My heart was speeding, and I felt slightly clammy all of a sudden, despite the cold weather. Mass fires? No gas stations open? Across multiple state lines that we knew about?

“Why no gas?” Emily asked, turning back to the sheriff. “If most vehicles aren’t working at all, then why did gas run out so quickly?”

“They can’t pump without electricity,” I said, turning my gaze back on the sheriff. “So, this outage stretches east at least as far as Pennsylvania, but what about in other directions?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t had a lot of time to go out to the highway and I don’t feel comfortable being gone for long. My boy broke his arm right after the lights went out—tripped down the damn stairs. There’s a hospital twenty miles from here, but even their backup generator is out of commission. They managed to find a couple of working vehicles and moved their critical patients to a hospital a few hours away with a generator that’s running. That one will be operational as long as they can acquire gas, but only for critical needs. Even so, it’s a total catastrophe there too, from reports I’ve gotten.”

Christ. Who was making the determination about who was critical and who was not? I didn’t even want to think about what was going on in a hospital after days without any electricity whatsoever. How many had already died? “There are no medical personnel in town who could help your son?” I asked.

“They’re at the hospital. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation there. Not only do they have the regular patients, many of whom are dependent on machines, to deal with, but there were burn victims from the fires that broke out, and some serious injuries from falling infrastructure. From what I’ve been told by those who’ve tried to seek help and been turned away, staff is being asked to sleep there for now and take shifts. So medical professionals who live in town haven’t been home in days. And unfortunately, that leaves anyone contending with what’s considered a minor injury out in the cold, literally and figuratively. I’m hoping that changes in the days ahead, but for now…” He sighed. “Anyway, we’ve got my boy in a sling, but he’s in pain and all we can do is dose him up on Tylenol for now.”

“Shit,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Charlie swore, picking his phone up from the ground. It appeared mostly undamaged. “You’re telling me there’s no form of communication in the entire world?”

Apparently, the pacing and muttering hadn’t helped much.