“Yeah, okay,” he grunted. Within seconds, he spotted something in the distance that brought a smile to his face. He took a look around, making sure nobody could see his next move, then slipped into the trailer and grabbed his backpack. When he came back out, the smile on his face expanded. A car headed in his direction. At last, he’d been rescued.
4
Slipping through the stalled traffic on the street outside of the shop, Hatfield was glad he’d walked to work that day. A car would be a problem—as it was for everybody on the road.
By the time he’d reached the other side of Temperton Street, tempers had begun to flare, and motorists were on the verge of losing patience. A few insults were hurled, and others stood in the middle of the street, asking nobody in particular what the hell was going on.
It had been less than an hour. Hatfield wondered to himself how people would feel after two, three hours of this. Then two or three days or weeks. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Hoping to find the least congested path home, he ducked through an alley on Chester Street. It was nice and quiet, nothing but the distant commotion of confused drivers.
If anything, the quiet was soothing. No buzz of giant machinery. No engines, no factories adding to noise pollution. Even the absence of electronic devices was evident as he walked past Sy’s Pawnshop—a place usually abuzz with TVs, radios, and other devices being tried before purchase.
But soon after reaching the next block, the serenity came crashing to an end. The shatter of glass took place behind him, followed by an ear-splitting screech. He turned and saw nothing at first. Then came the hurried footsteps and a burglar racing from a home with a giant TV screen.
Hatfield briefly wondered if he should do something, but there was nothing he could do. The culprit was already on his way down the other side of the alley. He gave his head a shake, realizing the burglar was due for a disappointment soon—when he realized that the screen—however impressive—wouldn’t work.
Listening to the perpetrator scramble in the distance, he wondered if it might have been a good idea to carry his gun. This wasn’t something he normally did, and when he’d left home, the day had every sign of being normal. Still, the incident underscored the need to avoid any possible conflict.
But with a busy street he needed to cross to get home, this became a harder thing to do. On Franklyn Street, he spotted a chubby, middle-aged man frantically waving him over. “Buddy, can you help me out here? I got a school bus full of kids. I really need your help so we can get them out.”
Hatfield leaned in, eyebrows knitted. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s on fire, man! We need your help! Please!”
The two men jogged to the end of the block on Franklyn Street. As the man said, a bus had been overturned, smoke rising from the engine. “What you need me to do?” Hatfield asked.
“I’ll stand at the door and you crawl into the bus, handing the kids out to me.”
As promised, the man stood at the door at the front and side, then knifed the door open for Hatfield to jump inside. “Come on, hurry!”
But something seemed odd about the whole thing. He heard no sounds coming from inside the bus. No screaming or even talking. “Are you sure they’re still okay in there?” he asked.
“Yeah, they’re fine! Come on, man! We’ve got no time for this.”
Hatfield started toward the door and, gazing into the side-view mirror, caught an accidental glimpse of something that startled him. There were no kids on the bus. Only two armed men crouched behind seats, ready to attack him.
He backpedaled from the trap slowly and cautiously.
“Hey, buddy!” the guy yelled. “Where you going?”
Hatfield was gone by then, pulse still racing. He knew he couldn’t outrun a bullet.
By now, he was roughly five blocks away from home and moving quickly enough to get there in record time. Although he didn’t spot any riots or brawls, he knew that was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the city erupted into a mess. Without a grid to support them and keep them safe, there was nowhere else for it to go.
With three blocks to go, he heard a crowd of people gathering blocks away. A loud voice tried to tame them, but it didn’t seem to be working. A handful of exasperated drivers had abandoned their car, but most of them sat right there, shaking their heads, screaming at their dead cell phones and sometimes at their passengers. It felt to Hatfield like a forest being doused with gasoline, ready to be ignited into an inferno.
With two more blocks left, the noise level had increased. There was shouting, angrily hissed insults and some angry pounding on the hoods of cars. At times, the vitriol spilled over to other drivers. A few confrontations had taken place. Hatfield hoped he could get home and get himself armed before any large-scale violence could unfold.
A block away from home, he noticed a small gathering at his neighbor, Pete’s, house. They chit-chatted as if what was happening was a brief delay in their everyday lives, nothing more. Before heading home, he eased over to them. “Guys, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you really should be getting prepared. This thing is no joke.”
“Tell me about it,” Pete answered. “The last power outage we had lasted almost what, three, four hours? It was crazy. All the food in our refrigerator was spoiled by the time we got home.”
“This looks like it’ll be more serious than that,” Hatfield said. “Seriously, I’d recommend getting out of the city.”
He got a bunch of puzzled looks. “Out of the city?” Pete’s wife Sheila asked. “For what?”
“To avoid the chaos.”
Another neighbor, Dennis, asked, “Chaos? Look, I know people get antsy when the internet goes out, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t. Guys, we have been hit by an EMP attack.”
They exchanged glances, faces creased by confusion. “What the hell is that?”
Pete said, “Oh, yeah, I remember that on an episode of that show about the FBI agent! Crazy stuff. At least it would be if it happened in real life.” They laughed together.
Hatfield didn’t have time to persuade his friends that he was serious. So he gave one more warning as he stepped away. “Look, I’m going to get to my family and make sure they’re okay. I recommend you do the same.”
The reply was a series of politely nodded heads. But the looks on their faces suggested they weren’t convinced of the dangers. Hatfield recognized that look from the one his dad would get when he was asked what he and his family were preparing for. As a kid, he’d probably given him “the look” many times himself.
After reaching home, he charged inside, finding Jess right there pacing in the living room, her face wrinkled beyond her thirty-seven years. “Trevor, you don’t think this is a… what was that thing your dad was afraid of?”
“EMP, honey. And yes. That’s exactly what this is.”
“What does that mean, we call 9-1-1?”
“Jess, there is nobody to call. We have to take care of ourselves and the kids. First, we pick them up and get to the country as quickly as we can.”
“The country? What do we do there?”
“It’s the homestead my dad was building,” he said, digging his holstered Sig Sauer out of a living room drawer and sticking it into his pocket. “I’ll explain everything on the way there. First, we need to get the kids from school!”
“What do you need that for,” she asked, pointing at his pistol as if it could be a bazooka. “Has anybody threatened us?”
He stepped to his wife, hands on her wildly tossed hair. “Look, Jess. I don’t mean to panic you. But after this thing gets ugly, everybody is going to be a threat.”