Jacqueline Druga - Protocol One

I told myself to only do the crossword puzzle and word search in that tabloid and no more. It wasn’t worth my time and energy. Yes, there was something Gil was worried about that was brewing on the horizon, but it certainly wasn’t the news bomb dropped by the tabloids.

I set the magazine on the passenger seat. I had bigger things on my mind. Like getting the items home and put away in the garage. I had all weekend and I would ship them out Monday. There was a pizza out there with my name on it and Friday Night Fights was on pay per view.

As I started the car and reached for the gear shift, my phone rang.

It was Gil.

“I thought you had a speech,” I answered.

“Are you still out shopping?”

“Unfortunately, what do you need?” I asked. “More foil?”

“No, no, we have enough foil. I need you to go to three different hardware stores and get three, five gallon gas cans at each of them.”

“Okay,” I said the word. “And those are gonna be odd to ship.”

“You aren’t shipping them. In time you’ll be filling them and using them. But don’t fill them yet.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said with some sarcasm. “Gil, listen. I am grateful for all that you are doing and you’re preparing me for something, I…”

“Anna, I have to go.”

“Listen, Gil, I need to know…”

“I really have to go, Anna.”

Click.

“And he hangs up.” Shaking my head, I tossed the phone to the seat. “Go get gas cans, fill them later, to go God knows where. But, apparently I’m driving there.” I said to myself, put the car in reverse and instead of getting that pizza, I went back out shopping.

Five gallon gas cans were bulky enough, but fitting nine of them into a mid size car was next to impossible. Let alone one already containing an obscene amount of aluminum foil.

I couldn’t see out my back window and was glad the reporters were gone when I arrived back home. Surely they would see the gas cans and come to the conclusion I was some sort of pyromaniac.

To be on the safe side, I parked the car in the garage figuring I’d get Jackson to unload it later.

“Finally,” Jackson said, when I walked in. “You were gone forever.”

“Blame your father. He sent me out again.”

“Man, Dad is really amping things up. Pizza is on the counter. Still hot, it just got here.”

“Thanks.” I walked to the kitchen. “And the stuff Dad has me getting isn’t the normal stuff like batteries, water and so forth. It’s odd stuff.”

“Except for the dehydrating.” Jackson said. “He always asks you to do that.”

“Yeah, well, the dehydrating is me. I figured I’d get a jump on it before he asked.” I opened the box and grabbed a slice of pizza. “I need a drink.” I went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. “Hey, Jack, why would you father need marijuana?”

Jackson laughed loudly, almost sounding as if he choked. “What?”

I took a sip of my beer. “Weed, marijuana, you know. You mentioned hemp when I said about the foil.”

“Mom, it’s not weed. You’re buying foil for survival. The first thing that came to my mind was HEMP.”

“The drug.”

“Not, hemp. H, E, M, P. It stands for High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse. An EMP. You know, knocks out all power. Kills all electronics. A HEMP is bigger. It can knock out a country. Aluminum foil, theoretically can protect electronics. Knowing that Dad is always thinking of what next big thing can hit, I just logically went with that.”

“Why didn’t I?”

“Mom, you thought I meant a drug when I said HEMP.”

Immediately, pizza and beer in hand, I raced from the kitchen.

“Where you going? The fights are coming on.”

“I’ll watch the replay. I have research to do.” I went to my room which was right down the hall, set my dinner on the nightstand and grabbed my laptop.

I opened the internet browser. Jackson hit it on the head. It had to be an EMP, but if so, why was I shipping the foil out? Why was I getting gas cans for my car?

I started to research HEMP and the use of aluminum foil. Sure enough, Jackson was correct. It theoretically was a safeguard. Part of a safe guard, there were other steps. But from the amount of foil I had purchased, there were a lot of electronics Gil planned on covering.

I did about an hour of research on what would cause them and how they occurred. Typically they would come from a high altitude burst of a nuclear weapon. The sun could even be responsible, but on a huge scale? I started to go to the next step of my research, knowing if I stayed on line much longer, my EMP would take me to the sun, which would in turn take me to videos and I’d end up watching something completely off the spectrum of my original research.

But that didn’t happen. The sun led my curiosity to that supermarket tabloid and for the hell of it, I looked up Dempsey’s Comet.

Sure enough it came up. But like Macy had said not a single story was from a reliable source.

Doomsday comet set to hit earth.

NASA and other countries secretly prepare.

Russia and United States fail to deflect the comet from its course…

It was that story, the one about an attempt to change the trajectory of the comet that caught my attention.

That story on a site called Prepper something or other stated that six months earlier the top secret attempt failed. Six months.

It had been six months since Gil started me shopping. With each passing month, the items grew stranger and orders grew larger.

The initiative in the United States was led by the Vice President. And a ‘source’ close to the Vice President stated that the VP was already making survival plans for his own family.

His family included Gil’s ex-wife.

While all of it was wild tales spread on the internet by typical conspiracy sites, it made sense to me that Gil would know since he was married to Gwen at the time of the failed attempt.

The laundering of survival supplies was his way of assuring it didn’t go back to him because he was probably sworn to secrecy.

My mind raced. I was as bad as the conspiracy sites. Again, I pondered my state of sanity. Was I really making conclusions based on a supermarket tabloid, the word of a nosy clerk and the sensationalism of internet blogging?

Stop.

I was buying foil. That was a fact. The EMP theory was a good solid guess. I went back to that and while I was at it, I added the word ‘comet’.

Sure enough, one of the effects of a comet impact was an immediate EMP ripple effect that would circle the globe.

I guzzled my beer. For the first time, it dawned on me that whatever Gil planned for had to be huge. It was much bigger than a earthquake bug out bag.

Beep.

The alert from my phone caused me to jump and I looked to see a text message from Gil.

‘Why is there a story on MNN that you claim I am the love of your life?’ he wrote.

Thinking, ‘what’? I replied, ‘ Maybe if you didn’t call me eighteen million times a day’ . And then I went directly to the MNN website.

I groaned when I saw the story.

Jenner’s Wife Claims She Still Loves Him. Can they rekindle the romance just in time for the White House?’

“Seriously?” I said out loud. “And look at some of these comments.” I couldn’t believe what people wrote. That I was looking for a meal ticket and that I only wanted him back because of the power. I wanted to comment as well. But I didn’t.

I simply sent another message to Gil. ‘That reporter took what I said out of context’

Beep.

‘Stop talking to the press. And I need to make sure it is clear the only connection we have is our son. Period. We have no lost love. I cannot have you connected to me.’