Human Extinction Level Loss (Book 2): Substation (The Last Stand of Gary Sykes) (11 page)
Read Human Extinction Level Loss (Book 2): Substation (The Last Stand of Gary Sykes) Online
Authors: Philip A. McClimon
Tags: #zombies
Minutes later, a new sound joined the banging and groaning, a metallic sound. Gary stood and went out into the hall. He stared at the door at the far end as he slowly approached. He jumped back as he watched the once solid door move ever so slightly in its frame. Down the hall, in the control room, the computer generated voice sounded.
Eastern Interconnection Synchronized. Initiate Generator Circuit Breaker Close for Eastern Interconnection.
Gary turned and ran back to the control room. As he entered, a buzzing sounded on the control board. Gary rushed over and flipped a switch labeled
Eastern Breaker Close
. The buzzer stopped and the voice sounded.
Western Grid Synchronization in fifteen minutes.
Gary looked at the Synchroscope for the Western Interconnection and watched the pointer begin to rise. He stood and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to catch his breath. He turned and looked back at the door leading out into the hall, then around the room. He went over to a bank of file cabinets. He wrapped his arms around one and tried to move it to no avail. Giving up he glanced at the couch. He grabbed the arm rest and tried to drag it over to the door. Through much effort he got it moving and it screeched as it slid across the floor. When he got to the door he realized that the couch was too wide to go through the door. He strained and tried to lift it only to slip and fall on his butt.
Across the room, the buzzer sounded again and Gary jumped up and over the couch to the control panel. More adjustments to switches and dials silenced the alarm. Behind him the noises from the door took on greater urgency and Gary thought to go investigate when the computer voice sounded.
Western Interconnection Synchronized. Initiate Generator Circuit Breaker Close for Western Interconnection.
Gary rushed back over to the panel and flipped the switch labeled
Western Breaker Close
. Above him, the voice spoke.
Texas Grid Synchronization in fifteen minutes.
Gary checked the movement on the Sychroscope then made his way to the couch. He climbed over the couch and crept down the hall to the exit door. Gary stared at the deadbolt. It rattled and jumped. White puffs of concrete dust floated from around the frame. Gary turned and ran. He barged into the room and looked at the control panel. The pointer on the Texas Interconnection Synchroscope continued to rise. He went over and stared at the scope, willing it to hurry. Gary jumped out of his skin as another buzzer sounded. Angrily, he flipped switches and turned dials and the buzzing stopped.
Down the hall, the sound of the moaning grew louder as the door jumped in its frame. Gary swallowed hard. He went over to his old station and found his backpack. Reaching inside, he retrieved a single tiny object and went over and sat in front of the control panel. Reaching up, he set the object on the top edge. The tiny stalwart figure of a Paladin, resplendent in shiny armor stood at attention, his sword smartly at his side. Gary stared at the tiny figure and tried not to focus on anything else. Beside him, the pointer on the Synchroscope continued to rise even as the noise from down the hall did so as well. The minutes ticked by and still Gary sat staring at his Paladin. Gary didn’t jump when he heard a metallic pop then a loud bang from down the hall. The crescendo of moans and growls confirmed to him that the door had finally given way and he heard them coming. Gary looked at the scope, which showed the pointer virtually straight up. Behind him, he could hear Runners propelling themselves down the hall.
Seconds later, they caught his scent and pushed into the room. The first wave fell as they couldn’t negotiate the couch, but others pushed over them and rushed towards him. He felt the weight of them as they seized him. Through the tangle of grasping hands and gnashing teeth, he kept his eyes locked on the Synchroscope. His body began to hemorrhage and his mind buckled under the barrage of pain signals racing through his nerve endings, but still he focused on the scope. The computer voice sounded in his ears.
Texas Interconnection Synchronized. Initiate Generator Circuit Breaker Close for Texas Interconnection.
With his last bit of strength, he reached up and flipped the switch labeled
Texas Breaker Close.
As they dragged him down and his vision went dark, he heard the computer generated voice make its announcement.
Total U.S. Grid synchronization achieved. U.S. Grid integrity now maintained from all sources…
Above him, the tiny Paladin stood at attention, keeping silent vigil over the last stand of Gary Sykes.
About The Author
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This particular offering is a prequel to the entire H.E.L.L. series. It is the story of how it all began, of Nicole’s father, Col. Steven Bennett. You will meet and learn more about Francis Delroney (you won’t like him any better). There is a scientist, Dr. Wilhelm Crenner, and I am pretty sure he is bat!@#$ crazy. I will let you decide that for yourselves. If you already have a healthy mistrust of those in power, then I am sorry, this story will not make you change your mind. It was fun to write and I hope you enjoy it. It is not terribly long, maybe thirty pages or so.
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Author’s Notes
(Or, “How I got to be eighty percent NOT screwed”)
This story was an interesting story for me to write. I now know more about the U.S. Power grid(s) than I ever really wanted to know.
When I was writing my first book,
H.E.L.L. Nicole’s Odyssey
, I thought about the power. I knew for the purposes of my story I needed the power to be on. In a lot of stories about the zombie apocalypse the grid fails. It is set dressing for the many other horrors and challenges the survivors have to face. There were certain story elements that I wanted to occur, however, that required the power to still be up, the grid to not have failed just yet.
Admittedly, there was some whistling past the graveyard on this, because… in a lot of zombie stories, the grid does fail. It is understood that without human intervention and maintenance, systems and infrastructure, like the grid will… fail.
But I didn’t want it to fail… just yet. Nicole embarks on her adventure six months after the start of the apocalypse, so the grid needed to be up at least that long, and… presto, it was.
There was not a huge outcry in my reviews, thirty-three of them as of this writing. Only two reviews have been negative, (one by a hater troll, so that one doesn’t really even count). The one review that pointed out that the fact the power was still up six months later may constitute a minor plot hole still gave me a positive review. But… it was a crack in the armor of my denial… denial that simply having the power still up six months after ninety-nine percent of the people are gone was anything that needed to be addressed. Whistling past the graveyard and I almost got away with it.
So now I found myself in the unenviable position of having to either keep denying and hope that a weakness in my story would continue to go largely unnoticed, or do a rewrite of a published book, working in either some explanation or recreating whole sections.
No thank-you.
There was a third option, but it was a roll of the dice. Did grid technology allow for the grid to still be up six months after a zombie apocalypse. This is not a question a writer wants to ask AFTER he has written a 330 page book and published it.
I did the belated research and got my answer. Can the U.S. power grid still be up six months after a Zombie Apocalypse?
Well… Yes and No.
Great, what does that mean?
I found out what it means. It means, based on my research, I was twenty percent in the clear on this. This also means, and let me check my math here (I was told there would be no math), I was eighty percent screwed.
So what does a writer do when they are eighty percent screwed?
More research.
Here is why I was eighty percent screwed (or twenty percent in the clear, which is how I prefer to look at it).
Gary already told us, but America gets eighty percent of its power from coal, which will last two days without human intervention. The other, natural sources (wind, solar, hydro) and nuclear constitutes twenty percent of our supply.
Now, in case you were wondering if I had to do a lot of research to find this out, no I did not. The beautiful thing about the zombie apocalypse is… there are a lot of people thinking about it from just about every angle. One of those angles is… how long will the grid stay up after the zombie apocalypse starts.
Which is what I typed into Google… almost word for word. You know what? Somebody not only thought of that question, but wrote a pretty slick essay answering the question.
I love research.
Here is the link that I found.
Isn’t that amazing?!
I thought so.
Still only puts me twenty percent in the clear though. What will put me over the top is currently being planned and (hopefully) worked on in Clovis, New Mexico.
What I could have lived my whole life not knowing, but know now is, there is not just one U.S. Power grid. There is like five of them. For the purpose of this story I only acknowledge three… I call it literary license.
What is significant though is, these grids are not linked together. My research indicated that currently only something like one percent of the power can be shared across the different grids.
The good news is that puts me at twenty-one percent in the clear…
So what about Clovis, New Mexico?
Enter
Tres Amigas
(though of course that is not the same plant as in my story. My story is BASED on technology that is in the public domain and I have taken some license.)
What my research indicates is this: it is possible for all three power grids to be linked, so that at a time of maximum demand or outage, power can be transferred from one central place across all grids to supplement said outage.