Countdown to Armageddon (15 page)

     Joyce said, “Dammit! You think they’ll climb the towers?”

     “I would,” Scott said, “if I were in their situation. If I was looking for a safe place to settle, I’d climb up one of the towers every mile or two just to have a look, to see if there was a clearing near a stream, or maybe an abandoned farmhouse. And if I saw a big black fence with a garden and a herd of cattle inside it, I just might want it bad enough to try to take it.”

     “How hard is it to climb one of those towers?”

     “Oh, it’s easy as can be. The only reason people don’t climb them now, for the fun of it, is because not many men will climb a steel tower with two inch thick power lines buzzing above them, carrying fifty thousand volts. But once they’re dead, it’s no different than climbing a tree. In fact, it’s easier, because the towers have steel ladders attached to them. Trees don’t.”

     “Okay. I almost wish you hadn’t told me. But since you did, what’s our plan to protect ourselves?”

     “That’s where the plywood comes in. We’re going to panel the whole interior of the house with four sheets of plywood. And it’s simple to install. All we do is stand up four sheets against the wall, and install a wooden strip on the floor and the ceiling to hold them into place. When we’re done, we’ll have a two inch thick wall to catch bullets, in addition to the brick and outer and inner walls of the house.”

     “Will that be enough?”

     “It should be. I stood up four sheets against one of the barns the other day while you were all gone and fired some AR-15 rounds and 9 millimeter rounds into it. Nothing got past the third sheet. And that didn’t take into consideration the other layers from the house itself.”

     “You’re not going to board over the windows, are you?”

     “No, but I’ve got a plan for the windows too. Initially we’ll cover the walls but leave the windows uncovered. Then we’ll go back and build portable walls. They’ll be four sheets of plywood thick, but will be on wheels. They’ll roll off to one side when not in use, and will stay in place by rails on the floor and ceiling. I’ll make a shooting slot in each one about four inches high and a foot wide. That way we can shoot back if we’re fired upon. We’ll be able to roll the portable walls into place within seconds if we ever need them.”

     Joyce was impressed.

     “Wow, you’re one smart cookie, mister.”

     “That’s not all. Once the power goes out, the electric company will abandon those power lines. For one thing, they won’t need them any more. The power station will be out of commission permanently. And for another thing, none of their vehicles will work, so they couldn’t patrol the area around the lines even if they wanted to.”

     “So what are you planning to do?”

     “Two things. First of all, I’m going to take some wireless long-distance cameras and mount one pointed in each direction, so we can see anyone following the power lines either up or down the mountain. The cameras are already in the
Faraday cage, so they’ll still work after the blackout. And they’ll work with small solar panels, like a lot of the portable highway signs they use these days. They will have attached batteries that will never go dead unless we have about three consecutive days without sunshine.

     “The second thing I plan to do is take my sixteen foot ladder and a cutting torch and cut the ladders off the towers. They can still get up there, but they’ll have to jump sixteen feet to grab onto something. My guess is they’ll just pass it on by.”

     “How many towers will you have to do that to?”

     “Only six. I climbed to the top of the wind turbine to service it a couple of months ago. It’s a lot taller than the fence. While I was up there I looked out at the towers. There were only six of them where I could see the lower half of the towers above the trees. The rest of them are okay. If we can’t see the lower half, then anyone on the lower half won’t be able to see us either.”

     “There’s one last thing, but I’ll only use it as a last resort.”

     “What’s that?”

     “The cameras will be attached to a motion sensor alarm. We’ll know when someone is coming long before they get here. And we’ll see if they start trying to climb the towers. I’ll have plenty of time to set up my sniper rifle and zero in on them.”

     “You’d shoot them off the tower?”

     “Yes, and here’s why. A normal man will pass by the tower when he sees the ladder’s been cut away. He’ll just keep going until he finds another one that has a ladder. That’s if all he’s looking for is a safe place to stay.

     “If he goes through all the effort of getting up on a tower with no ladder, then he’s out for more than just safety for himself. If he’s curious enough and devious enough to force himself up that tower to see what we’re hiding, then he’s a threat to us. And I’ll take him out in a heartbeat.”

     “My God, Scott. Don’t tell me you’re serious. What if he’s got his family with him? Are you going to just shoot him off the tower in front of his children?”

     Scott was stumped. That didn’t happen often, because he usually thought things thoroughly through. But it had never occurred to him he might have to shoot a man in front of his loved ones.

     He knew he’d have to put some more thought into this part of his plan.

     He muttered, “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

-25-

     Joyce stopped and got an Egg McMuffin on her way to the office. She had planned on making breakfast at home before she met a client in Northridge Estates to show a house. But then she remembered she left the sales packet for the house sitting on her desk the day before.

     “Dammit,” she murmured under her breath. She hated it when she did stupid things. Luckily, the office wasn’t too far out of the way.

     She’d have to forego a leisurely breakfast, but if traffic wasn’t too bad she’d have a few minutes to eat at her desk.

     Traffic wasn’t bad, and when she got to the register at McDonald’s and ordered her sandwich, she was greeted with a smile by the manager.

     “Good morning, ma’am. We’re running a new promotion this week, and every hundredth customer gets breakfast on us. No charge for you today.”

     Joyce didn’t know what to say. She’d never known McDonald’s to give anything away free.

     She managed, “Um, thank you…” and grabbed her breakfast and headed for the door.

     Traffic the rest of the way to the office was extraordinarily light. She began to think that maybe this was her lucky day after all. The house she was showing was a four million dollar estate. If she could secure the sale she’d lock up a nice commission. Yes. Today was her lucky day. She could feel it in her bones.

     She sat down at her desk and put the sales packet on top of her car keys. No way was she going to walk out the door without it a second time.

     The clock said 10:17. She could leave at 10:30 and still make it to the house with twenty minutes to spare. She’d learned years before that although prospective buyers are almost always late, realtors should always be a bit early. There’s always a scuffed floor to wipe, or litter in the yard. Or some other little thing that’ll turn a buyer off.

     She eased back in her chair and took a bite of her Egg McMuffin.

     The fluorescent lights above her head flickered and then went off.

     “Damn power surge.”

     Someone in the outer office said, “Damn! I just lost my monthly report!”

     The office smart aleck shouted out, “Two words: Auto Save.”

     Joyce sat back and relaxed. The power would be back on in a minute or two. The building they were in was old, and this happened on a regular basis, every time the weather was stormy. It always came back on rather quickly.

     She took another bite of her sandwich, careful not to drop anything on her jacket in the semi-darkness.

     While chewing, it dawned on her. Wait a minute. It’s not stormy today. Not even windy. Then what in heck made the power go out?

     In the outer office, somebody shouted, “Hey! Look out the window!”

     Joyce got up from her desk, walked to the window, and pulled the heavy gold curtain aside.

     The street outside looked like a parking lot. As far as she could see in both directions, cars and trucks were stopped dead in their tracks. Several of them had their hoods up, and their drivers were checking their engines, wiggling battery cables, messing with carburetors.

     And scratching their heads.

     Several of them were standing outside their cars, pacing back and forth, talking to other motorists or trying to call a loved one for a ride, or for a tow truck.

     Trying to call, but not being able to.

     Joyce saw three different people punching at their telephones, then looking at them disgustedly. One woman was so disgusted that her phone didn’t work, she threw it to the ground.

     Off in the distance, she heard a baby cry. Then she heard a woman scream and point to the sky.

     Joyce looked in the direction the woman was pointing, as did several other people.

     A low flying commercial airliner was approaching them from the east, no more than five hundred feet off the ground. It looked like it was gently gliding in for a landing.

     But the nearest airport was miles away.

     The airplane flew silently over them, with no working engines, so closely that Joyce could see the faces of panicked passengers looking out the windows. It continued on, deathly quiet, until it crashed in a fireball at a large apartment complex a quarter of a mile away.

     There were more screams outside. And more crying.

     Instinctively, Joyce reached for her cell phone to call 911. Deep inside, though, she knew it was not working. Her cell phone, her lifeline to the world, was now nothing more than a worthless paperweight.

     The solar storm had hit. The blackout had begun.

-26
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     Zachary was in third period. Eighth grade algebra. He couldn’t stand algebra, and he hated Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins was a turd with ears. No, wait. He didn’t have that much personality.

     Zach hated the class. He hated the teacher. The only thing good about coming to this room every morning, the only thing that made sitting here tolerable, was that he sat directly behind Amy Alvord.

     He’d been madly and deeply in love with Amy since the first grade. He was convinced that someday they’d marry. Of course, the odds were against it, since he’d never mustered the courage to say more than a few words to her.

     It wasn’t that he was afraid to talk to her. It was just that, well, she was so beautiful and wonderful and popular. And Zachary was just… Zachary.

     In his early years, he convinced himself that someday he’d get the nerve to talk to her. And after awhile he’d become bold enough to ask her to be his girlfriend. And in his fantasy world, of course, she’d say yes. And that would lead to the pair going steady, and then being college sweethearts, and then getting married and having a zillion kids.

     The trouble was, as each year went by, Amy became more and more unapproachable. As she grew into a beautiful teenager, she attracted more and more attention from other boys. And that got exponentially worse at the start of the previous school year, when she was one of the few girls to start wearing a bra. And one of a vastly fewer number who actually needed one.

     Suddenly Amy was the center of attention among the football team and the preppies in the school. And poor Zachary was pushed even farther into the background.

     Since his dad had told him months before about the world going black some day, and about Zachary having to move away, he started to feel a certain desperation. He just could not go on with his life without letting Amy know how much he loved her.

     There were a couple of problems with that, of course. One was that she was now dating the captain of the eighth grade football team. Danny Brasco was a surly sort of guy who liked to display his bravado by beating up on kids half his size.

     And Zachary was almost exactly half of Danny’s size.

     The other problem was that Zachary was quite comfortable around boys. But he was still painfully shy, and terribly awkward, when face to face with the fairer sex. He stammered and stuttered and looked like a fool.

     So as much as he desperately wanted, or more accurately needed, to tell Amy how he felt, the situation grew more and more hopeless as each day went by.

     Mr. Jenkins was trying to explain a basic algebraic equation on the board when the lights flickered twice, and then went out. Several of the students cheered and a couple of the boys high fived each other. Any distraction from the incessant droning of Mr. Jenkins was a welcome relief.

     “All right, settle down. Everyone stay in their seats. You may talk quietly until we can resume. Anybody who leaves their seats will march right down to the office.”

     John Jay Middle School had been around since the 1950s, and was still equipped with old fashioned venetian blinds on its windows. Mr. Jenkins went over to the row of windows on the classroom’s east wall and began rolling up each of the window blinds to let more light into the classroom.

     At the third window, he peered out and said, “Well, that’s odd.”

     Nothing will get the attention of a room full of teenagers faster than a teacher finding something odd. All of the boys, and several of the girls, stood up to look out the windows to see what Mr. Jenkins was talking about.

     And the hair suddenly stood up on the back of Zachary’s neck.

     Outside the window, on Marbach Drive, was a long traffic jam of cars stopped suddenly in the tracks. Going absolutely nowhere. The wailing horns that would normally accompany such an event were eerily absent. For the horns didn’t work without a car battery to power them. And all the car batteries had been suddenly and permanently shorted out.

     One of the boys in the back of the class asked, “What the hell?” and everyone began murmuring, speculating on what was going on.

     Zachary, of course, knew exactly what was going on. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. It was completely dead.

     He whispered to his friend Paul, “Hey, check your phone. Is it working?”

     “No. It’s dead.”

     Another boy spoke up from the next row. “Mine too. That’s weird.”

     Zachary knew what he had to do. He’d been drilled on it by his father many times. But first, he had a personal mission he had to accomplish.

     He sat back down in his chair to catch his breath and to calm his nerves. He’d always been able to unstress by counting backwards from ten. In his mind he heard his own voice slowly counting, “Ten… nine… eight…”

     When he got down to number one, he knew it was now or never.

     He stood up with a resolve he’d seldom felt before.

     He took two steps forward to where Amy was standing in front of her desk.

     He said, “Amy…”

     She turned, and Zachary wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her. Not a peck, either. He kissed her like the movie stars kissed in the movies.

     Amy, caught totally off guard and not quite knowing what to do, did the only thing that came to her mind. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

     It was a kiss of only a few seconds duration, but it was long enough to get his point across.

     He broke free and took a step back. Somehow both of his hands found hers, and he looked into her deep brown eyes.

     “Amy, I love you. I’ve always loved you. I just wanted you to know that.”

     Amy didn’t say a word. She was still shocked by what happened, and didn’t have a clue what to say.

     But it didn’t matter. No words were necessary on her part. Zachary did what needed to be done. He smiled at Amy and winked at her, then turned on his heels and walked out of the classroom.

     Most of the girls stood watching with their mouths hanging open. One of the boys said, “Wait until Danny finds out.”

     Another said, “Zach will be dead meat then.”

     Mr. Jenkins called out, “Zachary, where are you going?”

     He got no answer.

     Zachary walked out of the class and into the semi-darkened hallway with the strangest smile on his face. And despite all the chaos that was going on outside the school at that moment, he was on cloud nine.

-27
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     “Ball! ball!”

    
Jordan was wide open. He’d lost his man and had a clear line to the basket. He looked up court and caught his buddy Jason’s eye, and Jason let loose a long cross court pass aimed right for him.

     The lights in the gym suddenly went out, half a second before the basketball hit
Jordan squarely in the face.

     “Dammit!”

     He immediately tasted blood from a busted lip and felt the trickle of warm blood slowly rolling from his left nostril.

     He went down to one knee.

     The P.E. coach, Coach Garner, yelled, “Okay, nobody panic. Everybody just feel your way over to the door and we’ll wait outside.

     The P.E. gymnasium at
Oliver Wendell Holmes High School was not attached to the school. It was an outbuilding separated from the school by the faculty parking lot. The gym had no windows, and it was pitch black inside.

    
Jordan pinched his tender nose and tilted his head back to stop the bleeding, all the while hoping it wasn’t broken. He slowly made his way toward the exit, and when he was halfway there one of his classmates found it and propped it open. Sunlight came flooding in to mark the way to the outside world for the rest of the boys.

     He was drenched in sweat. When
Jordan played ball, he played for keeps. The breeze outside the gym felt good. His lip and nose were another matter completely.

     Coach Garner came over and asked, “You okay, Harter? You need to go see the nurse for an ice pack?”

     “No, sir. I’m okay.”

     Jordan and his friends chased each other through the parking lot, killing time while waiting for the lights to come back on in the gym.

     They stopped as soon as the vice principal, Mr. Martin, came out of the admin building and headed for his car.

     They watched as Mr. Martin tried using his keyless remote to unlock his car, and chuckled at the baffled look on his face when it wouldn’t work.

     They continued to watch while he manually unlocked the door and got inside the car. Twenty seconds later, he stepped back out of the car, raised the hood, and peered under it.

     One of the boys behind
Jordan muttered under his breath, “That’s what you get for buying a piece of crap.”

     He’d never say that loud enough for Mr. Martin to hear it, of course. But in his mind, it strengthened his street cred and got some laughs from some of his buddies.

     Perhaps it was because his attention was still focused on his sore nose and bloody lip. Jordan had just witnessed a blackout, and the vice principal’s car breaking down.

     But it still didn’t click.

     Then, out of the corner of his eye, Jordan saw something else.

     At the entrance to the parking lot, a few minutes before, another teacher had been pulling in. His car had also stalled, fifty yards away, and he was also out of his car and looking under his hood.

     The light finally came on in Jordan’s head. He slipped away to the edge of the parking lot and climbed on the hood of a pickup truck. From his higher vantage point, he could see over a row of shrubbery and down to Ingram Street in front of the school.

     To a sea of dead vehicles and frustrated drivers.

     Jordan immediately turned and headed back into the gym.

     It was still pitch black, of course. The sunlight only penetrated a few feet into the doorway. So very slowly, and very carefully so as not to hurt his already damaged face, he felt his way along the outer wall of the gym.

     At one point he tripped over a pair of gym shoes someone had carelessly thrown up against the wall, but he didn’t go down.

     At the end of the west wall, he turned a corner and felt his way along the north wall of the gym twelve feet or so until he came to the doorway leading into the boys locker room.

     Through the door he went into another sea of darkness. He knew that straight ahead there were five banks of lockers. He walked slowly though the blackness, both hands in front of him, until he felt the cold steel of the lockers.