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“That’s next on my list. So far, so good.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

June 11, 2018

Charli stood in a narrow corridor in the Ruby Mountain bunker, frowning at the president. Hallstrom was leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed, shaking his head. She felt like grabbing his head to stop his negativity. They both turned when Seth McGraw came around the corner.

“Ah, just the man we wanted to see.” Hallstrom pushed off from the wall. “Charli thinks we need to get out of the bunker and back to DC. Scientifically speaking, can we do that?”

“Short answer, yes—”

“Good,” Charli said.

“Let him finish, Charli.” Hallstrom held up a hand and turned back to McGraw.

“Yes. Probably.” McGraw held his hand out with the palm down and waggled it like an airplane losing control.

“Are you just being overly cautious?” Charli asked.

McGraw ran his hand through his hair—what was left of it. “Cautious, but not overly. In normal times, I’d say forget about it, not worth the risk—”

“Seth, let us worry about the political aspects,” Hallstrom said.

“Okay, sorry. Scientifically, there’s a good chance that we can leave without danger. Say eighty-five percent. Based on the x-rays, none of us are infected with emitters. There’s been no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and since yesterday at noon, no one has seen any active emitters except in those already infected.”

“Back up a second.” Hallstrom squinted. “How do we know it can’t be transmitted from person to person?”

“Well, if someone falls asleep and doesn’t die, it means they are not infected. Just like us here in the bunker, they don’t have any emitters in them. None of these people have been subsequently infected. That is, none of them have died after falling asleep a second time.” Seth looked at Hallstrom and raised his eyebrows. “That is, nobody survived one sleep, woke up, and then caught it and died.”

“So, they developed an immunity.”

“No, no.” Seth shook his head. “They never had it. Either you had those things in you or you didn’t. If you didn’t have them in you on June 10, you’re home free. We’re home free.”

“So we could leave right now?” asked Charli.

“Well, just so you understand, normally the CDC would take weeks or months to tell us how a virus was transmitted and so on, and it’s only been two days since we even knew these things, probably not viruses by the way, existed. So, we’ve had to make a lot of snap judgments.”

“Understood,” Hallstrom said.

McGraw shifted his feet. “Of course, there could be another round of these emitter things that we haven’t even discovered.”

“Life is full of risks,” Charli said.

“Well, yeah,” replied McGraw. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

Hallstrom scratched his ear. “Okay, let’s give it another day or so before we decide.”

“Let me go get Jake,” Charli blurted out. Her voice was louder than she’d planned. Both McGraw and Hallstrom looked at her.

The president shook his head. “No, I don’t want to risk you, Charli.”

“Look,” she said. “Put me in an F15 and shoot me down to Mexico City. I’ll grab Jake before he disappears again and then zip up to DC and meet you there.”

“I don’t know,” Hallstrom said.

“I’ll hold my breath while walking out to the airplane, if that will make you feel any better.”

Hallstrom just looked at her.

She went on. “You told me to give it top priority, and it’s been one of my main focuses.”

“Foci,” McGraw smiled.

Charli punched him in the shoulder. “I’ve got cabin fever. I need to get out of here. Jake could disappear again in a flash.”

The president frowned, turned to Charli, held her by both shoulders and stared at her. “Charlotta Keller …”

She frowned at the serious tone and looked at him, cocking her head like a puppy that just heard a strange noise.

“Jake’s not your bubble boy, is he?” Both Hallstrom and McGraw burst out laughing.

“Ha ha.” Charli reddened, pulled back, and stomped away down the hall. “Very funny.”

“Permission granted,” Hallstrom yelled after her. “Go get him, Charli. Go get your bubble boy.”

Without turning back, Charli raised her arm and gave the president of the United States the finger.

* * *

June 11, 2018

Sheriff Marie Keller walked in through the unlocked door of the Algashie River power generation facility with Mike right behind her. Just as she had feared: There was no one there. No one alive.

The main control room was humming along fine. The outdated control board on the wall, with its diagrams, labels, and lights, was dusty and faded. Left there as artwork? It was a reminder of how primitive the system had been in the past.

The current, functioning system consisted of six flat-screen monitors in two rows above a desk holding several keyboards and pointing devices. The only thing not humming along was the system operator. He was slumped over the table in the dessicated state that Marie was now used to seeing. He must have fallen asleep at the desk. This is what she’d expected; the phone had gone unanswered all morning.

Marie pulled out the portable police radio she'd started carrying. She pressed the mic switch.

“Claire, this is Marie. Have you gotten any help on the phones?”

“Yes, Ma’am, Bill Hennessey is here. His wife is gone, and he’s pretty broken up about it, but this is distracting him.”

“Good. Look, there’s no one alive here at the power station. Everything seems to be running on autopilot just now.” Marie looked absentmindedly around the room while she talked. “Can you call the power commissioner’s office, explain the situation, and patch them in to me?”

“High priority?”

“Yes, ASAP.”

While waiting for the callback, Marie and Mike picked up the dead controller and carried him into a storeroom. He had been obese, but his dried-out corpse weighed only about a hundred pounds. Just as they put him down, an alarm sounded in the control room, as if the impact of his body with the floor had jostled something loose.

There was probably nothing they could do about it, but they hurried back anyway and went over to the monitors. The top right monitor held a big spreadsheet-like display with a dark blue background. A line near the top was flashing orange, with the words “Low-head three Overvoltage.”

After ten minutes of watching this and enduring the alarm, her radio came to life: “Marie, come in, I have the power commissioner’s office on the line.”

“Thanks, Claire, put him through.”

A raspy voice came over the radio. “Sheriff Keller, this is Fred Hindley from the commissioner’s office. I’m a retired engineer, but I’m helping with administration, and I hear you could use some personnel down there.” From the sound of his voice, Marie pegged him at ninety-five or older.

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Hindley, and that’s true, but first I have a situation that I need help with. Can you hear the alarm tone?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Well, apparently I have a ‘low-head three overvoltage’ here. That may sound like I know what I’m doing, but I have no clue what it means. Is this important, and is there anything I can do about it?”

“Of course it’s important, all our alarms are important.”

Great, I had to get the old guy with attitude.
“Does this need to be fixed, and is there anything that I can do?”

“Of course it needs to be fixed.”

“Mr Hindley, I woke up this morning next to my dead husband. I then had to take over as sheriff, and thirty minutes ago I shot someone dead. Please answer my questions in a helpful way.”

“Of course. What color is the light at the far right side of the wall?”

“On the big board on the wall?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, Mr. Hindley, that light is off, as are all the lights on the wall. The monitors—”

“Off? All the lights are off?”

“Mr. Hindley, this control center now uses computers and computer screens, and the alarm just got louder.” She had to yell this last part, and she retreated into another room.

“Miss Keller, I’m going to have to put you on hold.”

“Wait, I—” There was a click followed by elevator music—“The Girl from Ipanema.”

She turned to her great-grandson. “Mike, go outside the door and let me know if you can see any lights, like traffic lights, from town.”

The elevator music stopped. “This is Ben Gill, who am I speaking with?”

“This is Sheriff Keller speaking from the Algashie River power generation control room. Are you an engineer?”

“Yes, ma’am. How can I help you?”

“I have a low-head three overvoltage alarm here, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Okay, I understand. Do you see the six monitors over the control station?”

“Yes, sir.”
Now we’re cooking with gas.

“The top right monitor lists all the alarms that have come through. Is that where you see the overvoltage message flashing?”

“Yes.”

“What color is the line that’s flashing?”

“It was orange and now it’s red.”

“Okay, now if you look down—”

“Is this a serious problem? Is the area going to lose power?” Marie looked for Mike, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, and worse.”

“Worse? What do you mean ‘worse’?”

“Well, if this problem isn’t resolved, it might cause an explosion that will put that power station out of commission for weeks,” Gill said.

“Got it, tell me what to do.”

“First, look down on the monitor below the alarm list display. There should be a large icon flashing red.”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Okay, there should be a countdown timer next to that, what does it read?”

“Twenty-eight colon fifteen colon twelve colon five. The last number is counting down.”

“Okay, good that means we have over a day to fix this, and I can send—”

“No, wait, sorry, that was the wrong one. The one next to the red icon reads thirty two colon twenty one. That is, it’s counting down from thirty two minutes right now.”

“Are you sure?” Gill’s voice went up in pitch.

“Quite sure.”

“You’re going to need to perform a manual switchover between the overvoltage quad phase regulators.”

“Can I do that, whatever it is, in time?” Marie dropped into a chair.
I wish I could take a break.

“Maybe. Are you good with electronic devices?”

“At home, my DVD player is flashing 12:00. Understand? What happens if I can’t fix this?”

“I’ll talk you through this, Marie. First we need to find the emergency shut-off switch. It will be outside. A large red box.”

“How large?” Marie pulled Mike, who’d come in with a thumbs up, out to the maze of gray girders, cables, metal cabinets, and ceramic insulators.

“About the size of a breadbox.”

I’ll bet he’s never even seen a breadbox.
“Ben, everything here is gray. I don’t see anything that’s red.”

“It’s probably inside one of the gray cabinets. Look for a cabinet that doesn’t have a lock on it.”

“Okay, I’m looking.” She grabbed Mike’s arm. “Go back in there and see how much time—no wait. I’ve got it, Ben. Inside one cabinet there’s a red box labeled ‘Emergency Shut-Off. Emergency Only.’ I’ve opened it and there’s a lever. ‘On’ and ‘Off.’”

“Good. Have your assistant go inside and watch the countdown timer. If it looks like you’re not going to be able to complete the quad phase switchover, you have to push that lever to off before the countdown gets to zero, got it?”

“Got it. Just like on TV.” She looked at Mike and told him to go in and yell out the countdown. “What next?”

“Okay, now you have to find two cabinets labeled ‘Low-Head Three.’”

“That was easy,” Marie said. “I see them.”

Mike started yelling from inside, “Fourteen minutes eight seconds. Fourteen seven seconds.”

“Mike,” she yelled, “Just tell me the minutes until we get down to thirty seconds.”

“Okay. Thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes.”

She ran inside, got Mike straightened out, and trotted back to the cabinets. They were locked. She ran inside to the storeroom and found the ring of keys on the technician’s belt. There were over fifty keys. She dropped them in her pocket and ran back out, her boots crunching over the rough gravel.

“Twelve minutes!” Mike was with the program now.

Back at the cabinets, Marie hoped that it might be obvious which keys would work. No such luck. Most of the keys were the same size. She tried one or two and then put the ring back in her pocket. A fist-sized rock lay by the chain-link fence at the edge of the yard. She reached down, grabbed it, and smashed it against the lock on the first cabinet. The lock held, but a gash opened on the thin, old-person skin of her middle finger. It bled down over her hand.