to go get ready to go. We’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes if you change your mind.”
Katie stepped forward and hugged each of them, wishing them luck, then walked them to the front door and securely bolted it when they exited. With a sigh of relief she went to the garage and started carrying armloads of canned goods into the house. She worked for some time, sorting out the food she’d looted from the grocery store.
Two cases of bottled water were brought into the house, but she left four more in the truck. She also left a couple of week’s worth of food, not wanting to contemplate having to make a quick departure, but knowing she needed to be prepared. Food distributed between the house and the truck, she went back to the gun safe and pulled the door open.
Already knowing which rifle she wanted, Katie grabbed it out of the safe, slapped in a loaded magazine and pulled the charging handle to put a round into the chamber. She rummaged in a closet until she found a larger pack, stuffing it full of loaded magazines. Unable to think of anything else to do she returned to the TV, settling on the sofa with the rifle lying across her lap.
The news was once again playing a loop of the drone footage of the devastation in New York. She cared about New York, cared about the millions of people who were dead or dying, but she wanted them to switch back to the coverage of Atlanta. She had only been watching for a couple of minutes when the screen went blank, then displayed the banner for the Emergency Broadcast System accompanied by a high pitched, dual tone alert.
Grabbing the remote, Katie changed the channel but all she could find was the same EBS alert. With rising panic she snatched up her iPad to check for news of anything on social media, but the Internet connection was down. She was cut off from any source of information.
4
The morning after the attacks, TV and radio broadcasts hadn’t come back on and Katie continued to have no luck in reaching John or any of her friends or family on the satellite phone. She even dug out some numbers from her past and dialed former friends and colleagues that she was reasonably sure were still with the CIA. None of those calls went through either. Buried deep in her jewelry box was a scrap of paper with an international phone number written on it in faded ink.
Taking a deep breath she punched the number in so it was held in memory then replaced the scrap of paper and walked out by the pool to connect with a satellite. When the phone showed it had signal she pressed the SEND button and held it to her ear. There were a couple of clicks then after what felt like a long time she heard a ring. On the sixth ring the call connected, but no one said anything.
“Steve?” She asked tentatively. There was silence for a moment, then a suspicious male voice.
“Who is this?”
“Thank God! It’s Katie,” she answered, nervous yet relieved to actually reach another person. There was silence on the other end of the phone; just a faint hiss was all that let her know the connection was still open.
“Are you there?” Katie asked after the quiet became unbearable.
Steve Johnson had been a fellow case officer at the CIA, and Katie’s former fiancé. They’d been engaged for less than a month when she met John. She and John had fallen in love at first sight, and there hadn’t been any going back. She’d broken it off with Steve but he hadn’t handled it well. Not that she could blame him. Even after all these years she still felt bad about it, but her heart hadn’t given her a choice.
“I’m here. Just surprised to hear from you.” His voice was sullen, but at least he hadn’t hung up on her. “Are you OK? Where are you?”
“I’m fine. Safe for the moment. I’m at home in Arizona. Are you still with… uhm, our former employer?”
“Our former employer,” he laughed. “Yes, and you can say it. C fucking IA. I’m still assigned to a surveillance post in Western Australia. Keeping an eye on this part of the world, but I don’t think that matters much any more.”
Katie gripped the phone tighter and took a deep breath. What had happened to Steve? He had always been a happy