Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

“Not all of them,” Paige says. “I’ve seen sad, angry, and slightly excited. Haven’t witnessed your happy yet.”

“Good to know,” Hank mutters. “Do you need my prisoner to help with any of their computer stuff?”

“I’d like for him to hang around a bit. Right now, we’re taking inventory of everything and then we’ll put it on a plane back to Fort Meade. We’ll wait to dissect most of it back there. Did you ask him if they’ve inserted any booby traps or anything else we need to be aware of?”

“No. C’mon, you can ask him yourself.”

Hank leads Paige back to the room and introduces her to Hassan. He finds another chair for Paige and drifts out of earshot while the two of them talk. While he’s waiting, he calls Mercer and fills her in on the latest.

“Is the president still among the livin’?” Hank asks.

“Yes. Who knew someone could hack a pacemaker?” Mercer says.

“Anything connected to the Internet—”

“Can be hacked,” Mercer says, finishing Hank’s sentence. “I know, I know, Hank. But damn, it has to stop somewhere, doesn’t it?”

“I doubt it. What’s to stop them?”

“I suppose you’re right, as always. How did our star programmer work out?” Mercer asks.

“She’s good. Terrific, in fact.”

“That’s good to hear, Hank.” There’s a long pause and Mercer says, “Umm… oh, never mind. When are you coming back?”

Hank knows exactly what she was going to say. “You’re worse than Nana, Elaine.”

“You aren’t getting any younger, Hank.”

Hank nips that conversation in the bud and tells Elaine of his plans then kills the call.

Paige stands from her chair and walks over. “If I didn’t know he was responsible for thousands of deaths, I’d think he was a nice, pleasant young man.”

“Yep,” Hank says. “He got in over his head and didn’t know how to get out. Do you want him to hang around?”

“Yes, for a while, in case we hit a snag.” She glances back at Hassan then turns to look Hank in the eye. “What’s going to happen to him and the rest of them?”

“They’ll be taken somewhere for further interrogation.”

“And after that?” Paige asks.

Hank shrugs. “Not up to me. Prison somewhere, most likely.”

“Are we flying back to Fort Meade together or are you staying here?”

“I’ll most likely be here until we can run this Nazeri guy to ground. How much longer are you goin’ to be here?”

“Most of the day, probably.”

“I guess I’ll either see you at the airport or I won’t. You did good, Paige.” Hank turns, walks over to the other guard, and tells him to keep an eye on the prisoner for a little while longer, and heads outside to confer with Reiley.

Paige watches Hank’s retreat and her emotions go all over the place. Rather than try to sort them out, she walks back to the main room and returns to the task at hand.

Chicago

Peyton was correct in her assumption—it’s a week later, and the power is still out in Chicago. Eric and Jordan have done a good job with gathering food, but it’s water they’re struggling to find. After spending all their lives taking it for granted that water will come out of the tap when you turn it on, it’s a shock when the tap runs dry. Being without electricity is a major inconvenience, but being without water is an absolute life-or-death matter.

Now it’s early afternoon and, after a lunch of canned chili cooked over a wood fire on Jordan’s gutted gas grill, the four are seated in the living room discussing strategies to address the critical water situation.

“What about the vending machine at the school down the street?” Peyton asks. Her feet are slowly healing, but it still hurts to walk. Luckily she wears the same shoe size as Allison, and, more important, Allison is willing to share.

“Already looted,” Eric says. “We checked.” His bullet wound is healing nicely and he’s dodged infection for now.

“What about the concession stands at Wrigley?” Allison asks.

“Same story,” Jordan says. “They were probably cleaned out by day two.”

The discussion drags on. Moments later, Peyton is struck by an idea. “We’ve been focused on finding bottled water and we haven’t contemplated other sources. We live blocks away from one of the largest freshwater lakes on the planet. Why not take water from the lake?”

That stirs a debate about E. coli, salmonella, giardiasis, cryptosporidium, and a long list of other nasty bacteria and microorganisms. Once that’s exhausted, the discussion moves to radium, lead, mercury, PCBs, arsenic, and other natural elements that might be present in the waters of Lake Michigan. But in the end, they are out of options.

“We’ll boil the water to purify it,” Peyton says.

“We need to run it through some type of filter first to filter out the larger debris,” Eric says.

“How long do you have to boil the water?” Allison asks.

Without thinking, Jordan pulls out his cell phone he keeps charged with a small portable solar panel to Google the question. Then he remembers they have no cell service and no Internet. Old habits are hard to break. “I don’t think you can overboil it, can you?”

“I don’t think so,” Peyton says. “But I think once the water is hot enough to boil that’ll kill all the bad bugs.”

“One other important question,” Eric says, “is how are we going to get the water from the lake to here?”

“We’ll have to carry it,” Jordan says. “I have some five-gallon buckets from Home Depot in the garage.”

“Five gallons of water is heavy as hell,” Eric says. “We need a wagon or something.”

“Didn’t we see a wagon in the Wallace family garage?” Jordan asks.

“We did,” Eric says. “Grab the shotgun and we’ll go get it. Peyton, will you and Allison gather up the buckets?”

Jordan stands and retreats down the corridor to their bedroom to grab the shotgun.

“Yes. We’ll make it a pleasant afternoon trip to the lake.”

“I don’t know about pleasant,” Eric says.

“Probably wouldn’t hurt if we got in and rinsed off, too. We’ll take a couple of towels.”

Eric sniffs under his arm. “You don’t like my manly odor?”

“Uh, no,” Peyton says. “Although I don’t smell much better. I’ll grab some soap and shampoo, too. We’ll bathe like the old-timers used to do.”

Jordan returns with the shotgun and he and Eric take off to grab the wagon. Although they carry the shotgun whenever they go out, they haven’t needed it—yet. That will most likely change as the days stretch out and they have to widen their search for food. There has been no sighting of the Singleton family and they don’t yet know their home no longer exists. Eric dreads that upcoming confrontation, but there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

The still-absent Wallace family lives just down the street and it doesn’t take Eric and Jordan long to grab the wagon and return. Allison and Peyton meet them in the front yard with the buckets, towels, soap, and shampoo. They pile everything in the wagon and head for the lake, twenty-one blocks to the east.

When they reach the lake they’re amazed by all of the tents staked out along the shore. The area is jammed with people, pets, and garbage for as far as the eye can see. If they were concerned about the water quality before, now they’re doubly concerned. They spend several moments discussing the issue, but find no alternatives. They must have water.

Smoke lingers along the beach from the many campfires, and thousands of people are lounging around their campsites, swimming in the lake, or standing along the shore, fishing. That’s something Eric and Jordan hadn’t thought of and they file it away as a future food source. The afternoon is hot and humid and it doesn’t appear that any clothing standards are in force. Many people are walking around in their underwear and just as many have shed their clothing altogether. Most of those would have been better served, Peyton thinks, if they had chosen not to discard their clothing.