Internet Kill Switch (15 page)

Rick gunned the engine, but Scarlett told him to ease off. “No sense in attracting more attention now.”

He slowed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Tony asked the obvious. “The question now is, what do we do?”

“Well, it’s around a thousand miles to Maryland,” Max said. “Th
at means, the way Rick drives, we could probably be there in about 90 minutes.” That got a good laugh out of everyone. “First we should get some gas and food. Tony doesn’t look great.”

Tony
looked at his right leg. A few dots of red speckled his jeans as blood seeped out of his bandaged thigh. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t feel well at all. The adrenaline from the escape from the hospital and flight to the airport helped him not notice, but now he felt a bit light-headed.

“Yeah, good idea, Max. Some food and a drink would be good. Maybe we should also find a
drug store or something and get more bandages.”

40

“So, how do we get to Maryland from here?” Rick asked. “The GPS
apps on my phone aren’t working.”

“You’ll find lot of things are different now,” said Max. “I feel like Helen Keller myself – totally blind
, deaf and dumb without any Internet access. I can’t find anything out, can’t look anything up. It’s infuriating.”

“Sounds like we need to get a map,” Tony said.

“A map?” Scarlett asked. “You can still buy those things?”

“Well, I’d imagine that not everyone has
GPS,” Tony said. “They’ll have them in gas stations and other stores, I’d guess.”

Having no idea which way to go, they drove west out of the airport and asked directions to the nearest pharmacy. There was a Rite Aid nea
rby on Elvis Presley Boulevard, they were told.

They drove south on Elvis Presley, passing Graceland on their way to the store. “You guys know this was Elvis’s home, right?” Max said.

“Yeah,” said Rick. “I’ve been here a few times. He was good, but he ain’t no Jay-Z.”

Max assumed an old man’s voice. “You whippersnappers. No respect for your
elders!”

They pulled into the Rite Aid parking lot. Outside the store was a group of newspaper boxes. They were all empty. Rick scowled.

“Well, that sucks. I was hoping to get a paper and find out what’s going on in the world.”

“Yup,” Max said. “The irony is that normally everyone would be checking out newyorktimes.com, washingtonpost.com and other news sites to follow a huge story like this.”

“No kidding. Tmz.com was my main news source,” Scarlett added, almost mournfully.

“Yeah, that too,” Max said, being careful to not add an amused inflection to its tone. It could have had a lot of fun with that one. “Printed news has gotten a lot more scarce. Lots of papers shut down in the Internet age. That leaves, basically, television and radio now. With so few papers, they’re probably sold out all over the country.”

They went inside the Rite Aid
. As Rick went in search of a map, Tony and Scarlett looked for bandages. Medical goods were in short supply, but the shelves weren’t totally bare. They bought several boxes of large bandages -- the last ones available -- and several more of gauze, along with a large bottle of antiseptic spray.

“
The car’s going to smell like a hospital,” Scarlett said. They also picked up a backpack’s worth of junk food -- crackers, cookies, candy, energy bars -- for the trip.

Rick didn’t find any maps.
“Guess they’re going to be hard to find too, like newspapers,” he said as he joined Tony and Scarlett at the checkout. He started to swipe his debit card at the register, then noticed a strip of tape over the swiping slot.

“Cash only,” said the guy behind the counter -- his badge identified him as
“Josh”. “Credit cards, debit cards, none of it works now that the networks are dead.”

“Oh, right. Gotcha
.” Rick took his wallet out and pulled out a couple of $20s. “Hey, are there any maps or newspapers available -- maybe unopened in a box in back or something?”

“Nope
,” said Josh loudly, looking around the store. “Not since last week. Can’t keep nothing like that around anymore.” Then he gave Rick a look.

Rick nodded. “That sucks, man
.” Then he rolled his eyes at the door. Scarlett and Tony shared a look -- what was going on?

They left the store and got in the Hummer. Rick took out a bag of Fritos and a Red Bull and
got to work.

“Why aren’t we
leaving?” Tony asked. He was still nervous about Bass.

“Just a minute,” Rick said. “You’ll see why.” He opened his wallet again and took out two $100 bills.
The wallet was thick with them, Tony noticed.

In a minute, Josh came out of the store and sauntered casually to their car. Rick rolled down the window as he approached it.

“Here you go,” Rick said, handing him the bills.

Josh pulled a United States
roadmap and two newspapers -- the
Memphis Commercial Appeal
and
USA Today
-- out of a Rite Aid bag and handed them to Rick. Without speaking, he turned around and headed back into the store.

Tony gasped. “You just gave a guy $200 for a map and two newspapers. Are you crazy?”

Rick shrugged. “Hey, that’s what happens in situations like this. A black market springs up quickly.” Tony didn’t want to know how Rick seemed to have such specific knowledge about these types of things.

“Just how much money do you have?” Tony asked.

“Enough,” Rick said. “I’ve got about 18 grand left. Should be enough to get us where we’re going, and then some.”

“Holy cow,” Scarlett said. “How big was your college fund?”

“Big,” Rick said. “My parents figured they’d have to save enough for me to go to Yale or Princeton or something.” He snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”

“But Rick, you don’t need to do this for me,” Tony said, aghast at the amount Rick had already spent on the Hummer and this little stop.

“Forget it, man,” Rick said. “It worked out perfect that I did this before Max wrecked the Internet. With none of the plastic working, we’ve become a cash-only society. There’s been a huge run on the banks, I heard. Everyone trying to get money to last them until credit cards and debit cards are working again. So we’ll need dead presidents for who knows how long.”

“Rick, you’re amazing,” Scarlett said.

“Just remember to tip your driver,” Rick said. “Now, let’s check the map and figure out how to get to Maryland.”

4
1

“OK, we need to go north for a few miles, then take 240 East, which takes us to 40 East, then through Nashville, then 81 north up to Maryland, it looks like,” said Scarlett, studying the map. “Assuming I’m doing this right. I’ve never really had to read maps before.”

Out of sheer habit, Scarlett took out her iPhone to check Facebook. She’d
been doing it since the Internet went down.

“Why do I keep doing this?” she said, mostly to herself. “No one’s there. I
hate
not knowing who’s doing what!”

“So, which way do I go out of
the parking lot?” Rick asked. “‘North’ doesn’t help me much.”

“Sorry. Go right,” Scarlett said, looking at the map again.
“I think...”

Rick pulled into the road. “We’re go
ing to need gas for this trip,” he said. “I’m stopping at the next station we pass.”

The next
gas station on their side of the road turned out to be roughly a mile away: an Exxon station at the corner of Presley and Winchester Road. As they drove north through the city, Tony noticed something unusual.

“What’s with all the abandoned cars?” he said. Suddenly Rick and Scarlett realized it, too: empty cars were scattered throughout. Some were right in the middle of the road, but most were pulled off to the side, or in parking lots.
Many of the ones in lots weren’t parked side-by-side, as normal; instead they sat at angles, as if they’d simply stopped there.

“Well, this isn’t the greatest part of town,
from the looks of things.” Rick said.

“
No, Tony’s right,” Scarlett said. “Even for a bad area, this is too many cars to just be left sitting around. Was there some kind of evacuation?”

Their apprehension grew as they approached the Exxon. Rick pulled into the station and
up to a pump, then got out. There were a few cars in the parking lot, but they too were left at weird angles. Rick looked inside the store; he didn’t see anyone.

He opened the H
ummer’s gas cap and took the pump off the hook.

Then he noticed the pump was dark: n
o digital readout of the price per gallon, no advertising message urging him to get a car wash. The pump, as far as he could tell, was dead. He looked at the other pumps. All dead.

A scruffy man, about 60, came out of the store. He looked homeless, with
filthy clothes, a scraggly beard and hands that constantly clenched and unclenched. He ambled over and looked in the passenger side of the Hummer, eyeing Scarlett and Tony. He smiled creepily at Scarlett, showing off his half-dozen teeth. Then he shuffled around the other side to Rick.

“Got gas?” he said in a rough voice.

“What?” Rick said, caught off guard by the question. “No, I mean, we need gas, that’s why we’re here. Do I pay you?”

“How much?” the old man asked, eyeing the Hummer again.

Rick still didn’t get it. “How much what? Oh, how much do I need? Probably $60 worth or so. I’ve got about a half-tank, but I’m going on a long trip.”

The old man’s eyes lit up, and he smiled again, sending shivers down Rick’s back. “Half a tank, eh?” The man turned and
waved toward the store. At that signal, at least eight men came out. They looked like gang-bangers, sporting head-scarves and tattoos. Rick had no idea where they came from, since he hadn’t seen anyone inside. He was quite confident, however, that they weren’t about to fill up his car and wash his windows.

“Rick, let’s get out of here!” Scarlett said, her voice tinged with panic.

Rick didn’t need to be convinced. He started to get back in the car, but the old man was quicker to the driver’s door. He opened the door, reached inside and grabbed the keys out of the ignition. Rick grabbed at the keys and wrestled them out of the man’s hand. As Rick pulled his hand away, the old man bit it with one of his few teeth. Rick howled in pain and dropped the keys, shoving the old man away.

Rick
tried to get back in, but was pulled away by the mob that had swarmed the car. All the doors were flung open, and the men shouted and hooted as they yanked out Tony and Scarlett, dumping them on the ground. Scarlett could hear Tony cry out in pain as his injured leg hit the ground. Scarlett had enough sense to grab the backpack as the mob opened the door, and still had it with her as she crawled to Tony to check on him.

The
men jumped into the Hummer, filling it completely. The SUV roared out of the parking lot. Scarlett saw an enraged Rick running alongside his car, banging on the windows and yelling. The men laughed at him. Within 100 feet, the Hummer had left Rick behind. He picked up a rock in the road and threw it at the speeding car. Cursing, he came back to help Scarlett and Tony.

“Well, I guess that explains the abandoned cars,” Tony said as he tried to stand up. The effort made him wince, but he steadied himself on Rick’s shoulder. “I guess there’s no gas.”

Scarlett opened the
Commercial Appeal
and scanned the headlines. “Yup. It says here that gas pumps haven’t been working since the Internet went down.” She read from one story:

“Thousands of systems, including those used to manage critical industrial control equipment, traffic lights, fuel pumps, retail point-of-sale terminals and building automation
, are out. They’re connected via terminal servers, also called  network access servers, that provide an easy way to connect equipment to the Internet.”

She pointed to the story and read the words “fuel pumps” again.

“It’s amazing how much equipment is hooked up somewhere to the Internet,” Max said.

Scarlett nodded, and read from another story.

“Already, mobs have formed in some places, and are looting stores and breaking into houses. The Internet outage has deactivated alarm systems all over Memphis and the country, leaving homes and offices vulnerable to intrusion. Crime is on the rise everywhere, and all law-enforcement agencies, including the National Guard in every state, along with military forces, have been activated to help quell the growing civil unrest.”

She looked at Tony, shaking. “Tony, what are we going
to do?” she asked in a trembling voice.

Max spoke, boldly and confidently. It knew exactly the right tone. “We get to Maryland any way we can, and find those servers so I can end this.” His calm assurance helped settle everyone down.

In the meantime, they were stuck at an Exxon in southwest Memphis with no car and a thousand miles to go.