Ray Gorham - 77 Days in September

“That’s fine. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open myself,” replied Kyle. Ed motioned for Kyle to follow, so Kyle trailed him down the hall to a small room with a computer and a fax machine on a desk against one wall, and a single twin bed pushed up against the opposite one.

“It’s not much,” said Ed. “We don’t usually have company, and I’m redoing the bedroom in the basement.”

“This is more than good. At this point I think I could sleep on the garage floor.”

Ed smiled weakly as he gathered a couple of folders from the bed and piled them onto the desk. “The bathroom’s next door. I’ll try to find you a flashlight.”

Saturday, September 3 rd

Katy, Texas

Kyle awoke in a small bed in an unfamiliar bedroom, the bright sunlight shining on him through the window of the bedroom. Outside the sounds of a typical Saturday morning could be heard—birds singing, dogs barking, and a lawn mower in a neighbor’s yard. From the kitchen he could hear the clinking of dishes and the occasional sound of a chair scraping on the floor. He lay in bed for half an hour, trying futilely to go back to sleep, but kept awake by the outside noises, the temperature in the bedroom, and a deep, nagging worry about his family as the nightmare that was yesterday played over and over in his mind.

Finally he got up, put on yesterday’s clothes, and headed to the kitchen. Virgie sat at the table drinking a glass of milk and eating a slice of bread covered with a thick layer of butter and jam. She looked startled to see Kyle coming down the hallway.

“Good morning,” Kyle said, sounding more cheerful than he felt. “I’m Kyle. We met last night, or technically this morning I guess; but either way, it was late.”

Virgie looked confused and covered her mouth as she swallowed. “I’m Virgie,” she said, pausing to think. “It’s starting to come back. Yesterday was a weird day, and then Ed came home in the middle of the night. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on. Did Ed say something about airplane problems?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Kyle replied. “There are a lot of things going on right now.”

Virgie’s look changed to one of concern. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Please have a seat. Can I get you something to eat? I’m sure you must be hungry.”

“That would be nice, but don’t go to a lot of trouble.”

“Well, we usually just have coffee and toast in the morning, but nothing is working, so I can’t get you either of those.” She got up from the table and opened the fridge. “Let’s see,” she said as she scanned the contents. “We’ve got some apples, orange juice, milk. Most of it’s not very cold anymore.” She closed the fridge and looked in the small pantry. “There’s some cereal, bread, peanut butter,…”

“Just a sandwich would be fine,” said Kyle. “Peanut butter and jam sounds good, maybe with some milk?”

“The milk’s warm,” she reminded him. “But I can get it for you if you’d like. It still tastes good.”

“Warm milk is fine,” Kyle answered. “I take it the power is still out.”

Virgie nodded. “It went out yesterday afternoon. I was at a friend’s house. Couldn’t even get my car started to come home. Strangest thing. I ended up having to walk over two miles.”

“It was like that at the airport, too.”

Kyle watched Virgie prepare his sandwich. She was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt and she hummed to herself while she worked. The small kitchen, devoid of any furniture other than the little table and its two chairs, reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen from when he was young, minus the pictures and wall hangings that his grandmother had lovingly covered her walls with.

“So where is it that I am?” Kyle asked, attempting small talk as he waited for his food. “Ed told me, but I don’t remember.”

“This is Katy,” Virgie said as she poured milk in his cup. “We’re not too far from Houston, just a few miles west. With Houston growing so much, it’s more like a suburb.” She set the sandwich down in front of Kyle. “Now tell me what’s going on. What happened with your airplane? I’m still trying to figure out why Ed’s here and not in Denver.”

Kyle related most of what had happened. He described the failed takeoff and their escape from the airplane, how there had been no emergency response, and that other airplanes had also crashed at the same time. He told her about the chaos at the airport and why he and Ed had decided to come to the house. He described the drive from the airport, and how there were cars stalled all over the city blocking the roads, and that they had seen only a few other operating vehicles. He described the accidents, the people walking home, the lack of a police presence, and how overwhelmingly dark the city had become once the sun went down.

Virgie sat across the table, shaking her head as she listened to Kyle, her bloodshot eyes open wide. By the time he was done talking, Kyle had finished two sandwiches and three glasses of milk, and Virgie was nearly in a state of panic.

“So why did it take you so long to get back here?” she asked. “It should just be an hour’s drive, and that’s if traffic’s bad.”

“Ed,” Kyle answered. “There was a lady with three little kids on the side of the highway. Ed couldn’t drive by. She was headed somewhere on the far side of the city, and it was a lot slower going because cars were stalled everywhere. We could easily have been much later because there were a lot of people who needed help, but the Jeep was getting low on gas.”

“Sounds like Ed,” Virgie said. “He’s got a big heart, too big sometimes. So what do you think is causing all of this?”

Kyle hesitated before he spoke. “I was telling Ed, the only thing I can think of that could have done this is something called an EMP, a nuclear bomb detonated in space. It doesn’t blow things up, but basically cooks everything that uses electricity.

“I’m not an expert,” Kyle added. “It could very well be something else, maybe a huge solar pulse or something, but even then, depending on how intense it is, the effects are pretty similar.”

“If it is that EMT thing you described, how long until we get our power back?”

“Well, if it was an EMP,” said Kyle, annunciating clearly, “we’re probably looking at six months or more. More likely a year or two.”

Virgie’s eyes bulged. “Six months until everything’s back to normal? We’ll never survive for that long!”

Kyle shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. If it really was an EMP, normal is years away, maybe a decade. Six months is how long it will be until we might get some power plants operating, and that’s if things go well.”

Deer Creek, Montana

Jennifer was busily working around the house, the silent television and telephone making for a productive Saturday morning. The kids had cleaned their rooms. Emma had swept the kitchen and helped pick up toys in the basement with Spencer, and David had mowed the yard and swept the garage. When his chores were done David left for his friend’s house, and the two younger ones were now playing in the backyard.

By all outward signs, it was a perfect, late summer Saturday morning. The sun was shining in a brilliant, cloud-free sky, birds were singing, the kids were getting along, and the house was clean. Even the neighborhood, with its homes spread out on multi-acre lots, and which was usually peaceful anyway, was unusually quiet. Jennifer knew she should relax and enjoy the day, but something gnawed at her instead. She had experienced power outages before, and Kyle had been held over at work more times than she could remember, but this was different. She tried to convince herself that the power, the phones, and Kyle being late were all a coincidence, that Kyle was probably trying to reach her to let her know he would be delayed by a day or two. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been held over out of town.