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Authors: Scott B. Williams

The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid (3 page)

BOOK: The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid
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Despite all the caffeine, Artie was exhausted from being awake and sick for so long, so when Larry told him he didn’t need any help steering, he stretched out on the cockpit seat and slept through the morning. When he woke shortly after noon he felt even better, and the nausea still had not returned. As he stretched his arms and stood against the cabin bulkhead, he asked Larry if they were still making good progress and glanced at the GPS to see if it had started working again.
“I guess not, huh? You decided to just turn it off?”
“No,” Larry said. “It looks like we’ve got an even bigger problem than the lack of satellite reception. The whole chartplotter unit just went off as if it had been powered down about two hours ago. I can’t get it to do anything when I push the power button. The VHF radio did the same thing. Without the autopilot to hold course, I didn’t want to go below and check the 12-volt circuit panel, but if you’ll take it a minute, I’ll go do that now.”
Artie got another cold Coke out of the ice box and moved into position behind the helm. Larry disappeared down the companionway steps and reappeared five minutes later.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, Doc. The VHF is dead as a doornail. The stereo is dead. The single-sideband radio receiver is dead. Even my personal handheld GPS receiver that was turned off and stuck in the locker under my bunk is dead. Not only is the autopilot disabled because it can’t communicate with the chartplotter, but the unit itself won’t even power on. I tried to power up my laptop and it won’t come on either; ditto for my cell phone. But we still have ship’s power. The batteries are apparently still working, and the LED cabin lights still come on, but there’s nothing to that but a simple 12-volt circuit and a single switch from the breaker panel. It’s apparently everything with sensitive electronic circuitry that’s shut down.”
“What could have caused that to happen? That stuff didn’t shut down right after I saw the lights last night. It was just the signals that were lost. Did you see anything else this morning?”
“No,” Larry said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It was daylight and you can see how bright the sun is. If whatever caused those lights to appear last night had happened in the daylight, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have seen them at all. For all we know, this could have been an even stronger second surge.”
Artie’s Blackberry was still in the pocket of his foul-weather jacket that was now bunched in a corner of the cockpit. He was reaching for it as Larry pondered the cause of the strange shutdowns. He took it out of the Ziploc and pressed the power button. It normally took a couple of seconds before it would light up when it had been turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.
“What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.
“I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”
“I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”
“In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”
“I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”
“It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”
“What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”
“I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”
“Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”
“Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”
“I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”
Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear
Ibis
to the north-northwest along the rhumb line that Larry plotted on the chart. He said they were making good progress and should arrive as predicted shortly after daylight the next morning. The afternoon wore slowly on under the tropical sun as the two brothers separately pondered reaching land again and finding out the source of the strange electrical pulse.
They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was otherwise devoid of traffic and they saw nothing but the occasional breaching dolphin until nearly sunset, when Artie noticed several objects floating in the waves several hundred yards ahead, and just slightly east of their course. He assumed it was floating garbage or debris of some sort until they sailed closer and saw how much of it there was. Many of the floating objects were shiny, reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. Pointing it out to Larry, Artie asked what he thought it could be.
Larry stepped up to the cabin roof and leaned against the mast to get a better view through his binoculars. After a few seconds he told Artie to steer for the debris.
“What is it?” Artie asked, “Can you tell?”
“Some kind of wreckage. I can’t be sure, but maybe parts of a boat—or an airplane. We’d better check it out. There could be someone in the water. Head up a bit so I can ease the sheets. I want to slow down and be ready to heave to if we see anyone.”
As they closed the gap, it became obvious what the floating objects were. “Oh my God, it
was
a plane,” Artie said, astonished, looking at a clearly recognizable wing tip floating, half awash, dead ahead of the schooner. He steered past it as Larry scanned the water for any sign of survivors.
“Looks like it was a small private jet, maybe a corporate aircraft of some type…. Definitely not a commercial airliner,” Larry said as they passed more recognizable pieces of fuselage and a tail section.
“You think it broke up like this when it hit the water, or could it have exploded first in the air?”
“Hard to say, but since there’s more than one piece here in the same place, it probably hit the water first. A lot of the parts may have sunk.”
“Maybe whoever was on it was already rescued,” Artie said hopefully, as they both scanned every wave for any sign of life, half-expecting to see the bobbing heads and waving hands of life-jacket-wearing survivors any minute now. “How long ago do you think this happened?”
“My guess is not all that long, considering that these pieces are still floating together. It wouldn’t take but a few hours with this much wind to scatter them miles apart. I’ll bet it happened when all the electronics shut down this morning.”
“You mean that you think that power surge or pulse or whatever it was that shut down our electronics could have also caused the plane to crash?”
“Absolutely. It might not have affected an older prop plane with manual controls, but this was obviously a late-model, high-tech jet. Aircraft like this have so many computer-operated controls and instruments that a total loss of on-board systems would have doomed it, no matter how good the pilot was.”
Larry grabbed the helm as he was talking and brought the bow of the small schooner through the wind to change tacks. “We had better crisscross through the area a few times and look carefully. If this plane crashed because of the pulse, no one has been here to look for survivors, and no one likely will, at least any time soon. They would not have been able to make a radio call before they went down, and anyway, air traffic control on the islands may be down too.”
Artie was stunned at the implications of what his brother had just said. “What about commercial airliners? Would they crash too if they were close enough to the source of the pulse to be affected?”
“Yes,” Larry said. “Let’s hope this thing was just local, but if not, I’d hate to think of how many jets would have been flying just in and out of the island airports in the area. St. Thomas is especially busy, with all the tourists connecting to the cruise ships there. You know, come to think of it, I haven’t heard any jets overhead at all today, or seen any vapor trails. There are usually so many you don’t give ’em any thought, but I
know
I haven’t seen any.”
Artie climbed to the cabin top and began desperately scanning the waves for any sign of life among the floating wreckage. “You’d think we would see them if they were still here, even if they were dead. Wouldn’t the bodies float for a while?”
“Maybe, maybe not. The waves could have carried the wreckage at a faster speed than floating bodies. But from the looks of these pieces and parts, I honestly don’t see how anyone could have survived the impact. Then there are plenty of sharks in these waters too. You know that from the ones we’ve already seen.”
Artie shuddered at the thought of being in the water for a long time without a boat. He knew Larry was right. He thought that if he had been in that situation, he would have preferred to have died in the crash rather than be eaten alive later.
“I know in some of the big airliner crashes over water they’ve picked up survivors who had been more than a day in the water,” Larry said, “but this jet might have gone straight down with an impact no one could have survived. That, and the fact that there was probably only a pilot and perhaps a copilot and two or three passengers on board makes it even less likely we would find them even if they were still afloat.”
Larry tacked the schooner twice more and made a couple of passes upwind of the debris, just in case any swimmers or floating bodies were drifting at a slower pace than the remains of the aircraft. They both scanned the rolling seas on both sides of the boat continuously as they sailed, but saw nothing else, and soon the sun was rapidly sinking to the horizon, taking with it the last chance of seeing anything they hadn’t already spotted.
“We may as well get back on course to St. Thomas,” Larry said. “Maybe we can find the answers there.”
“It worries me what we
will
find out,” Artie said. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of. And I certainly never expected to sail through a plane crash site when I came down here for a tropical vacation. This delivery trip is turning out to be more of an adventure than I had bargained for.”
“You and me both, Doc. All we can do at this point is carry on and get to the anchorage. I don’t think the radio, the GPS, or anything else is going to suddenly start working again, so we won’t get our answers until we get there.” Larry went below and grabbed his logbook and paper charts to work out the approximate position of the crash site, and entered it in the log so they could report it to the authorities when they reached the island. He then hauled in the sheets as Artie steered back on course, and soon the schooner was back up to hull speed, carrying them northeast into the growing darkness as the short tropical twilight faded to night.
Without the formerly familiar glow of the GPS in the cockpit, Artie’s gaze was fixed on the big steering compass. At least its backlight still worked, as it was a simple 12-volt bulb wired through a switch to the vessel’s storage batteries. Larry had said the batteries would continue to provide ample power for a few lights, including the running lights and interior cabin lights, until they reached the anchorage. They couldn’t recharge them because the engineless schooner had no alternator, and the charge controllers and voltage regulators that connected the batteries to the large solar panels mounted on the stern rail had been taken out by the pulse. Larry wished that the owner had allowed the builder to install a small auxiliary diesel engine, but he had stubbornly insisted on keeping
Ibis
a true sailing ship.
Artie reflected on what his brother had said earlier that day about how men had been crossing oceans in small boats without the benefit of electronics for centuries, and how they were lucky they were on a seaworthy sailing vessel instead of some posh motor-yacht with intricate systems dependent upon technology. The schooner worked now just as her predecessors had, and as long as the trade winds blew, they could depend on her to carry them to their destination. The sight of the plane crash had really unsettled Artie, though, and he longed to be able to contact Casey to make sure she was okay, and to tell her that he was. He knew he had to somehow maintain his patience, but as his four-hour watch dragged by, he had no doubt it was going to be a long night.
BOOK: The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid
10.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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