Max tried to get their attention back. “It doesn’t matter now, just listen…”
“Oh God, Dar and Danny, everyone on that plane, the Kayaker, they’re all dead,” Lisa shrieked hysterically, sobbing now in Bill and Sally’s arms.
“Lisa, that wasn’t Dar and Danny. It was some other plane,” Max stated emphatically.
“How do you know?” Bill asked the question now on all their minds.
“It was coming from the wrong direction, and I don’t think their plane even made it up in the air.”
Another explosion interrupted. This one was much closer.
Bill, Lisa, and Sally stopped listening, craning their heads around the limits of the back windows, attempting to add a visual answer to the illogical clues which was assaulting their senses.
“Please, I need your attention,” Max yelled.
Uta Parkington was running faster than in any marathon she had ever run. When she did run marathons, it was with a clear head and lots of time to think. Now she was running for one reason, fear. She figured she had a minute, maybe less, before the Monroe Power Plant blew up.
Only ten minutes ago, everything at the board went crazy. That is when the first anomaly occurred, a spike in the current readings in the Number One. Then, there was a spike in the Number Two. Finally, the whole board went red. She had never before seen this happen.
When the Number One caught fire, she was perplexed, having no idea how this could even happen. The coal used to fuel each of the burners is separated until it is needed to limit fire damage potential. So, other than what was fueling the burner and a small supply outside of it, there was nothing to combust.
Then the Number Four and Five started spiking at the same time. It was then that she knew they were in big trouble because their output hit 125% of capacity: a figure that was impossible to explain. They were only supposed to generate a maximum of 3,300 megawatts, but somehow, they were now at 4000.
Then she remembered the bulletin a staff member printed and brought in from the CME Research Institute. It predicted a Coronal Mass Ejection, which would induce current, causing over capacity in power plants, even those properly shielded from EMPs. They were not properly shielded.
“Punch up camera one-six for me, Val,” she asked a bald man sitting at a keyboard in front of a couple dozen monitors mounted on the south wall of their control center. An image flickered for a minute, and then the cam from the parking lot showed its image in full color. They could see the secondary parking lot and Lake Erie in the background. It looked like the sky was on fire.
Most of the control room staff stopped their frantic scurrying around the control room, and each tried to make sense of what they were seeing.
Val put the feed up on the main panel screen, twenty feet by twenty feet of vivid color.
In the distance, the transmission lines appeared to be a rope of fire, with the fire coming towards their screen. It was like some sort of gargantuan fuse, and they were the explosive.
“Val, hit the alarm and make the announcement. We need to get out of here, now.”
That was maybe two minutes ago.
Uta rounded the last corner, followed by a dozen of her staff, mostly from the control room. An alarm blared in the background and a red light flashed above their heads every 20 feet. There was only 50 feet to go before they would be able to exit and clear the facility.
We might actually make it, she started to hope to herself.
With more violence than what was generated from the sum of all bombs dropped on Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II, the entire Monroe Power Plant exploded.
Fred was worried about his granddaughter and grandson. Darla was supposed to send an email or text to let him know they made it on their flight and should have arrived in Tucson by now. He turned on his desktop computer, set up by his eldest granddaughter Sally a couple of years ago and waited for it to boot. He always found this to be funny terminology to describe the turning on of the computer.
He opened his email. There was nothing.
He pressed the home button of his iPhone to turn it on. It was another marvel of technology. He swiped his forefinger across the screen to unlock it, and then he dialed her cell number. “The number you have called is not available at this time,” said a stranger’s voice, probably from her provider.
There must be something wrong with the network.
He started typing a new email to Dar and then the computer shut down. He raised his hands and arms up, instinctively wondering what he touched to cause this. The inside lights were out as well, along with the refrigerator compressor, which always made noise. Its silence was noisier to him.
He pressed the Home button on his iPhone again. It was dead too.
He smelled something burning. Standing up, he walked slowly towards the back patio and saw the wood roof of his metal shed was on fire, as was his neighbor’s house.
“Freddie, the house is on fire,” yelled his wife upstairs as he ran outside.
34.
Death is Coming
His driver opened the hood, feeling a sharp pain on his fingertips. Letting go quickly, it closed, the latch engaging again. Rodrigo and two of his men stared at him and the car.
“What is the problem, punto?” Rodrigo yelled at the driver, who was sure the engine to the Cadillac was not the only thing that was dead.
“I don’t know, Rodrigo. All the engines are dead, and I just got shocked. It doesn’t make sense,” the driver replied, sweating profusely even though it was early morning.
After turning from Fremont onto Camino Playa Encanto, a dirt road two and a half miles from the beach and his target, all their trucks died at the same time. It had to be some sort of trick. Maybe Thompson was onto their plan. Maybe somebody tipped him off.
“That punto, Max Thompson is not going to stop us with his tricks. Grab your guns. We walk the rest of the way.”
“Again, I don’t think Darla and Danny are on any planes. I think they haven’t taken off — it was more of a hope but he wasn’t about to tell them this — and at this moment, we don’t have time to discuss it.” Max pleaded with Bill, Lisa, and Sally in the King’s living area. Lisa had finally settled down a little bit, her body still shaking.
“You’ll remember I told you last night that I was pretty sure that we would be hit by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. Well, we are experiencing this right now. All power is out everywhere and none of your electronics will work. And, you must watch out not to get electrocuted, which is possible around large sources of metal and water. We will survive this because I have about two years’ worth of supplies for all of us. But you have to listen to me carefully.”
Lisa already looked at her watch and then held it to her ear, just to make sure it wasn’t working. It was a gift from Bill a couple of years ago, a combo digital and regular faced watch. The digital display was definitely not working. Sally examined her iPhone and after pushing the side and top buttons, she looked up at Max. Bill was banging on the emergency strobe/radio/flashlight contraption he bought from an airline magazine last year, hoping that repeated beatings would prove Max’s words wrong.
“I know, they don’t work,” Max emoted, making plain his frustration. “I’m sorry to say this, but they may never work again. The world you knew is over. From this point forward, we all need to understand one thing and one thing only: survival.” Max looked at each of the Kings again to make sure his friends were paying attention to how serious he was at that moment.