T Connor - Bitter Cold Apocalypse

“Awful lot of windows for a house in the middle of a snow-prone area,” I noted, trying to prod for some more information on who he was and what the hell this house was about.

He gave me a shrug, careful not to disturb the woman we were carrying between us. “They’re energy efficient,” he said quickly. “Double-paned, low-emissivity glass. Keeps the cold out and the heat in, or vice versa. And I like the daylight. You never know when you’re going to need it.”

Right. So maybe not the sort of survivalist who lived in an isolated cabin in the woods, but a man who knew how to survive, regardless. Interesting.

We walked a couple more steps in silence, then heaved Angie up higher to get her onto the table in what I took to be the operating theatre. The table was surrounded by a semi-circle of counters and cabinets, all of them done in that cold, imposing stainless steel that they always used in places that specialized in cutting people.

I stifled a shiver at the thought. I might have been a soldier. That didn’t mean I liked blood. Or the thought of cutting people. I had killed more people than I could count, but I’d drawn the line at torture.

“Awfully fancy setup for a house in the middle of nowhere,” I noted.

Marlon gave me a stifled laugh. “I guess old habits die hard. I was a doctor in town in… well, one version of my real life, I guess you could say.” He left that odd sentence hanging for a moment, then continued, “Once I was forced to retire, I came out here to my vacation home and found that I was lonely for my old tools. At first, I built this place just as something to do. A way to feel like I was still important. Then…” An embarrassed look crossed his face, but he shut it down quickly. “Well, I started treating local livestock and pets. There aren’t that many people in this area, but there are enough. And they learned quickly enough that they could bring their animals to me if they needed treatment. This table hasn’t seen any real surgery, no. But it’s seen plenty of stitches. And more than one broken bone.”

He glanced at Angie, who was now laying on the table, very obviously controlling her breathing. “The good news is that I can treat you without any electricity. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. How do you feel about pain medication?”

“I feel like it might be the most brilliant thing mankind ever invented,” she said levelly, meeting his eyes. “Especially right now.”

He huffed out a laugh and nodded. “I don’t have anything as strong as what the hospitals might use, but I do have a good stock of Novocain and morphine. Stuff that I’m not supposed to have, of course. But old habits die hard. We should be able to make you comfortable for long enough to set the bone and get that wound stitched.”

He cast a frowning glance at the windows, then, and I followed his gaze. It was still bright white outside, the sunlight streaming in, but I could see that the color of the light had changed. It was starting to yellow.

“I just hope we can get it all done before the light fades too much,” he finished.

And at that, my mind finally caught on to his obsession with the light. I added that to his comment about not needing electricity to treat Angie—and his even earlier comment about having generators that only keep the house heated. Yeah, we were out in the middle of nowhere. Or at least I thought we were. But many of the houses, even this far out, had lines that ran to them. Lines that provided them with electricity.

So if this Marlon was so obsessed with doing things without electricity…

“Why is there no electricity out here?” I asked.

He looked up, his eyes intent, and I could see that he was judging me quickly. Trying to figure out how I was going to react. His gaze flew down to my chest, where my dog tags were lying on the borrowed shirt, and then back up to my eyes.

“So you don’t know,” he said. “I wondered how long you guys had been out there. Whether you knew what had happened.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Stop beating around the bush. We don’t know anything. What happened out there? Why don’t any of the lights work? Why didn’t my truck work when I tried to start it after Angie got hurt? What the hell was wrong with our phones?”

He pressed his lips together, but then nodded. “Nothing electronic will be working. Nothing that requires those electronic connections. Because this area—and, for all I know, the entire country, maybe the entire world—has experienced some sort of EMP event.”

“EMP event?” I asked breathlessly. Yeah, I’d thought that was what happened. That didn’t mean I’d actually believed it.

“Attack,” he corrected. “This was no accident. I don’t know who perpetrated it, or how far-reaching the effects are. But I can tell you that in Michigan, at the very least, we have been sent back into the Dark Ages. At least as far as electric components are concerned.”

After several moments of trying to get my brain to start moving again, I finally put two and two together.

“Wait,” I said slowly. “If there’s no electricity, it means there are no phones. No phone lines . No radio, no TV. How the hell do you know that’s what happened?”

Another long, heavy silence from Marlon, during which I could practically see the wheels in his brain turning. Finally, he shrugged.

“You’re military, and I’m guessing you’re Special Ops of some sort, given your behavior. So I’m also guessing that you’ll know enough to know not to question me when I say I can only give you so much information. The truth is, I have friends in high places—and ways to get in touch with them. So I know more than your average man in the woods might know. That doesn’t mean I know it all, and it certainly doesn’t mean I know what’s going to be done. Don’t know whether there’s even any plan for this sort of thing, though I suspect there must be, at some level. Beyond that…” He shrugged, giving me an open, honest look that told me he was telling me everything he knew—or at least that that was the story he was going to stick to.

“Right,” I breathed. More rapid recalculation in my head. More stopping and restarting of my brain. More pieces shifting on this big chess board we called life.

Because if I was right about what he was saying, then this Marlon guy was a whole lot more than someone who had once been a doctor and had for some reason retired out here in the middle of nowhere and started treating animals. If I was right about what I was thinking…

Then he was someone who had been in either the military or the government. Maybe even the intelligence community. He had friends who were still in, and they’d been able to give him information, either before everything went to hell or through secured—and non-electric?—channels right afterward.

I pushed my instincts out, trying to get a feel for the man and figure out whether I could trust him. Whether he might actually be telling me the truth. And I didn’t get any red flags. Instead, the guy had turned toward my wife and started carefully peeling the layers of her clothes away from her wound, stopping when he found cloth that had been caught up in scabs and was stuck.

He was leaving me to come to my own conclusions while he got started on the important thing: Angie. Smart. Efficient. Unemotional.

All of the things they’d taught us in the military.

I didn’t see any reason to distrust what he was saying. And if I was being smart, efficient, and unemotional, like I was supposed to be, I’d put all the questions away for another time.

I moved toward him, took up the bowl sitting next to his table, and looked up at him.

“Hot water? It’ll be the best and quickest way to get those scabs out of the way and get those jeans off.”