Post Grid: An Arizona EMP Adventure (10 page)

Chapter 4

“What are you doing with that radiation badge, Rich?” Emma Wise asked her neighbor incredulously. Rich waved the small plastic disc in the air by its metal clip as the two stood on the porch of Emma's adobe ranch house. Rich was just under six feet tall and of average build. His light red hair was now as much grey as red, after more than sixty years of living.

“I'm trying to see if there is any radioactive fallout,” he said.

“Fallout? Don't you think we'd know if there had been a nuclear attack? You know, the mushroom cloud, roaring winds, stuff like that?” Emma asked casually.

Emma stood about five feet four inches. Her cowboy boots gave her a little extra height. Old West cowboys would have called her a handsome woman. Her good proportions came from physical labor, not a gym, and were well displayed by her Wrangler jeans and short-sleeved western shirt. Emma was just a little younger than Rich, but in the same ballpark.

“You'd see that only if it were a full-scale ground attack,” said Rich. Before he could continue, a noise from the driveway caught his attention.

Emma heard it too. They both stared down the road.

About a quarter mile away, two middle-aged men wearing dark blue BDUs with bright, hunter-orange t-shirts and blue boonie hats came into view. They hiked up the driveway. Behind them were a teenage boy and girl. The teens wore bright-orange shirts and woodland camouflage BDU pants. They all carried backpacks.

“Who on earth are those people?” Emma asked, not really expecting Rich to have an answer. She walked to the porch rail.

“I don't see any guns,” Rich said as he moved nearer Emma's shotgun, propped near the front door.

The first man waved, leading the others up the driveway.

“Hold on—just one of you come up,” Rich called.

The first man continued to the porch. The others looked around, confused.

“Good afternoon, chaplain—or do you prefer rabbi?” Emma asked respectfully.

“Either, but I prefer Dennis, Dennis Rabbinowitz. I'm guessing you were in the military, ma'am.” Dennis tapped the silver Star of David and ten commandment tablets pin above the bronze oak leaf on his hat.

“I'm Emma Wise. Yes, I nursed in the Navy. This fellow is my neighbor, Rich. You folks look like the proverbial lost patrol.”

“How right you are. We were on a practice search-and-rescue mission for Civil Air Patrol,” Dennis said.

“What is Civil Air Patrol?” Rich asked.

“It's the US Air Force Auxiliary,” Dennis explained. “We search for downed aircraft. Our teenagers are cadets, like junior ROTC. We're a ground team for this weekend's search-and-rescue exercise.”

“Come on up, folks.” Emma waved to the others.

“This is my daughter, Lynn,” Dennis said. “That's Jose Herrero and his son, Jess. We were hoping you had a working phone. Our truck and all of our electronics seem to have stopped working. No one came looking for us.”

“Dennis, our phones are working just as well as yours,” Emma said. “All of our electrical stuff is out too.”

“That's what we were afraid of,” Jose said. “We think it might be some kind of solar storm.”

“Or an EMP—you know, electromagnetic pulse,” Rich said. “I think that a nuclear device was detonated high in the atmosphere, knocking out most electrical equipment
for good.”

Everyone, including Emma, looked at him, brows furrowed as if trying to grasp what he had just said.

Rich continued, “Solar flares only affect objects that are plugged in. During an EMP attack, a high nuclear blast, the whole ionosphere is charged. Macro and micro circuitry, plugged in or not,
fry.”
Rich's eyes grew big and he threw both hands up in the air. “POOF!”

Lynn jumped back, then shot a worried look at her father. Jess let out a
humph
of disbelief and rolled his eyes the way teenagers do when they think their elders are wrong. “There were no mushroom clouds. Everything looks normal.”

“The bomb was set off too high in the atmosphere for us to see all that,” said Rich resolutely. For all we know, it covers most of the United States.”

“I had hoped it wasn't an EMP,” Dennis said. “To my mind, that is the most devastating possibility.”

“Is that a dosimeter?” Jose pointed to the radiation badge in Rich's hand.

“Yes, but there's no color change, so no high radiation level,” answered Rich.

“I wish we had a survey meter to see what the radiation levels are and to see if they are rising, declining or staying the same,” said Jose.

“Shouldn't we have a Geiger counter for that?” asked Emma.

“Same thing, ol' woman,” Rich said endearingly. “The solar flare, or whatever this is, might break the meter because it's electronic too. As long as the badge stays the same color, we're fine.”

Lynn's eyes widened. She looked quickly between Rich and her father. “What is he saying? What are we going to do?”

“Don't worry, I'll take care of you,” said Dennis, drawing his daughter close to him. “We'll have to take this one step at a time.”

Lynn melted into her father's arms. “Does this mean the world is ending?”

“No, of course not,” Dennis answered unconvincingly.

Jess addressed his father sharply. “No way!”

Jose looked at his boots, then back at Jess. “I'm afraid it could be an EMP or solar flare. That would explain what's going on around here, but I think Rich is right. We can't jump to conclusions.”

“What about Mom?”

Jose shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know. She's in Iowa, out on the farm with your aunt and uncle. If they are without power, everyone there could manage for quite a while.”

Rich, after seeing Lynn's reaction, said, “Maybe we shouldn't hang our hats on the EMP hypothesis one hundred percent. Our minds could be playing tricks on us, or it could be something we haven't even thought of.”

“I'm sure we'll get more information over the next few days. Stay here and have lunch. Then you can work out what to do,” said Emma. “Lynn, you remind me of my daughter, Kelly, when she was in junior ROTC in high school. She went on to Navy ROTC and nursing school at the University of Arizona. She lives in Mesa now. I hope everything is alright there.”

“Emma is right,” Dennis said. “We have camping gear. We'll be alright for awhile. Relief should be flooding into the cities shortly. We have time.”

“May I use your restroom, ma'am?” Jess asked.

“Well, actually, no,” Emma said. “Our water comes from a well with an electric pump that Rich and I share. No power means no water. We have some left in the tank, but that's for us to drink. Conservation is the name of the game right now—no flushing. We will build a latrine away from the house. For now, take a shovel from the barn and dig a cat hole over there to the south somewhere. Please use as little toilet paper as you can. It's in the bathroom.”

“Do you have another source of water?” asked Jose.

“Just the trickle of water in the creek,” Rich said. “That leaves us trying to collect enough water for our use, plus watering the horses, chickens and rabbits. It's a bit of a haul up to the houses too. Our gardens won't last long.”

“The creek has to be filtered and pasteurized for drinking,” Emma said.

“Does that old windmill out back work?” Jose asked.

“That windmill was the original pump to the well,” Rich said. “The old workings are still up there. The well supplied water for a stock tank in this canyon before our houses were built. It was converted to an electric pump years ago. The windmill hasn't been used since before I got here.”

“Let's take a look,” Jose said. “I tinker with mechanical stuff. Maybe I can give you a hand.”

“Yep, Jose tinkers with stuff alright,” Dennis said. “He's a systems engineer who can actually turn a wrench. You should see what he and Jess did to trick out their SUV for search and rescue.”

“How about we put the seventy-two hour packs under that tree?” said Jose, trying to hide a slight blush.

Emma interjected, “Why don't you put them on the porch?”

“Care to follow me?” Rich asked, looking at Jose.

Jose and Rich started up the hill toward the windmill. Rich called back, “Mijo, you can join us after you have finished your hole diggin'.”

“Why don't the rest of you come in?” Emma said, motioning with her arms like she was calling a flock of chickens. “Let's go to the kitchen.”

Emma led Dennis and Lynn through her combination western and overflowing bookshelves themed living room, headed toward the kitchen.

“This clock's off by forty minutes,” Dennis remarked as he noticed the old grandfather clock sitting in the corner. He paused, glancing at his watch, confirming that it was still running.

“I set it yesterday.” said Emma. “It needed to be wound. I don't think anyone's let it run for more than a day or two since my dad died fifteen years ago. He disconnected the chimes when I was a kid, saying they kept him awake.”

“Mind if I set it?”

“Nope, let me help you.” Emma opened the face by lifting a latch on the side and swinging the glass open so that the hands could be manipulated. “I made a guess at the time when I set it yesterday. Looks like I got pretty close.”

Dennis moved the minute hand forward forty-two minutes, then closed the glass. “This ol' thing will be nice to have while the power's out.”

Emma led father and daughter into the kitchen. Her counters overflowed with food. Pots were boiling away on the propane stove. Empty Mason jars sat in boiling water or in boxes piled on the counters. Sunlight and a warm breeze flowed through the window over the sink.

“I'm trying to can everything from my refrigerator and freezer and Rich's refrigerator and freezer too. Don't know how long the power will be off and I won't see all this go to waste. We have plenty for dinner with all this food awasting. I only have so many burners and this meat, especially, has to be pressure canned for a long time to be done properly.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you?” asked Dennis.

“I'll take this lovely girl as helper,” Emma said in a motherly tone, looking directly at Lynn. “This kitchen is too small for more than that. Why don't you pull up a chair at the table?”

“I don't think Lynn has ever seen anyone can food,” Dennis said.

“Yeah, this all looks complicated,” Lynn said gazing wide-eyed at the whole operation.

“It's not, really,” Emma said. “Canning is all about keeping things sterile.”

Lynn stood close to Emma and peered over her shoulder, watching as she took Mason jars from a boiling pot with a special lifting device, dumped the water out, and set them upright onto a clean towel. The glass steamed.

“Hand me those metal lids, would you, Lynn?”

Emma added the metal lids, rings and a pair of tongs to a small pot of simmering water on the back burner. She put a large, wide-mouthed funnel into a sterilized jar and ladled boiling meat into it until the meat and its liquid reached the shoulder of the jar.

“Now take those tongs and place a lid from the boiling pan onto the full jar,” Emma instructed. Lynn tried to get just one lid with the tongs, but the lids seemed to be stuck together. Emma took the tongs and pried the lids apart carefully, then held one out, offering the tongs back to Lynn. “I learned to can by helping my grandmother and my mother. My daughter, Kelly, canned with me when she was younger.”

“I wish my Mom could have taught me stuff like this.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Emma could see the sadness on Lynn's face. “Is your mom gone?”

“She passed away almost six years ago now. Cancer.”

“I'm so sorry to hear that. Is it just you and your dad?”

“Yeah, he's a great dad, tries hard, but there are just some things you need a mom for.”

Emma and Lynn worked and talked together until all of the meat was packed into quart jars and the lids were in place. Emma took the screw-top rings out of the boiling water and laid them on the towel. She used an oven mitt and picked up one ring after another, tightening it over a lid and onto the jar, just enough to apply pressure to the lids. One by one, she lifted seven jars into the pressure canner, filling each open slot. The water in it was already hot, but not quite boiling.

Emma set the cooker's lid in place and said, “Now we're just waiting for the pressure to build up and the pot to eject steam.” She showed Lynn how to ready more jars of tomatoes for the water bath canner. After ten minutes of steam pouring from the pressure canner's relief stem, Emma put the heavy metal rocker on. The rocker made a quick
swoosh-swoosh-swoosh
sound as excess internal pressure was allowed to escape.

“Okay, ninety minutes should do it.” Emma sighed as she lifted her shirt sleeve to wipe her brow. “Canning is hot business, I tell you.”