Lisa Ghost, Senior Vice President of First Bank in Virginia, with many years tenure in different banks, supplied much of the banking compliance information used in the story, plus generous cheer-leading support.
Kurt Ghost, owner of Mariposa Electric in Phoenix, Arizona became my overseer for information on electrical generation plants, grid knowledge and generator installation, diligently proofreading for errors.
While the story line had to be written as fiction, many scenes were taken from actual current events in 2017 and 2018, plus the personal information on Communications, Inc. actually happened, but in the state of Kentucky.
This novel would not have been possible without the invaluable assistance of my children and their enthusiastic encouragement. Not all authors have such a fortuitous in-house research team--one who just happens to have expertise in the needed resource fields--but I had to give birth to them to get such extraordinary help!
ALSO BY SANDRA GHOST
The Mustard Seed
(Co-authored with Chuck Mottley,
Dr. Charles M. Mottley)
Why 2K?
When the Chips Are Down, Is It a Hoax?
The Turnaround--From 0-10 To 10-0
(Co-authored with Chuck Mottley)
Wings Of Terror--The Bird Flu Pandemic
(Co-authored with Chuck Mottley)
Is It Really Just a Small World?
There Are No Coincidences!
CHAPTER ONE
The small town of Front Royal, Virginia, seemed to have just lazily sat down, propped its back against the Blue Ridge mountains and dipped its toes in the Shenandoah River. The sprawling, brick colonial buildings of Randolph Macon Academy looked down on the center of town from a hill, spreading out its wings and regal white columned porches like a protective mother hen. As the town was only 69 miles from Washington, DC, it had become a bedroom community for commuters. At five o'clock in the morning long trails of red taillights could be seen wending their way down Interstate 66 to the east, like some massive fluorescent centipede trying to climb out of the mountains.
Horace Wilson had practiced medicine in Front Royal until he retired at age 67. He was a general practitioner who had delivered many of the babies that later had gone to school with his three children. He was an excellent diagnostician as he had seen just about every fungus, germ, disease and broken bone in the book during his long career.
He invested wisely in Mutual Funds, plus blue chip stocks, and bragged that he could live lavishly in retirement, not having to rely on just social security alone, "though God knows I pumped enough into it through the years," he always added.
Sunshine kissed the mountains on this humid Sunday morning in July. A blanket of fog still lingered on top of Signal Knob Mountain, until the sun pounced on it playfully telling it to wake up. Horace padded down the cement driveway in his brown leather slippers and blue plaid bathrobe to retrieve the local Sunday newspaper from the cylindrical metal box by the road.
He was tall, slender and fit--prided himself on working out at the health club, and played golf at least twice a week. The shock of silver hair had never thinned; however, his glasses seemed to get thicker each year until now they resembled the bottom of Coke bottles.
Opening the kitchen door, he was greeted with the rich aroma of Gourmet Supreme coffee. His wife, Marianne, was already dressed for church in a soft pink flowered dress. She spread cream cheese on two bagels, set them on Wedge-wood blue stone-wear plates, and poured two cups of the fragrant coffee. Horace flopped the thick Sunday paper on the cherry trestle table in the bay window. Pulling out one ladder-back chair and settling into it, he unfolded the front page and cleaned his glasses with the paper napkin from his place setting.
"Looks like this EMP scare thing is spread all over the front page again. Just a bunch of hype."
He replaced his glasses and grunted in satisfaction. "Bunch of bull...probably just some scheme to sell more newspapers."
"EMP? EMP?" Marianne spooned sugar into her coffee. "What's that?"
"Stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse," he fairly snorted the words. "If you'd read a newspaper once in awhile, instead of burying your nose between the pages of your Bible all the time, you'd know," he snapped.
A quick embarrassed flush painted Marianne's high cheek bones. A wrinkle-free complexion with the purity of fine Dresden china, large blue eyes and trim figure belied the fact that Marianne was now sixty-five years old. She had been a nurse when she and Horace had first met and then married. When the first baby arrived, a son they had named Jesse, Marianne quit nursing--became a full time homemaker and subsequently they had another son, Lance, and daughter Scarlett. She was accustomed to having her Christianity belittled by her husband, but it still embarrassed her, especially when he did it front of others.
She sipped her coffee, then sighed. "Well, why don't they just say its name instead of giving it some...some code name?"
Horace ignored her words.
"Everything seems so difficult now." She took another sip of coffee and looked out the diamond panes of the bay window. Cobalt blue pots of lavender and pink African violets splashed nosegays of color as they marched across the tiled window sill. "'AIDS' is now a disease--it used to be 'aids' were helpers in the principal's office at school. 'CD's' used to be 'certificates of deposit'. Now they're small round discs with music crammed on them, or things you pop into some mysterious drawer in a computer. Who can keep up with it?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Horace raised his head from the paper. "And Madonna used to be a virgin." He chuckled at his own joke.
"So what is this...this EMP...whatever?"
He pushed aside the newspaper disgusted with it anyway. "They're saying that nut job Dictator of North Korea claims he's gonna' shoot a nuclear missile over the US and knock out all our electric power. Kill the computers."
"Well, good. We got along without computers before, didn't we?"
"Marianne, that statement just shows your stupidity. "The words visibly stung her expression.
"The whole stinkin' world is run by computers now. The grocery stores check you out by computer--they recognize the price by the bar code. The bank keeps our records of deposit and withdrawals by computer. Planes fly by computer...our power... telephone lines...everything!" He waved a hand impatiently.
"I see," her tone was meek. "So, why's it such a big deal. I still don't understand." She knew she risked another tongue lashing, but she really wanted to know.
Horace pronounced each word slowly, condescendingly, as though he were talking with a five year old. I truly don't think this can happen, but think about living without power, water, sewers, banking, planes, telephones...etcetera, etcetera, etcetera." He drew out the last words, sounding like a character in the movie "The King and I". Suddenly his mood seemed to shift when he saw Marianne's eyes widen in obvious fear. "Now don't you worry, honey, as I said, it's all just horse pucky. They're going to beef up the grid, take care of this. They'll fix it."
That same morning, the sun rose slowly over the mountains of the Skyline Drive which started its journey south from Front Royal. Drops of dew sparkled in the trees with the first