Part of the agreement between them was that he could no longer be seen socially in the company of Joe, Dave or their wives, Lisa and Susan. He lived in the house that had their flagship shelter under its basement, the one potential clients were driven to see in a windowless van. No one could know where the house was or find it by watching Dave, Joe or their wives, or their friends and he and his wife were always gone when Joe showed the shelter to a potential client.
It had to be this way so that no one could connect him or his house to the shelter they were blindly led to after demonstrating an ability to pay in cash or liquid equivalent. The business was under government radar, one of the benefits of purchase. No one knew the whereabouts of these shelters except their owners, only a few had known of their existence.
The genius of the shelters was shared by the three partners. Joe did the civil engineering design work, Dave managed the project and knew how to keep it a secret from anyone who would be looking at the house, a skill gained from his military experience. Bob was an electrical engineer who had known Dave since he was a child. He did the systems for air, water and electricity and the entrance hatch using off the shelf components, all paid for in cash, with no special orders or unusual parts from hardware stores.
Susan was breaking all the rules just by being at his doorstep.
Bob looked over at the burning transformer again. "What are you doing here?" he asked as he continued to look at the transformer, pretending to ignore her. Susan spoke sharply to get his attention back "Joe and I were in a bad car accident and Joe didn't make it. This girl here was alone and she had come over to help after the accident. She is from Bellingham and was driving through the city to get to Portland. She doesn't know anyone even remotely from around here.".
She gave him a hard stare.
The young girl stayed silent. Susan asked him incredulously "What have you been doing for the last two hours Bob? Do you even know what happened?". Bob replied "I was trying to get some rest, at least that's what was happening" as he looked again at the transformer. He turned to look at Susan again. She looked differently from her usually calm, collected, and smiling face. She looked like she was about to fall apart or kill him out of frustration. Bob just wanted her to go away, he could find out what she wanted through their regular means of communications and did not want to see her at his doorstep.
Susan turned toward the young girl and said "Wait here. Do not move. Do not go anywhere. If something happens you are to enter this house and sit in the living room. You wait there but only for an emergency. If you have to, lock the front door and lock yourself in the bathroom and wait and stay quiet. We will deal with whatever it is so just stay quiet until we come and get you.".
"Do you understand me?" she said sternly.
Susan waited for a response, staring at the girl. The girl just looked at her and said "OK" after a moment, then sat down on the steps holding onto her backpack with her back to both of them. Susan opened the door all the way. A confused Bob, while looking at the girl, moved out of Susan's way as she walked in the house past him and into the living room, tracking mud and dirt on his floor with her dirty bare feet.
He walked into the sunlit living room behind her and remained standing, watching her as she sat down on his couch. Her pants were ripped and she had bloodstains on them and her top. One of her knees was scraped with blood and dirt. He remembered the girl outside had dirt all down the front of her T-shirt. He had thought it was some kind of modern art when he first saw it and had not really recognized it as a soiled stain. The two women looked like they had been on a hike and had fallen a few times in the moments he had to review it all.
Susan remained quiet as Bob looked her over. She knew Bob needed a few moments. "OK Susan. You have to tell me what's going on. Take a deep breath. Why are you here?". Bob took a deep breath. Susan took a deep breath. "Joe didn't make what? What are you talking about?" he said.
She said "Bob" she paused to think for a moment then said "Try your lights.". Bob just looked back at her, not understanding why she would say that. "Is there a switch in here?" she asked, to hurry him up.
Bob went over to the light switch. No power. He went over to the end table in the living room and picked up his cell phone. Nothing. No indication of power. He quickly checked the battery of the phone, it was in there and he had charged it over the previous night. Susan remained quiet.
He went into the kitchen to check the laptop he had left on earlier that was running on battery. It had a blank screen and its fan wasn't running. He hit return button, the power button. Nothing. He turned on the stove, the kitchen light. No light and no heat came from the element. Water trickled from the kitchen sink and then stopped. He looked out the kitchen window at the pole transformer on fire.
He ran back into the living room and said "Stay here and don't move! I'll be right back.". He ran toward the basement door and down the stairs. Susan yelled out to him "None of the cars work! They are all dead sitting in the middle of the roads in the city! Transformers are burning all over the place!". He yelled back at her "Where is Joe!?" She didn't answer.
He grabbed a magnet from his tool room to try the shelter hatch switch, magnetically activated and hidden behind drywall. Nothing. Its power was not working. He ran back upstairs and down the hallway and into his bedroom to the closet. He threw a few boxes out of his way from inside the closet and onto the floor. He found a carefully hidden package. He ran back down the stairs, leaving his closet shelf contents on the bedroom floor, with the small cardboard box in one hand and opening and ripping layers of tin foil from its top with his other hand.
He ran down past Susan and to the basement, grabbed a screw driver and opened the light switch box on the wall. He reached in and pulled out a circuit board and replaced it with one from the box. He moved the magnet across the wall and the hatch slowly began to open.
He knew as the hatch began to lift that the power system in the shelter was working. He felt relieved to feel the wind from the cooler and higher air pressure air inside the shelter blowing out on him. He saw the dim LED light coming from the hatch opening to illuminate the stairs and knew all the electronics in the shelter would be working.
He would not go down into the shelter yet. He knew everything was working inside.
He waited as the hatch lifted, unable to think of anything else. What didn't Joe make? Where is he? His mind shifted from one thought to another as he took deep breaths. Something happened to all the power everywhere and he had to stay in control.
When the shelter door had finished lifting he hit another switch to lower it. He stood there and thought about the situation as the hatch lowered and disappeared into the tiled patterns of the basement floor. He had Susan and the girl to deal with and Jennifer would be a few more hours having almost twenty miles to get from where she was attending a seminar with some colleagues from work.
It was early afternoon and she would arrive before nightfall. Jennifer would be home before any real panic set in. The electricity would not be coming back on anytime soon. Everything was different now.
Maybe it was some kind of weird electrical effect that no one had heard of or experienced. He thought about how in the useful sense science understands electricity very well, but in another way it didn't. No one really knew anything more about electricity than they did gravity or God. It just worked.
Maybe it was a giant sunspot, maybe a giant wave of magnetic energy coming from outer space like Dave had talked about. He only really understood the useful kind of electricity as an engineer. Maybe everything would soon return to normal but with long line-ups of people arranging to get their hydro, cars and computers working again, he thought but then he doubted that, nothing worked.
Society had blown a fuse.
Cars were not running, his unplugged cell phone didn't work and his stove wouldn't turn on. No massive power distribution failure could kill his unplugged cell phone or his car. The shelter was built to protect them from anything, bu
t they had a massive economic collapse or a war in mind when they had built it, so did their single client when he bought his.
What had happened was completely different from anything they expected but they had put a fine copper net around the sub basement shelter, the expense of which was lower than the risk of a sunspot or electromagnetic storm or event, or atmospheric nuclear device that Dave had gone on about during the design phase. His wife, Jennifer had them thinking like actuaries sometimes, she was one. After all the arguing about building the shelter, all of her objections, she was the one that was right about the most important thing. The extra expense of the copper netting that shrouded the shelter probably saved them and it was probably a giant sunspot or atmospheric nuclear device that killed all the power.
He wondered when or if Dave and Lisa would arrive, he had no idea where they were or exactly where Dave was working through the week, he was a project civil engineer and was supervising road construction. Lisa would be at her car lot which was several miles away. Dave would get Lisa before coming to his house. They had planned for Dave and Lisa to live in the shelter with them in the event of an emergency, Susan and Joe had the other shelter they had built under their basement.
He continued to wonder if this was a local, national or international event. Time would tell. He swept around the hatch opening and then went back up the stairs. Sweeping was automatic and paramount in importance and he had been doing it ever since he had started going down into the shelter nearly every night during the past year. Sweeping prevented dust patterns from exposing the perimeter of the sub basement shelter hatch that lay hidden in the cracks of the tiled basement floor. He was in control.
His and Jennifer's regularly use of the shelter ensured that it was both ready and well tested. They were going to be safe for years if necessary.
He knew he didn't need to go into the city himself to see, he had more immediate concerns. He saw the burning transformer, he believed Susan about the cars. He took some deep breaths to get calm and cool and began thinking steps ahead of his actions. He ran outside to try his car, rushing past but without speaking to the girl sitting on the steps. Nothing, no ignition sounds, no dashboard lights.
He ran back in, ignoring the girl again on his way. He told Susan that the shelter was fine and everything was working. He explained that she would have to replace circuit boards with spares he had given them. "So the electrical system will be working in your shelter too. Relax for a few minutes OK?".
He sat down in a chair beside her and let out a deep breath. She was now laying on the couch. Bob said "So what happened? Where is Joe? What didn't he make?". Then he knew, as soon as he said it. She sat up and wiped tears from her face, and began to explain.
She and Joe had been driving through downtown when the power went out. They were going through an intersection and the driver ahead of them slammed on his brakes the instant the cars went dead. Joe hit his brakes to avoid a collision but the car at an adjacent light didn't stop. That car had ran into theirs in the intersection and hit Joe on the driver side door. Joe was badly hurt and had gone unconscious. He was bleeding profusely from a compound fracture and open wound in his leg. His body was twisted. Joe's side door and Joe's body absorbed almost all of the impact of the oncoming car.
The girl that she had left outside his door sitting on the step had come over to help her with Joe right after the accident. People had gathered around her car but shortly left, unable to help or call an ambulance. There were several accidents and a few people had slight injuries but most cars and people remained unharmed. Joe was the only one around seriously hurt. The girl wasn't hurt, she was just shaken up from seeing what the accident had done to Joe. She explained that he soon died after going unconscious, his breathing steadily grew more and more shallow until it was no more. He had lost too much blood and she couldn't stop the bleeding. Tears were in her eyes and she had to keep wiping them away from her face as she continued to explain.
Bob didn't know how to react to the news. Everything was so sudden and it was too much to digest all at once. He put that on pause and continued to listen to Susan, giving her what she needed, a sense of calm and control. He reached over and took her hand as she continued to talk.
She let go of Bob and explained that the girl had realized that her cell phone didn't work after trying 9-11. When other people had come over to the accident scene they had talked about their phones not working. Pole transformers were on fire and all the traffic lights were dead. She explained that it took the girl a while to realize what had happened but she seemed to be handling it.
The girl had stayed with her and Joe after Joe had died, having sat in the back seat and trying her best to comfort her. Susan said that she began to explain what had happened with the power and what an electromagnetic pulse event was to the girl, as she learned from Dave and Bob. After finding out where she was from and that she was alone too, she offered the girl help. She didn't want to be alone. She had no one and neither did the girl.
Susan said that she asked the girl to walk with her, that Joe was gone and they could leave his body, and that she would explain more as they gathered their things and got out of the car and started the walk toward her house. She said that she had stopped and ran back to the car to kiss Joe goodbye and started crying again. She collected herself and said that she explained everything that she knew to the girl with the exception of the two shelters that she and Joe and Bob and Jennifer had. She only told the girl that she was prepared for this, leaving the details out.
Susan explained her ideas about what to do with the girl. She said that the girl should stay with her and that it would take a few days for the reality to sink in for both of them. She told the girl that she had food, water and a place to stay. She had been thinking about telling the girl about the shelter but decided to stay quiet until they arrived at the house and met with him and Jennifer.
"I will explain your shelter to her and tell her that I will be along shortly to join the two of you. I won't really come over right away but the fact that I didn't show up will scare the girl out of wanting to leave your shelter. You will give her ideas of the chaos that will be happening outside the shelter. Maybe she has seen a movie and you can tell her that it will be much worse than any movie. Get in your shelter as soon as you get home and do not leave it.".
He paused to think while Susan looked at him in silence.
"You know that if we tell her about your shelter and you let her in she cannot be allowed to leave. Me not showing up should scare her out of leaving. I will tell her that I will stay at this house and wait for Jennifer and we will both come over to the shelter as soon as Jennifer gets home. We cannot tell her about this shelter without talking with the others first.".
Bob stopped to think.
"I will come to your shelter and bang on the basement three times, pause for a few seconds, then seven times in a few days, maybe a week. Make it five days from today so today is...Monday. It will be Saturday...unless I cannot for some reason.... and it could be any reason we can't even imagine right now.".
He paused for a breath and put his hand up to stop Susan, who was about to speak. "You open the hatch for me and I will fix the things like your house microphone and cameras in the yard. You have spares for all this inside your shelter. If you do not see me on Saturday do not exit unless it becomes uninhabitable or something goes wrong. Something could happen that could prevent me from entering your house or me leaving mine. Stay in the shelter no matter what. Neighbors will be watching. I will come over and see you as soon as I can. If something goes wrong you come back here alone and we decide what to do about the girl with the others.".
Susan quickly responded as soon as he stopped talking "I know, and I know how to do everything and where everything is. Joe made sure of that. I know how to fix the hatch door if it doesn't open and I have started the gardens already. We used the shelter all the time. It's ready and I know how to run it. I can replace the cameras and microphone. You
showed me how to do this when you finished the electrical system. I will stay in the shelter until one of you shows up. I will have everything fixed and see you on the cameras.".
She went on "I will tell the girl that you are expected any moment after we arrive, that you are just waiting for Jennifer. I know you need to wait for the others here and this is too much for me, I need to be alone and, for some reason, to care for that girl. I know her from somewhere but I can't remember where right now. I know she is a friend but I can't remember how I know this right now.".
Bob suggested for her to lay down on the couch for as long as she needed and that he would go outside and talk with the girl.
He went outside to find the girl sitting on the steps of their front porch. He introduced himself and got the girls name as Emma and asked her if she needed water or the bathroom. She said she needed both so he let her into the house and showed her where the bathroom was and got some water bottles out of the fridge. He told her to come back outside when she was done and that he would be waiting for her with water on the steps.
Bob got water bottles from the fridge and went back outside and waited for the girl as she went to the bathroom. She came out moments later and sat down beside him and accepted the water and drank a bottle of it. She immediately needed to go inside to use the bathroom again and asked Bob if it was OK once again. Shortly after she came back and sat down and drank the other bottle. Bob realized Susan was probably dehydrated too, and in severe shock. She said that the toilets had no more water to flush.
Bob went into the house and handed Susan two bottles of water, telling her that she was probably dehydrated and needed to drink. He told her there was fruit on the kitchen table and other things to eat in the fridge. "Help yourself. Eat something. Eat some nuts and some fruit." he said. Susan got up and walked into the kitchen while Bob went back outside to talk with the girl.
The girl asked Bob about what was going on as he sat down on the step beside her and he explained it as Susan had. He thought the girl was in a state of shock having to absorb in hours what had taken the adults months or years to be mentally prepared for. She didn't seem to know what to do so Bob asked her what she thought her options were. She thought for a minute and said that she had none in a calm and considered way. She seemed to act years beyond her appearance and had kept herself calm better than he or Susan.
Bob told her that she was right, she did not have any options except to stay with him and Susan. She had to get along well and not cause trouble and she had to agree to stay with them to be able to go to a safe place and that she could not leave this safe place until he or Susan had said she could. They could not let her out with their secrets. She had to agree to those conditions or pick up her backpack with some water and food he would give her and be on her way.
The girl thought about the terms and agreed to them and seemed to understand what she was hearing. She continued to seem mentally much older than she looked. Bob explained the shelter at Susan's but was careful not to mention his.
He explained that she had to agree to stay in Susan's shelter and wait for him and his wife Jennifer with Susan. He explained to her that he, his wife Jennifer, Susan and Joe had all prepared themselves for this and that she would be in a state of shock for a while and that they would look after her.
Susan had lost Joe and under the circumstances was holding up but Bob knew she was probably in shock and could fall apart. He wanted Susan at his shelter but couldn't just kick the girl to the curb or trust her on behalf of Jennifer, Dave and Lisa. He was worried about Susan and had to make it clear to the girl that Susan was an important, respected and close friend to him. The girl may be just what Susan needed, he thought. She missed her own boys and often mentioned it. They had grown up and moved away for opportunities and that had hurt Susan, Joe's stay-at-home wife. He knew Susan well enough to know that she was often lonely with Joe at work.
He went on to explain that she must listen to and do what Susan said at all times and to never do anything without asking first. The girl agreed and so far had been following Susan's instructions closely as far as Bob could see. She seemed to be able and willing to follow instructions and to listen. She didn't already know everything like a typical young teenager. She hadn't just lost her husband and was in better shape than Susan to make judgments. Still, he wished Susan was alone so he could bring her into their shelter.
He asked her how old she was and what she was doing in the city. She said that she was fifteen and was on a bus going through town when the power went out. She was on her way to visit her cousins. Bob looked her over, she had shoulder length straight brown hair and brown eyes to match. She was very pretty, tall for her age and slender and tanned. She had the appearance of an outdoor lover. She was athletic, he noticed a bit of muscle in her bare arms. She could be a physical threat to many people but Susan knew how to defend herself better than a girl this age had time to learn. Susan would be safe with her, he thought. She could help them and Susan rather than be a burden. She could be an asset.
He explained to her that if she became a problem or wanted to leave the shelter that she would not be allowed back in and have no other options. She could die or be killed for something like water or her possessions in her back pack. He and Susan were fully prepared to let that happen. It was inconceivable for her to walk back home or to ride a bicycle there alone, it was too far away. She nodded in agreement. She could be killed for a bicycle or the water or food she would have to carry with her. He said that thousands or hundreds of thousands, of people in the area could be dying over the next week or two. "Things are different now and they are going to stay different for a very long time", he said. She seemed to agree and had time to think about the predicament she was in as well as the fact that she was alone. She said that her family was unreachable, "for now" she added after a pause. Bob ignored that comment in his rush to explain the situation.
He explained that if things were to get back to normal, the electricity would be back on within days and they would hear airplanes or helicopters in the sky and that he would get her back home. He explained to her that nothing worked so the electricity likely wouldn't just suddenly come back on. Too many things from cell phones to cars had suddenly stopped working. They had been thrown back in time a hundred and fifty years in an instant. The girl remained silent and in agreement as Bob explained.
Susan suddenly came out after listening to them from behind the screen door and had asked the girl if she was ready for another walk. The girl quietly stood up and picked up her backpack, ready to follow Susan.
Together they left, each with another bottle of water and began the nearly hour long walk to Susan's. They would be in the shelter safely, long before any real panic with the general population set in and long before nightfall.
Bob yelled back at Susan and ran to them and hugged Susan. "I'm so sorry about Joe. You have all of us, me, Jennifer, Dave and Lisa and you already know that." Susan quietly nodded with a tear in her eye. He looked at the girl "Take it easy on her OK? You are lucky you met this woman". Emma replied "I will and I know that already." and smiled sincerely. The girls relaxed nature and calm attitude puzzled Bob. It was as if she knew something that they didn't. He wondered why Susan brought her along, perhaps she saw in her what he did. Perhaps she was still confused and just needed someone after the accident. Maybe Susan wasn't herself, he didn't know her well enough to know that.
Bob went back inside and laid down to think and maybe even get some sleep to clear his head. He wondered about Jennifer, if she was OK and what he would do without her. He was relieved that Susan was safe and had someone with her. He thought about Joe, he and Joe had become good friends. Mostly he just anticipated Jennifer walking in though the door although he knew that could not happen for a while. He couldn't think about his parents and older brother. They were far away. Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer raced through his mind. Was she on her way back? Was she OK?
He started making plans about what to
do next while he laid down with his eyes wide open, his tall and thin build kept his feet up on the opposing armrest of his couch as he tried to relax, to think about what to do next. He suddenly got up, grabbed all the food and remaining bottled water and put it downstairs beside the hatch. He went into the garage and picked up all of Dave's hand tools that he had left behind and put those beside the hatch. Lisa and Dave had been living in an apartment and Dave had left tools in the garage when he and Lisa moved out of the house after Bob and Jennifer bought it to build the electrical, heating, air handling, entrance hatch and water systems part of this first shelter. Dave and Joe had built the main structure out of concrete underneath the basement before he moved in.
He laid down on the couch again to wait and tried to sleep, anticipating Jennifer walking in the front door.
He was awoken by another loud knock at the door. His neighbor was shouting for him. He decided to stay quiet and not answer it. The neighbor continued knocking saying he needed some water and that he was going to take some out of the pool in the backyard. Bob didn't care, he didn't know his neighbor and didn't need the water. A giant storage tank that was always full was in the shelter and the pool needed to be emptied of chlorinated water before it could be used for its real purpose, a cistern. He knew Susan and the young girl would be safe in the other shelter. Susan would have time to come back before dark if anything went gone wrong. He wondered how Susan was coping.
He later overheard neighbors shouting across yards to one another and couldn't fall asleep with the noise outside.
They all began talking about getting water from Bob's and other swimming pools. He closed the window. Shouting erupted when the pool owners next door refused their neighbors water. There was some yelling and some noise. People were going to start getting hurt, he thought. Most of them believed that the government would save everyone and somehow get the electricity working. They just needed water to hold them for a few days. They believed that helping them was the governments responsibility. Barbecues were lit. The smell of cooking meat and the noise from shouting, talking and opening and closing doors permeated the neighborhood.
Gas barbecues lost gas pressure. All the gas pressure that was available was stored only in the underground pipes that led to the houses. There would be no more gas.
He realized he had forgotten to see if the connected computer, microphone and cameras were still working in the shelter so he got up and went down into the shelter to test them. He found the microphone not working so he got the spare microphone board out of the shelter storage, went out of the opened hatch and up the stairs and unscrewed a light switch where the microphone was hidden in the kitchen and replaced its circuit board. He went back down into the shelter, tested the microphone. It worked. Now he could hear everything that was happening both inside and outside the house with the shelter door sealed. Jennifer would expect to find him inside the shelter. He could close the hatch because they never left it open. It was opened and then always immediately closed after they entered. They had rules and protocols to keep the shelter secret from the guests they had in their home, unexpected as well as expected.
He gathered the tools, water and food that he had left by the shelter entrance and brought them down into the shelter and closed the hatch. Sometime within the next few days he would have to replace the cameras and the solar panels outside. For now the microphone worked and he could listen for Jennifer.
He walked around the expansive space for a check on water supplies and that the air handling system was working correctly. He and Jennifer had spent many nights in the shelter and he had already tuned all of the systems. Freezers were well stocked and Jennifer had the gardens that surrounded the space on high shelves under bright lights on a timer during the daytime growing their food. The shelter was already fully operational and they would be safe.
He wondered about their recent client. He too was lucky, his shelter had just been completed and he had seeds to start a garden. They would never meet again. He would have to read the manuals Bob had written for him. Bob would also never see his parents or his brother again but they were not close.
Bob had "touched the electric fence"* when he lived at home as a child. He already knew of evil, he knew it was real and didn't have his knowledge of evil from novels and movies. That was why he got involved with Joe and his shelter idea, he knew something bad would happen one day. He read enough political science to see that it was inevitable. *Will Rogers.
Jennifer had not, she had not experienced evil except in novels and movies. His attitude toward government and politics was fundamentally different than Jennifer's. She thought the trouble in the world was the tyranny of good intentions coupled with the greed and hubris of a few. Bob believed that a civilization rested on two pillars, one was its ethic and the other its ability to produce wealth and that both were being systematically destroyed by a ruling class that existed above government. He had read Plato and Aristotle and knew the world had never really changed. It was the source of constant tension between him and Jennifer in social situations. At home they were busy with work, both being work at home professionals. They had lots to talk about and do without touching the subject.
Buying and moving into Dave's house put Jennifer closer to work where she could attend meetings in person rather than teleconference. The shelter gave her peace of mind regarding a possible economic collapse. The time Bob spent working on it paid for itself and then some with their first and only sale after building Susan and Joe's shelter. Jennifer liked the shelter and it made her a gardener and setting up the shelter interior was something they did together. It was their secret and no one from either of their families knew about it. Neither would ever see their parents or brothers and sisters again unless the power came back on, somehow. He knew this would be hard for Jennifer.
He took down one of the false walls for their bedroom in the shelter so that he could hear the corner mounted loudspeaker clearly and laid down on the bed and listened for her with the volume turned up. He could hear his neighbors again. After a few hours some of them were drunken and yelling obscenities at one another. He turned off the light thinking that it would be best if he could get some sleep. The neighborhood quieted down soon after and Bob fell asleep in the perfect darkness of the underground shelter.
Dave and Lisa woke him up late into the night. His clock read after two AM. He was awoken by the sound of them opening the front door, walking across the floor and coming down his noisy wooden stairs over the shelter loudspeaker. Dave spoke, knowing Bob would hear him through the shelter loudspeaker. "Bob, Jennifer are you here? It's Dave.". They went quiet.
It took a second for him to register what he heard. He waited for a moment to be sure that it wasn't a dream having been awoken from a deep sleep. A few seconds later he heard him repeat it. He turned on the bedroom and main lights, jumped up and ran over to the hatch switch, grabbing his big warm housecoat along the way.
He opened the hatch to find Dave and Lisa standing at the entrance.
The normally jovial, funny and clever Lisa looked tired, like she had been walking for a while and she had a blood stained cloth wrapped around her left arm. Dave was limping as he moved toward the shelter stairwell to help him finish sliding the raised hatch clear of the shelter entrance.
Lisa usually had something funny to say whenever they met socially, back when he and Dave attended school together, after Dave had started dating her, but not on this day. They came down the stairs and sat down at the table while Bob put a water cantor and some glasses on the table. He expected them to be hungry so he went to the cupboard and asked them which MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) they wanted and put the meals in the microwave. He poured them each a glass of water and sat down at the table to join them while the meals cooked in their microwave oven. He had a full sized freezer filled with military MRE's that Dave had suggested for the shelter, in case something went wrong with the gardens or meat freezers.
Lisa asked where Jennifer was and B
ob told her that he hadn't seen her yet and that she was at a nearby town to attend a seminar, Mill Creek. Dave reassured him that she was probably safe and preparing for the walk home the next day. "It wouldn't be a good idea for her to be walking through the city at night" he said. Dave made sense, he knew how people reacted in unusual or dangerous situations with his military training and experience he had before attending school with Bob. Dave had a few years of experience over Bob, being four years older and having been in the Bosnian war as a special operations soldier. Bob was glad he had Dave, they were good friends that complimented each other well. Dave was a realist, Bob was a broad and abstract thinker who could sometimes forget or ignore the obvious.
Dave asked if he had seen Joe and Susan. Bob explained that Joe didn't make it, how he died, and that Susan and a young girl were in Susan's shelter. He told them that the young girl didn't know about their shelter as well as what had happened to Joe. He explained that he wanted Susan to stay with them but she had the girl and he couldn't trust the girl on behalf of all of them. He and especially Susan couldn't just leave her, she was alone and Susan had the space and the need for company immediately after the accident. She didn't know if he or Jennifer would be at home after the accident and she couldn't be alone, Bob speculated.
Dave and Lisa went to sit down on the couch after eating. Neither had eaten anything all day and neither one of them looked like they went without eating for long. The slightly heavy set Lisa had personality, smile and expressiveness that more than made up for her less than ideal appearance and Dave was a big strong guy with shoulder length curly dark hair. Lisa's normally infectious smile that lit up rooms was still absent, she wasn't coping as well as Dave.
Dave put his foot up on the coffee table and undid his shoe while Lisa unwrapped her arm to get a better look at a wound she had in the light of the shelter. Bob went and got the first aid kit and a brighter light. Lisa began to explain what had happened to them. Dave was quiet, thinking about the loss of his good friend Joe. Lisa asked more about Susan and the girl, questions Bob couldn't answer and some he could as he and Dave looked at Lisa's wound. He explained that Susan had time to go to her shelter and get back to theirs if anything had gone wrong.
Lisa explained that they were in a mall at the back of one of the big department stores picking out a new tent and some new camping gear for a weekend hike during their lunch breaks when the power had gone out. Both of their cell phones went completely dead. He said that none of the emergency lighting came on in the store. They were in perfect darkness the instant the power went out and they didn't have a lighter with them.
They had started to make their way out of the darkened mall and it had taken what seemed like an hour in just getting out of the department store. They had felt their way around the store to get out and found some tents and some dry survival food for trade, and a cheap strung bow and arrow set for defense on their way out for their walk to the shelter. Dave had hurt his ankle tripping in the dark and Lisa had cut herself on the forearm from a hunting arrow in the store so they left in the darkness before feeling around in the dark for more supplies.
During their walk they had seen a lot of people leaving the city on bicycles and on foot, all heading toward the river, many with camping gear on their backs and empty water bottles tied to bicycles in various ways.
They had walked a mile after stumbling out of the store and decided to stop and let Dave's ankle rest for a while.
They continued to look at Lisa's gash while Bob put some iodine on the cut and proceeded to apply a sterile bandage as Dave instructed him. Lisa was tough enough not to scream out in pain when he had applied the iodine and kept talking before and after it was applied, a quick deep breath was the only indication of pain. She probably needed a few stitches but she didn't need to use the arm for a few days. It would heal but leave a big scar. If the cut had been a little deeper she would have bled to death in the store, in the darkness.
They had seen a lot panic and were often asked if they had extra water while walking. They had walked through the side streets to avoid the possible panic that could set in with drivers on the main roads that may have been many miles away from home. Dave explained that they thought that walking along a main road would be trouble. Some of the people on the road would have understood what had happened and few would have had water. Some could be ready to kill for water or supplies and have weapons.
They had reasoned that people in their homes in the neighborhoods probably had something to drink in their fridges and were therefore much safer to be around than those who did not. "The comfortable middle classes are always clever but not often smart" he remarked. They had settled down in a tent for the night in a backyard of an empty residential home after Dave had limped for almost a mile.
They finished tending to Lisa then applied a tension bandage to Dave's bared ankle.
Dave and Lisa changed into some heavier clothing they had in the shelter ready for them and Bob put on sweats to replace his housecoat. The relief from the outside heat in the cool shelter had now made Dave and Lisa cold in their summer clothes. They made hot tea and sat down comfortably in the living area of the expansive shelter and talked about Jennifer, Joe and Susan, their future and the reality of the power outage. They quietly assumed what Dave had said earlier, that Jennifer would be on her way early the next day to keep Bob's mind off it.
Lisa wanted to go to Susan's but Bob and Dave reminded her about the ensuing chaos that would soon be developing outside and that it could become dangerous and completely unpredictable quickly. Everyone would soon realize that the power wouldn't be going back on anytime soon and most would need water. Bob pointed out that she was already injured and nearly killed and Dave couldn't make that journey with his sore ankle and that all this had happened only in the first few hours.
Dave asked Bob if he had any idea what had happened. Bob explained that he knew about as much as he did. Bob said that none of the outside stuff with the shelter worked, the switch for the hatch, the cameras, the solar panel and the microphone all needed replacement. He told Dave that he had not replaced the cameras or the solar panel yet. "I guess it was an EMP bomb or pulse from outer space I suppose. Lucky you thought of that or we would be S.O.L. right now", he added.
Dave suggested that he should change the cameras soon because the neighbor that could see his backyard most clearly probably ran to his fridge to drink the rest of his beer while it was still cold the instant the power went out. Bob didn't know his rear neighbor, Dave had warned him when he moved in. He would be long asleep or be in a drunken stupor by this time. He suggested that now would be a good time to replace the cameras while no one was watching and everyone was probably sleeping and had not yet understood the seriousness of the matter well enough to keep a close eye on those around them.
Bob decided that they would turn the generator on and that it would be a good idea to listen for it while they were outside to see if it could be heard in the silent night air without the dull whispering roar of city noise.
Lisa remarked about how dark and quiet everything had been earlier except for some odd shouting, breaking glass, doors slamming and the gunshot they had heard. The ambient mechanical noise of the city, mostly from cars, was gone. It reminded her of camping. She had never seen stars so bright or so many of them. The absence of ambient city light made outer space seem so much bigger and deeper.
The light of the city had blinded so many people to so many things.
If the generator could be heard in the quiet they should be the first to hear it. They had no way of determining this definitively when the system was built because of the city noise. Bob had just made it as quiet as he could make it.
Dave limped over to the general storage and air/water treatment room to retrieve a box that contained the replacement cameras from storage while Bob hit the switch to lift the shelter door. He intructed the girls to turn the generator on once they had left and the hatch had been sealed. They quickly cha
nged into dark colored pants and dark hoodies as the hatch slowly lifted before climbing the shelter stairs to slide the hatch across the entrance to get into the basement and go outside into the darkness.
Bob felt around and found a ladder in the garage and used it to climb some trees to replace five carefully hidden cameras that spied into the house and around its perimeter by moon and starlight.
Dave limped around behind him and held the ladder. They whispered a little but didn't need to talk much. They both listened to the surrounding noise carefully as Bob clipped the tiny new cameras into place and collected the old ones in his pockets.
They could barely hear the low rumble of the generator exhaust if they listened very closely when they were near the shed. They didn't hear any sound coming from any of the neighbors homes or see any movement. They would have to be mindful of the generator sound when it was on by watching cameras that surrounded the house.
Their hearing had become much more acute in the silence. They heard the bats and the insects flying through the air around them. People that may find their way into the backyard would have an acute sense of hearing and be very interested in finding the source of an engine noise.
All the neighbors appeared to have all left or all be sound asleep.
Replacing all the cameras took them only a few minutes and they were sure that no one saw them, they heard nothing so they went back inside and closed the hatch. Bob turned on the video monitor after they got back in and switched through all the cameras. He would have a complete view of the perimeter of the house. He left the video monitor watching through the camera pointed at the shed that covered the end of a long exhaust pipe as the generator continued to run.
Lisa was crying on the couch so Dave sat down beside her and put his arm around her. Bob commented that it was getting warm inside the shelter and also close to sunrise when neighbors would be awake so he shut the generator off. The generator needed to run only fifteen minutes to a half hour to keep the batteries topped up with charge every day.
The three of them began to speculate on what happened again and its possible consequences. It could be centuries before anyone living in the area could ever know because knowledge could take that long to reach one end of the continent from another without electricity. Print information would always be noisy and cryptic and printing presses that didn't use electricity would be rare. They wondered how long it would take to bring the electricity back if it was out all over the world. They wondered how many people were prepared and how many had electrical appliances or generators that were protected from a natural or weaponized EMP shock. They wondered if it was something that came from the solar system or a bomb. Lisa suggested that maybe the country would soon be overridden with Chinese or Russian soldiers.
Absolute uncertainty and complete and total darkness was just outside their front door.
They all knew what would probably happen with their friends and relatives but didn't talk about it. After a while they had just went silent as Lisa wept, each slowly digesting what had happened. They were prepared, they had built the shelter for this and they had power, food, safety and comfort.
Dave and Lisa reassured Bob about Jennifer and that there was no real reason to think she was hurt or unable to find her way home after seeing the concern written on his face. Dave suggested that they should all get some sleep and that the new first new day could be a big one.
Dave limped over to the battery room and got the first aid kit and took the bandage off Lisa's arm to look at it again, clean it and re-dressed it again. They both needed to rest for a few days so they could heal before doing anything physical.
Bob started putting together a bedroom of false walls for Dave and Lisa. He sat down in front of the computer and watched for Jennifer, staring at the live camera footage of the front of the house in the still night after Dave and Lisa went to bed. He soon went into his partially built room and laid down listening for her over the speaker as he fell asleep.
Hours later Jennifer woke him up from a light sleep as she came down the wooden staircase and was calling him from the basement. She said she was OK. He got up and ran over to the switch to open the hatch in the dark before she finished her sentence.
He slid the hatch out of the way to find her standing there in some new hiking boots and carrying two bags, looking both sad and anxious. He ran up to hug her and kissed her and held back tears, he told her that he knew she would make it back. They stayed in the house basement for a minute while they collected themselves before coming back down. They walked down the narrow shelter steel staircase as Dave and Lisa were coming out of their bedroom dressed in heavy housecoats.
Bob asked her why she was so late in getting back while drying his face so that others wouldn't notice. She explained that the seminar was given by a retired actuary and he was talking about some aspects of the financial system and how it had to eventually collapse and what possible scenarios could play out during a sudden collapse. After that, they had gone on a nature hike and left their cellphones and anything electronic behind. Their guide had shown them all the things they could eat from the bush.
They sat down at the big dining table and made pine needle tea and sampled some berries and leaves from one of the bags she had been carrying. She explained that the seminar group didn't get back to their cars until after six PM and didn't realize anything had happened until then. By that time it was too late for her to leave for home. Their car wouldn't start and they had to walk back to the house where the seminar was held before learning that, this took a few hours and late afternoon and turned to early evening during the walk.
She had stayed the night at the house with the others and had traded some of the seeds she had left in the trunk of her car in exchange for a few bottles of well water. She walked into town, leaving at sunrise, and managed to trade her left over water and empty water bottles for a bicycle at a shop where the door was open. The owner had put up a sign saying he traded survival supplies for bicycles. She wrote him a cheque for the bicycle as well, to set his mind at ease about a situation that hadn't fully sunken in with either of them.
They continued to sample the leaves and plants that she had brought back and drank pine needle tea while Jennifer talked about some of the survival strategies she learned on the hike after the seminar. She learned that a lot of the people she worked with were survivalists who believed the system would eventually crash. They were quite secretive about their preparations. None had mentioned having shelters to her. The ones that lived in the small town had fish hooks, guns, tents, sleeping bags and hiking supplies and planned to go into the bush for food in a collapse scenario.
She thought a lot of them, if not all of them would be OK. They had a diverse and extensive skill set and the knowledge to survive together, which they had planned. None of them wanted to be in the city and they begged her to stay with them after she said she was leaving first thing the next morning to find her husband.
She described the city as she rode through it the next morning. Some transformers were smoking, cars were left in the middle of the road. Many people were sitting or sleeping in their cars. People had gathered in small groups everywhere and had wanted her to stop to find out what she knew. Everyone she saw was looking for information, food and water and she had nothing to offer them. She was in a hurry and never stopped to talk for long. No one attempted to take her bicycle.
Jennifer was tall and thin and tough, having done a minor in phys-ed. She was in top physical condition and could have easily handled most people with her self defense training. She probably could have handled Bob, who's idea of exercise was getting up from his computer to get another cup of coffee. They looked similar, both tall and slender with short blonde hair. They looked compatible with one another but in many ways were different. They were both abstract thinkers and mathematicians who worked at computer terminals most of the time. They could both miss the obvious at times. Bob liked to play computer games in his spare time when she was at th
e gym. Dave or Lisa were more likely to meet strangers or to tell a joke.
Jennifer said that no one at the seminar had any idea what had actually happened. One of the group who had a physics degree explained that man has only known about electricity for a few hundred years. From what he knew, it could be a giant magnetic or electrostatic wave going through the solar system. He explained that there was at least one contradiction in the fundamental laws* that were understood to explain how electricity works but that this hadn't stood in the way of progress. *Two Capacitor Paradox.
She asked if Bob and Dave had any idea and Bob agreed with what the physics guy said.
Bob asked her how she got the hiking boots and she explained that she had to stop and buy some on the way to the seminar for the hike they were going to take after the morning presentation. A friend from work had gone with her to pick them out before they drove out to Mill Creek for the seminar. The seminar wasn't advertised at her office and not everyone was invited.
A short while later she retired to their room and asked Bob to help her put up the wall he had taken down for their bedroom to isolate sound so she could get some sleep.
Dave sat down to put his ankle up while Bob and Lisa went around and did a systems check on the shelter. The water tank was full. The batteries had enough charge to keep them going comfortably for a few weeks without recharge and they could stay in the shelter and be completely quiet and unseen by the people in the outside world. Bob sat down and watched the monitors and read through the handout sheets that Jennifer had in the bag from the seminar. Lisa came out of their room to lay her head on Dave's lap.
A few hours later Jennifer came out of the room and started tending to the gardens while Dave and Lisa stayed on the couch and watched some reruns of sitcoms that Bob had bought on DVD for the shelter.
They could watch DVD's and use a computer while they were in the shelter. The heat generated from these helped heat the shelter so their power usage was not wasted. They could watch as much TV or use the computers as much as they wanted. A gallon of gas would supply enough energy for them to watch TV, cook and use the computer all day for a few days. They had nine hundred gallons of gasoline buried under the shelter floor in tanks in the cold ground.
They decided to run the generator every day early in the morning so that the generator waste heat could be used to warm up the shelter before they woke up and the battery bank would always be near full charge. They could stay dead quiet for weeks without the generator ever running for an emergency if they always kept the batteries fully charged. They had agreed to take turns at this and turn on the generator at 3 AM and let it run for the time it would take to fully charge the batteries from the previous day of usage. Someone would wake up for a half hour or so to watch the video's of the house while the generator was on. The shelter was working perfectly, they had thought of everything that could go wrong and had the means to fix anything that could go wrong.
After a few days Lisa was starting to use her arm and Jennifer worked out an exercise routine for them. Dave's sore and swollen ankle would prevent him from doing anything but limping around the shelter for the next few days still. They started doing aerobics, yoga, body weight bearing exercises and some easy gymnastics to stay limber and prevent muscle atrophy for an hour twice a day. They would all be in excellent physical condition and Dave would soon start teaching them self defense, when they were all strong and flexible enough to not get seriously injured when sparring with one other and when he fully recovered.
They had books on everything, reference books for engineers and scientists, first aid and medical books, a few big dictionaries, a full philosophy and literature library as well as boxes full of fifty cent novels they bought in bulk from a used bookstore owner. They had survival books, gardening books, cook books, law books, a few bibles and a useless set of encyclopedias in addition to stacks of DVD's to watch, all on shelves surrounding the shelter perimeter directly under the shelf that held the gardens.
The shelter living space was thirty eight by fifty two feet in size, not including the bathroom and two utility rooms built for batteries, supplies and water and air filtration. There was lots of space. False walls were used to create two bedrooms and a quiet room with a computer for anyone who wanted to be away from noise caused by the others. The vast space and portable false walls allowed relative privacy between the two couples.
Bob had set up one of the computers to continually record video. The house microphone would provide real time warning of any danger. One of them would fast forward through the video recordings at times during each day to see what was going on outside the shelter and around their property to look for events that were not heard through the loudspeaker as they happened. Nothing ever happened outside the shelter without one of them seeing it in a video recording or all of them hearing it.
They started adjusting to shelter life, it was an easy life. They could sleep all day if they wanted to. The shelter was easy to maintain and they had lots of high quality stored food that didn't require much preparation. Bob and Jennifer were quite accustomed to staying indoors but Dave and Lisa would soon start to get restless and need to go outside. Eventually Bob and Jennifer would too. Supplies were not infinite.
They saw dogs and cats fighting on video when they played the recordings of the days events outside the shelter that they had earlier heard over the speaker each day. The fights seemed to be escalating in frequency and severity. Dave remarked that it seemed like people were leaving and leaving their dogs and cats behind. Their neighbor from behind the house had periodically dipped into their pool for water with his bucket. His rear neighbors family wasn't home and he was alone, presumably without alcohol or drinking his remaining supply.
The house on the left side of them didn't have any activity other than the one family leaving with backpacks the day after the power outage. The house on the right had no activity and none of the three houses that surrounded their yard had any apparent damage. He could not see the house across the road or see as far as the sidewalk in front of the house with the camera arrangement they had.
No one had yet tried to open their front or rear house door, both doors were unlocked. They left the doors unlocked so people could come in and see they had no food or water rather than break in to find out and do damage to the house in the process. The house would just look empty and anyone would probably just shut the door on leaving, maybe after sleeping there for a night. No one ever came to the house except the rear neighbor.
Dogs had began to form into packs and numbers of them between three and ten could be seen trotting across the front and backyard on video in the days that went by. There were dogs of all kinds, sizes and shapes traveling in packs together. Their barking, growling and fighting could often be heard through the shelter speaker at night. Large numbers of dogs could be heard howling together. They had watched recorded video of a pack of four dogs tear a smaller one into pieces and eat it leaving only its fur, bones and a head in seconds after hearing the sound of it over the loudspeaker. Dogs would be a serious threat to anyone walking around outside.
He wished they had some information about domesticated dogs that had turned feral. He wished he had known how many people were out there and where they had all went. They wished they knew how Susan was and they hoped she didn't decide to leave her shelter. The dogs would get her.
They all wanted to see if Susan was OK but doing so would require that the young girl learn they had another shelter in addition to Susan's. It was better to leave her to believe that something happened to Bob and Jennifer. Susan would know better and keep it to herself. Dogs or desperate people could get them on their way to Susan’s. They thought that Susan and the girl would be living at Susan's for a while yet, at least until the number of dogs dwindled.