Jakarta Pandemic, The (48 page)

Simply amazing.

He moved over to the sliding doors and stared out into the yard. The scene before him was ethereal. The sun sat between the two closest houses behind the Fletchers’ yard, blazing rays of sunlight through the crisp early morning air. The ground shimmered with color and light as the sun’s rays scattered through millions of ice-encased blades of grass. The sensation mesmerized Alex again. Larger reflections sparkled from the ice that burdened the branches of the bare trees and empty bushes, pulling them closer to the ice-encrusted ground.

The evergreen trees sagged, and he saw several snapped evergreen branches throughout the yard. Most of the maples and birch appeared intact, aside from the loss of some smaller branches. He imagined the heavy damage to the trees across Harrison Road, which had stood for nearly half a century and towered over the homes there.

Without thinking, Alex moved the wooden bar jammed into the sliding door’s track and opened the glass slider. He took in the cold air for a few seconds and stepped out onto the deck and held onto the door frame for balance. The entire deck was covered by a one-inch-thick slab of ice.

Don’t be stupid here.

He tested his footing and decided that the icy surface was rough enough for him to slowly walk across to the railing on the opposite side of the deck. He reached the other side and used the railing to navigate the steps down to the grass. He stepped down into the grass and knelt down to take a closer look at the grass, which resembled a crystallized shag rug. The grass crackled under his weight and every blade was individually encased in ice
.
Alex heard a distant cracking sound, followed by a crash, which made him instinctively duck down a little further.

Maybe this isn’t the best idea.

He stood up and scanned the horizons. The eastern sky held a thin, white layer of high altitude clouds barely visible over the distant tree line; the western sky told a different story. A solid mass of dark gray, extending north and south along the horizon, loomed nearly overhead, making it clear to him that the sun’s rays would probably never get a jump-start melting all of the ice. He started carefully back up the stairs.

**

Alex watched his son from the kitchen island. He’d finally come down from his room to get some breakfast and had been staring out of the great room window into the backyard for the past ten minutes. Alex turned his attention to the kitchen window. The snow had started falling steadily about an hour ago and had picked up intensity over the past twenty minutes, joined by sporadic bursts of wind.

“You gonna grab something to eat?” Alex asked.

Ryan slowly turned his head toward the kitchen, still in a daze. “Uh…yeah. Can I make toast? Or does that use up too much electricity?”

“You could make toast if we had any bread left,” Alex said.

“Oh yeahhhh,” Ryan said and plopped down on one of the island stools.

“Or if your mom ever dusted off the bread maker in the basement. We have everything we need to make it.”

“How long do you think the power will be out, Dad?”

“Pretty long time. Longer than we’re used to. I’d be willing to bet that the ice knocked down a bunch of lines. With the flu out there, I’d be surprised if CMP had the manpower to make a dent in repairing the downed lines.”

“So…can I play Xbox?”

“Not all day. We’re gonna try to figure out how much battery power basic stuff like that will drain from the system. Right now, let’s shoot for an hour of playtime, then we’ll see about adding time. Who knows? We might be able to run the TV up there all day and not have to worry. Right now all we’re running is the fridge, which we really don’t need, the furnace and some computer equipment. Everything else is unplugged for now,” Alex said.

“Have you tried the cable?”

“Sorry, buddy. Cable TV is dead. Good news is that the internet still works. I’m still running power to our router,” he said optimistically.

“Good, I can still go live on the Xbox,” Ryan said.

“I don’t know how many other people will be on there anymore.”

“There should still be a bunch of people outside of New England. There’s usually people from all over.”

“Maybe, but probably not for long. Most experts estimate that large portions of the country’s electrical grid will fail within the next few days anyway. Fuel deliveries to the power plants have been sporadic or non-existent for the past few weeks, and most plants are using up all of their reserve coal to keep operating,” Alex told him.

“We’re really gonna be here for a long time, aren’t we?” Ryan replied wistfully, staring out at the near-blizzard conditions.

Alex nodded his head.

**

Alex put the last empty tin can on the plank resting against the basement door. Several minutes earlier, he’d finished a sweep of the basement, checking the bulkhead door and taking a look at any of the basement nooks that could conceal an intruder. He opened the door to the bunker and removed the Uniden scanners, which now sat in his office, charging. New information from internet sources and the radio was sparse at best.

From what he could tell, the power failures were widespread throughout New England, sparing few communities in southern or central Maine. All efforts to return power were directed toward the reestablishment of permanent power links to hospitals, triage centers, and local law enforcement systems, which meant that the populace was extremely unlikely to see power any time soon.

Finished with the cans, he turned and looked at the kitchen window, which was now covered by an old dark blue towel. He had nailed the top corners of the towel to the trim just before dinner. This was the last window on the ground floor that needed to be covered. He’d finished a similar project on the mudroom door earlier in the afternoon. He glanced around at the kitchen and great room, which was scarcely illuminated by the stove light’s lowest setting. He planned to turn it off later when everyone was asleep.

He headed upstairs and saw empty tin cans, assorted wood planks and a folding chair to the left of the railing, sitting in the darkened hallway to his office. He planned to create another early warning trap on the stairs.

He turned left toward the master bedroom, which was faintly lit by a small lamp on Kate’s dresser. He heard the shower running as he approached the bedroom door, thought about joining Kate in the shower, and began to feel excited, but the stirrings were immediately quelled as he stepped up to the bathroom door.

“Hi, Daddy. Mommy’s taking a shower,” he heard from the bedroom.

He turned and walked toward Emily, who was reading a book, buried under a pink and purple checkered fleece blanket on the couch.

So much for that.

“Sweetie, you can turn another light on in here. I don’t want your eyes to fall out of your head,” he said, ruffling her hair.

“I don’t want to use up all of our electricity. Mommy said we could all watch a movie later if the batteries are charged up,” she squeaked.

“Right now the batteries are fine, and we most certainly can still watch a movie together in here.”

“But not on cable,” she stated flatly.

All they’re worried about is the cable.

“Nope. The cable probably won’t be on back for a while. Tomorrow, we can bring the DVR box up here from the downstairs. We have a ton of shows and movies stored on it, and as long as it has power, we can watch those shows,” he said.

At least I hope so.

Alex looked around at the room, seeing two inflated air mattresses and a large assortment of sleeping bags and blankets. From this point forward, the kids would stay in the master bedroom at night, with no exceptions. Even if an intruder tripped two of the alarms downstairs, he wasn’t convinced that he could react in time to put himself between the intruder and the kids’ rooms. With the threat of the Mansons looming, they’d both agreed that the best strategy was to keep everyone in the same place, with the door locked.

“I’m gonna check on a few things, then we’ll get Ryan and watch a movie together,” he said to Emily.

“Sounds good, Daddy,” she said, without lifting her head from the book.

“Be back in a few.” He headed out of the bedroom toward his office, turned into the dark hallway leading to his office, and almost tripped on all of the junk he had dropped there earlier. He walked forward to the only window in the house that wasn’t covered, looking behind him to make sure that the background was dark enough not to create a silhouette of his body. There was barely enough light in the hallway to keep from stumbling, so he wasn’t overly concerned.

He leaned on the windowsill with both hands and stared out into the complete darkness. He sensed heavy snowfall passing the window, blown by steady gusts of wind, and saw a crust of snow forming on the screen outside of the glass window. Through the Cimmerian murk, he strained to identify barely discernible dark patches in his front yard, where he remembered the trees stood, laughing to himself at the thought of anyone staking out his house tonight. Still, he wouldn’t take any chances because if he had to plan and execute an assault on one of the houses in the neighborhood, he’d pick a night like tonight.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Monday, December 2, 2013

Alex stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to Kate’s deep rhythmic breathing, unable to find sleep. Despite feeling exhausted from the previous evening’s scattered sleep, he was still too anxious to drift away. Every time he felt himself start to slide into an unconscious haze, he involuntarily formed another paranoid thought, which triggered a small adrenaline rush. He continued to repeat this cycle, unable to sink under.

The paranoia came in several forms, but mainly materialized as a desire to check and re-check the doors, the windows, and his Jerry-rigged alarm system. He knew that if he got up and actually checked that he’d start an even worse cycle of paranoia. So he lay there, accepting the finite amount of rest granted by almost falling asleep, over and over again.

He started to drift off again, but jerked awake, fully convinced that he’d heard a noise from downstairs. He peeled away the blankets and comforter, careful not to wake Kate or Emily. He sat on his side of the bed and stared at the pistol on his nightstand.

There’s nothing down there. I know it.

“I’ll just listen at the top of the stairs,” he whispered to no one.

Twenty minutes later, convinced that nothing was wrong, he sidestepped the alarm contraption next to the railing and entered his office, leaving the door open. He turned on the swing arm desk lamp and lowered the arm until it was only several inches off the desk. Most of the light was cast directly onto the desk, and not the rest of the room.

If I can’t sleep, I’ll surf the web until my eyes fall out.

Alex spent the next hour alternating between staring at his computer screen and listening intently to a completely silent house. From the computer he managed to assemble an ominous picture of the situation in the Northeast. The storm had swept along the eastern seaboard and tangled with arctic air north of New Jersey starting late Saturday night. Gradually, over the course of Saturday evening and early Sunday morning, the arctic air dominated most of the Northeast, wreaking havoc on New England.

Widespread power outages were reported from Stamford to Bangor, and state authorities offered little hope that the power would be restored any time soon. ISPAC officials expected regional power grids to fail within a week as critical power plants ceased to generate power. Rolling blackouts prior to permanent darkness could be expected on a regional and then national level. ISPAC officials urged the Department of Energy to take steps to regionalize blackouts and prevent a nationwide failure.

CDC and ISPAC officials predicted absenteeism to peak during that same week, topping 90% nationwide, as the population isolated itself in fear of the H16N1 virus.

It’ll be higher up here with this storm.

He couldn’t imagine anyone beyond the National Guard, medical community, or police leaving their homes. Beyond that, even if you wanted to go to work, he couldn’t imagine a business that was still open at this point.

Hospitals, triage centers, police stations, radio stations? Casco Bay Lines ferry? What would be the point of leaving one of the islands?

Alex turned off the computer screen and lifted the window shade up a few inches to stare out of the window.

Nothing.

He was astonished that he couldn’t see the trees less than forty feet from the house. He had only seen nature conspire to do this once before, on the other side of the world. He remembered being engulfed by thick sheets of impenetrable red sand, as his entire battalion lay sealed up and silent along an unpaved road north of the Euphrates River, the glass viewports on his armored vehicle affording him a dark red view of absolutely nothing.

Visibility was limited to five feet in the worst surges of sand, and fifteen to twenty feet under the best circumstances during the storms. Vehicles were stacked within yards of each other along the road, and the marines rotated through perimeter security duty when they weren’t huddled inside their light armored vehicles.

The infantry fought off several scattered waves of confused Fedayeen loyalists that had somehow eluded the battalion’s thermal sights and stumbled right into the marines’ fighting positions. They were dispatched quickly, but the brief firefights generated confusion and paranoia. The marines fired on a lot of “confirmed” enemy that day, and Alex had listened tensely to the battalion communications net for the friendly fire report that mercifully never materialized.

He drifted back to the sheer impenetrable darkness in front of him, thinking about the criminals hunkered down at the Murrays’, burning Greg’s firewood, or maybe even his furniture for warmth.