One Second After Read online

  “You still haven’t answered my question about your damn car,” Tom snapped. “Why is yours working and I’ve got six squad cars out there that are dead?”

  “The electronics,” Charlie interrupted. “That’s what got me thinking on it, too, but I didn’t feel it was right to say anything about it.”

  “Why not?” Tom asked.

  “Panic. That’s why. I saw an article on the Web about this a couple of months back, and it was a lot worse than what we were talking about just two years ago. Some people who don’t like us have apparently been spending a lot of time and money to get a bigger bang for the buck.”

  “So why didn’t we just protect ourselves?” Kate asked. “Hell, what does it take to build a better surge protector?”

  John sighed and shook his head. She was so damn right.

  “Kate, it’s some rather technical stuff, but it meant retrofitting a lot of stuff, hundreds of billions perhaps, to do all of it. And besides, a lot of people in high places, well, they just glazed over when the scientists started with the technical jargon, the reports would go into committees, and…”

  “And now we got this,” Charlie said coldly. John nodded, frustrated.

  “Global warming, sure, spend hundreds of billions on what might have been a threat, though a lot say it wasn’t. This, though, it didn’t have the hype, no big stars or politicians running around shouting about it… and it just never registered on anyone’s screen except for a few.”

  “I don’t get it with the cars, though,” Tom interjected. “Computers, yes, but a car?”

  “Any car made after roughly 1980 or so has some solid-state electronics in it,” John said. “Remember carburetors, thing of the past with fuel injection and electronic ignition. That’s why my mother-in-law’s old Edsel is ok and Bartlett’s VW out there. No computers in the engine, and vacuum tubes in the radio. The surge had nothing to fry off; therefore, it still runs. Now everything in a car is wired into some kind of computer. Better living through modern science.”

  John fished in his pocket for a cigarette, pulled it out, then hesitated. Kate was glaring at him, as was Tom. The town had a no-smoking ordinance for all its buildings.

  John hesitated, but damn, he wanted one now.

  “Look, guys, if you want me to talk, I get a cigarette.”

  “Mary would kick your ass if she knew you were still smoking,” Kate said.

  “Don’t lay the guilt on me,” John replied sharply. It was Mary’s dying that had snagged him back into smoking after being clean for ten years. The army had started getting uptight on it, and amongst all the other aspects of grooming for the star, smoking was a checkmark against him with some of the bean counters and actuaries in the Pentagon who argued why invest the effort on a guy who might die early?

  “Go on; light up.” She hesitated. “And give me one of those damn things, too.”

  Now it was his turn to hesitate. He hated leading someone back into sin, but on this day… what the hell.

  He lit her cigarette. She leaned back in her chair, inhaled deeply, let it out, and sighed.

  “God damn, I’ve been wanting that for six years now. Damn, is it good.” A couple of seconds later she actually smiled, the first time she had done so since he walked in.

  “Head rush,” she muttered, then took another puff.

  “Damn near everything has a computer in it now,” John continued. “Cash registers, phones, toys, cars, trucks, but, most vulnerable of all, the complex web of our electrical distribution system. All of it was waiting to get hit.”

  Tom leaned against the wall and let a few choice words slip out.

  “You think they’d of seen this coming. Done something about it.”

  “Who is ‘they,’ Tom?”

  “Jesus, John, you know. The president, Homeland Security. Hell, I was getting e-mails damn near every day on terrorist alerts, training on what to do if they hijacked a truck loaded with nuclear waste, even a drill with the hospital last year if they unleashed some sort of plague. I got twenty bio and hazmat suits in a storage closet. Never even heard about this thing being talked about.”

  John sighed.

  “Yeah, I know. It was off most people’s screens. Seemed too sci-fi to some of them. But that doesn’t matter now.”

  “I’m still worried about radiation, though,” Kate said, “fallout.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You sound rather assured of yourself.”

  “You don’t have a single radio working here, nothing at all?” John asked.

  Tom shook his head. “I do.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Edsel. It’s an old tube radio. I checked it last night. Static from one end to the other. If this thing was local, if they had popped a bomb over Atlanta, Charlotte, we’d still be picking up radio stations from the Midwest and Northeast,”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a horizon event. Line of sight, like I said. I’ll guess it was one to three nukes, lit off a couple of hundred miles up above the atmosphere, covered most, maybe all, of the United States. Fallout is a by-product of rubble blown up into the atmosphere from a bomb going off. Pop an EMP above the atmosphere… and, well, at least you don’t have any fallout worries.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Charlie sighed.

  That caught John slightly off guard. Charlie was strict Southern Baptist, and for him to say that… well, it was a major sin, though a Catholic wouldn’t think twice about it.

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “Does it matter?” John replied.

  “Yeah, maybe it does to me?” Tom said. “I got a boy over in Iraq right now. You know that one of my nephews is with the navy out in the Pacific. I sure as hell would like to know who they’re fighting. If it was the Chinks, my nephew will be in it. The rag heads and it’s my son.”

  “Doubt if it’s China,” John said quietly.

  “Why? You said they were the ones doing the research.”

  “Doing the research, but using it in a first strike? Doubt it. They are just as vulnerable to EMP as we are. Do it to us and we’d flatten them and they know it.”

  “We have it, too?”

  “Sure we do. What the hell do you think the threat was to Saddam back in 1991? Charlie, you were over there then, same as me; you remember.”

  “Yeah, if they hit us with any weapon of mass destruction the word was we’d pop a nuke off about twenty miles above Baghdad.”

  “When a nuke goes off above the atmosphere or even in the high upper atmosphere, it sets off that electrical chain reaction I talked about. Again, just like a solar flare, usually the upper atmosphere absorbs the magnetic disturbance of a solar flare and up north we see that as the northern lights. But if it’s big enough, the disturbance hits the ground and starts shorting things out. So we threatened Saddam with an EMP if he unleashed anything on us,” John said. “It would have shut down the entire power grid of central Iraq and shut down their entire command and control system as well. They didn’t, so we didn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t that have fried our stuff, too?” Kate asked.

  “No. Remember, it’s line of sight. Twenty miles up, our forces in Saudi Arabia would have been below the horizon. Besides, all our equipment was hardened against EMP to varying degrees. They spent a lot of money on that back during the Reagan years.”

  “So our military is still ok here in the states then?” Kate asked.

  “Doubt it. That’s the gist of the report I just gave you. Every administration since Reagan’s has placed hardening of our electronics on the back shelf. Meanwhile the equipment kept getting more delicate and thus susceptible and the potential power of the burst kept getting one helluva lot stronger. Remember how we were all wowed by the high-tech stuff back in 1991. That equipment is now as primitive as a steam engine compared to what we got now. And in constantly making computers and electronics faster and better we made them smaller, more compact, and more and more vulnerable to an EMP strike.”

&
nbsp; He dropped the butt of his cigarette into his nearly empty coffee cup, offered a second to Kate, who took it, and lit another for himself.

  “Who then?”

  “For my money… maybe North Korea, maybe Middle East terrorists with some equipment supplied by Iran, Korea, or both. As for the warhead, we all know there’s enough of those left over from the old Soviet Union that sooner or later someone would get their hands on, if for nothing else than the goodies inside that go bang. Iran and Korea were hellbent on making nukes as well. But they’d be crazy to throw three or four at us when we could make the rubble glow for a hundred years with a thousand fired back in reply. But turn them into EMP weapons… and they win, at least in terms of hitting us harder than we could ever have dreamed of.

  “Maybe launched from a sub, hell, even from a freighter that got up a couple of hundred miles from the coast. Get that close and even an old Scud could just about get the package high enough. One like I said, maybe two or three, and you’ve just castrated the entire country.”

  “We’ll flatten the bastards for this,” Tom snapped.

  “Most likely already have, but do they give a shit? Hell no. The leaders will survive; they’re most likely down in bunkers a thousand feet deep laughing their asses off right now. Hell, if we flatten them, they’ll tell their own people that survive that we struck first and then they got millions more followers.”

  “I can’t yet believe this,” Kate sighed.

  “Sun Tzu,” Charlie said.

  John looked at him and smiled.

  “The enemy will never attack you where you are strongest…. He will attack where you are weakest. If you do not know your weakest point, be certain, your enemy will.”

  All three looked at him in surprise.

  “Hey, I remember a few things from college.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “What happened out there,” John said softly, “doesn’t matter to us now. It’s what happens here in Black Mountain that does.”

  “How long before the power comes back on?” Kate asked. “Or we get some word from Washington on what to do? Or even from Raleigh or Asheville?”

  Strangely, an old Civil War song flashed into his mind, a line from “Lorena”: “It may be for years, and it may be forever.”

  “Weeks, months, maybe years,” John said, and he found he could not look into Kate’s eyes as he said it.

  Yesterday, her biggest concern was the hot argument in the town about who would be grand marshal this year for the Fourth of July parade, that and the continuing wrangle with Asheville about water rates.

  “We’ve got to prioritize,” Tom said. “Security for one thing. I’ve got five hundred strangers from the interstate on my hands this morning. What the hell should we do with them for starters.”

  No one spoke.

  “Well, we just can’t kick them out,” Kate said. John did not reply.

  “Priorities for getting through this,” Charlie interjected, and now everyone was becoming agitated. John realized that for the last fifteen hours they had been waiting for “someone else” to tell them what to do. The reality was beginning to hit, that there just might no longer be “someone else.”

  “Water first,” Kate said. “Once the tank on top of the hill runs dry, the pipes will start emptying out. We don’t have any means then of pumping more back up to the tank. Most of the town will be dry within a day.”

  “We’re lucky in one sense,” Charlie said. “We get our water gravity fed from the reservoir. The dam face is at twenty five hundred feet above sea level, so at least here in town we’ll get some, but anyone above that elevation line is screwed.”

  John realized that meant him; his neighbor had a sign on his driveway: “Half mile high.” They were 250 feet above the gravity feed point for water. At least we have the pool, thank God.

  “Food,” Tom said. “Jesus, no electric means no refrigeration.”

  John was silent, on his third cigarette as the other three argued about what to do next.

  “I’m making a quick run up to the college, and once the pharmacy opens I’ve got a very important errand to run,” John said. “I’ve told you all I know, so if you will excuse me.”

  He stood up and started for the door. “John.”

  He knew this was coming. It was Tom.

  “Concerning your car.”

  “What about my car?”

  “I’d like to have it.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to get around.”

  “Use a bike; it’ll be good for you.”

  “John, don’t bullshit around with me; I need that car. I’ll give you a lift home, but I do need it.”

  John stared right at Kate for a moment, then back at Tom. “That car is mine, my family’s. You declaring martial law?”

  “I think we’ll have to,” Kate said quietly.

  “When you do, come and try and take it, Tom.”

  “What do you mean ‘try’?”

  “Just that. Just try.”

  Tom stood silent, no one speaking, and then finally he nodded. “Ok, John.”

  He looked back at Kate, who sighed and then nodded in agreement. “Sorry, John, we were out of line.”

  “That’s ok. Just a bit of advice, Kate.”

  “And that is?”

  He pointed to the cigarette in her hand.

  “Now that you are hooked again. You better go over to Smiley’s and get several cartons. Cash only. If Hamid says he doesn’t have cartons, pull rank on him. He’s hiding them in the back of the store. You better load up now ’cause you’re going to need them.”

  John turned and headed out the door and then realized that Tom had followed him out.

  “What the hell is it now?” John asked.

  Tom hesitated.

  “Look, John. Sorry. I haven’t slept since yesterday. Sorry about back in there,” and he extended his hand. John took it.

  “Tom, I don’t envy you your job one bit.”

  “Look, John. I know I might not be the brightest lightbulb in the pack.

  You’re the smart guy. I like my job, though, and try to do what’s right. But I never thought I’d be dealing with something like this.”

  “Yeah, I know. Hard day. Damn, I hope I’m wrong about everything I just said back in there. My first thought was it was some sort of weird solar storm. Maybe I’m dead wrong and ten minutes from now the lights will come back on.”

  “Think they will?” Tom asked hopefully.

  John reluctantly shook his head, went over to his car, unlocked it, and got in. He almost felt guilty as he turned the switch and the car roared to life. Everyone gathered in the parking lot looked at him as he drove off.

  * * *

  The run up to the college had been a quick one. He felt, though, that he had to go, just check on what was happening.

  A lot of heads turned as he drove into the campus and pulled in front of Gather Hall.

  “Hey, Doc, cool wheels!” someone shouted, and John nodded and smiled.

  The conversation with President Hunt only took a couple of minutes. He had basically figured out the same thing and was already organizing the place. The kids were feasting on steak and ice cream this morning; they were emptying out the freezers as quick as possible and stuffing the food into bellies. Anything preserved or canned could wait.

  The kids on this small campus were a good crew and ready to help out. A group had been organized to push cars clear of the road; others were hauling buckets of water all the way from the lake up to makeshift tanks near buildings in case of fire. The water in the campus pool would serve as drinking water, and four Porta Potties, hauled with much groaning and complaining, had been commandeered from the construction site for the new gym and a couple of new houses going up in the Cove and placed in front of the dorms.

  The head of campus security, Washington Parker, who until now was viewed by most of the kids as a “rent-a-cop” to be teased about falling asleep in the student union a
t three in the morning, now had a job. He was old ex-military, an actual marine sergeant from long ago, in his early sixties and the good-natured guy who usually had nothing more to do than bust a kid for being publicly drunk or shine a spotlight into a parked car to break up a hot and heavy session. Parker had already met with the heftier members of the ball team and their coach to discuss keeping the campus safe and setting up a twenty-four-hour watch.

  Parker had taken his job seriously for years, in spite of the fact that if ever there was a “safe” campus in the mountains of western North Carolina, it was Montreat College up in the Cove. A year or two would go by without even a minor crime, let alone the far more serious issues of rape, assault, or heavy drugs. But he had religiously attended every conference on campus security offered by the government, especially the ones that dealt with the potentials of a terrorist takeover of a campus. He had once talked with John about that issue, pointing out that the fact that they were, in general, so darn safe up in these mountains meant they were exactly the type of campus that just indeed might be hit.

  As John pulled away from Gaither Hall and turned to head back into town, he spotted Washington standing by the gateway that led into the campus. John slowed and came to a stop. Washington looked over at him and then actually saluted.

  “Morning, Colonel.”

  It was an old joke between the two, colonel and sergeant, but today it felt more than a little strange.

  “Inspecting the troops?” Washington asked.

  “Just figured I’d drive up and see how things were here.”

  “It’s EMP, isn’t it?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Your car for one, sir,” Washington drawled, his deep South Carolina African-American accent rich and full, mingled in with that clipped tone of a former marine drill sergeant.