One Second After

“Look, Ben. I’m not going to lie to you. The situation might be bad. I suspect we’ve been hit by a weapon that has shut down the electrical grid nationwide. That means it might be months before we get power back again.”

He took it in, nodding his head, saying nothing.

“But not a word of this to Elizabeth or Jennifer. Understood? Let me tell them in my own way.”

Jennifer and again his throat tightened. She was one smart kid, very smart, and when she learned that the power would be off for a very long time she just might figure out that the clock was ticking for her.

He looked back into Ben’s eyes, saying nothing.

“Yes, sir,” Ben whispered.

“Fine then.”

“You’re bleeding, sir.”

“An accident, nothing serious.”

He went back up the stairs and sat down at the dining room table. Jen was already waiting with the first-aid kit. “What happened?”

He looked up. Ben was standing by the door out to the deck.

“Everything’s ok, Ben. But remember, I don’t want those girls worrying about things. Given the way things are, I’m expecting you to be a man and keep a sharp watch on them.”

“Anything you say, sir,” and he left the room.

“You know, John, he really is a nice boy. By the way, while you were gone, we ran out of water.”

“Already?”

“Poor Jennifer. She used the toilet, and well… it didn’t flush and she was really embarrassed. Ben got a bucket, hauled the water in from the pool, flushed it, then filled the tank up again. He’s a good kid.”

John laid his hand on the table and she peered at it.

“You should of stopped to get stitches.”

“No time. I wanted to get the medication home.”

“I’ll butterfly bandage it for now,” and she set to work. “You can have Kellor look at it later.

“Now what happened to you? And fill me in on all the news.”

He told her just about everything… except for Makala and, of course, the Mustang.

CHAPTER FOUR

DAY 4

The sound of the helicopter, a Black Hawk, after silence for so long was startling. It came in hot, about five hundred feet up, skimming over the interstate pass, leveling out.

He felt an emotional surge at the sight of it, the black star on its side. It roared past his house, which was high enough off the valley floor that he could almost see into the pilot’s side window. Elizabeth was jumping up and down, shrieking, waving.

“We’re saved!” Elizabeth shouted gleefully. “We’re saved!” She sounded like a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island.

John found himself waving as well… and the helicopter thundered on, heading due west, growing smaller, the sound receding, then disappearing, the silence all-engulfing again.

The elation disappeared into a sense of overwhelming depression. Somehow, the sight of that lone bird was now symbolic of so much, and maybe it was a portent that within a few more minutes the electricity would come back on.

He stood for several minutes, shading his eyes, gazing westward. And everything was as it had been.

Dejected, Elizabeth walked over to the side of the swimming pool and sat down, dipping her feet in, Ben came over and splashed her. The water was still cold. Without the pump, there was no circulation into the solar heating panels. The water was still clear, though. John was dosing it heavily with chlorine, since it was, for now, their drinking and bathing water. The kids swimming in it would at least keep the water stirred up. Jen was already waiting in the car.

Ben waved, John casually pointed to where the shotgun was, and Ben nodded in reply. Jennifer was down today with her friend Pat, joining a couple of other girls who were going to play Monopoly for the afternoon.

Starting the Edsel, John rolled down the driveway, out onto Route 70, turned east, and drove the short distance up to Miller’s Nursing Home, where Tyler was. Jen had gone up to check on him the day after the outage and said that though it was chaotic, Tyler was doing OK. She was silent now, tense, as they drove.

None of them had left home yesterday, except for one brief foray by John.

He had laid out a long series of tasks. All the meat still in the freezer downstairs was pulled out and cooked thoroughly, with everyone eating as much as they could before wrapping the rest in plastic and storing it. He wasn’t sure if it would help or not, but what salt they had was liberally sprinkled on the meat.

Next came a privy pit dug at the edge of Connie’s orchard, with a privacy screen made out of a tent. The girls had argued that the toilets inside were just fine, and there had been a rather delicate discussion about what the privy could be used for and what the toilets inside would be used for.

“Oh, for that, just do it like Zach does,” Jennifer replied with a grin, “against a tree.”