No Ordinary Day , Tate, Harley [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

got nothing smaller? I’m about outta change.”

John shook his head. “It’s all I’ve got. Round up to ninety if it’s easier.”

The clerk grumbled, but took John’s money, handing him a pair of rumpled fives in exchange. John stuffed them in his wallet and motioned toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”

Emma couldn’t agree more. She’d had enough of the adrenaline and the low-grade fear rippling through the store. She’d never seen this kind of panic. Not when the power had been out for a week in a storm in Boise or when every one of her tests at CropForward turned out horribly, horribly wrong. This was new and it terrified her.

Before the door to the store even shut behind them, Tank was there, headbutting John in the thigh and wagging his tail so hard, his back end came along with it.

John gave the dog a scratch. “Sorry that took so long, buddy.”

Holly’s voice warbled. “Everything okay? You guys were in there an awful long time.”

Emma nodded. “It was a little bit busy. Picked over, but I found what I was looking for.” She held up the garish shoes.

Holly wrinkled her nose. “Everyone will see you coming.”

Leaning against the exterior of the store, Emma eased her blistered feet out of her dress shoes and into the new socks before tugging on the sneakers. She picked up the pumps and tossed them in the dumpster. Even if everything went back to normal, she was swearing off heels for good.

As soon as she was ready, they set off, heading back toward the highway and Gloria’s cabin.

“Any chance we can take a break? I think Tank’s hungry.” Holly wiped at her sweaty brow. “And I could use a breather.”

Ever since negotiating their way back to the highway, they’d kept well off the congested asphalt and hugged the tree line. Until the area grew more familiar to one of them, they needed to stick with what they knew.

John slipped his bag to the ground and rolled his shoulders. “I forget how heavy water can be.” He pulled out bottles for everyone and passed them around.

Holly made a makeshift watering bowl out of an empty, folded-over chip bag and Tank lapped up an entire bottle.

As they munched on snacks, John scouted the horizon and Emma watched the road. Over the course of the day, some cars had made a break for it, trading in the highway parking lot for off-road adventures. Based on the ruts dug into the dirt and weeds on the shoulder, quite a few cars bumped their way to exits, opting to weave through town.

Others still sat, waiting. She frowned. How long would people stay there without food? She remembered the snowpocalypse of a few years before, where cars were trapped on the highway for thirty hours or more. Quite a few people abandoned their vehicles and walked home, coming back days later to retrieve them.

Maybe the same thing happened here. She turned to John. “When will you go back for your Jeep?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your SUV. When do you think you’ll go back to get it?”

He scratched behind his ear. “Don’t know. I guess we’ll have to see how long it takes to find Gloria.”

Emma frowned. “I still feel terrible that I’ve put you in the middle of all this.”

“Don’t be.” He stiffened and nodded toward the road. “We’ve got visitors.”

A pair of walkers, laden down with overflowing backpacks, approached. “Hey, y’all. Mind if we share your shade?”

“As long as you don’t mind shaggy dogs,” Holly responded.

The woman smiled. “Not at all.” She held out her hand and Tank sniffed. “Hey there, fella. Aren’t you handsome?”

Holly grinned. “See? Everyone thinks so.” She gave Tank a rub as the man stuck out his hand to John.

“Eugene Orton. This is my girlfriend, Patricia.”

“Patty,” she corrected him.

John introduced everyone.

“Where y’all headed?”

“To my friend’s place in—” Emma began, but John cut her off.

“Up north a ways. Yourselves?”

“Oh, just out of the city. Need to find somewhere to hunker down, wait out what’s coming.”

“What do mean, what’s coming?” Holly asked.

“Chaos, most likely.” Eugene sounded so matter-of-fact, like he was talking about a rainstorm or the sunset.

“Here we go.” Patty rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

Emma lifted a brow. “You mean the blackout?”

“It’s worse than that.” Eugene pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m an electrical engineer, used to work on the big transformers out at the substations, you know the ones?”

Emma nodded.

“The coronal mass ejection fried them. Had to have been huge. The EMP it unleashed took out the grid for the entire continent. Maybe more.”

“An EMP?” Holly glanced around. “What’s that?”

Eugene smiled like an indulgent teacher. “Electromagnetic pulse. There are different kinds; some are fast and quick, like what would be emitted from a nuclear bomb. Others, like from a solar flare or CME, are long and slow. When they reach earth, they travel through the electrical grid along all the wires and eventually reach the end points, be it substations, computers. Anything plugged in basically.”

“What does it do?”

“Cook them. It’s a surge of electricity.”

“Like when my lights blink on and off before the power goes out?”

“Exactly. Only this was much, much bigger.” Eugene scanned the tree line. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen any fires from the highway. Most transformers must have blown or melted.”

Emma tried to process. “So, what does that mean? We’ll be without power for longer?”

“Much, much longer.” Eugene glanced at Patty. “I’d say three years at least to bring most of the grid back online.”

“What?” Holly sounded incredulous. “I’ll be eighteen!”

Eugene sobered. “With any luck.”

“Why would it take so long?”

“Over the past two decades, we’ve outsourced more and more of our manufacturing. Transformers aren’t made here anymore. They come over in huge container ships from other parts of the world. And the ones we do make aren’t manufactured in surplus. Our supply chain is so lean, we run without any excess now. It’s how big businesses stay profitable. By cutting out languishing capital.”

Emma tried to think through everything he’d just