by Tate, Harley
Emma suppressed a shiver. First Zach, now this insanity. She had to believe this was temporary. That people had lost their minds over the blackout, but that when the power came back on, everything would go back to normal. She clung to that hope and she resumed her search. At last, she found a pair. Neon yellow with bright orange laces. Not the most attractive, but they beat sensible pumps for a ten-mile hike any day.
She held them up to John. “As long as we’re not trying to be stealthy, I guess these will do.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Emma shrugged. “Maybe I can find some matching socks.” She hurried to the end of the aisle where a handful of socks remained scattered on the floor. She grabbed two pairs. “Let’s go.”
Together, they made their way toward the checkouts. People queued in tight-packed lines, crowding in anticipation.
John eased up behind a man in the shortest line holding a basket full of runners’ goo packets. From the flip-flops and cut-off shorts to the beer belly, he didn’t look like a seasoned athlete.
Emma leaned close to John and whispered, “You really think he’s that into running?”
“My guess is that’s the only food left in the store.”
Emma pulled back and looked around. Every person stood with pensive, worried expressions. One woman clutched a sleeping bag to her chest while she held a grubby toddler’s hand. Another carried a cooler and a bundle of waterproof matches. The man who fought over the deep fryer gloated over his prize with his chest puffed out and his hands on his hips.
They inched forward one customer at a time, until it was their turn. The clerk took the box of shoes and socks and punched the prices into a handheld calculator. “That’ll be $87.90 please.”
Emma reached for her wallet and pulled out a credit card.
The cashier tapped on a piece of paper taped to the counter. Cash Only!!! was scrawled in marker.
Emma’s cheeks heated. “I never carry cash.”
John reached for his pocket. “I’ve got it.” He fished out a handful of twenties and held them out for the cashier.
“You got nothing smaller? I’m about outta change.”
John shook his head. “It’s all I’ve got. Round up to ninety if it’s easier.”
The clerk grumbled, but took John’s money, handing him a pair of rumpled fives in exchange. John stuffed them in his wallet and motioned toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”
Emma couldn’t agree more. She’d had enough of the adrenaline and the low-grade fear rippling through the store. She’d never seen this kind of panic. Not when the power had been out for a week in a storm in Boise or when every one of her tests at CropForward turned out horribly, horribly wrong. This was new and it terrified her.
Before the door to the store even shut behind them, Tank was there, headbutting John in the thigh and wagging his tail so hard, his back end came along with it.
John gave the dog a scratch. “Sorry that took so long, buddy.”
Holly’s voice warbled. “Everything okay? You guys were in there an awful long time.”
Emma nodded. “It was a little bit busy. Picked over, but I found what I was looking for.” She held up the garish shoes.
Holly wrinkled her nose. “Everyone will see you coming.”
Leaning against the exterior of the store, Emma eased her blistered feet out of her dress shoes and into the new socks before tugging on the sneakers. She picked up the pumps and tossed them in the dumpster. Even if everything went back to normal, she was swearing off heels for good.
As soon as she was ready, they set off, heading back toward the highway and Gloria’s cabin.
“Any chance we can take a break? I think Tank’s hungry.” Holly wiped at her sweaty brow. “And I could use a breather.”
Ever since negotiating their way back to the highway, they’d kept well off the congested asphalt and hugged the tree line. Until the area grew more familiar to one of them, they needed to stick with what they knew.
John slipped his bag to the ground and rolled his shoulders. “I forget how heavy water can be.” He pulled out bottles for everyone and passed them around.
Holly made a makeshift watering bowl out of an empty, folded-over chip bag and Tank lapped up an entire bottle.
As they munched on snacks, John scouted the horizon and Emma watched the road. Over the course of the day, some cars had made a break for it, trading in the highway parking lot for off-road adventures. Based on the ruts dug into the dirt and weeds on the shoulder, quite a few cars bumped their way to exits, opting to weave through town.
Others still sat, waiting. She frowned. How long would people stay there without food? She remembered the snowpocalypse of a few years before, where cars were trapped on the highway for thirty hours or more. Quite a few people abandoned their vehicles and walked home, coming back days later to retrieve them.
Maybe the same thing happened here. She turned to John. “When will you go back for your Jeep?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your SUV. When do you think you’ll go back to get it?”
He scratched behind his ear. “Don’t know. I guess we’ll have to see how long it takes to find Gloria.”
Emma frowned. “I still feel terrible that I’ve put you in the middle of all this.”
“Don’t be.” He stiffened and nodded toward the road. “We’ve got visitors.”
A pair of walkers, laden down with overflowing backpacks, approached. “Hey, y’all. Mind if we share your shade?”
“As long as you don’t mind shaggy dogs,” Holly responded.
The woman smiled. “Not at all.” She held out her hand and Tank sniffed. “Hey there, fella. Aren’t you handsome?”
Holly grinned. “See? Everyone thinks so.” She gave Tank a rub as the man stuck out his hand to John.
“Eugene Orton. This is my girlfriend, Patricia.”
“Patty,” she corrected him.
John introduced everyone.
“Where y’all headed?”
“To my friend’s place in—” Emma began, but John cut her off.
“Up north a ways. Yourselves?”
“Oh, just out of the city. Need to find somewhere to hunker down, wait out what’s coming.”
“What do mean, what’s coming?” Holly asked.
“Chaos, most likely.” Eugene sounded so matter-of-fact, like he was talking about a rainstorm or the sunset.
“Here we go.” Patty rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.
Emma lifted a brow. “You mean the blackout?”
“It’s worse than that.” Eugene pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m an electrical engineer, used to work on the big transformers out at the substations, you know the ones?”
Emma nodded.
“The coronal mass ejection fried them. Had to have been huge. The EMP it unleashed took out the grid for the entire continent. Maybe more.”
“An EMP?” Holly glanced around. “What’s that?”
Eugene smiled like an indulgent teacher. “Electromagnetic pulse. There are different kinds; some are fast and quick, like what would be emitted from a nuclear bomb. Others, like from a solar flare or CME, are long and slow. When they reach earth, they travel through the electrical grid along all the wires and eventually reach the end points, be it substations, computers. Anything plugged in basically.”
“What does it do?”
“Cook them. It’s a surge of electricity.”
“Like when my lights blink on and off before the power goes out?”
“Exactly. Only this was much, much bigger.” Eugene scanned the tree line. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen any fires from the highway. Most transformers must have blown or melted.”
Emma tried to process. “So, what does that mean? We’ll be without power for longer?”
“Much, much longer.” Eugene glanced at Patty. “I’d say three years at least to bring most of the grid back online.”
“What?” Holly sounded incredulous. “I’ll be eighteen!
”
Eugene sobered. “With any luck.”
“Why would it take so long?”
“Over the past two decades, we’ve outsourced more and more of our manufacturing. Transformers aren’t made here anymore. They come over in huge container ships from other parts of the world. And the ones we do make aren’t manufactured in surplus. Our supply chain is so lean, we run without any excess now. It’s how big businesses stay profitable. By cutting out languishing capital.”
Emma tried to think through everything he’d just thrown at them. “So instead of warehousing transformers in case we might need them, electrical companies only order them when actually necessary?”
“Correct. That’s why when a tree takes out a transformer, it can be up to a week for it to be replaced. Often times, the area can be bypassed short term, and neighborhoods can come back online, but not always.”
Holly piped up. “We had that happen last year. A big old oak cracked in a thunderstorm and landed on the power lines down the street. The big metal thing on the pole caught fire. It took the power company nine days to restore power. They said it was because of the number of outages, but my dad didn’t believe them.”
“They weren’t lying, exactly, but the lack of available equipment definitely slowed them down.”
“I had no idea.” Emma couldn’t wrap her head around the implications. “So, you’re saying that everywhere across the country is suffering from blown transformers and melted equipment? And we don’t have enough materials to fix it?”
“Yep.”
“So, what happens to the country?”
“Just what I said: chaos.”
Emma shuddered at the thought.
“No electricity means no financial markets, no logistics, no supply chain. No heat. No lights at night. No refrigeration.”
“It’s like we’re thrown back into the pre-industrial revolution.”
“Except no one knows how to farm, or raise livestock, or do any of the things that used to be a necessity.”
It was too overwhelming. Emma couldn’t think about the ramifications of Eugene’s words. If even a fraction of what he explained were true, then life as she knew it was over. She glanced at Holly. The poor girl looked like she might throw up. “Don’t worry. It can’t be as bad as all that.”
“That’s what I keep telling him,” Patty offered. “Come on, Eugene. You need to stop scaring people with all this talk.”
He reached out and took his girlfriend’s hand. “I’m just trying to prepare them, hon. That’s all.”
All this time, John hadn’t asked a single question. As the group fell into a strained silence, he excused himself and walked into the tree line.
Emma watched him for a moment until she realized what he must be up to and turned before heat raced up her cheeks. “You two hungry? We have a bit of food. Happy to share.”
Chapter Fourteen
Emma
No one felt much like talking after parting company with Eugene and Patty on the outskirts of town. Congested business districts with every fast food imaginable and countless gas stations gave way to rolling hills and pastured horses. Emma hadn’t driven this far outside of her bubble of work and home in months.
Not since everything went crazy with CropForward.
She’d only been to Gloria and Raymond’s cabin once; about a year before when Gloria invited her for a long girl’s weekend. It was one of those places where you forgot the world existed. All alone on about twenty acres, nothing but trees and a creek and the occasional deer. The Sanchez family could ride out whatever happened with the power grid and CropForward in the relative safety of the woods.
“Do you believe all those things Eugene said?” Holly’s question brought Emma back to the present. “About the power grid and what might happen?” Holly had retreated into herself after the midday conversation, shoving earbuds in her ears and cranking up her music. It must have taken her that long to process.
“I don’t know.” Emma wished she did, but everything had gone sideways. “If what Eugene said is true…”
“The world just got a hell of a lot more complicated.” John spoke for the first time in an hour. “We need to do some reconnaissance. Find out more information.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” She said it with more venom than she’d intended, but John didn’t take the bait. Emma softened. “Sorry. I’m just hungry and tired.” She checked her watch. Past dinner. The sun would be setting soon. “We should look for a place to rest. I’m not sure how much more progress I can make tonight.”
“I’m exhausted,” Holly groaned. “Tank is, too.”
An exit loomed and John pointed toward it. “We can head off the highway here, see if there’s a place off the road we can camp out.”
Holly yanked her earbuds out. “You want us to sleep outside?”
“Why not?”
As if in response, a fat raindrop plopped on Emma’s nose. She pointed toward the sky. “Because I think we’re about to get soaked.” As she spoke, the sky opened up, dumping an instant, soaking downpour on their heads.
Holly shrieked and took off running, duffel bag bouncing against her back with every step. John pulled a ball cap from his bag and tugged it low over his eyes before stuffing his hands in his pockets and picking up the pace.
It didn’t take long for the rain to soak Emma to the bone. Her blouse clung to her skin, rain dripped off her eyelashes, and her brand-new sneakers squished with each step.
Up ahead, Holly stood at a T-intersection, head on a swivel. “There’s nothing here. Not even a gas station.” Tank crowded beside her, ears flat and tail tucked.
She was right; they had definitely left civilization behind. Emma came to a stop beside her. In the distance, only one light glowed. “Look over there. Is that a house?”
Holly held a hand up to shield her eyes as she squinted. “Maybe. You think they would let us in?”
“We shouldn’t risk it,” John offered. “It’s better to keep going.”
“We’re still miles from Gloria’s.” Emma shook her head. “I’m freezing. Holly and Tank are miserable. It’s worth a shot.”
“We don’t know what we’d be walking into.” John seemed adamant, but Emma didn’t agree.
She glanced at Tank, shivering beside Holly, and made up her mind. “We can’t stay out here. If you don’t want to come with us, fine. But we’re going to try.” Emma ushered Holly toward the light. “The worst that happens is they turn us away.”
“If that’s what you think, then you’re even more naïve than I gave you credit for.” John called out the retort as he watched Emma and Holly head toward the house.
After a few moments, he loped up beside her.
“Change your mind?”
“Decided I’d rather not hear the gunshot and always wonder.”
She cut him a nasty glance, but the rain cut it short.
“Oh, look! It’s so cute!” Holly practically scampered forward, pointing at a little white farmhouse straight out of a picture book. A white post-and-rail fence lined the driveway and a mailbox announcing the Sutton residence presided over the front lawn. Emma took a deep breath. If these people were as welcoming as their yard, maybe they could dry off and have a warm place to rest.
“Holly, slow down!” John’s voice sliced through the rain, but the girl didn’t listen. He jogged after her, looking every bit the military man he used to be, until the front door to the house swung open.
“Get off my property!” an older voice warbled as it called out from the shadow.
Emma slowed. John stopped, one hand on his hip where his pistol was holstered.
Holly skittered to a stop and held up her hands. Tank’s fur bristled.
This was going all wrong. Emma waved at the porch. “Hi, there! We were just looking for some cover from the rain, that’s all.”
“I said, get off my property!” A figure emerged from the shadows pointing a double-barreled shotgun straight at Holly
. From the shake in the barrel and the shock of white hair, Emma guessed the man was in his seventies, maybe older. She could understand his concern.
“We don’t mean any harm.” Emma glanced at John, who still kept his hand on his hip, ready to draw. “Like I said, we’re just tired and wet and could use a rest.”
“Of course you could.” A hot pink umbrella covered in polka dots bounced toward the shotgun-wielding man with a wisp of a woman underneath it. She grabbed the barrel and shoved it down. “Gilbert Sutton, don’t you go makin’ these poor people feel unwelcome.”
“They don’t look poor to me.”
The woman shook her head and let go of the gun. “Y’all come right on up to our front porch and let me get a look at you.”
“We don’t know them, Irma.”
She tsked him and pointed at Tank. “Anyone who has a dog is good people.”
Gil and John rolled their eyes in unison and Emma couldn’t help but laugh. “I appreciate your kindness, ma’am.”
“There’s no ma’ams around here. Name’s Irma. Now get out of that rain before you catch your death.” She ushered them forward, patting Holly on the back as she ducked beneath the metal roof.
Gil lowered his weapon and stepped back to make room as Emma and John squeezed in.
Irma’s clucking broadcast her dissatisfaction. “Put down that shotgun and go get some towels from the laundry.” She shooed her husband into the house.
Grumbling about meddling women and unwelcome visitors, Gil let the screen door swing shut behind him.
“You pay him no heed.” Irma smiled as she took a good look at the lot of them. “Y’all look like drowned rats. We’ll fix that. Some towels, maybe a change of clothes, some warm food in your belly. You’ll be right as rain.” She scrunched her nose as she peered out at the sky. “Maybe not this right.”
Emma smiled and Holly laughed, but it turned into a chatter.
“Goodness, where is that husband of mine? Gilbert!” Irma hollered for her husband and Emma smiled wider. These were good people.
The screen door whooshed open. “You’d gone and put the good towels in the front,” Gil huffed as he emerged from the house. “I had to rummage through to find the old ones. No need to holler.”
