Last Light (13 page)

Deni didn’t much like the idea of hanging out with high school friends. After four years at an eastern college she was beyond that. She’d changed, and didn’t want her old friends thinking she hadn’t.

She lifted her chin. “I hope I won’t be here long. I’m starting a job at an NBC affiliate in Washington as soon as I can get out of here.”

Chris looked suitably impressed. “A TV job! Wow. That’s perfect for you. I always thought you’d be a star.”

Deni laughed in spite of herself. “Well, let’s hope that I can get there before they give up on me. My fiancé is there, and he’s got to be worried sick about me.”

There. She’d gotten in the engagement
and
the television job in one fell swoop. She lifted her left hand to scratch her face, hoping Chris would notice the ring. But she didn’t.

“Isn’t all this crazy?” Chris’s voice lowered to a whisper. “And did you hear about the murders?”

“I’m the one who found them.” Deni’s gut knotted with the words, but a sense of pride welled up in her, as if that elevated her somehow.

“You did? Oh, my gosh, Deni. Was it as bad as they said?”

“Worse.”

“Do they know who did it?”

Deni shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s so creepy,” Chris whispered, looking around. “I don’t think many of us are going to sleep tonight.”

Deni glanced across the lawn and saw her friend Mark sitting on the pier. He stared down into the water, still clearly shocked at what he’d seen earlier.

“Man, I’d kill for a bath.” Chris lifted her hair off of her neck. “I plan to make friends with someone who has a pool tonight. You guys haven’t had one put in in the last few years, have you?”

Deni shook her thoughts from the murders. “No. My mom hates cleaning them. All these years I’ve told her we need a pool. Now she wishes we had one.”

“Well, I’ll let you know if someone invites me to swim.”

The sun was laser sharp and glaring as it made its final blast of heat before setting. “I saw Katie Morris the other day,” Chris said. “She’s working at Target.”

“Did she graduate?”

“No, she said she’s got another whole year. She was a partier, you know, and only came out with about nine hours every semester. Her parents stopped paying for it, so now she’s having to work to put herself through.”

Deni had known many students like that in college, and had even been like that herself for a while. Then it had occurred to her that she had ambitions and goals, and she couldn’t meet them if she was up all night drinking and partying. Finally, she’d decided to focus her energies on getting a good job when she got out. That meant getting good grades. It was those grades that had impressed the station that hired her. Her future looked so bright she’d need sunglasses to navigate her way through it.

Someone yelled for their attention, and the milling people began to take their seats.

“If we could go ahead and get started . . .”

Her own father called the meeting to attention. That amused her. “What is he doing?”

“Looks like he’s taking charge,” Chris said. “Why is that funny?”

“Because he’s never been to a homeowner’s meeting in his life. He was always afraid he’d get elected to something.”

As the group settled down, he continued to stand at the front, as if planning to address the crowd. Brad, their next-door neighbor, father to Jeremy and Drew, stood with him. It looked like they were in this together.

Her dad cleared his throat. “Stella Huckabee just told me that her husband, Hank, who’s this year’s Homeowner’s Association president, is in Washington. Needless to say, he hasn’t been able to make it home. Randall Abernathy was the vice president . . .”

Deni caught her breath. Abernathy—the murdered husband of Beth’s teacher.

Her dad cleared his throat again. “Anyway, in the absence of a leader, I offered to open the meeting tonight. I know everybody has a lot of questions about the murders and the outage in general, so maybe we can spend a little while here just exchanging information. My neighbor Brad Caldwell is here to help.”

Brad offered a wave. “Before we start talking about the murders, I wanted us to share any hard facts we might have about the outage.”

“I don’t have any facts,” a man said, “but I didn’t get home until an hour ago. I was in Atlanta when the power went out, and had to ride home on a bike. I can tell you that things are just as crazy there as they are here.”

That was the last thing Deni wanted to hear.

“Atlanta?” Her dad sounded stunned. “The power is out there, too?”

“That’s right. Didn’t see any sign of anything moving at any of the towns I went through. Cars stalled all along the highways and interstates, people walking around with no information whatsoever about what happened. No communication working at all.”

Deni’s heart sank, and she looked at her father. Disappointment tugged at his face.

A woman stood. “When that power outage happened in New York a couple of years ago, they started getting power back on by the next day. How come nothing’s working? Not the slightest thing?”

“Yeah, and why is our water out?” a man asked. “What’s water got to do with electricity?”

Doug tried to answer. “The water gets to us via an electric pump, and the treatment plants work on electricity. But this is clearly a bigger problem than just electricity. A power outage wouldn’t affect our cars and watches. I even have a brand-new, never-used generator that won’t work. But if everyone will listen, Brad has an idea what might be going on.”

Brad raised his hands to quiet the growing chatter. His voice, trained to get the attention of his jurors, boomed over the crowd. “I’ve been racking my brain all day trying to figure out what our cars, watches, planes, and even our newer model generators all have in common. And the one thing I can come up with is semiconductors.”

“What’s a semiconductor?” someone shouted from the crowd.

“It’s a material that conducts electricity less than a conductor, like metal, and more than an insulator, like rubber. You’ve heard of chips—silicon chips, computer chips . . . Well, they’re all made of flakes of silicon, and they’re in almost everything. Since this outage isn’t just electricity-related but is affecting cars and planes and who-knows-what all else, that must be what’s damaged.”

Deni couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “But why? What happened to them?”

Brad shrugged. “Sounds like an EMP to me. And whatever radiation is causing it is still in the atmosphere. Even brand-new equipment is dying the minute it’s turned on.”

“Then how long before it passes?”

Brad shook his head and looked at Doug. Finally, her father spoke. “Semiconductors are fragile. If they’ve been damaged, it’s probably irreversible.”

There was a collective moan around the group. Amber Rowe, sitting with two of her children in a stroller and the other on her lap, asked, “What does that mean?”

Doug looked as if he hated to spell it out. “It’s not like a power outage where the electric company repairs its lines and the lights come back on. This is much more severe.”

Deni couldn’t breathe. The news couldn’t have been worse if he’d told them they were at war! Her eyes widened. Maybe they were. What a way to defeat the country. Knock out their technology and leave them helpless. No one even had to die.

They’d just
wish
they were dead.

Deni glanced back at Amber and saw that she was crying. She wasn’t the only one.

“Then we won’t make it!” a woman yelled. “We don’t have enough food to last indefinitely. Nothing’s open, even the banks. What are we going to do?”

“We’ll have to share with each other,” Doug said. “Help those who need help.”

“With what?” someone shouted out.

“With whatever we might have extra.”

Ralph Whitson, who’d run for county supervisor last year, stood up. “Why should we provide for families who weren’t prepared? I knew something like this might happen one day. I’ve been stockpiling stuff since Y2K, and I have no intention of sharing it. Not my fault if others were stupid.”

Brad fixed the man with a hard look. “No one knew
this
could happen. And it’s certainly up to you. You don’t have to share. We would just like it if each of you would consider it. We’re gonna need to pitch in as a neighborhood to help everyone through this. This outage is going to bring a lot of challenges.”

“Yeah, like murder.” A retired man from the back of the group came forward to be heard. “Doug, what can you tell us about the killings? Was it a robbery, or does it look like some other motive?”

“Definitely a robbery,” Doug said. “They took their television and jewelry and silver and just about everything they could carry out of that house without backing a truck up to it. Looks like the outage was just an opportunity. The sheriff thinks it might be the same thieves responsible for the other two break-ins this month. A lot of people weren’t home last night. Maybe the crooks thought the Abernathys weren’t home, then killed them when they surprised them.”

“What are the cops doing to find the killer?” an old man asked.

“They’ve been talking to neighbors. Some of you probably got interviewed today. A lot was going on last night, with people trying to get home and all, but if any of you happened to see someone carrying a television or something, you might get in touch with the sheriff’s department. We all have to defend ourselves. Maybe it would benefit us to create some kind of neighborhood watch program.”

Stella Huckabee got up. “So you think we need to set up guards in the neighborhood?”

Brad nodded. “Wouldn’t hurt. We don’t know for sure whether we’re at war or not. But we do know there’s an enemy among us.”

“Whoever the enemy is,” Doug said, “we could have some kind of neighborhood watch of men willing to patrol our streets during the night, to make sure people aren’t roaming around creating mischief. After the meeting, Brad would like to meet with all the men who could help with this. And I urge you to not let your guard down. It’s hot in our houses, and we want to sleep with windows and doors open to get the air circulating. But that might not be the best move.”

Deni’s eyes strayed back to Amber Rowe. She’d never seen a more helpless look on anyone’s face. This wasn’t going to help her rattled neighbor sleep tonight.

“If the sheriff catches the killer, can he even lock him up?” someone asked.

“Yes. The locks on the jail still work.”

Deni’s mind reeled as she listened to the rumblings around her about who the killers were. Some suggested it was the reclusive Mr. Miller, who lived in the run-down house that had brought down the value of the neighboring property. Others suggested it was a family rumored to be drug dealers, since a steady stream of seedy characters always came and went from that house. Others named a family of men. The mother had died a few years earlier of cancer, and the boys had run wild ever since, following in their father’s immoral footsteps.

Everyone had a theory.

Deni figured she’d just steer clear of all of the suspects.

As her eyes swept over the crowd, she shivered despite the heat. Any one of them could be the killer.

Just as any of them could be the next victim.

seventeen

Doug was in over his head. The crowd was growing hostile, as if he alone were responsible for the outage and the murders.

Merilee Garrison, the golf pro at the local country club, looked downright annoyed. “Doug, how long are we looking at here? Days? Weeks? Months?”

“I wish I knew,” Doug said. “I think I can safely say it won’t be just days. I could be wrong. Maybe the power companies have some alternative way of getting power to us, without all their computers and electronics, but I doubt it.”

An older man raised his hand. Doug had seen him many times before working in his yard, but he didn’t know the man’s name. “I’m Max Keegan,” he said in a phlegmy voice. “Doris and I do a little gardening in our spare time.”

Oh, yes, Doug remembered the brouhaha that had occurred sometime last year, when the Keegan’s neighbors complained about them turning much of their backyard into a vegetable garden. They’d sued to get them to put up a privacy fence so they wouldn’t have to look at it. Unless Doug had missed the resolution, it was still in litigation.

“We have a good bit of food canned and put away. We can share some okra, squash, tomatoes, butter beans, and peas. If we could get some of the ladies to help us, we could get more done and have a good amount to spare.”