The faces before me glowed dazzling bright green, and then the green spotlight swept down the hallway, flashing off door frames.
“Cool, huh?”
“Very cool.” I took off the night-vision goggles. “Lights, please?”
With a click, the lights we’d jury-rigged in the hallway, connected to Chuck’s generator, turned back on.
“I can’t believe you have ten thousand dollars’ worth of night-vision goggles and infrared flashlights.” I looked at the military paraphernalia stacked around Chuck. “And you don’t have a shortwave radio.”
“I’ve got one, but it’s in Virginia at the hideaway.”
Same place he should be, he didn’t add.
“Thanks again for staying,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, thanks for staying,” said Ryan, one of our neighbors from farther down the hall. He raised a steaming cup of buttered rum.
His partner, Rex, raised his glass as well. “A toast to our well-prepared friend Chuck!”
“Hear, hear!” came a half-hearted cheer from the rest of the people crowded in the hallway, nearly twenty of us packed together on chairs and couches pulled out from our apartments. We all raised our cups to drink.
Susie had decided to host a hot rum toddy party for Christmas, and all of our neighbors were bundled and cuddled up together, holding steaming-hot cups of alcohol in their hands.
The building was retaining heat but cooling quickly. We’d switched to using electric heaters in Chuck’s apartment. The kerosene heater was more powerful but produced low levels of carbon monoxide, and Susie was worried about the kids. For this gathering, we’d pulled the kerosene heater out and placed it in the center of the hallway. People were warming themselves around it as if it were a campfire.
The hallway had become our communal living room, a place to gather together and chat. We’d wired up a radio that played news in the background, mostly listing off emergency shelter locations around the city and saying that the power would be back on soon and to stay indoors. Most of the roads and highways were impassable, in any case.
Everyone was sitting in more or less the same positions as where their apartments were located along the hallway. The Chinese family from down the hall near Richard had finally come out and were bunched up together on a couch with the wife’s parents, who’d come for a visit before everything fell apart. It was a bad time to have chosen to visit America for the first time, and none of them spoke English very well.
Next to the Chinese family was a Japanese couple—Hiro was the husband’s name; I hadn’t caught the wife’s—and across from them were Rex and Ryan. The Borodins were sitting to my right. Aleksandr was awake for once, but just barely as he sipped the hot rum drink, with Irena beside him. Chuck, Susie, Pam, and Rory were to my left, and little Ellarose was sitting up on Tony’s lap.
The only one missing was Lauren. I wasn’t sure what to say to her, and she hadn’t wanted to talk. I’d tried holding her, asking her to come out, but she wanted to be alone. She was in Susie’s room, sleeping.
Luke had no idea what was going on. To him, this was all a big game, a party, and he was running around, dressed up in his snowsuit, saying hello to everyone and showing off a red fire engine toy he’d gotten for Christmas. It lit up and made noises and should have been annoying, but it was somehow comforting. I wasn’t sure how long the batteries would last.
Richard walked over from his end of the gathering to sit down on the arm of the leather chair I’d dragged out from my place. “So can we have it?”
He’d been badgering us all day about taking the kerosene heater.
“I’ve got some food I could trade.”
Somehow he’d acquired a large load of canned food and groceries, probably by offering someone a small fortune.
“If it keeps getting colder, we’re going to freeze to death if we all stay in our own places. I’ll take in that Chinese family and the gay guys and Hiro and his wife. Sarah and I will organize a shelter at our end, and you guys do the same at your end. All I need is the kerosene heater and a few other things.”
I was impressed that he was offering to create a shelter in his apartment. Maybe I have this guy wrong. “You need to talk to Chuck,” I replied.
Richard looked over at Chuck, who I was sure could hear our conversation. He was adamant that we needed to keep everything we had for ourselves, but Susie was just as adamant that we needed to share.
“Charles Mumford,” whispered Susie to Chuck, “we don’t need that thing. You go on now.”
Chuck sighed. “Fine, yes.” He turned to Richard. “And I’ll collect some other stuff for you guys. That’s a good idea, doing a shelter for the floor.”
“And can we get a cable for electricity?”
Chuck sighed deeper this time. We’d snaked an extension into Pam and Rory’s next door to run a small electric heater and light. Their place was tiny, smaller than mine and Lauren’s, so it was workable, but we’d opened a can of worms. Now everyone wanted a connection.
“The generator is only six thousand watts, and we’re already running three heaters.”
Susie kicked his foot.
“Ah, forget it. Sure. Only for lighting? At nights? And everyone does siphon duty?”
“You bet,” agreed Richard. “Good man.” Getting up to leave, he turned to me. “Is Lauren okay?”
“Yeah, she’s good,” I replied without enthusiasm.
Richard frowned, but then shrugged and returned to his wife, who was trying to talk to the Chinese family. Luke was over with them, and the grandfather was admiring his new fire engine. I smiled at them, and the grandfather smiled back. We’d decided the bird flu warning was a hoax.
Just then the stairwell door opened, giving everyone a start. A face appeared, grinning awkwardly. It was Paul, the suspected intruder from the day before. Chuck’s eyes narrowed. He whispered to Tony, who looked up at Paul and then shrugged back at Chuck.
“Hey, guys,” said Paul with a small wave. The light from his headlamp flashed in my eyes. “Wow. Cozy up here.”
Squinting, I raised one hand. “Could you turn that off?”
“Sorry, forgot. You’re the only ones with real lights.”
“Paul, from 514, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Chuck leaned toward me and whispered, “Tony locked the front door hours ago, and he says this guy sort of looks familiar. I guess I was wrong.”
Everyone was quiet, waiting on us. I smiled back at Paul. “Want a drink?”
“That’d be great.”
Conversations resumed, and I introduced Paul around while Susie fetched him a hot toddy. Paul shook everyone’s hand, exchanging enthusiastic Merry Christmases until he got to Irena and Aleksandr.
“Merry Christmas!” he said, extending his hand.
Irena looked up at him, pressing her lips together and frowning. “Happy holidays, yes,” she replied, nodding, but neither she nor Aleksandr held out a hand.
Has he offended them by assuming they celebrate Christmas? It wasn’t often I saw them being grumpy, but the stress was getting to everyone.
Paul dropped his hand, still smiling, and pointed to a spot next to them on their couch. Irena shrugged and shifted slightly. He squeezed himself in next to her, cupping the hot toddy Susie gave him. He blew on it and took a sip. “You guys look pretty organized. Any idea what’s going on?”
I shook my head. “We know as much as anyone else.”
“But everyone has an opinion,” said Chuck, raising his drink, “so how about a straw poll?” He gestured to Paul. “You start.”
“Easy, gotta be the Chinese. We’ve been squaring off for a fight with them for years.” He looked toward the Asian corner. “No offense.”
The Chinese family smiled back, perhaps not understanding, but Hiro shook his head. “We’re Japanese.”
Chuck laughed loudly. “Probably not you guys this time, but what’s your vote?”
Hiro looked at his wife, gripping her hand. “China?”
“Amen to that, brother,” agreed Paul, raising his drink. “I hope they’re bombing those bastards back to the Stone Age right now.”
This time he didn’t bother apologizing.
“India and China are in the middle of that huge fight over dams in the Himalayas,” pointed out Chuck. “How do we know the Indians didn’t cause that dam failure?”
“It’s possible the Indians were involved,” said Rory, “but the Chinese wrecking America would be like burning down your own house to get rid of the tenants. They own half of it.”
“Political leaders do stupid things all the time,” I pointed out.
“Not the Chinese,” observed Chuck. “They got that thousand-year planning.”
“Don’t be too impressed,” said Rory. “Their politicians are as bad as ours. But my bet is the Iranians. Did you see their ayatollah on TV just before the blackout?”
Tony liked that suggestion. “If we’ve been spoiling for a fight with anyone, it’s the Arabs. Had a chip on their shoulder ever since they took our embassy hostage in ‘79.”
“We did overthrow their democratically elected government and install a dictator that terrorized them,” pointed out Rory. “And they’re not Arabs, they’re Persian.”
Tony looked confused. “I thought you thought they did this?”
“Maybe,” Rory sighed. “It’s hard to say.”
“Russians,” said Richard. “It’s the Russians. Who else could have invaded our airspace?”
“Ah, yes,” laughed Chuck. “A commie under every cover.”
“Do you know they just restarted strategic bomber flights over the Arctic?” Richard said to Chuck. “Same flight patterns as during the Cold War?”
“I did not know that,” admitted Chuck.
“Yeah, they did,” confirmed Rory.
“The Russians ran out of money for a few years in the nineties,” continued Richard, “but you can bet they don’t like playing second fiddle to America and China. Probably taking us both down at the same time.” A quiet pause. “I bet half of America is a smoking crater already. That’s why no military has shown up. We’re screwed.”
“You don’t need to scare everyone,” said a tiny voice. “I think this is all just an accident of some kind.”
It was Richard’s wife, Sarah, and he turned to her angrily. “As if you know anything,” he growled. “The aircraft carriers, that destroyed village in China, DEFCON 3, train crashes, over a hundred million without power. This is no accident.”
Everyone stared at them, and she shrank away.
I turned to Irena and Aleksandr, trying to divert attention away from Sarah. “So do you think it was your countrymen who attacked us?”
“This,” said Irena, waving her hands toward the ceiling and sniffing, “is not an attack. An attack is when someone has a gun pointed at your head. This is criminals, crawling in the dark.”
“You think criminals could wipe out the entire United States and invade our airspace?”
Irena shrugged, unimpressed. “Many criminals. Criminals even in the government.”
“Finally, we get to the conspiracy theories,” I said, turning to Chuck. “So is all this just an inside job?”
“One way or the other, we probably did do this to ourselves.”
“I thought you liked the Canadian theory.”
“Snow as a strategic weapon does have Canada written all over it,” agreed Chuck with a smile. “But I’d agree with Irena—the only way this makes sense is some criminal element.”
“Anyone else with an opinion?” I asked. Nobody said anything, so I stood up to recap. “We have the Russians and an accident with one vote each, Iran and criminals with two votes.” I held my fingers up in front of me to indicate the tally. “And the winner, China, with three votes!”
The door to Chuck’s apartment opened, and Lauren appeared, looking terrified.
What happened?
I took a step toward her. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”
It was the first thing that came to mind.
“Baby?” I heard Susie saying. “What baby?”
Chuck shook his head, holding up a hand to quiet her.
Lauren held her cell phone out to me. “It’s my parents.”
“They’re on the phone?”
“No, they left a message, and my cell must have picked it up before the networks went dead.”
“Was there an accident?”
“No accident, but their flight to Hawaii was canceled at the last minute when the bird flu thing started. They were in Newark and called to see if we could get them.”
A moment passed while I processed this. “They’re still at Newark?”
“They’re trapped at Newark.”