Emp Attack

As usual I welcome constructive comments but if you are obsessed with punctuation and sentence structure this might not be for you. I write chiefly for my own pleasure and hope that some others will enjoy my efforts. Also, I'm neither a doctor or an engineer so my efforts in the parts of this story that encompass those fields of endeavor are probably not technically accurate.

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EMP Attack

Sharing everything in order to survive

It was Saturday afternoon, about two o'clock, when the overhead kitchen light went out. At first I assumed it was a spent bulb but then I saw that the clock on the microwave also had gone dark. My first assumption was that a breaker had tripped in the basement and I went to the back door to call my husband, Don, who had been working in the back yard trying to restore a shed that was in dire need of repair. He was walking back to the house when I opened the door to yell for him and before I could explain my problem he grumbled:

"Damn breakers! I must have tripped one with the power saw"

"Honey, everything in the kitchen died also". I said, as he descended the basement stairs to check out the circuit breakers.

When he reemerged several minutes later he had a puzzled expression and stated that none of the breakers were tripped and he had flipped them all on and off, just in case one was hung up.

He then went around the house turning on light, TV, anything powered by electricity. Nothing worked. He went back downstairs to recheck but to no avail, he could find nothing wrong.

We knew that the house needed updating, including the electrical system, when we bought it about eight months ago. However, the price was right and as they say in real estate: "location, location, location". Maybe this wasn't the location for everybody but it was exactly what we were looking for, a two acre lot with a five bedroom house, one bedroom that we could convert into an office for Don and three more for the family that we intended to start on once some of the improvements were underway.

My husband was the proverbial, Jack of all trades - master of none, but most of what had to be done he could do by himself. His dad was an independent contractor and having worked for him throughout high school and college, Don had learned a lot, not the finishing touches but he could do most of the rough work.

We had both been raised in and around Jacksonville and for the first five years of our married life we lived in a one bedroom apartment. I had been working as a bank teller and Don was employed as software designer. He had designed several programs that his employer had patented and was making substantial profits from. Unfortunately, neither his salary nor meager bonuses were reflective of that profit. We both agreed that with the money we had saved we could afford to indulge in our dreams of moving to a rural area buy a home and become "country folks". Don would be able to work at home continuing software designs and at the same time, no longer having to commute, spend some time renovating a fix-er-upper.

Neither of us had been married before but both of us had been in relationships, me with a couple of casual hookups and one long term 'friends with benefits' arrangement. Don had been living with a girl he was engaged to before she rekindled a romance with a previous college sweetheart and walked out on him after two years. My one serious relationship during that period ended when I accidentally discovered that the love of my life enjoyed the company of both sexes. That certainly took the wind out of my sails for a while and Don and I were both victims of "the once burned, twice shy" theory when we met. We dated, although not exclusively, for a year. Even when he proposed we lived separately for six months before finally moving in together for another year before marrying.

After determining that the house was powerless Don and I assumed that the cause of our lack of electricity must be the result of a local power outage. When the power did not return after a few hours I decided to call the electric company, especially since darkness was quickly approaching. I was surprised that there was no dial tone and when I tried my cell phone it was dead also.

Don had gone back outside to do what work he could on the shed without the help of power tools. When I went to advise him of our new dilemma he seemed concerned and returned with me to the house. One of our problems was that we really didn't have any friends or neighbors in our new neighborhood. Well neighborhood might be a misnomer since we lived in a rural area and aside from the man next door the next closest house was a quarter of a mile away and that house was what looked like a family farm, set several hundred feet back from the road.

Our "next door" neighbor's house was actually four or five hundred feet from us but about the same distance from the road as ours. There was a neatly installed turkey wire fence separating our properties which also seemed to enclose his entire acreage. Even though our properties extended about four hundred feet from the back of the house to the wood line, his side yard extended another six to seven hundred feet south and had a few small sheds and a large barn on it.

When we first moved in we went over one afternoon to introduce ourselves. As we approached the house we could hear what sounded like large dogs inside, barking and growling. Before we reached the door a man emerged and closing the door behind him stood on the porch awaiting our approach.

We stepped up on the porch and by way of introduction, I said:

"Hi, we're your new neighbors, thought we'd introduce ourselves. I'm Keri Propper and this is my husband Donald". We each extended our hands which, after a moments' hesitation, he shook briefly.

"Bo, Bo Johnson, he said by way of introducing himself, but although there was nothing in the way of hostility in his eyes, there was no warmth in them either.

He was pretty tall, maybe 6'3" muscular, dark brown hair with the lightest, brightest blue eyes I had ever seen. It looked like he hadn't shaven that day or maybe not even the day before but he had clean jeans and shirt on with work boots that suggested a lot of wear. He wasn't handsome like my husband but had what I would call, rugged good looks. I guessed he was about thirty five and he reminded me of a young Tom Selick.

I guess I expected him to invite us in or at least extend a welcome but neither was forthcoming. The lack of further conversation was becoming awkward but finally nodding his head to the door, behind where the dogs were still growing, menacingly, he said:

I'd invite y'all to come on in but my dawgs don't take to strangers much and I'm fixin to have some lunch before I head on back to work".

Not knowing what else to say, Don stuck his hand out again and said "Well, good to meet you Bo, I guess we'll see you around. As we walked back toward the road, Don mumbled"

"Weeel, I'm a guessin that old Bo ain't a gonna be a cumin to our house warmin party."

I had to laugh despite my embarrassment.

In the months that followed we only saw one person enter Bo Johnson's house. Every week or so we would notice a BMW convertible pull into his driveway. It was driven by an attractive red haired woman of about forty. Bo would come out to help her with her overnight bag and they would embrace briefly with a quick kiss on the lips. We assumed that she was a longtime friend because the large mastiff usually accompanied Bo to the car, wagging his stubbly tail. She would bend down scratch his massive head and they would disappear in to the house. The car was usually there all of the next day, but would disappear the following morning. Occasionally it was there for two days, but not often.

********

Don seemed confident that the electrical problem had nothing to do with the house itself since one of the first things we had done after buying it was to upgrade the old 60 amp service with a 200 amp one. What mystified us was the unavailable cell phone service but we chalked it up to being related to the power outage.

We lamented about the pitfalls of "country living" but busied ourselves with the outside chores that could be accomplished, sans electricity.

Just before nightfall Don cooked chicken on our propane barbecue grill and managed to boil water for rice and frozen vegetables. As darkness enveloped us there was still no power and we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be spending a night without air conditioning.

Fortunately, knowing we were going to be living in the country and possibly being more susceptible to power outages, we did have a sufficient number of candles on hand to prepare for such occasions. After it got dark and we had finished our dinner Don mentioned that he would take the pick up to town in the morning to get some ice, if power had not been restored. With no television or other means of amusement we finished off the two bottles of Chardonnay that were in the frig and fucked ourselves to exhaustion.

********

The, so called, town was just over ten miles south and consisted of a small independent food market; a feed and grain store; a gas station - repair shop; a small dry goods establishment: hardware store and the smallest wood frame post office I had ever seen. In order to do any real shopping we had to drive thirty miles to Gainesville.

There still being no power when we awoke, Don decided to take the truck into town to get us the needed ice in order to preserve our food and possibly see how much of the area was affected.

Having to override the garage door opener Don got in the pickup but when he turned the key, nothing happened. Thinking it was the battery he put the meter on it and found it was fully charged. His pickup was his pride and joy and he kept that vehicle in tip top shape so when he came back in from the garage he had a look of profound bewilderment etched on his face.

We were both totally confounded as we tried to imagine a scenario that left us powerless and, now, without transportation. It was time to contact the power company to see when this problem would be fixed but when I picked up the receiver there was no dial tone. To add to our dismay, neither of our cell phones would activate even though there should have been plenty of charge in both batteries.

The morning brought no solution to our problem. There was still no power and the truck still wouldn't start. To add to our problems, Central Florida is not a good place to be in the summer without air conditioning. Even though it was early June, the heat was becoming oppressive.

Compounding our problems was the fact that we no longer had running water. All the homes in this part of the state had individual wells to supply water and despite having added a filter, the water had a strong mineral taste. For that reason, we had at least four cases of bottled water stored in our pantry. However, you can't shower with bottled water but that was the least of our problem, you can't waste it to flush with it either.

As a temporary solution, Don removed a toilet seat and affixed it to an empty five gallon bucket but due to the heat the urine would quickly start to smell so the pail would have to be emptied after each use. Don had dug a hole behind the shed to dispose of our solid waste and the urine he just threw into the woods, which was actually state forest land that bordered the back of our property.

That afternoon we cooked what we could of the meats in the refrigerator on our backyard barbecue. We knew that would be a temporary fix since the meats would go bad anyhow but it would preserve it a little longer. We next took all of our dry goods out of the pantry and cabinets and sorted them into two meals per day. Needless to say, we hadn't prepared for this eventuality, whatever the "eventuality" was, we calculated that we would have enough food to last five to six days, enough time we hoped that the power situation would be resolved.

Our street had very little vehicular traffic normally but it was the main road into town so we were used to seeing a car or truck every so often, yet the only vehicle we had seen since the power. had gone off was a farm tractor heading south. Don had been in the back yard when I saw it going by but despite running out of the front door, yelling and waving my arms, the driver either didn't see me or ignored me.

We decided to approach our neighbor, Bo, to see if he could shed any light on the situation but as we approached his house we could hear his two large dogs coming from around back, barking and growling. One dog was a Doberman and the larger one a huge Mastiff, both came running to the front corner of the property as we approached. We stopped walking, terrified that they would attack but their master must have had an electric dog fence which would have trained them not to leave the property because they never breached the property line. However, we stood still in hopes that our neighbor would come out front to investigate the commotion. After a full five minutes with the dogs still raising hell, we abandoned our quest. We walked to the next nearest house, the family farm, which was a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction and although no dogs came to intimidate us after making the trek, no one answered our insistent knocking, so we returned home.

That night we ate some of the cooked meat along with a can of string beans and the remainder of the wilting lettuce. Although the situation was not yet desperate, not knowing what was going on was beyond frustrating. I could see the concern on my husband's face, despite his occasional attempts at levity. That night we discussed our options and our only conclusion was that we had to discover what was happening to cause all of this and how wide spread it was. We could not just sit around while we depleted our meager rations and hope for the best. Don calculated that if we started walking around six thirty the next morning we could reach town before noon and if we didn't encounter someone along the way who could provide some answers, we could still get back from town by six that evening.

When we began our trip, just after dawn, we each wore a back pack with several bottles of warm water and a couple of the few energy bars that we had left. By ten o'clock our clothes were soaked with sweat and we had consumed half of our water supply. Most of the property on the way in to town was lined with citrus farms and we supplemented our needs by picking some oranges. Not having a knife we had to tear the fruit open with our fingers and then waste some of our precious water to clean the sticky juice from our fingers and mouths.

There were no homes fronting the street we were on but rather just a few farm houses that were located far down a few dirt roads that intersected with ours. Rather than waste precious time and energy approaching them we figured the town was our best shot, so we trudged on. By twelve thirty, as we neared the first building in the town, we were exhausted. The temperature had to be in the nineties and the humidity was almost palpable. There had been no shade on the walk into town and we had not the foresight to have applied sun screen so both Don and I were starting to feel the effects of sunburn.

The old, two pump, gas station had a wooden overhang that provided some shade that we immediately took advantage of as we reached it. The front door was pad locked and there was no one around as we collapsed against a wall and carefully shared a bottle of water. A few hundred feet further on was the small food market and the front door looked as if it had been kicked in. The jamb was broken and the store was completely empty as we entered to look around. After a few moments of gazing at the completely empty shelves I heard a faint, indistinguishable sound come from the back room and looking at Don I realized he must have heard it too because he was looking in that direction and called out "Hello" several times.

Upon receiving no response he pushed the door open and was about to enter as I let out a yelp and we both jumped back in surprise. A white and tan cat darted out past our legs and through the open front door. Despite our growing fear we both had to laugh at our reaction. Don was about to say something when we heard it, a rhythmic banging, like a hammer. When we looked out of the front window we saw two men, well actually a man and a teenage boy, nailing up plywood on a building diagonally across the street.

As we headed that way the boy noticed us first and nudged the man's arm and cocked his head in our direction. The sign over the front door read:

"Chet's Farm Supply".

A stocky man in his forties with the ruddy complexion of a farmer looked at us suspiciously but said nothing as we approached them. Rather than offering his hand my husband stood a few feet back and said:

"Hi, my name is Don Propper and this is my wife Keri. We live about ten miles north, right here on Liston Road. Do you have any idea of what's going on? We lost our power a few days ago, our phones don't work, my truck won't start and we had to walk the whole way here. My few neighbors are either not home or won't answer their doors, so we haven't spoken to a soul

Without further introduction, he continued to squint at us suspiciously but said:

"Don't rightly know. Some folks are sayin it's the Russians. Maybe attacked us, blowin up power stations and such. Nobody knows fer sure and we ain't seen no police not any government folks either. Most everybody left, headed for Gainsville or wherever. Not many cars workin, mostly tractors and some old pickups, so most folks are footin it".

That seemed to be his total wealth of information and he turned to resume his work when Don persisted:

"Is there any where that we can buy provisions, we're running out of food?

The man's head was shaking slowly and as his eyes shifted to look at the empty market, he said:

"Nope, Nate's market sold out two days ago. I guess he took what he needed fer his family then locked up and headed on out of town. Just after dawn some rough looking characters kicked in the door. Figured there might be a little sumthin was overlooked, I guess. Saw them from upstairs but short of shootin em for bustin a lock, not much I could do".

Me and my boy are going to finish boarding up the place, though really not sure what for.

Nothin in here of much use fer now". First light tomorrow we and the missus be headin on out too. Don't know if it'll be any better but you know what they say, there's strength in numbers. Anyways gotta try something".

With that said, he wished us luck and went back to his task.

Don must have seen the fear and desperation on my face because he pulled me into him and kissing the top of my head, whispering:

"Everything will be OK, this is the USA for God's sake. We just have to hang in there, OK?

I nodded slightly but tears were running down my dirty cheeks.

It was after seven when we walked past Bo Johnson's house. We could see some faint light in the back of his house, probably candles, but his dogs were making their presence known and we were too exhausted to care. When we got in the house the first thing we did was to down a bottle of water each and while there was still enough light to maneuver, I kicked off my walking shoes and stripped my sweat soaked clothes from my body. The heat was too oppressive to change clothes so after I put on clean underwear and Don, clean boxers, we had our dinner of saltine crackers, peanut butter and water. By the time darkness had enveloped the house we had already fallen into an exhausted sleep.

Over the next two days we saw an increasing number of "pilgrims" as we now referred to them, walking south towards town. Some were families, one woman even pushing a stroller. Others were couples and an occasional lone individual.