The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid by Scott B. Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

happened to cause this? How will we know if other places outside the city are affected?”
    “We won’t know anything by staying here… unless someone makes it here from areas that were not damaged. I don’t know, but if it was what I think it was, and it was caused by whatever caused that light display last night, I can’t imagine that it only affected our region. And if it was more widespread, how would anyone send a message here or get here? This could be a very serious situation, worse than any hurricane.”
    “Well, I don’t see how it could be worse than a hurricane. I mean, no one is getting hurt because the power’s off and the phones don’t work. It’s not like there’s wind blowing houses apart or flood waters filling the streets. How can it be that bad?”
    “Think about it for a minute, Casey. Think about all the people in the hospital, for instance, depending on machines that run on electricity to keep them alive. Think about people that need to get to the hospital, but now can’t. Think about all the stores that will have to stay closed and can’t sell food or anything else. What will everyone do when they can’t get anything?” Grant paused for a minute. “You can be sure people are getting hurt or dying because of this.” He suddenly got quiet. “You don’t even want to think about all the people who must have been flying in jets and other airplanes when this pulse or whatever it was suddenly hit.”
    “What would it do to an airplane? If they stopped like all these cars did, couldn’t the pilots still glide them down or something? I’ve seen them do that in movies.”
    “Maybe some types of small planes; not big jumbo jets, from what I understand. They don’t glide well at all, and there are not many places they could safely land. Besides, big airliners are even more dependent on computer controls than cars are. They can’t navigate without all that stuff to tell them where they are, how high they are flying, and how fast they are going. I think they would all crash if all that went out. At least that’s what I read somewhere.”
    “Oh my God, if this had happened just a couple of days later, my dad could have been in a crash!”
    “Is he flying somewhere then?”
    “He’s supposed to be coming back here from St. Thomas on Thursday. But he couldn’t have been on a plane today, because he’s out in the ocean with my Uncle Larry on a sailboat. What would this do to a sailboat?” Casey suddenly looked frightened. “What if their GPS went out? How will they find their way back to land?”
    “Where were they going?” Grant asked.
    Casey told him all about the delivery trip, about how she and Jessica had sailed with Larry in the islands the previous summer, and how Larry had been sailing all over for years and years, but it was her dad’s first offshore voyage.
    “I wouldn’t worry right now, Casey. It sounds like your dad is in good hands with his brother, and a real sailor like that can navigate without fancy electronics. They’re probably in about the safest place anyone can be right now, out on the open sea.”
    “But how will I know ?” Casey was distraught. Grant put his arm around her and she turned to him and hugged him with both of hers. “He won’t be able to call me when they get to land. I won’t even know if they made it or not.”
    “I hope I’m wrong about the extent of this, Casey. I really do,” Grant said as he returned her hug with a reassuring squeeze. “I hope this was somehow local and just affected the city. That way, they can get outside help in here fast and get things running again.”
    Casey had never given much thought to how much everything in modern life was dependent upon electronic devices and the power that made them work. Like everyone else, she imagined, she just took it for granted that all these things would keep on working just as they always had. Most people had never considered the possibility of a situation like what was going