by Noah Mann
There was no point in trying to outrun my pursuer. My pickup was built for load, not speed. I was out of good options.
Except one.
I slammed on the brakes and slid my pickup to a stop, its length skidding to block both lanes of the highway, dull metal guard rails to either side, creating a makeshift roadblock. The cruiser in pursuit screamed to a stop, tires smoking as they grabbed asphalt. By the time it sat motionless a dozen yards from my pickup I was out, AR-15 in hand, taking dead aim at the younger Trooper as he stepped fast from his cruiser and drew down on me from behind the open driver’s door.
“Put down your weapon!” he commanded me.
I made no move to comply.
“Now!” he shouted, using volume to exert authority.
“No,” I said.
I’m not sure what he expected me to do or say, but the simple word of defiance appeared to take him aback. He shifted in place, gaze sweeping the road to either side. Possibly to see if he’d fallen for some planned ambush. Or maybe he just wanted a way out of what was happening.
“What’s your name?” I asked past the triangle glowing in my AR’s illuminated sight.
He hesitated for a moment, fingers flexing around his pistol.
“Trooper Morris.”
“No,” I told him. “Your name.”
“Jason,” he said, a slight catch in his words.
“Jason, listen to me. Something’s happening, something big, and people are scared. You’re scared. I’m sure as hell scared. But that doesn’t mean either of us has to do the wrong thing.”
“I’m just following—”
“Orders,” I said for him. “I know. Your partner back there probably told you to go corral my ass and drag it back to the roadblock. Right?”
He nodded sharply. Like a frightened child might confirm an innocent misdeed they’d been caught in.
“Him telling you that, or even higher-ups ordering these roadblocks, those things don’t make it right. None of it.” I knew what I had to say next. “And killing you wouldn’t be the right thing for me to do, either.”
I could see the color drain slightly from his already pale complexion.
“The smart thing for me to do, to have done, to make sure you didn’t know where I was going, would be to pump you full of bullets before you ever had the chance to get out of your cruiser. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. That would not be defending myself. That would be executing you. I’ve seen that done, and I don’t want to go there. I don’t even want to come close to that mental place where one person can do that to another. So let’s end this.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, truly at a loss.
“We walk away,” I told him. “You go back and report that you couldn’t locate me, and I go on my way, as I should have been able to do in the first place. The world is going to shit, Jason. You and I killing each other isn’t going to change that. It’s only going to put that stench on us for doing so.”
Behind him, the radio in his cruiser spat out “Red... Red... Red...”
“We’re both better than this, Jason,” I told him, and for a long moment in the half-light he stared at me, until finally the aim of his weapon dropped, muzzle pointed at the asphalt between us.
“What the hell is happening?” he asked, truly asked, almost a plea. Just some young kid, probably a year out of the academy. “Is this all because of the blight?”
“Yeah,” I said, and watched him holster his pistol, my AR coming down as the moment fully defused.
“What the hell do I do?”
“You could do your job,” I told him. “Or you could get with your family and try to make it through this.”
He thought on the suggestion for a moment, then nodded. It was a quiet gesture. A confirmation closer to surrender than determination. Whatever decision he’d made bringing no full measure of comfort.
“Go on, Jason,” I calmly urged him.
He slipped back into his cruiser and killed the pulsing red and blue lights atop the vehicle, staring at me through the windshield for a moment before backing through a three point turn and speeding south down the highway. When he was out of sight beyond a low rise in the road, I returned to my pickup and continued north. I saw no lights in my rearview the rest of the way. No sign of life at all.
I wondered if Trooper Jason Morris would be the last person I’d ever see.
Seven
I turned off the road and drove maybe twenty yards up the driveway of my refuge and stopped, killing the engine and getting out, AR in hand as I waited. And listened. And watched.
No one had followed. No officers of the law had hung back, blacked out, trailing me covertly. Waiting for me to stop so they could pounce. I had made it. Jason had taken what I’d said to heart. He hadn’t radioed for reinforcements.
I was home.
From the back of my pickup I dragged a stout chain and looped it around a sturdy pine on one side of the driveway, then around a similar tree opposite it, securing both ends with heavy padlocks. The linked barrier was set about radiator high, and would, if not stop any unexpected arrivals, at least let them know that their presence was not entirely welcome. Finished, I climbed back into my pickup and drove the hundred yards or so to my house. Again I stood quiet once outside my vehicle, taking in my surroundings. My new surroundings.
My forever surroundings, a small voice within suggested. Maybe warned.
It mattered not, I knew. The fact that I was here, alive, somewhat prepared. I slung my AR and took mental stock of what I’d accomplished already before arriving. Beyond the food and consumables I’d trucked up for storage, other practicalities had occupied me on the few trips I’d made up in the previous weeks.
In the barn, whose roof I’d mostly patched and siding I’d mended where needed, I’d installed a timed filter on the mobile tank filled with diesel, scheduled to run every day to mitigate the inevitable fouling of the fuel by moisture. How long that would keep the diesel viable I didn’t know. Six months? A year?
That pump, and my house, depended for power on the solar array I’d expanded. Mounted out back of my house, with a full southern exposure, what it produced from sunlight was fed into a bank of batteries that had taken over the back bedroom. That was now power central, with distribution panel, inverters, and a switch allowing me to change the whole thing over to generator power if need be. That beefy unit, which I’d positioned in an old, well ventilated shed on the west side of the house, was probably the weakest link in my attempt to maintain some creature comforts. It was fifteen years old, and had, through my own fault, been neglected in the many years it had sat here, virtually unused. It was working now after some maintenance. I hoped it still would if it came to needing it.
For heating, there was an abundant supply of wood just outside my door. I’d already laid in two full cords for the coming winter, and with either chainsaw or axe I could take down whatever more I needed, hauling sized logs on the back of the ATV I’d trailered up the past weekend. Critical areas, where the batteries and electronics were situated, and in the barn near the diesel filter system, had dedicated 12 volt space heaters. Not enough to make the space anything near habitable for any stretch of time, but plenty to ward off any threat of freezing during the coldest periods.
All the preparations I’d made, both mechanical and practical, would require near constant maintenance. Snow would need to be cleared from the solar panels as it accumulated. Filters would need to be cleaned. Battery connections would have to be checked for corrosion. Food would have to be planned, and rotated, and kept free of assault by vermin.
And still, I knew I wasn’t fully ready. I doubted anyone could be. Some things I was certain to forget, or be unaware of altogether. There would be failures. Breakdowns. Mistakes. If none of them killed me, I would consider myself lucky.
But I was here. Safe for the moment. With much to do. I made my way inside and lit a fire in the hearth of the great room, facing it from the old leather chair with a pad
and pencil on my lap, ready to make my list for the first day of my new life. Tasks, large and small, to begin or complete. The myriad of necessary actions tumbled about in my head as I tipped it and let it loll toward the window, the day sweeping yellow over the trees and mountains beyond. Before I could stop myself my eyes began to flutter, then close, and I was dreaming. Visions filling the sleep as I fell into it, exhausted. Images and sounds of gunfire and blood and screams.
The new world.
Eight
More than two years earlier, on a lark, Neil and I had decided to spend a cold Sunday in February watching the Super Bowl at my getaway. All it had taken then was dragging a satellite dish to the property, mounting it, connecting it to an older flat screen I was ready to do away with, and, with Neil performing a little electronic larceny, jacking the converter box so we could ‘borrow’ the signal for a bit. The dish had remained mounted to the roof since, neglected, weather and nesting birds wreaking havoc upon it, but after waking from the exhaustion-fueled sleep that had seized me, a few hours of attention on the receiver as the afternoon crept toward evening gave me a window to the world outside.
None of the major stations were coming in on the satellite. No CNN, no ABC, nothing. I guessed it was possible that they were already off the air, without staff, some trouble spreading quickly. More likely, though, was a simple reality unrelated to what had happened—our little satellite signal theft had been shut down. The signal once again scrambled.
One station did come in, though. From Denver. A local network affiliate that displayed nothing more than a solid red rectangle on screen. No different than what I’d seen on my television at home.
At my old home.
I left the television on, ignoring what drain it might have on my batteries, and went to the hearth, arranging logs and setting the kindling beneath ablaze. In ten minutes I had a fire licking at the hearth’s blackened interior. The old leather chair that faced it swallowed my still-tired body. To the left a side table filled the space between my chair and another, its emptiness stark and chilling.
Neil had sat there. With me. In front of a fire no different than the one that blazed before me now. We’d relaxed, tossed back beers, bullshitted after a day’s fishing. Now I sat alone.
An overwhelming need to reach out to my friend filled me, and I dug my cell phone from my pocket, the act futile before ever seeing the NO SIGNAL displayed on the top of its screen. I knew there’d be no service at my refuge. There never had been. A few miles north of Whitefish things got spotty. Back in the woods, behind hills that rolled toward the mountains, one might as well have been trying to reach out from a black hole. But the desire to connect with him was impossible to resist, and I stared at the phone for several minutes before realizing that the visual representation of the Red Signal still filled most of the screen. Even without reception. Somehow the warning had been downloaded, and, for lack of a better term, lived within the device now.
I turned me cell phone over and laid it face down on the side table, regarding it warily for a moment, then looking to the fire again as I said a quiet prayer for my friend.
* * *
I stood in the kitchen and stared at the stove and cursed myself.
“Idiot.”
The stove was perfectly good, but, like all stoves, it required fuel, and the propane tank nestled out back beyond the generator shed hadn’t been topped off since spring. And, adding insult to injury, that slow leak I’d suspected it to have in its regulator, the one I’d been meaning to get fixed, looked to have bled out what remained after a spring and summer of regular use.
I cranked the burner off, then on again, and flicked the long lighter I held over the jets. A few spouts of flame glowed blue for a second, then flickered out, whatever gas there’d been in the tank virtually gone. I’d stocked up on smaller propane cylinders for a camp stove, and a dozen large bags of charcoal for the barbecue, but I’d mentally prepared myself for at least a few months cooking on the existing stove, in the kitchen, like any normal person would. Just a slice of my old life that I could maintain.
Wait...
I didn’t speak the word aloud, but even thinking it I felt a sense of relief rise. Possible relief. From the moment of my arrival early in the day until this very moment, I hadn’t opened the shutoff valve on the tank. The very same valve I’d closed at the end of my last extended stay during the summer. All I was getting was residual gas in the line between the tank and the house.
“Idiot,” I repeated, for different reasons now, and tossed the lighter onto the kitchen table as I pushed the back door open roughly. I’d neglected to grab my jacket, and the evening chill was already settling in, biting at me as I moved down the side of my house and rounded the back corner. The propane tank, supported on its side like some giant white pill, rested just ahead, in the deep shadow laid by the generator shed, the very last light of day blotted out by the structure. I went to it and reached for the valve handle.
But I stopped before laying a hand upon it. Even in the din of the coming night I noticed something.
The regulator fixed to the outlet valve had been changed. It was dull metal and far from new, but it was different. Not the rusted mass that had topped the tank the last time I saw it.
I grabbed the valve handle and twisted it open. Gas hissed through the regulator and into the buried line feeding my house. The tank wasn’t empty. The repair had prevented that from happening.
But repaired by who?
Instantly I felt exposed, turning to take in the sight of the darkened woods surrounding my refuge. I wore no pistol on my belt. Had no rifle slung. One or the other I should have had with me. Because, clearly, I wasn’t the only person who’d visited my refuge in the recent past.
I glanced to the working regulator again, then returned to the house, closing the back door and locking it as night came fully. Gas was flowing again. The meal I’d planned from the small amount of fresh food I’d brought with me on this final trip was just minutes away. But I never cooked it. Never turned the stove on. Sounds from the great room made that impossible.
Voices.
Nine
The pair of newscasters, a man and a woman, stared out at me from the television in the great room, taking turns speaking to the camera as the newsroom buzzed behind. Everyone both intentionally and unintentionally on camera seemed running on the juice that fueled the news profession when some crisis struck.
Calm, though, was my reaction to seeing what I did. Borne of lingering tiredness, or simply from surprise at finding some connection to the world beyond my refuge, it set me into a mode of near stasis. I didn’t sit. Didn’t move. I just stood a few steps inside the great room and watched the first reports of the nation beginning to crumble.
“Again, bear with us,” the male newscaster said. A graphic beneath identified him as Jim Winters, and his colleague as Stephanie Brent. “We’ve just managed to break through the signal that has apparently overrun all television broadcasts.”
“And radio,” Stephanie added as Jim took a breath. “Cell phones, the internet. This takeover of communications has been total and widespread.”
“Unprecedented,” Jim agreed, falling quickly back into his role. “If you are joining us, this is Network Five, Denver, and we are on the air after more than fourteen hours of inability to bring the news to you.” He glanced briefly over his shoulder, to ranks of monitors high on the wall in the newsroom beyond, each and every one still showing the glaring red rectangle. “All national and affiliate stations are still off the air, as you can see behind me.”
“If you pick up your landline phone,” Stephanie said, retrieving a handset from beneath the sleek desk at which they sat, “you’ll hear this.”
She held the phone close to the small black microphone clipped to the collar of her blouse, and over the air the familiar repletion was broadcast.
“Red... Red... Red...”
“There are no dial tones,” she said, returning the phone to
its hidden cradle beneath the desk. “Just that word repeating over and over.”
“It is the same for calling on cell phones,” Jim told the audience. “Which has made our attempts to get some explanation from authorities exceedingly difficult. We’ve sent staff to reach out to both city and state officials, but have received no telling information.”
“Our engineers aren’t even sure how they were able to override the jamming signal,” Stephanie admitted. “But, thankfully, they were.”
They bantered on for a few minutes about their own situation at the station. How seasoned reporters were trying to work sources, to dig, to pressure any who might have information. But there was nothing concrete to offer. Only speculation.
“In the absence of official statements,” Jim began, drawing a breath, as if steeling himself for some difficult admission, “we must look to events that might enlighten our understanding of this ongoing event. What do we actually know?”
He began to list facts of the moment, and facts that could very well help explain the situation. There was widespread concern about the blight. Concern that had begun to manifest itself in hoarding, shortages, even theft of foodstuffs from warehouses. If the seriousness of the blight and its effects had been concealed from the public, might not the Red Signal be related? Some alert from the government to personnel? Jim Winters surmised that this was precisely so. I knew it was, thanks to Neil.
“And just who has the ability, the power, to do what we see on those screens behind me? We’ve learned through leaks and reporting by the few brave journalists with guts enough to stand against a government that preaches openness while enforcing secrecy that agencies of our own intelligence apparatus have—”
Something just off camera drew Jim’s attention for an instant, interrupting his monologue.
“No, I will not ‘be careful’,” Jim said, Stephanie at his side, both glaring at some unseen individual off camera. “We’ve been ‘careful’ for too long. It’s time to tell it like it is.” Again he looked to the camera. To the audience, whatever it numbered, beyond the lens. “Our own intelligence agencies have woven themselves into our daily existence. Hacking emails, collecting phone calls, tracking our movements both online and off with help from compliant technological behemoths. Is it too far-fetched to assume that an entity capable of that is also capable of implanting some code in our phones? Or taking over the airwaves? The satellites? To borrow a clichéd phrase, this reporter thinks not. So we have that as a starting point—this is the doing of our own government. And that, my friends, sends shivers down my spine. Because if they are afraid...”
