"Jessica! Oh, thank heavens."
As they embraced, the mayor's eyes swiveled in Devon's direction. "Mr. Myers. May I ask why you're here?"
"He rescued me, Dad. There was a crush in the bar."
"You were there? I've told you about that place, Jessica."
She pulled away from him. "I'm not sixteen anymore, Dad."
He sighed and then nodded at Devon. "Thank you for looking after my daughter. I guess you've earned your spot at the center of things."
"What's going on? Are we under attack?" Jessie asked as the mayor shepherded them into a corner, away from the hubbub.
Gil Summers looked like a man who knew that the truth was going to prove even worse than the evidence so far would support. "I haven't been able to get through to any of the county or state OEMs. I was watching the news. The studio just exploded. That was broadcasting from Vegas and the game was in Tampa, so that's two places we know were affected. Then the lines went dead and now we can't raise anyone outside of Hope itself."
"So, it's a terrorist attack?"
The mayor shrugged. "At best, this is a disaster, at worst … who knows how far this goes?"
Devon rubbed the stubbly hair on his head and tried to wrap his brain around what he'd just heard. He saw again the fireball that had consumed the Super Bowl stadium and the darkness that followed it. He'd spent the greater part of his professional life infiltrating and fighting terrorist groups, but he'd only ever seen plans of destruction on this scale in the hands of the most deluded radicals. But this had all the hallmarks of a planned attack and if they'd pulled it off, then it would be a final victory for the forces of terror, and everything he'd ever done would have been in vain. He groaned as a black wave of despair engulfed him.
#
Paul Hickman sat in his living room waiting for the power to come on so he could switch off his generator. Propane was expensive and he would certainly claim the cost—plus a percentage for his inconvenience—once everything was back to normal.
Back to normal? What had he seen on the TV in the moments before the electricity died? It sure had looked like the stadium had blown up. An accident? Maybe. A terror attack? Yeah. That would be it. Strike when half of America was watching. Maximum impact. Maximum fear.
Well, Paul Hickman wasn't going to be afraid.
Except that he couldn't reach his daughter.
One text had come through from her: Dad, gone crazy here. Help!
He'd replied, but she'd not gotten back to him again. The message had come through half an hour after he'd phoned her grandmother, so she'd escaped whatever had happened to the old woman, but the uncertainty was killing him.
So, he sat in silence. The TV couldn't pick anything up, so the transmitter must also be down. Puzzling, since it was a long way out of town. In his mind he replayed all the mess-ups, bad choices and misfortune that had led to Sam living two thousand miles away. She was the only human being he gave two hoots about and now he didn't know if she was safe.
How long had it been now? Ten years? Eleven? He pulled at Buster's ear as he gave in to the memory. He'd been sitting in this very room, though he'd stripped it bare like a slash-and-burn farmer in the years since. Sam had been asleep in bed while her mother partied. The phone had rung, and the foundation of his life melted from beneath him. A hit-and-run as she walked along the sidewalk.
He'd buried Juliet and done his best to comfort his daughter, all the while waiting for the justice he knew to be coming. They'd caught the driver the next day and the prosecutor had a cast-iron case. And then his wife's blood results were revealed in court—without having been disclosed to the prosecution first. The judge ruled that the defendant, the son of a state legislator, could not be found guilty because it was just as likely that Juliet had staggered into the road as it was that the killer had mounted the sidewalk.
Despite the tire marks. Despite where she'd fallen.
Paul Hickman had learned a valuable lesson that night. Don't rely on anyone else for justice. And so he'd lost his daughter in his pursuit of vengeance. He'd neglected her and the same legal system that had failed him then took his only solace away and handed her to his wife's parents. Nearly a decade ago.
Perhaps he'd lost Sam for good this time. He had a bad feeling.
A flash of white tugged him back into the present. Something was out in the garden.
"Not again!" he snapped as he strode over to the window and stared into the darkness. He dimmed the lights and waited for his eyes to adjust. Yes, there it was, hopping around his lawn without a care.
Well, this time the girl would learn her lesson. On this night of all nights, it was time everyone understood that actions had consequences, and we all had to be responsible for what we did. He'd faced up to his stupidity and thoughtlessness, but perhaps if someone had taught him that lesson when he was a kid, his life would have turned out differently.
He moved over to the glass door that opened onto the garden. "Come here, boy," he said.
Paul Hickman pulled the door open. "Go get it." And Buster slipped out. Paul didn't enjoy listening to the screams of the rabbit, but sometimes the most valuable lessons are also the most painful to learn.
2: Ezra
"I didn't ask to come," Devon said as he gazed out of the truck window.
Ted Kaminski—though everyone called him Rusty on account of his having once had red curly hair—grunted but didn't respond. He kept his eyes on the highway and one arm out of the car window. It was cold outside, and a frost had tickled the scrubby grass that lined the highway, but Rusty's car stank of wet old dog and on second thought, having to wrap up warm was the lesser of the two evils.
"I guess Gil reckons I need a babysitter," he said eventually. "Either that, or he wants to keep you away from that there daughter of his as much as possible."
Devon felt himself flush, though with skin as dark as his there was little chance of Kaminski noticing.
He was wrong. "No need to go all coy on me, son. There ain't no shame in taking a shine to a good-lookin' woman and Jessie Summers sure is that. She's also a whole heap of trouble. If you'll take my advice, you'll steer clear of her."
It had seemed like such a good idea when Council Leader Gil Summers had asked him to ride shotgun with the town's only electrical engineer (and retired at that) to investigate the loss of Hope's electrical power. A chance to gain a credit in the old man's book and, perhaps, impress Jessie at the same time. But it seemed that nothing in this small town remained private for long and his attempt to get her to go on a date with him was common knowledge. Jessie herself had probably spread it. Maybe she thought it was funny.
They were heading north on Kennedy Highway. Hope had grown up from a tiny settlement on the gold rush road but established itself for copper mining in the decades that followed. The mines were still open, though occupying only a part of the moonscape to the west of the highway, and some townsfolk found work there, but Hope, like so many small towns, was now home to an aging population as its youth sought jobs in the cities.
Ezra had been founded to the south decades later, but over the years its location on a flat plain between two ranges had seen it expand so that it had become the county seat and leached off Hope's authority and self-determination as it acted like a magnet to its people.
So, Hope sat sandwiched between the modern copper workings and the Schmidt Valley range of mountains to the east. The only way in and out was along Kennedy Highway, and the transmission towers followed it.
"Look at that!"
A big truck with "Scott to Go Deliveries" emblazoned on the side was half blocking the road, almost lost in a tangle of cables and struts from the tower it had plowed into.
"Well, I'll be a …" Rusty said as he swung the old Ford pickup alongside the wreckage.
Devon jumped out and ran to the door of the fire-blackened cab. It screeched as he wrenched it open. Bracing himself for what he might find, he climbed up and peered inside. "No one here. How on earth?
"
"Come and look at this," Rusty called from the other side of the truck.
Devon climbed over the debris that surrounded the front of the cab.
"Hey!" Rusty called. "You be careful, you hear? Those cables could be live!"
After freezing for a moment, Devon looked across at where the top of the tower now lay on the ground and followed the four cables to where each had broken. None were in contact with the metal of the truck, so he clambered on before finally standing alongside Rusty and following his pointing finger. "Footprints? So, the driver got away?"
"I reckon he crashed it, then got out before it caught fire."
Devon tried to follow the old man's reasoning. As a former police officer, he wasn't too keen on asking this civilian to state the obvious. Then he saw it. "The footprints are pretty wide apart. He was walking, not running."
"Yeah. Maybe it was a surprise to him when the cab caught fire. Maybe we'll get a chance to ask him. Looks like he headed toward town."
Nodding, Devon gazed back along the route they'd taken. They'd seen no one, but the blackout had happened over twelve hours ago and that was plenty of time for the driver to make his way into Hope. Where was he now, though?
"Well, this is gonna take a whole heap of fixin'. Best we get some help, and we'd better start at the substation. They've probably already switched it off, but it pays to be careful around ten thousand volts of prime, home-grown alternating current."
They climbed back in the car and Rusty steered it slowly around the wreckage, the heavy smell of spilled diesel polluting the fresh winter air as they picked up speed again.
The substation was fifteen miles to the north. Or, at least, it had been. What remained were the twisted shapes of transmission towers and metal support posts writhing as if in frozen agony, framed by the shattered remains of chain-link fencing that had exploded outward. At the rear, a small brick building smoked, its door flung open, and the tortured remains of what might once have been human beings lying like shadows on the black-spattered concrete.
The substation looked as if a giant black beetle had fallen from the heavens onto its back, legs clawing at the sky as it lay there in its ruin. There was an alien quality to the scene that left Devon's mind unable to grasp what he was looking at.
"Jesus, Joseph and Mary," Rusty hissed as he brought the pickup to a halt just outside the blast zone.
"I guess we don't need to worry about the cables being live," Devon said, jumping out and striding along the road, his heavy boots crunching on shattered fragments.
He kneeled beside a body sprawled on the ground, half covered with glass. "Good grief. The poor devil's been thrown here. He—she—didn't run, she flew."
"She dead?" Rusty asked in a stunned voice.
"Of course she's dead!" Devon snapped before rubbing his eyes and getting to his feet. "Sorry. This is just …"
Rusty patted him on the shoulder. "Sure. I know. Guess we'd better get a bit closer. Try to figure out what happened."
The substation itself was unrecognizable. What would once have been a complex nest of metal and plastic now resembled some sort of nightmarish pasta dish that had been left in the oven for too long. It stank of burning rubber and the residual heat warmed Devon's face.
"It must have been one hell of a fireball," Rusty said.
Devon turned away from the scene. "Were you watching the game last night?"
"No. Baseball's my sport. First I knew anything was up was when the lights went out, so when the power didn't come back on, I reported to Gil."
"Very public-spirited of you."
Rusty let out a grim chuckle. "Not really. I was just saving him the trouble of sending someone after me."
"Well, the last thing I saw on the TV was an explosion, right before the power went out."
"Like what you think caused this, you mean?" Rusty said, sweeping his arm over the smoking devastation.
Devon nodded. "Yeah, exactly. Except much, much bigger." He climbed back into the pickup with the image of that ring of fire in his mind, wondering just how much of the country had burned last night.
It seemed to Devon that Gil Summers had gotten a lot older in the past few hours. He and Rusty had forced their way through the crowd that had gathered outside the community center to make their report to the mayor and, as he delivered the bad news, Devon reckoned he saw Summers age another few years.
They were in the office Summers used when performing the duties of a civic leader. Those had been light enough in a town with only a hair over two thousand inhabitants—disputes between neighbors, representing the council in their ongoing bickering with Ezra—and so the room was small and had only one window that looked out over the road outside.
"So, no prospect of restoring power," Summers said to himself as he gazed down at the waiting crowd. "I've got a crowd gathering in the gym hall downstairs and I'd hoped to be able to say we'd have the lights back soon, but I guess folks will have to make do with their generators, those that have them."
Rusty nodded. "Yeah, we came through a bunch of them. They seemed pretty calm so far. I guess they think that if the power comes back online, they'll be able to find out what's been goin' on outside. What is it, Mr. Mayor?" It was a small token of resistance that most Hopers referred to their leader this way even though the place was no longer big enough to justify the title.
Summers' face had dropped. "And then we'll have another problem. I've been round to Martha Bowie's place. You ever been there, Rusty?"
"Sure. It's like a fortress. Old Dave got her started, but she's taken it to heart. Seems she was right, after all."
"Well, she's got the mother of all ham radio setups and she's been trying to get some news while Joe runs the shop. Joe's her husband, Devon. Dave's his father, and as unlike his son as any man can be."
"And what did you find out?" Devon asked.
Summers shrugged. "Nothing positive. Nothing on the official emergency channels, and she hasn't been able to get in touch with any of her usual contacts. She thinks the repeaters might be down, whatever they are, so her range is limited."
"So, we can't confirm the status of anyone outside of Hope, except that it seems likely that the power outage is nationwide?"
Summers nodded.
Devon thought for a moment. "You know, pretty soon, the people downstairs are going to have more on their minds than whether the lights work. If there's no power outside Hope, then the entire infrastructure will collapse—chilled and frozen food will be ruined, gas stations won't work and it might be a long time before we see any fresh supplies. People will make their way to Martha's to stock up. It'll be orderly enough to start with, but when the shelves start looking thin, chances are things'll get nasty."
"You're making a giant leap there, Mr. Myers. All we know at the moment is that we can't contact anyone outside and that there have been at least a couple of what look like attacks. If they've hit the power grid hard, then they might have caused the lights to go out, but it's hardly Armageddon. And it might surprise you to hear this, but I had given the security of our food supply some thought," Summers said, with a touch of petulance. "I was going to send Ned Birkett around there to keep order, but I was also going to ask him to drive down to Ezra to see the sheriff and bring back some extra officers. One cop isn't enough."
"'Specially when that cop is Ned Birkett," Rusty said.
Summers wagged a finger at the former engineer. "Now then, Rusty, enough of that. He may not be the sharpest saw in the toolbox, but he's all we've got and if we're to keep a lid on this, we need to respect the law. No, we need him to stay here. Mr. Myers, why don't you go? You were a cop yourself, weren't you?"
With a sigh, Devon nodded. "Metropolitan police. Anti-terror squad. Not sure it carries any weight here, though."
"But you're American, ain't you?" Rusty said, his eyes wide. "Your accent's a bit weird. I kinda thought it was East Coast."
"Army brat. Born here. My dad served in the UK. Mum and Dad spl
it up. Mum stayed over there. I stayed with her. And yeah, Mr. Mayor, I'll go to Ezra."
He didn't want to, but it was the quickest way out of the office and the awkward conversation about his past. He didn't want that particular rabbit hole to come under scrutiny.
What he needed above all else was a shower, a few hours' sleep and time to himself. What he got was a quick wash and Rusty's company on the road south.
If Hope was a two-bit town, then Ezra was its half dollar bigger brother. A little under fifty miles to the south along 89, it was the administrative center of Dogwood County and home to the nearest sheriff's office and hospital. Devon knew little enough of Hope's history, but it was impossible to ignore the resentment its inhabitants felt for Ezra as the signs of its independence had been stripped away over the decades and funneled into Ezra instead. The last, and worst, of these indignities had been the closure of the sheriff's office and jail a couple of decades ago.
Devon had been gazing out of the window of Rusty's pickup when he saw the first signs of trouble on the horizon. To their left, the Schmidt range rose against a blue sky, and ahead other peaks marched across their path. In the plain where the two met sat Ezra, and above it, black roiling clouds rose and polluted the fresh winter air.
As they neared the town, they began to pass the burned-out wreckage of vehicles, though they saw no one alive. It was hovering just above freezing and the sparse grass and shrubs were laced with frost—no weather for being outside—so perhaps any survivors had walked back to Ezra. But there would be no shelter for them there.
The regional airport, a major source of income that had gone entirely to Ezra instead of Hope, was in ruins. Charred hulks lay on the runway like downed and abandoned birds, while trails of smoke drifted from the blackened remains of the main building. Orange flames, fed by reserves of fuel, still licked their way out of maintenance buildings and hangers, and Devon could just barely make out the tail numbers of a small passenger jet that looked as though it had stalled on takeoff, plummeting nose-first into a taxiing Cessna 172.
Last City: Book 1 in the Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series: (The Last City - Book 1) Page 3
