks, the former Secretary of the Interior, now officially sworn in as President Pro-Tem, until such time as the whereabouts of the President, Vice President, and upper leadership of Congress can be determined. Trying are the times we’re living through, but as you can see, the system works, and we will have at least some measure of stability.”
“Whaaat?” Cami gasped. If the Secretary of the Interior had been sworn in as president, then the destruction in D.C. was much worse than she’d feared. The U.S. government had effectively been decapitated.
“We turn next to continuing coverage of the power crisis, as the damage to the nation’s electrical grid is still being assessed. That hasn’t stopped rolling brown outs—and in some areas of the Midwest, full-on blackouts—from taking place.” The picture of the harried reporter behind the anchor desk was replaced with a map of the United States. The east coast was swathed in black, a red line, jagged and uneven, pulsated halfway from the coast to the Appalachian Mountains, all the way from Florida to Maine.
Cami put a hand to her mouth. The dead zone was far worse than just a dozen miles along the coast.
“Conservative estimates place around a hundred million people without power along the eastern seaboard this afternoon. What’s left of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, Jacksonville, and Miami are totally in the dark. Reports of spotty service are coming in from all along communities in the Appalachian Mountains, and blackouts have happened as far west as Denver, as the nation’s grid struggles to stay online.”
The map turned gray between the dead zone and Denver, sometimes clear and sometimes hazy, to simulate unstable power delivery. “West of the Rockies, localized blackouts are occurring but along the Pacific coast, brownouts—both scheduled and unscheduled—are happening more frequently as the day heats up and air conditioning demand soars. Representatives of the nation’s major electric providers are meeting in teleconferences at the moment, discussing…”
“It’s happening, then,” Amber said, her voice distant and dreamlike.
Startled, Cami fussed with her hair, trying to hide the fact she’d been crying. She looked at her daughter. Amber’s eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks glistened. “Oh, sweetie…”
“Everything you said is coming true,” Mitch pointed out, joining Amber in the hallway.
Cami stood and reached out her hands. Amber and Mitch moved closer in stiff gaits, like zombies, and each took one of her hands. She squeezed hard. “Guys, this is not the end of the world.”
“But you said—” Mitch began. “It’s…look at it!”
“The only important things right now are standing in front of me.” When they both looked at her with tired, scared eyes, Cami found a courage building in her she’d never known. “Listen to me. We are going to get through this. We’re going to be just fine. We. Will. Survive.”
Mitch’s gaze drifted over her shoulder to the TV. “But—”
�
�But nothing!” Cami snapped. “If you’re convinced that everything I say comes true, then listen hard. Your father is going to make it here, Mitchell Adams. And your father,” she said pointedly at Amber, “is going to make it home, too. We are going to be just fine—”
“…Governor of South Carolina has declared a state of emergency and activated the national guard. With communications networks essentially non-existent at the moment, citizens are urged to shelter in place, whether that’s home, or a friend’s house, or at a work, or wherever you can find that’s safe and out of the elements. I’m afraid we’re all going to be on our own for a while. Those of you in our viewing area who still have power, count yourself lucky. Don’t wait, take care of yourselves, your neighbors, and your loved ones. Share what you have and help each other until help arrives. We may have to—”
The signal went to static.
Cami let go of Amber and Mitch’s hands, picked up the remote, and shut the TV off. She quietly unplugged the device and dropped the extension cord from the battery bank to the floor. “That does it for TV for a while.”
“We can’t just sit out here in the dark,” Mitch said.
“I can hook up dad’s emergency radio,” Amber offered, wiping her face. “It’s got shortwave and all kinds of cool stuff on it.”
“Good thinking, sweetie,” Cami said. She took a deep, centering breath and exhaled slowly. The fear and anxiety were gone, replaced by a rock-hard determination to protect her family and defend her homestead until Reese could get home. “Guys, you saw what was on the news. The whole country is pretty messed up right now, and we’re just outside of Ground Zero.”
“It’s time to cowboy up,” Mitch said, stone-faced.
“You got that right,” Cami replied. “Now, Amber, why don’t you go get that radio and set it up. Mitch,” she said, turning to the young man, “go with Amber, and when you two have the radio set up, we need to start harvesting the garden. I don’t like the way those clouds are forming on the horizon.”
“What are you gonna do?” asked Amber.
“I’m opening your father’s gun safe.”
“You think it’s that bad?” asked Mitch. “Already?”
Cami pursed her lips, considering. “No,” she said after a moment, “not yet. But between Marty Price’s warning this morning, and now this,” she said, gesturing at the TV, “I’m willing to continue hoping we don’t need them…but if we do…” she looked at Amber and Mitch. “I intend to be ready.”
Chapter 15
Coastal Maine
Owing to the unstable movement of the Excelsior in its death spiral, it took Jo and Reese the better part of an hour to secure the zodiac, empty the water from inside, confirm it was seaworthy and had enough fuel. Eventually, Reese was ready to cast off and move away from the slowly sinking yacht.
"Can't believe we’re going to do this again," Ben muttered, sitting in the middle of the still-wet zodiac.
"Second time's the charm, right?" asked Reese, smiling from his position at the tiller.
“I don’t think that’s how that sayin’ goes,” murmured Jo.
Ben leaned over and rubbed his injured leg. "Let's get this over with, then.”
Reese started the outboard. It rumbled to life in a cloud of blue smoke and a throaty roar.
“We got us a live one!” hollered Jo, slapping her thigh.
"I think we have enough gas to get us ashore, so we’re going to skip the sightseeing—that all right with everybody?" asked Reese.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" demanded Jo, looking for all the world like a seasick, wet rat. "Let's kick the tires and light the fires. I’d like to stand on dry land before I throw up all over myself again.”
Ben untied the line holding the zodiac against the Excelsior's hull, and Reese pushed the tiller over, hit the throttle, and pulled them away from the dying yacht. "Oh yeah,” he crowed, feeling the power vibrate through the tiller, “she's got some legs!"
The little wooden dinghy had gotten them halfway across the new gulf and sacrificed itself in the process. The zodiac, a much larger boat with a more powerful engine, had no problem cutting through the flotsam. Reese aimed straight for shore, opened up the throttle, and held on for dear life as the zodiac tried to climb up out of the water. They sliced through waves and flotsam all the same, its reinforced hull powering through all the trash and debris streaming offshore.
In less time than it took to get halfway, they’d plowed their way through the debris field and approached the coast of Maine. Or what was left of it.
Water streamed off the high ground, falling in sheets of waterfalls, all up and down the coast. The relatively low approach near Trenton, where the bridge to Mount Desert Island had been anchored, lay mostly buried under uprooted trees and lumber from devastated buildings.
As they grew closer, Reese discovered a wall of twisted, broken debris blocked easy access to dry land. He stood in the rear of the zodiac, keeping one hand on the tiller as he slowed them, looking for an easy approach to get to shore. No matter where he turned or how far north or south he looked along the coastline, the scene was the same. Jumbled remains of buildings and homes, boards, and wet lumber stuck up at all angles, creating death traps for boats. Interspersed with snapped trees and ruined buildings, he found the remains of boats and watercraft of every shape and size. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. Even the destruction on Mount Desert Island paled to the catastrophe clogging Maine’s shoreline.
"How bad is it further inland, you think, if things look like this on the coast?" Ben asked over the roar of the outboard.
Jo shook her head, holding her sodden campaign hat against her chest, and tried to wipe the tears from her face “It ain't right…it ain't right," she said to herself.
"There,” Reese said, pointing ashore. He’d driven them north, looking for a way through the debris on the beach, then drifted back south toward Trenton. Just north of the highway connecting Mount Desert Island with Trenton proper, Reese spotted a clear stretch of beach, maybe 20 yards wide. He turned the throttle and goosed the engine, lifting the bow up out of the debris and surging forward.
“Whoa!” Jo exclaimed.
"Don't stop—the trash is just getting thicker and thicker," Ben announced from the bow. He turned to look back at Reese and made a chopping motion, directing Reese forward.
"Everybody hang on!" Reese hollered as he sat down. He turned the throttle wide open and the powerful outboard changed its roar to an earsplitting pitch. He would never be sure, but it felt like the boat tried to take flight as they slammed into a handful of trees floating just off shore. Everyone found themselves on hands and knees, pitched forward as their momentum suddenly stopped. The zodiac crashed through the last few pieces of debris and skidded to a stop on the rocky shore.
The motor sputtered and coughed, then died in a cloud of black smoke. Reese lay in the bottom of the boat, tangled on top of Jo. Ben had disappeared. For a moment no one said anything. Seagulls cried overhead, and the rushing sound of water cascading over higher ground to tumble back into the ocean was the only thing Reese heard.
Then Jo cursed. "Why don't these things come with seatbelts?"
Reese laughed and clambered to his feet, helping her up. He stumbled over the side, landing in shin deep water, and splashed ashore to find Ben a dozen feet in front of the boat, on his back in a patch of seaweed. The crutch lay tangled up in what was left of a pine tree, about six feet away from him.
When they’d all regained their feet and found purchase on dry land, Jo embraced Reese in a bear hug. "Well," he grunted as she squeezed the air from his lungs, "I don't need to see the chiropractor now.”
They all shared a laugh and congratulated each other on having survived the crossing and making it to dry land. "Now what do we do?" Ben asked, looking around.
"Looks like a bomb went off around here,” Jo commented, taking in the devastation.
“Where is here, anyway?" asked Reese.
"Boys,
I think this is what's left of Trenton." Jo shook her head and pulled out a soaking wet phone from her pocket. She held it up, letting the water drip from its case and squinted. "I had all kinds of maps on you, didn’t I? Ahyup, you’re not going to do us any good now."
Reese searched his pockets, but his phone was gone. He looked frantically in the zodiac, but it wasn’t there. He looked up to see Jo and Ben watching him. “My phone…it’s gone—Cami…”
Ben pulled a crinkly package from his pocket. He’d wrapped his cell phone in a Ziploc bag, from which he removed it and held it up like a trophy. “The bag of ice you gave me melted, so I used it to protect my phone. We can text Cami with mine, dude—relax. Here, I’ll disable the passcode so you can use it, too.”
"You little devil," Jo muttered, grinning.
Ben leaned on his remaining crutch and pulled up the maps app on his phone. "Yep. That's Trenton, all right. Cell service’s down, but GPS is still working just fine. See? Here we are.”
The others gathered around and looked down at the little glowing screen. True to his words, Ben pointed at the blue circle representing their location on the beach just north of Trenton. They all looked up as one and stared across the shortened beach, past the clumps of seaweed and downed trees. Trenton had been stripped bare, down to the foundations. Only one building remained standing, and that was simply four concrete walls. The only other structure still recognizable was a heavily damaged sign proclaiming the Trenton Bridge gas station.
"There's nothing here," Reese said, walking toward the road. They picked their way carefully through the debris and wreckage littering every square inch of ground until they made it to the relatively clear asphalt. "Why are the roads clear?"
"Don't know," Jo said. "Don't care much either. It's easier walking, I ain't lookin’ a gift horse in the mouth."
"Maybe because the road was smooth, so it allowed wreckage and stuff to move over it easier?" asked Ben as he stumped along on his crutch.
Broken Tide | Book 1 | Overfall Page 16
