Scott Williams - The Pulse

Artie could barely understand what Scully was saying. He was obviously speaking English, but in some strange West Indian dialect that was so foreign it almost sounded like another language. Larry obviously understood him perfectly, though, despite how fast he was talking.

“You’ve been saying that for years, Scully,” Larry said. “But whatever it was, as far as we know it’s widespread. In St. Thomas, everything’s out. Have you heard any news from anywhere else beyond here?”

“Some mon comin’ on de sailboat from Fajardo yesterday. He seh all de lights dem dark on Puerto Rico. Lights dem don’t work. Cars dem won’t go. Bus too, an’ de planes dem can’t fly. He seh he comin’ to Culebra because he afraid to stay on Puerto Rico. T’ree million people an’ dem got not’ing to eat on dat island.”

“Yeah, Puerto Rico would not be the place to be about now, just like I told Artie about St. Thomas. I guess a lot of people from over on the main island will be coming here and to Vieques too when it gets bad, but only those who have sailboats or some kind of old, really basic engines will have a way to get here.”

“So wot you gonna do, Copt’n? You t’inkin’ to put dis boat in de watah?”

“We’ve got to, Scully. Sailing is the only way to go. Artie has no way to get home, and he can’t stay here, because Casey is in New Orleans. We’ve got to sail there and try to find her. We need your help, Scully. We’re sailing to the States.”

“New Orlean? Dat’s in Bobbylon, mon! America de very place dat displease Jah so much he shut off de lights all over de world. A mon not supposed to be sailin’ to dat place in de end time like dis.”

“Maybe not, but we can’t leave Casey there. What else have you got to do, Scully? You always said Jah was going to destroy Babylon anyway. Maybe now you can see it for yourself. We don’t plan on hanging around after we find Casey. I figure things are going to get real bad up there if the power stays off long enough, too many people who won’t know what in the hell to do. It’s bound to get ugly. But if we get going fast, we hope we can find Casey quickly and get the hell back south to St. Somewhere, where there’s not so damned many people.”

Scully looked out over the harbor and then back to the disassembled catamaran in the shed. He pushed his long dreads back over his shoulder and reached out to shake both Artie and Larry’s hands. “Okay. I t’ink it’s crazy but if you goin’, I goin’ too. Can’t leave a girl like Casey in dat evil place. We need get her on de boat and wid she friend too. Nice girls dem, and need to bring dem bok to de island. But dis boat she can’t sail like dis.”

“Absolutely, Scully. So let’s get to work so we can go!”

WHEN THE TWILIGHT FADED away in New Orleans, the blacked-out city was darker than Casey could have ever imagined. Standing on the balcony outside Grant’s apartment, the three of them watched as night enveloped the neighborhood, cutting them off from the world beyond the streets out front. Stars they had never noticed before in the perpetual light pollution of the city now filled the sky in the gaps between surrounding trees and houses, providing the only illumination to be seen other than a few candles and battery-powered flashlights visible through some of the nearby windows. Casey wasn’t afraid of the dark, but this complete absence of electric-powered lights was just creepy in such a dense urban environment. Adding to the closed-in feeling of near complete darkness was the unsettling quiet caused by the lack of automobile traffic and other mechanized sounds. She had not been aware until now of how pervasive the constant hum of machinery in the city had been until it was silenced, and now she heard human voices from the streets and nearby buildings that would have been drowned in the background noise before. They each stood looking and listening, lost in their private thoughts for a few moments, saying nothing until Grant suggested they go in and eat something.

Inside the apartment, Grant’s battery-powered lantern illuminated the small living room where he had begun sorting through his camping gear and organizing it into several piles according to each item’s priority. Casey was surprised at how much stuff he had, and wondered how they were supposed to carry all this on bicycles if they really had to leave the city that way. Once the compact sleeping bags and other items were unpacked from the duffel bags he kept them in, Grant’s equipment practically filled the room. Casey had only been camping a couple of times with her dad, and that had been years ago in a state park campground where they were able to set up the tent just a few feet from the car. There had been hot showers and vending machines, as well as lots of other friendly people around. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to camp along the road while riding bicycles, as Grant suggested, since 90 miles would be too far for them to travel in a day. Unlike Jessica, she could see that it was possible to ride that far, but she sure hoped they wouldn’t have to. Casey still held out hope that they would wake up in the morning and the lights would be back on—just as they had been after a tornado had ripped through the neighborhood and taken down the power lines when she was a little girl. Grant was convinced this couldn’t happen.

“This is different than any kind of conventional wind storm or lightning damage,” he said. He went on to explain that though wind can blow down power poles or trees and take out big areas of service by disrupting the transmission lines, and lightning can short out transformers and destroy other components along the lines or at the power sub-stations, the areas of damage in both cases are usually pretty limited. Katrina was an exception, to be sure, he said, because the power grid throughout most of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was taken out in a single day by that storm. It took a staggering amount of work to get all those power lines that were pulled down by falling trees rebuilt and back online, even with utility companies from all over America pouring into the region and crews working around the clock for weeks. In some of the hardest-hit areas, it took nearly two months to get all the power restored—and that was with the resources to do it. Plenty of replacement parts were available everywhere outside the hurricane damage zone, as well as running vehicles and manpower to operate them and do the work. Grant asked them both, if this solar storm or whatever it was took out a bigger area than Katrina had, maybe even most of the United States, where were the crews and parts going to come from? “I don’t think we need to entertain false hope that this is going to be fixed any time soon,” he said.

“So you think it could be a few weeks before they can get it fixed?” Casey asked.

“No, I don’t even see that happening, more like a few months if I had to guess. But we really just don’t know the extent of it, so who knows?”

“I can’t just sit in some cabin in the woods for months,” Jessica said. “How am I supposed to let my parents know I’m okay? How am I supposed to know if they’re okay? And how is Casey’s dad going to get home? And if he does get back here, how will he find us?”

Grant was about to answer when he was interrupted by a loud banging on the door that startled all three of them. He picked up the long machete that he had shown them earlier—another souvenir from his trips to the South American jungles—and walked over to the door.

“Who is it?” he asked, before reaching for the knob.

“Is Jessica in there? She’s supposed to be at this address,” an impatient voice on the other side demanded.

“Joey!” Jessica jumped up.