Aurora(42)

Thom declined to argue her simplistic, Luddite view of information technology. She took advantage of the pause and glanced at her watch. “I should probably get going. Does that give you enough of a picture for now?”

“Not yet.” Since she’d accepted the $10 million, Thom felt free to dispense with conversational niceties. “What are the cities like?”

“Not post-apocalyptic, or not yet anyway. Exit flow from New York and New Jersey was better than expected. But we’re still at the threshold. Most people don’t have a problem maintaining a 72-hour personal sustainment mindset, but longer than that—well, after the first week we’re headed into the great unknown.”

“Have you heard anything about the Chicago area?”

“No. Why?”

He wasn’t interested in a two-way flow of information. “Where did you say you are now?”

“My family’s cabin in the Alleghenies. Western Pennsylvania. I knew power would last the longest here, but I imagine it’ll go in the next few days.”

“What is the status of recovery efforts?” he asked.

“Way too soon to tell. We’re still in reaction mode, then we move to resiliency, and then we can start to think about recovery. But it will be a spectrum of recovery. First resources will always be directed to”—she ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke—“electrical water pumping, sewage treatment, and hospitals. In that order. Given a choice between pumping fresh drinking water to a city and running power to a hospital or care home, a local government will choose the water every single time.”

“As they should,” Thom added.

“Opinions vary,” she shrugged. “Abundant water flow leads to massive waste. Intelligent, restricted flow, with agreed-upon hours . . .” She could see she was losing him and stopped herself. “We don’t have to get into that.”

Behind Thom, ex-Major Jimmy had come into the room and was gesturing that Thom was needed. He looked back into the camera. “That’s it for now. I’d like to speak again in twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll do my best. But when it goes dark here, I switch to survival mode too, Thom.”

“I guess ten million doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

Dr. Singh just looked into the camera with a level gaze. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Thom hit the LEAVE button on the conference, dissatisfied. He picked up one of the two phones that were on the table in front of him, this one a clunky satellite phone. He checked the screen, didn’t see what he wanted, and tossed it back down on the table, where it landed with a clatter.

“Is my sister the worst person in the world or what?”

Jimmy just looked at him, unsure how to respond.

“Rhetorical question. What do you need?”

“Brady’s set to go, sir.”

“About time.” Thom got up and left, muttering under his breath, and Jimmy only made out a few words. Something about never having to work so hard to save somebody in his life.



And then there was Brady. The indispensable Brady had arrived from San Francisco more than forty-eight hours earlier but had dragged his feet about leaving for Aurora ever since, citing the need for “thorough preparations.”

“Finally decided you’re ready?” Thom asked as soon as he came outside. Brady was leaning against the side of the black BMW, eyes closed, soaking up the sunlight. The day was crisp and bright, the sky cloudless, and the air so clear you could pick out the pine trees on Black Crook Peak in the distance. Brady opened his eyes and stood.

“I know you would have liked me to leave sooner.”

“I’d have liked you to be there by now. I haven’t spoken to Aubrey in three days. Her sat phone’s off and you can bet she doesn’t have any money stashed. I have no idea what’s going on, and you’re dawdling.”

“It’s a long drive to Aurora, sir,” Brady said. “Fifteen hundred miles, that’s twenty, twenty-two hours if I go straight through. There’s a lot to consider.”

“What are you so worried about?” Thom asked. He looked back at Jimmy, still in his fatigues, semiautomatic slung across his chest, and made a “What is this guy so afraid of?” face. Ex-Major Jimmy shrugged. Some people.

“Personal safety,” Brady replied. “The drive here was a little dicey.” He hadn’t shared the details of his encounter with the meth heads in Battle Mountain, in part because he believed it was wrong to burden one’s employer with the details of a difficult job but also out of sheer embarrassment. He had been stupid and careless and nearly gotten his head caved in for it. The encounter had left him shaken, mostly by his low level of awareness, and the realization that the more complex the plan, the more stress points at which things can go wrong. Sheltering in your house is one thing, but trying to maintain a fuel-supply chain across eight hundred miles, all the way to your underground community in a decommissioned nuclear missile silo—you know, there could be some hitches in that plan.

He’d vowed to learn from the experience. He’d spent the forty-eight hours since he arrived at Sanctuary checking every cable and contact on the car, cleaning and oiling the guns, charging batteries and filling gas tanks, eating and sleeping as best he could, treating his bruised joints with Voltaren and ice, and gathering every bit of intel he could get about weather and societal conditions across the Great Plains. He was going to need to make two fuel stops on this trip, and neither one of them would have the pre-planning of the Bald Mountain gas station—and look how that had turned out. He was highly invested in the idea of nothing going wrong this time.