The Grid Goes Black (Super Pulse Book 1) by Dave Conifer

Author:Dave Conifer [Conifer, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-09-23T23:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Thanks to the August heat, which intensified the horrible stench of the neighborhood, life in Crestview got a little uglier over the next few weeks. Most Crestview residents were used to packing up the minivan and hanging out at the Jersey Shore for relief from the heat and humidity during this part of the year. When they weren’t doing that they were sealed into their houses, relishing their air conditioning.

Not this summer. With dwindling food and water supplies and no power, not to mention the obvious lack of motorized transportation, just about everybody was grumpy, exhausted, and scared. And Nick was right there with them.

~~~

One afternoon, after catching a glimpse of Matt tinkering with his water purification gear, Nick thought of a solution to Matt’s two toughest problems. One move could eliminate dependence on a foul water source and at the same time minimize the difficulty of transporting water and firewood. It all went back to what he’d seen the night that he’d walked over to Nate Irby’s to retrieve his grill. It might be a way forward, and it was time to act on it.

~~~

With sleep so hard to come by in the heat, Nick had maintained his habit of rising early, and usually took a long walk in the cool of dawn. It was good to get out of the house, and it helped him keep abreast of what was happening. The neighborhood was deteriorating fast. Lawns were un-mowed and gardens were drying up. There was more trash every day, and it was everywhere. Besides the debris that blew around every time a breeze kicked it up, a lot was piling up at the curbs in orderly but growing mounds, apparently placed there by residents who had faith that order would soon be restored and trash pickups would resume.

The worst blight on the suburban neighborhood, however, was still the raw sewage that could be smelled and sometimes even seen. Nick saw a few makeshift outhouses that had been slapped together, and even a few commercial grade porta-johns here and there. For the most part, however, it appeared that residents were resigned to simply dumping their waste in the streets. It was the easy way out. If nothing else, he fumed, they could dig a hole and bury it. But physical labor wasn’t something that many of his neighbors were fit enough for, so he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for that.

Something else he noticed more and more as the days passed was the presence of weapons, and a growing lack of effort to be discreet about them. That was no surprise either, after some of the violence he’d witnessed since the lights went out. During his walks he found himself nodding to his armed neighbors at their posts, usually on the front porch or hanging out of second-floor windows. He shuddered every time he imagined himself in the crosshairs of an unseen rifle scope. That was just another reason not to complain about what anybody was doing with their sewage.

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