He rolled to a stop and lowered his window.
“Listen,” a guy in khakis and a blue Best Buy shirt said in a panic. “We don’t have a clue what happened, but all of our cars conked out at once.”
A young girl with a blonde ponytail lifted her cell phone in the air and scrunched up her face. “Our phones are dead too.”
“I know,” John said. “I don’t want to frighten you, but the same thing is happening in my neighborhood. Might be the whole city is affected. Maybe even more.”
“Hackers,” the guy from Best Buy spat. “I remember seeing a video on this a while back. Russian and Chinese hackers. They’ve finally done it.”
“I don’t think it was hackers,” John told him. “They tend to target one piece of infrastructure at a time. Electricity, cell phones, but not all at once and not your cars too.”
“You sure about that?” Best Buy asked.
John shook his head. “How can I be? I suggest each of you forget going to work and get stocked up on as much food and water as you can find. This outage may last awhile.” It could last months or years, but now wasn’t the time to freak people out.
The blonde girl was talking to herself now. “I never trusted that Onstar stuff. I’ll bet you a million bucks that’s what the Chinese used to hack our cars.”
The conspiracy theories were starting to fly and with that John excused himself.
“Wait a minute,” Best Buy called after him as John started rolling his window up. “Can you give me a lift to Kingston Pike?”
“Yeah, I need a lift too,” the blonde said, waving her cell phone as though she was hailing a cab.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Please step back so I don’t run anyone over by mistake.”
“Come on, man!” Best Buy shouted. His polite veneer was already starting to crack.
John went for the pistol and stopped himself. They were scared and slipping into panic mode. He revved the engine, making it growl. “Step back, please.” His military command voice came out and they did as he said.
John sped away. He’d be coming back along the same route before long and hoped the crowd would be dispersed by then.
Heading up Northshore Drive John encountered a single stalled car. It had rolled back into a ditch after the owner must have abandoned it.
A minute later, he approached the Century 21 office. The building was a red-roofed, one-story bungalow. Sharing the space was a law office and a small mortgage company. John pulled into the parking lot and stopped before the front doors. A few of Diane’s real estate colleagues were milling about outside. He stuffed the S&W under his belt and pulled his shirt over it. Then he got out of the car and locked it behind him.
“Hell of a morning, John,” Tom Weaver crooned, pulling hard on the cigarette clenched between his yellowed fingers. He owned the real estate branch and seemed to spend most of his time out front smoking.
“Is Diane inside?” John asked curtly.
Tom shook his head. “Don’t think so. Last I saw Diane she was on her way to show a house in Cedar Bluff.”
Tom rattled off the address, but what struck John most was the way they were all standing around, waiting for the power to turn back on, just as it had always done in the past.
“This may be a whole lot worse than it seems,” John said. It was difficult knowing whether to come right out and scream EMP, that they should go home to their loved ones before it was too late. The average person wouldn’t understand and even if they did, they were so ill-prepared for what lay ahead that it almost seemed cruel to warn them this late in the game. Even so, John drew in a deep breath and began laying out what he thought had happened. He didn’t get very far before Tom cut him off.
“I know you spent time in the military, John, but I don’t see how you could know such a thing.”
“I didn’t say I knew, Tom. I said there isn’t another explanation that can account for everything that’s happened this morning. The loss of power, cell phones and cars not working.”
The others standing nearby were beginning to look frightened.
“I sure hope you’re wrong about this, John, cause Diane’s got a big property up in Oak Ridge that’s supposed to go through today.” Tom pulled out his pack of Marlboros, shook a fresh one loose and lit it with the dying ember of his current cigarette.
John smiled, told them God bless, hopped back in his truck and took off. This was the third time today he’d tried warning someone about what was coming and it was clear they just weren’t interested in believing it. Not yet. By day two and three the grim reality would start to sink in. That was time John could use to figure out what play to make. Stay in the bunker he’d built under his garage and live off the month of supplies he’d stashed there or head north for the cabin?
He stepped on the accelerator, roaring past a man in blue jeans next to a BMW, waving his dress shirt around like a white flag. Knoxville was brimming with people crying for help all at once and there wasn’t a thing the police or emergency response services could do about it. John’s first order of business was to find his wife and kids and hope to God he would get there in time.
Chapter 6
The further he drove, the clearer it became that the outage wasn’t limited to Sequoyah Hills. Small handfuls of stunned motorists stood along the roadside, many of them watching his Blazer rumble past as though it were a UFO. A few even chased after him, waving their hands in the air. The lost expressions on their faces reminded him of news footage from Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. Except here and now, instead of death, there was only shock. But that would change soon enough.
He reached Cedar Bluff and turned onto Eagle Brook. A minute later, he arrived at a typical suburban neighborhood, perfect for a young family. The house Diane had come to show was on the corner; red brick, yellow garage. Two cars were in the driveway and one of them was hers. Groups of neighbors were huddled outside talking to one another, many of them eyeing John as he drove in. He stopped and slid the S&W inside his front waistband. This time he wanted people to see he was armed since it might help deter them from doing anything silly.
He locked the truck and made his way to the house. The hope was that Diane was waiting with her client inside, but as he drew nearer, John’s heart sank. The door was slightly ajar. That meant they’d probably exited at some point after the lights went out. He stopped next to Diane’s Ford Focus and tried the handle. It opened. Had she come out to leave and found that her car wouldn’t start? Just in case, John drew his pistol and poked his head inside the house.
“Diane?”
The house was empty and the deep timbre in John’s voice made an eerie echo. He let himself in, wiping his shoes on the doormat purely out of habit. John made a quick search of the house. There was no reason to head into the basement, since the lights weren’t working and they wouldn’t be able to see down there. It was time to look elsewhere.
As he exited the house, three men were standing near Betsy. They were talking to one another, pointing at the hood and the engine underneath. It was clear enough to John that they were wondering how his Blazer was still working when the other cars in the neighborhood were dead as a doornail. He just hoped for their sake that the men weren’t hatching some foolish plan to take it from him.
They turned when they saw John approach.
“I’m looking for my wife,” he told them before they had a chance to say anything. “She’s five five, long dark hair, wearing a black skirt and a white blouse.” The real estate sign on the lawn had Diane’s picture on it. He pointed. “Any of you see her around this morning?”
One of them nodded. “Yeah, I saw her. She was with a man and a woman. They started walking up the road not long ago. Don’t know where they were headed.”