“Mom, what does all that mean?” David asked, his voice more sober than she’d ever heard before. “When is Dad going to be home?”
Jennifer fought to maintain control. “I’m not sure, Dave. I don’t understand everything. I’m sure your dad will be home soon. He’s a pretty tough guy,” she said, as much in an attempt to convince herself as it was to convince her son. “Will you go get me a paper and pen? I want to listen again and write some things down.”
David ran off, then returned with a pen and some sheets of paper he’d ripped from a school binder.
The broadcast was repeated after a five-minute break, and as David steadily cranked the radio, Jennifer jotted notes down with a hand she couldn’t quite manage to stop from shaking. When the broadcast ended, she ran inside to get Kyle’s flight information from the front of the refrigerator, sending magnets bouncing across the floor as she tore it down. She scanned the page to find the information she needed. His arrival time in Missoula was circled with a yellow highlighter, 9:45 P.M. He was to have left Denver at 7:45 P.M. after arriving there at 5:10. Her eyes flew to the next section. The flight from Houston was scheduled to leave at 2:08 CST. Jennifer did the math, adjusting for the time zones, and realized that Kyle’s flight would have been in the air for an hour when the attack occurred.
Breathing was suddenly difficult, and Jennifer’s breaths began to come in short, erratic gulps. She felt her knees weaken and stumbled over to a chair at the kitchen table. Her mind raced. What had they said about airplanes crashing? Did they say all of them?
“What is it, Mom?” David asked, his face ashen. “Has something happened to Dad?”
“David… I don’t know. Let me listen to the broadcast again so I can remember the exact words. You wait inside for me.” Her words felt hollow and meaningless, but she felt she had to be strong for her son.
Jennifer gathered her strength and went back outside to the radio. She switched it on and began to turn the handle. The vice president was talking about electrical power as the radio groaned to life. She turned the volume up with her free hand and hoped that somehow there would be more information this time around. Vice President Hamilton’s words crackled from the speakers, as calm as if he were relating the weather report. “…we have received word of dozens of airplane crashes…” The words were clear and hit her as hard as a kick in the stomach. She dropped the radio and burst into tears. “Kyle, no! Please, no!” she cried under her breath, her voice quivering. The vice president’s voice droned on about the military, then the volume gave out as the small charge the radio held began to fade.
Hearing footsteps, she looked up to see Emma coming towards her.
“What’s for lunch, Mom? Me and Spencer are hungry.” She paused when she got close to her mother. “What’s wrong?”
Jennifer wiped the tears from her eyes, swallowed, and fought to compose herself. “I’m not sure, sweetie. Can you wait a few minutes?” she said, her voice cracking.
“Why are you crying? Are you hurt?”
Jennifer’s throat ached, and her head hurt so badly she could barely see. “There was some bad news on the radio, Em. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s got me worried. I’ll be all right. I just need to lie down for a few minutes.”
“Okay, Mom,” Emma said, turning to leave. “Can I go to Lindsay’s house after lunch? Her mom says it’s alright.”
Katy, Texas
Ed, Virgie and Kyle ate their lunch on the back patio in silence, their thoughts consumed by the speech on the radio. They had listened to the vice president’s broadcast twice, and both times it was the same horrible news.
“I don’t get it,” Ed said, breaking the silence. “If the vice president said they’ve been preparing for this for thirty years, then why’s it so bad… and why haven’t they ever let us in on their little secret? It would have been nice to be able to do something to prepare! With that much time to get ready, I’d damn well be prepared for it if I was in charge. They should be able to just turn the power back on.” Ed’s face was red, and he pounded his fist on the table as he spoke.
Kyle took a sip of warm water. “I agree with you. There should have been more warnings, Ed, but you don’t understand how vulnerable the electrical grid is, and there’s no practical way to protect it. I don’t know a lot about communications and the other systems, but I know about our power system. The only way to maybe protect it would be to bury every power line ten feet underground in a steel tube, and even then it wouldn’t protect much because ninety-nine percent of the stuff that runs on power would still be exposed. The problem is that almost everything in our country depends on electricity in one way or another. An EMP… it’s like…“ Kyle paused, searching for a way to explain and noticing that Virgie’s worried eyes were locked on him. “Virgie, I was telling Ed this yesterday… it’s like lightening hitting every power pole in the country at the same time, but fifty or maybe a hundred times worse. We don’t know exactly what it’ll do, but we know it will be bad.”
Ed began to calm down as Kyle spoke. “They should have warned us instead of letting us find out after the fact. It seems like the government was keeping secrets from us. Maybe they didn’t want to cause a panic, but now the situation is worse. ”
“Are you sure it’s going to be so bad?” Virgie interjected. “I didn’t see or hear a thing. I was at my friend’s when it happened, and everything just went dead. There wasn’t any noise or anything. Everything just shut off all of a sudden, and then there was nothing but silence.”
“Virgie, the vice president said the bomb went off three hundred miles above us,” Ed reminded her. “You’re not going to see or hear that.”
“It’s the electrons that do the damage, not the impact of the explosion,” Kyle explained. “They overload everything. Once they find a conductor, they build up and things start to melt, even the copper in the power lines. The best-case scenario is that just sensitive things, like computer chips, get cooked. The worst case is every wire and electrical appliance in the country will need to be replaced.”
“But look around, Kyle,” Virgie said. “Everything looks fine. I don’t feel any different. If you ask me, I think the vice president is just trying to scare us so they can raise our taxes or make some new law. I don’t want some politician telling us a bunch of lies. You can’t trust them, you know?”
“Virgie, I don’t trust them much either,” Ed said. “But you weren’t at the airport, and you didn’t drive across town with us. Something real bad has happened. Cars were dead, airplanes had crashed, and the whole city was stopped. People were walking, just leaving their cars and walking home. I was afraid to stop, thought someone might kill us for the Jeep. I don’t think the vice president is lying to us, at least not this time.”
Virgie shook her head in dismay and looked at Kyle. “How long do you think it’ll be until things can be fixed?” she asked Kyle matter-of-factly. “The vice president said months. He doesn’t mean it, does he? It’ll just be a week or two, don’t you think?”
Virgie and Ed watched Kyle as he thought about his answer. “I think a year would be best case. If the power lines are damaged, it could be a decade before everything everywhere is back to how we know it, if that even ever happens, and that’s assuming other countries are going to do all they can to help us. Obviously someone who doesn’t like us did this, and if they send their military against us, or against our allies, who knows how long it might take. It might take a lot longer than what I’m guessing. There are just too many things I don’t know to give a reasonable estimate.”