CASEY DRAGER PULLED the covers over her face and rolled over, annoyed that her dream was interrupted by bright sunlight filtering through the thin curtains hanging in her window. She couldn’t return to that place though, as much as she wanted to, and slowly she became conscious that it was only a dream. She threw the covers off and sat up with a start. The sun wasn’t supposed to be up! Jessica was supposed to call her at 6:00 a.m. so she would have time to study for an hour before she showered, ate breakfast, and headed for her eight o’clock class. The way the light was filling her bedroom, it had to be eight already. She grabbed her iPhone off the table by her bed to make sure she hadn’t silenced the ringer volume by mistake. She couldn’t believe Jessica would let her down, because she had to get up early today too. She was mad at herself more than she was at her roommate, though. She knew Jessica wasn’t coming in last night and she should have set the alarm on the phone as a backup.
The phone lit up, and the digital clock on the screen read 8:07 a.m. Oddly, there was a blinking message at the top corner of the screen that indicated the phone was not connected to the network. This had never happened since she got the new iPhone a year ago, and it certainly shouldn’t happen in a city the size of New Orleans. It brought back bad memories of the lousy service she had had with her first cell phone back in junior high. So that was the reason Jessica hadn’t reached her. She had probably tried but couldn’t get through.
Casey didn’t have time to beat herself up for not setting her own alarm, though. She rushed into the bathroom to hurriedly work on her hair and makeup. There would be no time to shower or eat today. She stepped out for a second to turn on the TV so she could hear it while she got ready. The screen lit, but all that it showed was a blue background and an error message. The sound coming from the speakers was white noise. She grabbed the remote and flipped through several channels. They were all the same. Weird, she thought to herself. No cell service, no TV. WTF? There was no more time to give it much thought now, though. It would be working again any time, of that she was certain. Right now, all that mattered was getting to class.
Casey supposed Jessica’s phone could be off the air too. She had an Android phone on a different network, so it seemed unlikely, but it was also unlikely that the cable TV would be out at the same time too. Jessica had spent the night with her boyfriend, and Casey wondered if they could have overslept too. She would find out when they met at lunch. She slipped the closed MacBook that was lying on her table into her small backpack that doubled as a book bag and purse, slung it over one shoulder, grabbed her key ring, and rushed out the door. Her bike was cable-locked to the wrought-iron balcony rail of the second-floor apartment that made up half of the small wood-frame house fronting Webster Street. She opened the combination lock, quickly carried the bike down to the sidewalk, and pedaled off. It was just a short three-quarter-mile ride to the Tulane University campus, and the bicycle was the only sane way to go with the parking situation being what it was.
As she turned onto St. Charles Avenue, Casey was surprised to see large numbers of cars stopped everywhere in both lanes of the broad, live-oak-shaded boulevard. There was no moving traffic besides other students on bicycles, and some drivers were opening their doors and getting out. She narrowly missed wiping out when a man in a large SUV opened his door right in front of her. Why all these vehicles had stopped in the street was beyond her, but it was not her concern either, late as she was. It was already vexing enough that her phone service was out. She steered onto the broad sidewalk away from the cars, weaving among pedestrians as fast as she dared until she reached the main campus entrance from St. Charles and hung a quick right into the breezeway to the bike racks in front of Dinwiddie Hall.
She locked the bike in an empty slot and made for the front doors, pushing her way through a cluster of students on the steps. Once inside, she was surprised at how dark it was, and she realized that all the overhead lights in the hallway were off. More people were milling about outside several open classroom doors.
“What’s going on? Why are the lights out?” Casey asked the first student whose eyes met hers.
“We were wondering that too,” the girl said. “They just went out all at once, like they were switched off.”
“When?” Casey asked. “I had power at my apartment over on Webster Street when I left just fifteen minutes ago.”
“It was, like, less than five minutes ago. That’s why everyone left class. The windows in this building suck. It’s too dark to do anything without the lights. I think most of the classes in here were dismissed.”
“I wonder if this has anything to do with my phone not working? When I got up this morning my phone had no signal, and it still doesn’t. My TV was just static too.”
“Tell me about it! Everyone I’ve talked to this morning said the same thing about their phone. Everybody’s phone quit working right after that freaky light show last night.”
“Light show?”
“I didn’t see it, but everybody who did is talking about it. The whole sky lit up like daylight at about two o’clock in the morning. They said it was awesome, like all kinds of colors and flashes—lasted nearly a minute. After that, all the phones went out.”
“That’s freaky! What was it?”
“People are sayin’ it was something like the Aurora Borealis, you know, the Northern Lights. They say it messed up electronic signals somehow.”
“I didn’t think it was possible to see that from New Orleans,” Casey said.
“I don’t know. All the geeks and Star Wars nerds are talking about it. I heard some of them this morning. They’re all excited about it, saying it was caused by the sun or something from outer space.”
“Great. So when exactly can we expect AT&T and all the rest of the cell companies to get their signals fixed? There’s no telling how many texts I’ve missed this morning. And now the power is out in Dinwiddie Hall. Or do you think it’s all over campus?”
“I don’t know. I was just heading over to the library to find out if the lights are still on there when you asked. I sure hope so. I’ve got a ton of research to do.”
“Well, thanks,” Casey said. “I guess I freaked out for no reason over being late for Anthro.”
Casey walked back out to the sidewalk and glanced back at St. Charles Avenue out front. The entire street was still like one big parking lot. No vehicles were moving, not even the streetcar that was still stopped on the tracks right where it had been when she had entered the campus. Most of the cars in the street had their hoods raised now, their owners standing around looking helpless. Casey wondered if the strange power outage had anything to do with all these apparently stalled cars, but she couldn’t think of any reason why it would.
She turned and walked down the shaded sidewalks of Gibson Quad. Its park-like expanse was crowded with groups of students talking about the power outage and the strange lights during the night. Looking at the other surrounding buildings, she realized that the power probably was out all over campus. No one was in class, it seemed.
She decided to keep walking to the breezeway at the other end of the complex and see if PJ’s Coffee was open. She knew Jessica had a nine o’clock class and would normally be stopping by there about this time to get her morning caffeine fix first. Casey thought Jessica might have seen the lights if she and Joey had been out that late, but when she got there, despite her hopes that it would somehow not have been affected, PJ’s was closed. She sat on a park bench across the breezeway and opened her backpack to get out her MacBook. Usually, on the rare days she had time to stop for a vanilla latte, she would sit in the café and check her e-mail or post something to her Facebook wall. She didn’t really expect the campus WiFi to be working with everything else shut down the way it was, but the laptop was fully charged and she could think of no reason why it shouldn’t come out of hibernation when she opened it up. She pushed the power button repeatedly with no effect, and then noticed that the little green light that indicated that the battery was charged was not lit. It was just one more WTF moment in a morning that seemed to hold no end of new surprises.
“Hey, Casey!”
She looked up to see Grant Dyer walking her way at a brisk pace. His wavy blond hair was even more disheveled than usual this morning, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. But like every other time he was near, she felt something come over her that was hard to describe, something between nervousness and excitement. She had met him only last semester, when she went on a field trip for extra credit in a freshman cultural anthropology class. A graduate student, he had been assisting her professor on a visit to an ancient Native American village site near the mouth of the Mississippi River. From the first day she met him she had experienced the same reaction when he spoke to her. Today was no different, and as she turned to greet him she felt herself blush a little.
“Hi, Grant! I didn’t see you in Dinwiddie Hall, but I was late getting there. I guess you left when the lights went out, huh?”
“Yeah, I wondered where you were this morning, Casey. I figured there was no use hanging around when I saw the whole building was shut down.”
“I overslept. My roommate was supposed to give me a wake-up call, but of course I didn’t know the cell phones were going to go out. Did you see those lights last night that everyone is talking about?”
“Oh, yeah, I saw them, Casey. You mean you missed them? It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It was amazing. I had just walked out of the House of Blues with my friend Jeff and was about to go home. We just stood there in the parking lot tripping out. The whole sky lit up; then it just glowed, and waves of colored light ripped across the city like some kind of explosion, but there was no sound. It was just an eerie, silent, flashing light show. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What was it? Do you know?”
“No one knows for sure. But I’m hearing a lot of talk that it could have been some kind of mega solar flare. It disrupted every kind of radio communication, and no one seems to know how extensive the disruption was, because there’s no way to get any news.”
“My TV was out too. I didn’t check the radio, though. But now my MacBook won’t even power up. What’s up with that? I know the battery was charged because it was plugged in all night before the power went off.”
“Weird! I don’t have mine with me, but it should come on, even it you can’t get online.” Grant took his cell phone out of his pocket as he looked at Casey’s laptop to verify that there was no way to turn it on. “Hey, my phone’s completely dead now. Not only does it not have a signal, it won’t even come on.”
Casey reached for her iPhone and discovered that it was likewise shut down and would not come back on.
“This must have just happened at the same time as the electrical shutdown a little while ago. Wow! What kind of force would it take to do that?”
“Did you see all the stalled cars out on St. Charles?” Casey asked. “It looked like they had stopped just about the time I turned onto the street this morning on my way here. That would have been about the same time the lights went out, according to what everyone in Dinwiddie Hall said.”
“No, I haven’t been back off campus. If cars have gone dead because of this, then it was definitely worse than I thought. And the fact that our phones and your computer are stone dead confirms it.”
“How can the power going out affect things that were not plugged in?” Casey asked. “And what does any of that have to do with causing cars to stop?”
“Because it’s much more than just a power outage, Casey. First it was radio and satellite signals right when those lights flashed. Then the electricity went out this morning. That must have been a separate event. If it shut down cars, then it was one hell of a strong electromagnetic pulse that must have fried the computers in them.”
“I still don’t see what that has to do with cars. Surely most of them don’t have computers in them?”
“I don’t mean regular computers like your laptop… just the little ‘black boxes’ that control the ignition and other things that keep the engine running. Without those devices, most cars won’t even start.”
“Oh. I’m really stupid when it comes to cars, I guess.”
“You’re not stupid, Casey. I don’t know that much about them either. I don’t even own a car. I just read about that somewhere. Oh, and there was some documentary I saw about how the police were experimenting with some kind of pulse device on their cruisers that could be used to shut down the engine of a vehicle they’re chasing. It worked on the same principle.”
“I guess my car probably won’t start, then.”
“I don’t know. What is it? What year is it?”
“It’s an ’03 Camry. Why?”
“If it were an older car—no fancy electronics—it might still run. At least that’s what I read. But yours is much too new.”
“I tried to get Dad to buy me an old Volkswagen Beetle, but he insisted I needed something newer and ‘more reliable.’ So much for that, huh?”
“Who could have known this would happen? We still don’t know the full extent of it. This could be a lot bigger than we think. It could have affected the whole country, or even the entire planet.”
“I didn’t know the sun could do all this. Has it happened before?”
“Maybe it has, just not since people have had electricity. It wouldn’t have mattered before that.”
“Is this dangerous?” Casey asked. “I mean, can’t the sun, like, burn up the planet or something?
“No, I don’t think so,” Grant laughed. “I should say, not right now anyway. Of course it will eventually, when it expands and burns up every planet in our solar system, as scientists say all stars do, but that’s a few million years down the road, I believe.”
“That’s comforting. So, what are we supposed to do now? No electricity, no cell phones, no WiFi…how do we find out how bad this is?”
“All we can do is go have a look around. Hey, since we can’t go to class, do you want to go see what we can find out?”
“Sure, I guess so,” Casey tried to sound nonchalant, hoping Grant couldn’t tell there was nothing she would rather do than hang out with him for a while. “Where will we go?”
“I don’t know, maybe off campus a bit, see if the power is out in other parts of the city. You’ve got a bike, right?”
“Yeah, it’s locked up over in front of Dinwiddie Hall.” Casey knew Grant had one. She had passed him in her car a couple of times far from campus, flying down city streets, weaving in and out of traffic like a New York bike messenger. Looking at him, anyone could immediately see that he was in great shape. “I won’t be able to keep up with you, though, on my heavy mountain bike.”
“We don’t have to go fast,” Grant said. “I won’t run off and leave you, I promise.”
“Hey, can we just go by my apartment first and at least check my car? We won’t know for sure that it won’t start unless we try it.”
“Sure thing; it won’t hurt to try. Where do you live?
“It’s not far. Over on Webster Street just a couple of blocks this side of Magazine.”
Grant walked with her back to where she’d left her bike, and then she pushed it along as they walked to get his where he’d left it near the library. When they rode off the campus together and turned onto St. Charles, there were so many people standing and walking in the road and on the sidewalks that they had to slow to a near-walking pace to avoid hitting them. Stalled vehicles were still blocking the lanes everywhere, most with their hoods up and their frustrated owners talking with each other and wondering what to do next.
“These cars haven’t moved since I came by on the way to class,” Casey told Grant.
“This is unbelievable,” he said, as he scanned both ways at the first cross street they came to. There’s not a moving car in sight. Good thing we have bicycles.”
“Yeah, I never drive my car to campus anyway. It would be too crazy trying to park. But when I have to get around town, it’s nice to have it—especially since I can’t ride insane miles on a bike like you do.”
“I just like riding, especially since the weather’s so good here most of the time. And when I’m here during the semesters, I rarely leave the city anyway, there’s just no time. Grad school’s like that.”
“I can imagine,” Casey said.
They turned onto Calhoun Street, dropped a couple of blocks down from St. Charles to avoid the snarl of cars and people, and soon reached Webster Street, where Casey lived. Six blocks farther on, Casey pointed out her car parked on the street near the stairs that led up to her apartment. They pulled the bikes up beside it and Casey dismounted and rummaged through her backpack for her keys. When she found them she looked at Grant with a shrug.
“You might as well try it, at least,” he said.
Casey first tried the electronic door opener on her key, but nothing happened when she pushed the button. She had to use the key itself and manually unlock the door. When she slid behind the wheel and turned the ignition switch, it had no effect whatsoever; there was not even the click of the starter relay.
“I guess we won’t be cruising around town in this,” she said, almost apologetically.
“Yeah, too bad you didn’t get that VW Bug you wanted. I’ll bet it would still run.”
Just as he said it, as if to prove his point, they heard the sound of an engine winding out and saw a dilapidated diesel work truck weaving its way up the street around the stalled cars and their stranded drivers. It looked to be a relic from the ’60s, if not older.
“Nothing electronic under the hood,” Grant answered when Casey gave him a questioning look. “People with old vehicles like that are in luck, but the problem is, the roads are so clogged up with all the new ones that they likely won’t be able to go anywhere. We’re better off with our bikes.”
“I suppose, as long as we don’t need to go far. Hey, I need to see if my roommate Jessica came home. Do you want to come up to my apartment with me to check? Then we can go ride around some if you want.”
“Sure. There’s certainly no hurry. Not much else I can do anyway.”
Casey was grateful for this unexpected turn of events that gave her an opportunity to hang out with Grant. She hoped it didn’t show in her body language because she was embarrassed for him to know that it mattered to her. She led the way up the stairs and unlocked the door. “It’s going to be hot in here without the AC, but at least it’s not summer yet.”
“Yeah, it’s actually pretty pleasant today. Usually when the power goes out down here, it’s because of a hurricane, and in hurricane season, it’s always hot.”
“I want to hear more about what it was like here after Katrina, if you ever have time to tell me about it.”
“Sure, I’ll be glad to, but we got out ahead of the worst of it and didn’t come back for a long time.”
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like to lose your home and everything in it.”
Grant just shrugged and said that wasn’t the worst part of it. He said that growing up the way he did he was used to being uprooted and moved to new places. As a result of that lifestyle, he said, he didn’t have a lot of possessions that he was attached to, like most people did. The worst part was that all his close friends had moved out of New Orleans and even out of the state after they were displaced and none had come back. He was essentially alone on campus, and though he had new acquaintances in his graduate classes, none of them were people he spent time outside of class with. He promised to tell her more about Katrina soon, and said that what he learned in the aftermath of that storm might come in handy considering what had apparently happened now.
It was obvious that Jessica was not in the apartment, and Casey could see no sign that she’d been back. She told Grant that she must still be at her boyfriend’s place or else had gone straight to campus from there without coming by the apartment.
“What about yours?” Grant asked.
“My what?”
“Boyfriend, significant other, or whatever.”
“No, I’m afraid not. I haven’t really dated since I started classes here. I just didn’t need the drama with all the work I have to do. I thought I would end up with my high school sweetheart, but he dumped me when he went to LSU.”
“That was a dumb move on his part, I’d say.”
Casey blushed. “Thanks, but it happens to everyone, I think. That’s why I haven’t bothered again for now.”
“I know what you mean. I keep myself free too these days. If not, I couldn’t do all the traveling I do between semesters.”
Casey started to say something but reconsidered. She was lost in thought for a moment but suddenly changed the subject. “If we can’t get the news on TV or the radio, and cell phones are not working either, how are we supposed to find out more about what 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 on today. She was grateful that Grant was with her and that he seemed so knowledgeable. She wanted to just stay in his arms where she could momentarily forget her worries, but she felt his embrace relax, signaling an end to the hug, and she reluctantly pulled away.
“So what do we do now?” she asked, hoping that whatever it was, they could do it together.
“Do you still want to ride around some on the bikes? Maybe we can look for your roommate, and listen to the talk on the streets.”
“Of course. We could try going by Joey’s place to see if she’s there. He lives in a little cottage on the grounds of an old mansion on Philip Street. It’s about three miles west of here, over in the Garden District.”
“I know the area. It’s where the rich people live.”
“It’s just a rental, but yeah, his parents are loaded, I think.”
“Let’s go, but I’m getting kind of hungry. We’d better find something to eat first.”
“I’ve got pizza in the freezer,” Casey said, “but no way to cook it.”
“Let’s see what we can find somewhere on the way. We’re going to have to start thinking about more than lunch too; if the power stays off, food will run out fast.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Casey said.
“You haven’t been through a hurricane. It’s okay. Leave that to me. I know all about this stuff.”
Casey was becoming more impressed with Grant all the time, and in a twisted kind of way, she was almost glad the lights had gone out. When she thought about it, she knew he lived alone, and with everything shut down, he probably didn’t have too much else to do right now. This would give them a reason they otherwise would not have to spend time together—time that she hoped would help them get to know each other even better. It seemed that Grant liked her company and wanted to help her. If not, he would just do his own thing, as he was used to being on his own.
They made their way to the busy maze of Magazine Street, which was much narrower and seemed even more crowded than St. Charles Avenue, with stalled cars, pedestrians, and throngs of other people riding bikes. They found a line outside a pita sandwich shop that was serving what food they had left and the rest of the semi-cold sodas from their coolers to customers who could pay in cash. Casey never carried bills on her, always relying on her debit card to make even the smallest of purchases. Once again she felt stupid and embarrassed and had to admit to Grant that she didn’t have any money. Grant told her not to worry, he had money on him, so they were in luck and got in line standing beside their bikes, where they could overhear all sorts of wild speculation from those around them about what could have happened. Theories ranged from terrorist attacks to government conspiracies and even an alien invasion. Many people in this city that never sleeps had been outside and had seen the bizarre lights that flashed across the sky in the wee hours of the morning. It was obvious that there was a growing sense of frustration at all the unknown aspects of the situation, and even though it was only March, by late morning it was getting hot and humid. Gathering clouds threatened the afternoon rain that was typical in the Big Easy. When the rain started falling it would only add to the annoyance of all the suddenly stranded drivers who found themselves unable to get to wherever they had been trying to go that morning.
Grant bought all the bottled water and Gatorade they could stuff in their book bags, along with some one-serving bags of baked potato chips, the only extra snacks the shop still had a supply of. Then they pedaled off to make their way to Joey’s house, where they hoped to find Jessica. Along the way, Casey told Grant that the relationship between Jessica and Joey probably wasn’t going anywhere. It was more of a physical attraction than anything else. Joey was arrogant and impatient and didn’t seem to care much about listening to what anyone else had to say. He didn’t have much time for her roommate anyway, Casey said, adding that he was a pre-med student barely keeping his GPA above the minimum, thanks to all the time he spent partying with his friends.
“Sounds like she should have dumped him already, if you ask me,” Grant said.
“Yeah, I keep hoping she’ll move on. She deserves better.”
Casey set the pace as she led the way down Magazine until they came to Philip, where she turned right, heading towards the river. “Here’s the house, just ahead on the right.” She pointed.
They pulled into a narrow drive that led into a beautifully landscaped semi-tropical garden of date palms, philodendrons, and oleander, and followed it past the white two-story mansion to a separate guest house in the back of the grounds. Joey’s black Audi was parked in front, but Jessica came to the door alone when Casey knocked.
Casey reintroduced Jessica and Grant, though they remembered meeting briefly one morning when she and Casey were walking through campus together.
“I was just getting ready to start walking home, since Joey’s car wouldn’t start this morning,” Jessica said. “He flipped out about it pretty bad. I tell you, I’ve had about enough of his temper. We both had nine o’clock classes, and by that time, whatever caused the electricity to go out and all the cars to mess up had already happened. Joey just went nuts. I don’t know if you noticed it in the driveway or not, but he kicked a big dent right in the driver’s door of his car, blaming it on his dad for buying him a used Audi. Then he took off running towards campus. I decided not to bother. I didn’t have anything I couldn’t skip today and besides, I knew they wouldn’t have class with no electricity. I went back to bed, because I sure didn’t get any sleep last night, and I was a bit hung over.”
Grant glanced back in the direction of the car and rolled his eyes. Jessica was a beautiful girl by any standard, and he was surprised she put up with such an asshole. “Did you guys see the lights last night?” he asked.
“Yeah, through the windows. We had just gone to bed and it was so bright it flashed through the whole house. I had no idea what it was. Joey didn’t either. But we were both pretty bombed from the party we went to.”
“I slept right through it. Grant was outside though, and saw everything,” Casey said.
“What in the hell was it?” Jessica asked. “What’s going on? I can’t believe everything just quit working like that. I can’t make a call, listen to the radio…nothing.”
“We don’t know for sure,” Casey said. “But the rumor is that it was some kind of disturbance from the sun. It could have affected a lot more than just New Orleans. Grant said that it could be a serious thing. A lot of people might have already died, and if the power doesn’t come back on soon, things will get bad, like after a big hurricane.”
“What are we supposed to do now, then?” Jessica asked.
“We need to start thinking about that,” Grant said. “Hey, if you’re ready, why don’t we head back over to your apartment? Mine’s close by campus too. I’ve got some stuff there we’re gonna need. Do you have a bike, Jessica?”
“Yeah, but it’s locked up by McWilliams Hall on campus. I left it there after play rehearsal and rode here with Joey in his car yesterday.”
“No problem. We’ll walk back with you. Casey and I can push our bikes so you can keep up.”
“Geeze, Casey,” Jessica whispered as they went inside to grab her bag out of the bedroom. “How come I can’t find a nice guy like that instead of a jerk like Joey?”
During the three-mile walk back in the direction of the Tulane campus and their apartments, Grant related some of what he had experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to Casey and Jessica and began speculating about what could happen next in a city the size of New Orleans with no power, no communications, and few working automobiles. He said it would likely become dangerous to stay in the city if these conditions continued for more than a couple of days. He mentioned the post-Katrina violence that took place throughout New Orleans after the levee broke and the city was flooded and cut off.
“But those people didn’t have a choice,” Jessica said. “They were stuck in the Superdome and everywhere else in the city and our own government screwed up and didn’t get them out in time.”
“It was a combination of things,” Grant said. “Yeah, the local, state, and federal governments could have done better, but it was really an overwhelming event no one could have prepared for. It’s also a fact that some of those people stayed behind on purpose to take advantage of the situation. Even members of the police department were looting stores and stealing new cars from the dealerships. The people who truly got stuck here against their will were mainly just waiting in the Superdome—in bad conditions to be sure, but most didn’t have bad intentions. People who had their own transportation and wanted to leave generally got out before the hurricane even hit, and well before the city flooded.”
“But don’t you think a lot of the looting and stuff happened because people lost their homes?” Casey asked. “This is different. Yeah, the lights are out and the phones don’t work, but I don’t see why it would get bad like it did after a hurricane.”
“When you think about it, Casey, what are people going to do for food in a city this size? You saw how long we had to stand in line just to get a sandwich and something to drink at lunch. And this is just the first day. I wonder how long shops like that will have anything left. I’ll bet that one we went to is already completely sold out. Think about the grocery stores. If the power is out everywhere and most vehicles are not running, the shelves will be stripped bare in no time, and with the delivery trucks not running, they won’t be restocking. There are a lot of people in New Orleans, Casey.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Jessica asked.
“The only sensible thing to do is get out of the city,” Grant said. “There are simply too many people here. There’s no way order can be maintained. It’s just a short time before most people start panicking.”
“I don’t know where else I would go,” Jessica said. “I don’t know how I could get home if cars aren’t working and the airlines are shut down.”
“She’s from Los Angeles,” Casey explained to Grant. “And I don’t know where I’d go either…. It’s not as far to my dad’s house in Mobile—well, at least not in a car, where it would be like two and a half hours, but that might as well be L.A., if you had to walk.”
“What day was he supposed to be back?” Jessica asked. “Did you hear from him last night before the phones went out?”
“No. They left Martinique on Sunday afternoon. I think they were supposed to get to St. Thomas like tomorrow, so his flight back here was on Thursday. I knew I wouldn’t hear from him last night because they were still at sea, but now he has no way of reaching me to let me know when they get to St. Thomas. I’m worried about him, but like Grant said, a good sailor like Larry doesn’t need electronics to navigate. I’m sure they’ll be fine, but how will he get back to the States when they do get to land? I know he’s going to be worried sick about me too.”
“We can still hope the effects are not that far-reaching,” Grant said, as he started walking again to encourage them to keep moving in the direction of their apartment. “But they’re probably better off there than most anywhere else they could be, if this thing is that widespread. We’re the ones in a situation we have to worry about. I think we need to start getting ready to go and make a plan now. But regardless of when we leave, we had better get what food we can carry now.”
The only store along the way that was open was a small corner grocery on Magazine Street that was already packed with people buying everything they could snatch off the shelves. Like the sandwich shop Casey and Grant had stopped at earlier, the grocery could only accept cash purchases because there was no way to verify credit or debit cards. Grant had a little over forty dollars left in his wallet and Jessica had a single twenty-dollar bill.
“Jessica’s a vegetarian,” Casey said as Grant reached for the last two packages of beef jerky remaining on an end display.
“It’s okay,” Jessica said. “Go ahead and get what you want, it doesn’t bother me as long as I don’t have to eat it.”
“The thing is, we’ve got to get things that are lightweight, will keep without refrigeration, and, ideally, don’t require extra water to cook.”
“Hey, how about these?” Casey asked, holding up a two-pound bag of almonds.
“Those are great,” Grant said, “And vegetarian-safe,” he added with an amused smile.
They were out of cash before they had purchased more than they could carry. Grant said they had done well, though, scoring a supply of several kinds of nuts, raisins and other assorted dried fruits, some bulk-packaged granola, a couple of large boxes of oatmeal that he said could be eaten uncooked if necessary, the jerky, several packages of tuna in foil, some boxes of whole-wheat crackers, two jars of peanut butter, and a couple of large blocks of Swiss cheese that he said would hold up well without refrigeration. Most of the other customers were loading up on bulky canned goods and other items that would be impossible to carry far on foot or on a bicycle. Despite their small haul, it took nearly two hours to get in and out of the grocery store. While they were in there the dark clouds that had been threatening rain since late morning finally broke open and drenched the streets, but the downpour had let up to a light drizzle by the time they were out in it.
They tied the plastic bags on Grant’s rear rack and around the handlebars of both bikes and, pushing the bikes, made it back to Casey and Jessica’s apartment by late afternoon. Casey opened all the blinds to let in as much light as possible, and at Grant’s urging the two roommates began sorting through their clothes and shoes to find a few items that would be suitable to travel in. Casey was overwhelmed at what Grant was suggesting—that they might actually have to leave the city on bicycles. She knew Grant could do it, but she couldn’t imagine how she or Jessica could pedal for miles and miles on the open road to anywhere. But Grant wasn’t talking about just anywhere. His parents, who were currently working on an archaeology project in Bolivia, owned a small cabin on a river not too far from New Orleans. They’d used it as a weekend getaway when they were living in New Orleans for a couple of years while Grant was still in high school and his father was teaching at Tulane. That was before the hurricane destroyed their home in the city and his parents left for good.
“It’s only about 90 miles from here,” Grant said. “It’s to the north, not far across the Mississippi state line, on a beautiful stream called the Bogue Chitto River. It would be a safe place in a situation like this. My dad thought of everything. There’s a well and generator and lots of food and other supplies stored there all the time. I was up there over the holidays to get away and work on a research paper.”
“Ninety miles! I could never ride a bicycle 90 miles!” Jessica blurted.
“Sure you could, Jessica. If you can ride a bike at all, you can ride it as far as you need to. You just have to take it one mile at a time,” Grant explained.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Casey said. “You could probably ride that far in a day. But we aren’t in shape for it like you are and our bikes suck compared to yours.”
“I’m not talking about a race, Casey. We’ll take our time, and go at the pace of whoever is the slowest. If it takes two or three days, that’s okay. The main thing is that we’ll be getting out of here. We can ride out of the city and get across the Causeway the first day for sure.”
“The Causeway is 25 miles long by itself!” Jessica said.
“Yeah, you’re right. But it’s also the shortest route north to where the cabin is. When you think about it, if you can ride a mile, then you can ride two miles, three miles, and on and on. You just keep pedaling and the miles will slide on by. We’ll stop and rest whenever we need to. One good thing, with few vehicles running, there won’t be any traffic. I’ll bet there’ll be other bicyclists though—at least those who are smart enough to think of it and start moving now.”
“I just hope it’s not a mistake to leave,” Casey said. “Can’t we just go back now and buy all the groceries we can carry and bring them back here? I’ve probably got at least thirty or forty dollars in change if I dig through all my drawers and boxes in my closet. We can come back here and stay inside and lock the doors. The lights have to come on soon, don’t they? Maybe it won’t be too long before everything is back to normal.”
“I think it would be a mistake to stay here,” Grant said. “I mean, we don’t have to leave immediately, but we’d better get ready. I don’t think we can count on this being resolved or back to normal any time soon. If we didn’t have the option of going to a well-stocked cabin within a reasonable distance, it would be one thing. But I know we would be safe there, and we would at least have a supply of food and water. We wouldn’t have to worry about the angry mobs of looters that are bound to start roaming the streets here when they figure out no one’s gonna bring them what they need and the police are powerless to stop them from taking it wherever they can find it. If I’m wrong and it turns out to be no big deal, then there will really have been no harm done, and we will have had some good exercise riding up there.”
“But this isn’t the Ninth Ward, Grant,” Jessica said. “This is Uptown. It’s nice here. People here don’t loot and rob. I think you’re being a bit paranoid.”
“I know it’s nice here now. And yes, it’s relatively safe. But this kind of stuff would happen anywhere after a disaster like this. When people get desperate, they’ll do anything. And besides, the people in the truly bad areas like you’re talking about know that with everything shut down, nothing is going to stop them from coming here. And they know there’s money and other goods here.”
“He may be right, Jessica,” Casey said. “He’s been through hurricanes and lived all over.”
“But why us, Grant? You hardly know us—well, me anyway…. Don’t you have other friends or family that will need to go there?”
“Not now, I don’t. My parents are much too far away to get any good out of it. And as I already told Casey, after Katrina all my close friends left New Orleans and never came back. I suppose I would go alone to the cabin if I didn’t know anyone who wanted to go with me, and I still will if you two aren’t interested. I’m certainly not staying here in the city, regardless. Casey and I just kind of ran into each other today; it’s been a really weird day, and, well, here we all are at your apartment. I don’t really have anyone else to spend the first day of the total shutdown of the grid with.”
“We don’t know that it’s a total shutdown,” Casey reminded him.
“No, but we should assume that it is in the immediate region, anyway. Look, I don’t want to try to talk either of you into anything. But I’ve got a few of the things we need over at my apartment, and whether you leave the city with me or not, it would be safer to stick together for now. I’d like for you to both come over after you get your things together. I’ve got battery-powered lights and candles in my camping gear. At least we’ll be able to see after dark at my place, and we can talk it over tonight and see how things are looking in the morning. What do you say?”
“That’s fine with me,” Casey said. “I hate blackouts even when they’re just for a few hours. It’d be scary over here with no flashlights or anything.”
“I’m okay with that too, I just don’t know about going to some cabin in Mississippi,” Jessica said. “And what about Joey? If I go, can he come too?”
“Of course,” Grant said.
“If he would even want to,” Jessica added.
“He may stop by here looking for you before he goes home tonight,” Casey told her. “Why don’t you leave him a note telling him we’ll be at Grant’s place and that he can find us there?”
They locked the door to the apartment at dusk, slipping a small piece of paper with Grant’s address in the crack just above the deadbolt, where Joey couldn’t miss it. Jessica and Casey had both emptied their backpack/book bags and stuffed them with as many items of clothing as they could possibly jam inside without breaking the zippers. The groceries were still tied on the bikes in the plastic bags. They walked them on campus, to the bike rack near the theater where Jessica had left her bike the day before. Grant’s place was an efficiency apartment in back of a house on Freret Street, so after a short ride of a few blocks they were there.
“Wow, you’ve got some cool stuff in here,” Casey said after Grant let them into his apartment and lit up the living room with a battery-powered Coleman lantern he dug out of a closet.
“Thanks. It’s mostly stuff I traded for during summer field study in Guyana. These things are all that made it home. A lot of the artifacts I shipped got lost, or more likely stolen, somewhere along the way.”
“What were you studying?” Jessica asked as she looked around the room at the collection of carved wooden drums, masks, blowguns, and bows and arrows hanging from every wall.
“Grant is an anthropology grad student,” Casey explained. “I forgot that I hadn’t told you. He spent three months last summer in the Amazon jungle.”
“Actually it was in the highlands of Guyana, not in the Amazon Basin,” Grant said. “I was working on a project our department is conducting among an indigenous tribe called the Wapishana on the upper reaches of the Kamoa River.”
“That’s crazy,” Jessica said. “Do those people still use this stuff? Are they cannibals or something?”
Grant laughed. “No, they’re not cannibals, but they’re still mostly naked. And yes, they do use primitive tools and maintain most of their ancestral ceremonies. They are true hunter-gatherers, and really don’t need anything but what the rainforest provides.”
“Hunters? That’s just wrong!” Jessica said. “Why do they still do that? I thought the jungle was full of tropical fruit and stuff.”
“It is, but not enough to live on and get a balanced diet. They eat everything the forest provides, from the smallest insects and fish, to monkeys, snakes, wild pigs…you name it.”
“It must have been an awesome experience staying in their villages and seeing how they live,” Casey said, before Jessica and Grant could get into an argument about the ethics of eating animals.
“It was quite the experience, but this particular subgroup of the tribe has such a nomadic way of life they don’t even live in villages. That’s one reason we know so little about them. Our department is the first group of anthropologists to study them. Their first contact with the outside world was just in 1995. Anyway, there’ll be time to tell you more about it later, if it doesn’t bore you to death. I need to sort out some stuff and we need to talk about a plan, that is, if you two are still in with me after seeing all my jungle headhunter gear.”
Casey and Jessica waited while Grant pulled a large duffel bag out of the same closet where he had gotten the lantern. He said it was the gear that he took on the jungle expedition and also occasionally used for weekend canoe camping on the river near his parent’s cabin.
“The problem is, we can’t carry all this stuff on the bikes, plus the food and water we’re going to need for the trip. I can carry much more on mine, since I’ve got a rack on it and it’s a lightweight bike anyway, but you two are going to have a hard enough time just pedaling those heavy clunkers you have even without any weight.”
“Can’t we just wear our backpacks?” Casey asked.
“Yeah, but it’s not ideal. If you keep them light with just your clothes and things like that, I suppose it will have to do. But too much weight that high up will wear you out and keep you off balance. It’s better to let the bike carry the weight. I think if you both carry your clothes in your packs and we strap some of the lighter, bulkier stuff like sleeping bags on the handlebars and under the seats, I can manage everything else we need.”
“Didn’t you say the cabin would have everything we need?” Jessica asked.
“Yes, but we can’t head out on a trip that far and count on getting there in a certain length of time. A lot of factors could delay us, considering what has happened, so we need to be prepared to be as self-sufficient on the road as possible.”
“I would have never thought like that,” Casey said. “I guess that comes from what you learned in the jungle, huh?”
“Just travel in general. I learned more from my parents than from anywhere else. We were always on the move, it seems. I learned that real travel, not the tourist stuff, requires flexibility in your thinking and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. We’re not going to be tourists. If we go anywhere while the grid is down, we’ll be travelers, and we had better be ready for anything.”