Slow Apocalypse by John Varley Read Free Book Online

case of Spam might come in handy.”
    “I’ve never actually eaten Spam.”
    “And you probably won’t, unless we have a big earthquake.”
    “Ah. Earthquake supplies.” That was really all the explanation needed for a girl who grew up in Southern California.
    He spent that evening and into the night surfing the Net.
    First he looked for stories about the murder of Colonel Warner. There was nothing. Not in the
Times
, not on CNN, not anywhere. It was such a blank that he began to worry if merely searching for his name might alert someone in a secret government agency. He quickly deleted his search from memory.
    It wasn’t hard to find other stories. The oil-well explosions and fires at Ghawar, and in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Russia was the big story of the day, though it was being reported as if it had just happened. Coordinated terrorist attacks on the oil fields, most likely by Al Qaeda, though Hamas and Hezbollah were suspected, too. The National Guard was on alert, patrolling the oil and natural-gas fields in Texas and Louisiana, and the wells and pipelines in Alaska. The Coast Guard was protecting the offshore platforms in the Gulf ofMexico. The Royal Navy and the Norwegian Navy were on duty in the North Sea. Firefighting crews from Texas were on their way to or already in place in Saudi and Kuwait.
    The stock market had taken its worst three-day beating since 9/11.
    There was a story about oil tankers that had gone missing in the Indian Ocean. Some of them had been seen to explode, some of them had simply fallen off the radar. Somali pirates were being blamed, though no one had said how they would make a profit sinking tankers.
    The most interesting stuff was on the blogosphere. The online population was confused, suspicious, and angry. As usual.
    The same people who figured Arabs weren’t smart enough to fly airplanes into skyscrapers, that the Twin Towers had been brought down by charges placed inside them by their government, naturally thought these oil-well fires were a conspiracy. Who was behind the conspiracy was a matter of some debate, but that it
was
a conspiracy was a given. Ironically, Dave thought, they might not be far from the truth this time.
    Other, more rational voices seemed mostly frustrated. They agreed that the terrorism angle was probably a lie, but that left the question of who benefited from this whole business? The obvious suspects—big business, big oil—seemed to be panicking, and hemorrhaging money, from all anyone could tell from the outside.
    The insider blogs, opinion pieces from people who might be in a position to know, sounded flat-out frightened. These were government insiders, reporters, policy makers. No one was telling them anything. Whatever was going on, real knowledge of it was the most closely held secret anyone could remember. The top presidential advisors, cabinet secretaries, congressmen heading key committees and their staffs looked like they weren’t getting a lot of sleep. A few had even disappeared and couldn’t be found.
    The next morning he opened Quicken and scanned through his financial data. It hadn’t magically improved since the last time he checked. If they were going to have to hunker down, he would want to lay in even more supplies. If they were going to move, he’d want to be as liquid as possible.
    There was no point in trying to sell their cars, with gas prices the way theywere. Selling the house in the current market would be a disaster, and it might not move at all, but he could possibly get a loan on it.
    The best news was that his family had not yet reached the point where they had maxed out their credit cards. He still had a few thousand of what was to have been their savings in the bank. He had cashed in all their investments to make ends meet, so it was all in low-interest checking. That would come in handy. And the balances on their four platinum cards were low. None of them had a credit limit. He could buy pretty much whatever he thought