Rockfall (Tertiary Effects Book 1) by William Allen

Author:William Allen [Allen, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Malleus Publishing
Published: 2019-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Hey, the internet is back up,” Nikki announced as soon as I hit the back door. She was in the kitchen, working over a large pot of something simmering on the stove.

“Great, I was wanting to check my Facebook account,” I shot back, giving my sister a stupid, cross-eyed grin.

“Okay, not all of it is back up,” she corrected, setting aside the large stainless-steel ladle in her hand. “I guess I should say some sites are back up. No Facebook, or Twitter, though. YouTube is back, and so are some of the subscription entertainment sites. Amazon is up, but only delivering electronic media at this time.”

“Huh,” I grunted, thinking on what Nikki said as I approached the stove. “Entertainment sites, you said. What are you using to navigate?”

“That’s kind of weird, too,” Nikki continued. “If you go to Google, or Bing, or any of the others, you get redirected to something called Netfeed. Not as user-friendly, but it gets the job done.”

“That’s interesting, and scary, too. Dollars to donuts, that Netfeed is a government-sponsored search engine of some sort. Brought online when the others failed to bounce back. Uh, I would suggest being very circumspect in what you search for, Nikki.”

“Duh,” Nikki replied, sounding like her eight-year-old son, Hunter, when she said it. “You don’t have to tell me Big Brother is watching. Hell, I had CNN on all day, and not a peep about the fighting in San Antonio. Or anywhere else, except in passing.” Nikki glanced around the kitchen and lowered her voice before she continued.

“I think the president is working himself up to declare Martial Law over the entire country, Bryan.”

“Don’t you mean Marshall law,” I quipped, then saw Nikki’s confused expression and apologized.

“Sorry, I just see it misspelled so often I want to pull my hair out sometimes.”

“Looks like you’ve been doing it for a while,” Nikki shot back and I laughed. I wasn’t the least bit sensitive about my thinning hair. I was just proud I could still wear the same size jeans I did in high school.

“So what’s for dinner? And where are the littles?”

“I decided we could all use a little chicken soup, and you gotta quite calling them that. Gonna give Hunter a complex.”

I laughed again. Hunter was probably going to be taller than me by the time he was grown, and Rachel was already over five feet tall at only eleven.

“They okay? About what happened on the way?”

Nikki stepped back from the stove and gave me a hesitant smile. She was the youngest of the three of us, and I always thought she was the toughest. Today, she looked uncharacteristically fragile, and I resisted the urge to give her a hug.

“I don’t know,” she settled for saying, and the way her shoulders slumped told me she wasn’t okay either.

“Want to talk about it? Remember, I am your attorney, so anything we discuss will be privileged.” That wasn’t exactly how it worked, but close enough.

Nikki turned back to the stove, turned off the heat and led me over to the kitchen table.

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