When A Plan Comes Together Read online

  Kathy watched as Rex flipped two heavy switches. Nothing happened. “We need to check a couple of the emergency circuits to see if they have power,” Roxie said, handing the binder to Kathy. “I’ll check the kitchen.”

  She was back in only moments, a smile on her face. “We have juice!” she said.

  “Your father, in the manual,” Kathy said, reading for a moment, “says we should black out the house if we use internal power and the neighbors are out of power so they don’t know.” She looked up from manual and asked, a puzzled look on her face. “Why should we do that?”

  “Mom,” Rex said, “People might not like us having power when they don’t.”

  “He’s right, Mom,” Roxie added. “Dad talked to me and Rex about keeping our preps a secret. People do strange things when they’re under extreme stress. We’ll have to feel out the neighbors before we let them know we’re not in quite the same situation as they are.”

  Kathy frowned. It just didn’t sit well with her, but she decided to go along. “Turn it back off, Rex.”

  Rex did so. “What now, Mom?” he asked. “Turn off the water, too, in case the public water systems shut down?”

  Kathy flipped through the book. “Yes, turn off all the utilities. Until we find out how bad things are.”

  “I’ll shut off the propane tank,” Roxie said and ran out of the garage.

  “I’ve got the water,” Rex said. He went to one corner of the garage and got out a T-handle tool and went toward the street.

  She didn’t see the need, but Kathy read in the manual that the cablevision and telephone lines should be disconnected and she went outside to where they entered the house. Roxie came over as Kathy was studying the two connection boxes, a couple of feet from one another.

  “It’s easy, Mom,” Roxie said. “Just unscrew that cable connection. I’ll unplug the phone lines.”

  “Won’t we need the telephone?” Kathy asked. She undid the cablevision line and closed the door of the box.

  “It’s dead, anyway,” Roxie said. “Remember? And if there’s another pulse, we don’t want to risk anything carrying it into the house with the PV system running.”

  Kathy could only nod. It made perfect sense.

  “Water’s off,” Rex said when he joined them.

  They went back into the garage and checked the binder. “There is a cut off for the sewer line,” Kathy said. “But it says not to shut it off unless the sewer starts to back up. But if it does, turn it off quick. If we shut it off, we’ll be using chemical toilets, it says.”

  “I know where it is,” Rex said. “It’s easy. Just move the big fake rock in the front of the house by the porch. There’s a T-handle in a piece of pipe. You just push it down to close the line. Dad said this section of the city has all gravity sewer lines and should work for a few days. Longer if the water is off and people can’t flush.”

  “Won’t we have to use the chemical toilets anyway?” Kathy asked, “With the water off the flush toilets won’t work.”

  “The PV system feeds the well pump in the yard shed,” Rex replied. “I turned valves on to feed water to the house from the pump and tank. It’s going to taste a little funny, but Dad said he had it tested and it’s okay.”

  “I see.” There were so many things that Jay talked to the children about, that she’d shown no interest in learning, she realized, thinking back on his occasional attempt to get her involved.

  “I think we should try to find out what’s going on,” Roxie said.

  “How?” asked Kathy, at a loss. No TV, no telephone… She tried her cell. No cell phone. How were they going to find out anything?

  Seeing the look on his mother’s face Rex spoke up. “We can try the regular radio, and then the NOAA radio, and if we still aren’t getting anything, we can try the shortwave radio.”

  “We have one of those?” Kathy asked. “A shortwave radio?”

  Roxie and Rex both nodded. “I’ll go get one of the crank ups out of the basement,” Rex said. “Reception will be better out here than inside.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kathy took a moment to look around the neighborhood. At first it looked like an ordinary day. There was Dave Monroe, mowing the large expanse of yard on his corner lot. He saw Kathy and waved.

  “He doesn’t know does he?” she whispered to Roxie.

  “I don’t think so. But look down there…” Roxie turned her mother to look down the street the other way. Two families were hurriedly loading up vehicles, children still in pajamas standing around, crying. Both families were new to the street and Kathy didn’t know either of them.

  Dave Monroe suddenly noticed the differences in activity for a Friday morning. There hadn’t been a car pass since just after he’d started mowing. He saw the two families packing their cars. Then, like Roxie and Kathy, noticed old man Humphrey standing outside in his bathrobe, looking at the sky with binoculars. Dave shut off the lawn mower and walked over to join Kathy and Roxie. Rex joined them just as Dave did.

  “What’s going on?” Dave asked.

  Rex gave him a quick look, but decided he’d better not say what he was thinking. Fortunately Kathy spoke up. “There’s been some sort of attack, we think. Something called EMP.”

  “Like the nuclear EMP?” Dave asked.

  Kathy let Roxie answer. “Yes, sir, Mr. Monroe.”

  “I don’t see any mushroom cloud,” he replied, looking around again. “Or hear anything. And my lawn mower was running. Doesn’t EMP shut down engines?”

  “Some,” Rex said as he wound up the radio and light combination. “Not everything. There are too many factors to know beforehand. Something will either work or it won’t.”

  “You won’t get anything on that radio, then,” Dave said. “I’ve read about EMP. Zaps all radios.”

  “Not necessarily,” Rex replied. He turned on the radio and began turning the dial. “Radios not hooked to the electrical system and with short antennas aren’t affected too badly. YES!”

  His last bold statement came when he found a radio station on the air. Rex held the radio up so all could hear. Mr. Humphrey was walking toward them. Rex happened to look down the street and felt a shiver go down his back. The two families packing up their cars had a couple guys standing around with shotguns.

  He kept his eye on that group as he listened to the radio with the others. All they found out was the confirmation of a nationwide loss of power; due to high altitude electromagnetic pulse devices detonated several places in the upper atmosphere over the US.

  Rex was as sure as he could be that the people loading the cars hadn’t tried to start them before loading up. He saw men get out from behind the wheel of each car and open the hood of their vehicle. There was some yelling, and then one of the shotgun wielding men headed toward Rex and the small group listening to the radio.

  “Trouble,” he whispered to his mother, and nodded toward the man.

  She turned and started slightly at the sight. The man was headed straight toward them.

  “Do any of your cars work?” he asked harshly, bringing the shotgun down from on his shoulder to hold it in two hands.

  The group exchanged looks, and Dave looked like he was about to protest about the gun. “Haven’t tried,” Mr. Humphrey said. “And what’s it to you, anyway?”

  “I’m taking any car that runs. Let’s go. All of you. Who’s closest?”

  There was silence for a moment and the man growled, “I will shoot you down in cold blood if you don’t answer!”

  “We are!” Kathy said quickly, realizing the man wasn’t bluffing.

  The man motioned with the shotgun for the group to go over to Kathy’s hybrid. “Start it.”

  Luckily, Kathy had the keys in her jeans. She unlocked the car and put the key in. When she turned it, there was a low growl, but that was all. A second try didn’t even produce a growl.

  “Okay. It’s toast too. You, old man, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  All of the others c
ould see Mr. Humphrey was going to protest. “Please, Mr. Humphrey,” Kathy pleaded. “Do what he says. I don’t want my children hurt.”

  Whether he would have done something or not if the children had not been present he never said. He turned toward his house and marched, head erect, straight to his Dodge pickup truck. “I don’t have the keys on me,” he said when he reached the side of the truck. “They’re just inside the door.”

  “Inside” He commanded. “All of you.”

  Another minute and Mr. Humphrey was trying his truck. He had almost the same result as Kathy. The truck engine would turn over all right, but would not start.

  Just then, an old minivan came around the corner of the street and the man pushed the others away and ran toward it. He got in the street and raised the shotgun. The minivan slid to a stop and the man with the shotgun dragged the driver out from behind the wheel. Jumping in, he drove down to join the others of his group that were standing around watching.

  One of the men started moving the small trailer coupled to one of the cars to the minivan ball hitch.

  The driver of the minivan picked herself up from where the man had pushed her down onto the pavement of the street. “My van! I need my van!” She began running down the street toward the group now moving their gear from the cars to the minivan.

  She didn’t get very far. One of the men with a shotgun turned and fired before the woman got close.

  Kathy and the others whirled around when another shot came, this one from close to them. Mr. Humphrey had disappeared into his house and come back out with a handgun. He was firing at the other group.

  “You’ll hit one of the kids!” yelled Kathy and Rex at the same time.

  “I’m a better shot than that,” Mr. Humphrey called back. He took aim again and fired. One of the shotgun toting men went to the ground, but was back up immediately. Both of the shotguns boomed and Mr. Humphrey slumped to the pavement of his driveway.

  Dave headed for his house at a run. Kathy and Roxie did the same. When Kathy looked around, Rex was kneeling beside Mr. Humphrey. “Get over here, Rex!” Kathy yelled as she slid to a stop.

  Standing and then running a zigzag course, Rex joined his mother and they both continued running to the house. Roxie had the front door open and the two ran inside the house. It was only when Rex put the pistol and spare magazine he was holding down, did she realize he had it.

  “What in the world is wrong with you?” Kathy demanded.

  “I wanted to check Mr. Humphrey, in case he was just wounded… He wasn’t.” Rex’s face was pale. “And I didn’t want some kid to find the gun and shoot himself or for the gun to fall into someone’s hands that might use it against us.”

  “Well… Don’t do that again! You could have been killed like that woman and Mr. Humphrey.”

  “That woman was Mrs. MacGrady,” Roxie said, tears streaming down her face.

  Kathy whirled around to look at her daughter.

  “But…”

  “I recognized her,” Roxie said softly. “And the van. I was at the mall the other day and saw Ginny. She was complaining about how old the used minivan they bought was.”

  Kathy sat down heavily in one of the living room chairs. “My Lord! What is happening?” She was close to tears herself. “The binders. I want to see what we should do next.”

  It took a moment to gather the binders up. In the process all three in the family checked to make sure the front door was locked.

  Rex looked out the front window occasionally to check for anyone approaching the house as Kathy went through the binders hurriedly. She vowed to herself to read through them thoroughly as soon as she had the chance.

  But for the moment, she wanted to know what to do about being attacked. To her great surprise, she learned that one of the features of the house was its bullet resistance. Between the brick façade and the interior wooden stud wall was a six inch thick steel stud framed wall faced on each side with three-quarter inch plywood, filled with minus three-quarter inch gravel. It would stop most projectiles that might be fired at the house.

  She felt a bit more at ease when she read that the doors and shutters were high tensile steel laminated with plywood. They wouldn’t stop everything, but would stop or slow most regular bullets.

  “Close the shutters!”

  “Aw, man!” exclaimed Rex. “I should have thought of that!” They’d only used the shutters once before, when Rex was small. He ran to the door and used the manual closer to close the door security shutter. As it slid home, he moved to the controls for the front window shutter and began cranking it closed.

  Roxie had run to the kitchen and was closing the shutters for those windows and outside door. When she came back to the living room and saw that Rex was also closing the blackout curtains that hung between the sheers and regular curtains on the windows, she went back and did the same thing.

  Kathy was taking care of the windows in the bedrooms. Rex moved to the study and closed those. The house got very dark. Turning on the flashlight of the windup combo, Rex said, “I’ll get some more lights.”

  He went to down into the basement and brought up two more of the windup flashlight radios. He handed one to his mother and the other to Roxie. “I still don’t think we should start the back-up power system until we know more.”

  “You’re probably right. One of the things I saw in the documentation your father has done was the lack of information on whether or not the solar power system was EMP proof.”

  “Well, it survived the direct attack,” Rex mused, “But if there are nukes close, it’s still iffy.”

  “Please don’t say that,” Roxie pleaded with her brother. “I don’t want anything more to happen! Mrs. MacGrady is dead! She sat us for years. What’s Ginny going to do without a mother?”

  Rex gave his mother a sharp look when she said, “As soon as I can, I’ll contact Mr. MacGrady and tell him what happened. Right now we should be contacting the police to tell them what happened.”

  “The phones are dead, Mom. Remember?”

  “Oh, that’s right! What am I thinking?” Kathy shook her head. “I’m not thinking. Kids, give me a moment to compose myself, will you?”

  Rex and Roxie looked at one another and then went into the kitchen to give Kathy some privacy. Rex continued into the garage and came back a few moments later with one of the family’s camping stoves. He fired it up and Roxie moved the skillet from the regular stove to the camping stove and the two set about fixing a late breakfast.

  Kathy came in a few minutes later and the three had a quiet breakfast, no mention of the current situation made during the meal, despite it being cooked on a camp stove and the room lighted by crank up flashlights.

  None of the three ate much. When Kathy got up and began to gather the dishes, Rex said, “I’ll go get a container of water and the camp wash basin.”

  A few minutes later, the dishes done, dried, and put away, the wash water down the drain, the family sat back down at the kitchen table, the binders stacked in the center. “I think we’re safe for the moment,” Kathy said.

  “What should we do about Mrs. MacGrady and Mr. Humphrey?” Rex asked. “We can’t just leave them out there.”

  “I don’t know,” Kathy said. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. We really should notify the authorities. But I don’t know how, with the phones out.”

  “I’ve got an idea, Mom. But you aren’t going to like it.”

  “Let’s hear it first and then I’ll decide if I like it or not.”

  “I think I should go down to the police station on my bike and let them know what happened. See if they have any other word about what’s going on.”

  “No! Absolutely not! You aren’t leaving this house while… whatever is really going on is going on.”

  Rex didn’t say anything.

  Kathy thought for a moment, and then said, “But you may have a point… Perhaps I should go and…”

  “No, Mom,” both children said immedia
tely.

  “Mom, to put it bluntly, you’re a woman. Women are going to be at big risk in the coming days as law enforcement breaks down. You need to be here with Roxie. I can get there and be back in less than an hour, if there aren’t problems.”

  “Now, see here, Rex. I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

  “But if something happens to you…” Roxie said, “With Dad not here… What will we do? What will I do?”

  Kathy hesitated. Roxie continued. “I don’t usually admit it, but Runt here is smart and capable. I really think he could get there and back faster, with fewer problems and less risk than you could, Mom. He’s right about women being at risk in disasters. That was pointed out in one of the history books we had in school.”