CyberStorm Part 22

He had a good point.

Vince nodded. "You can't protect freedom by giving it away."

"Exactly," said Rory, sitting back down.

"And what does all that have to do with what's happening?" asked Tony.

Rory looked at him. "n.o.body gets upset when they read that the Chinese invaded our electric grid because they a.s.sume that someone is taking care of it, but that's not the case. Freedom needs to be protected every day, starting with a responsibility to protect our own personal freedom in the cyber world. Stop doing that, and bit by bit, we're losing the freedoms our forefathers fought to protect."

Just then the music stopped and a voice came over the main sound system, "The sight is unbelievable, I don't even know how to describe it-"

"Are you boys playing nice?" said Susie, holding Ellarose in her arms. Susie had snuck up behind Chuck during our animated discussion.

"We're just having a little chat," I replied.

Chuck looked up and reached around Susie's waist, leaning in to kiss Ellarose.

"Come sit with us," said Susie to me and Chuck. "We have the countdown on the radio."

"-thousands of people are standing in the snow, holding candles, lanterns, anything they can find-"

Getting up, I frowned.

"From where?"

She smiled.

"Times Square, of course."

Picking up my drink, I crossed over to the couches and squeezed myself in beside Lauren, picking Luke up and sitting him on my lap.

"For the first time in over a hundred years, ever since Times Square was named Times Square," continued the announcer, "it is dark on New Year's, but while the neon signs may be dimmed, the light is still burning brightly in the hearts of New Yorkers. People are appearing out of the darkness everywhere-"

Spellbound, the entire room went quiet, and everyone stopped and stared at the sound system. Outside the windows, big snowflakes appeared out of the blackness, illuminated briefly by the light spilling out from our sanctuary, and then fell away, disappearing again into the night.

"-the official celebration had been canceled, and authorities had warned against a gathering, but people are still coming together. A makeshift structure has been erected in the middle of the snow, a projection screen and generators-"

"Remember this moment," I whispered to Luke.

"With one minute to midnight, the crowd has joined together in a spontaneous rendition of our national anthem. I'm going to try and position my microphone-"

We could already hear it, beyond the noise and the static, the unmistakable sound of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Everyone was caught up in the emotion. It was our anthem, from another moment that this country was under siege, another time it was bent but not broken. The words stretched through time, connecting us with the past and the future at the same time.

"-the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

And then the sounds of clapping and cheering. "Ten...nine...eight..."

"I love you, Luke," I said, squeezing and kissing him. Lauren kissed him too. "And I love you, Lauren."

I kissed her, and she kissed me back.

"...two...one...Happy New Year!"

The room erupted with the sound of noisemakers and merrymaking, everyone getting up to give hugs and kisses.

"Hey," someone shouted, "look over there!"

I was busy giving Ellarose a kiss when Chuck tapped me on the shoulder. People were crowding at the window at the far end of the apartment. Vince was over there waving at us.

"The lights are on!" he yelled, pointing out the window.

Where before there had been only dark, the falling snowflakes on the other side of the window were now lit from behind with a soft glow coming from outside. Picking up Luke, I walked over.

It wasn't just a lamp or streetlight, but an illumination that lit the entire street and building facing us. From this angle, between the buildings, we couldn't see the lights, just their flickering reflection. Looking up, I saw that even the sky was lit up.

The entire next block must have power, just like they promised.

"Come on!" yelled Chuck. "Let's get downstairs and have a look!"

"I'll stay here with the kids," said Lauren. "You go and look."

Gripping her tightly, I kissed her again.

"No, come on, I want Luke to see this!"

In a mad rush fueled by the alcohol in our systems, everyone in the room searched for something to put on. It wasn't that cold out, so I grabbed what I could find, taking care to bundle Luke up, and then clambered down the stairs with everyone else. In the lobby, the front door was too jammed up with snow, so we began squeezing, one by one, out through the back door and onto Twenty-Fourth Street.

Luke was confused but smiling at all the action.

Carefully, with my headlamp in one hand, I picked my way to the center of Twenty-Fourth. The path there was packed down and rough, and in the semidarkness I took my time, watching my footsteps, holding onto Luke. Chuck and Tony were right ahead of me, with Vince following behind. The light was spilling onto Ninth Avenue ahead of us, and a crowd was already in the street, staring down toward Twenty-Third Street.

It began snowing harder, and the wind was picking up. Finally, rounding the corner, I pushed past Chuck and into an open spot and looked up, expecting to see street lights, neon signs.

I was greeted by smoke and flames.

The high-rise on the corner of Twenty-Third and Ninth was ablaze. Luke looked up, his small face reflecting the flames. Seeing the fire, he smiled and pointed, just as someone jumped through the smoke from a top-floor window, sailing silently through the air and hitting the snow below with a sickening thud.

The crowds backed away, and then two people ran to try and help the person who'd jumped. Lauren was behind us, and I looked back at her as she walked toward us, still in the darkness. She was smiling, not seeing what I was seeing, but when she saw my face she knew something was terribly wrong.

I hopped quickly back through the snow toward her, grabbing Vince.

"Can you go upstairs with Lauren, take Luke back up?"

Looking up in horror, Lauren finally saw the flames. I turned her away and looked straight into her eyes.

"Go back inside, baby, please go back inside with Luke." I handed him to her.

It wasn't just one building.

Other buildings on the block had already caught fire. Black smoke was billowing upwards into the swirling white snow, an ominous cloud lit by the inferno that fed it. Thousands of people stood huddled together in the streets, stretching off into the distance as far as the eye could see, mesmerized by the blaze.

No sirens, no noise at all except the roar and crackle of the fire fighting off the cold and snow. New York was freezing and burning at the same time.

Day 10 New Year's Day January 1.

"TRY NOT TO MOVE," I said softly. The man on the mattress groaned and looked up at me. His face was badly burned. "We're going to get help."

He nodded, closing his eyes and grimacing.

We'd turned the lobby of our building into a makeshift infirmary by dragging some mattresses down from the empty apartments and laying them on the floor. Pam was running the show with a doctor and some EMTs from neighboring buildings.

The acrid stench of smoke and fire mixed with the smells of body odor and fetid, open wounds. We'd brought a kerosene heater down into the lobby, but we were running low on kerosene so had started burning diesel in it. It didn't burn clean, which added the stink of soot and petroleum to the air.

We wedged the back door open to ventilate the smell, and at least it had warmed up outside. It was above freezing for the first time in a week, and the snow had finally stopped. The sun was shining for the first time in days.

The fires outside were still burning, and I thanked G.o.d that our building wasn't attached.

A steady wind had blown all night, urging the flames from building to building. It wasn't just this one fire either. NYPR announced that two other fires had started in Manhattan during the New Year festivities-fires and candles didn't play well with alcohol. The authorities were now warning people not to start fires indoors and to be careful with candles and heaters.

Too little, too late, and besides, what are people supposed to do if they're cold and in the dark?

A torrent of people had run out of the burning buildings the night before. Many were suffering from smoke inhalation, and some were horribly injured, but most were unhurt. All of them, though, were terrified to be outside in the cold and dark, clutching whatever belongings they could carry, wondering where they would go.

A convoy of military Humvees had appeared from the blackness, coming along Twenty-Third from the West Side Highway, crunching through the snow. There wasn't anything they could do about the fires. There was no water, no fire department, and no emergency services.

They radioed in what information they could, loaded the wounded, and within a half hour they were gone, replaced by a second convoy about an hour later.

A third convoy failed to appear.

By that time, a ragtag collection of local firemen, doctors, nurses, and off-duty NYPD had gathered and started organizing the situation. Not knowing what else to do, we began taking some of the wounded back to our apartment while trying to convince the residents of other buildings nearby to do the same.

The newly homeless had made tearful pleas to be let into neighboring buildings. A few of the early ones had found people willing to take them in, and we'd agreed to take two couples, but quickly the requests had overwhelmed the willingness.

Standing back, we'd watched them begin their lonely walks up toward Javits and Penn, despondent, terrified, and many with children amongst them. A steady stream of them had disappeared into the swallowing darkness and snow, begging bystanders for shelter, many with only their phones to use as flashlights to hold back the night.

A noise at the back entrance snapped my attention back into the present. Vince appeared through the back door of the lobby with a young kid from one of the adjoining buildings. He waved at Pam and me to come over. He was holding what looked to be a huge bong.

"I went around and asked for painkillers and antibiotics," said Vince in a hushed voice to Pam. "Most of what I could come up with was Advil and aspirin."

He held out his hand to reveal a few bottles.

"Even this was difficult to get people to give up, but I have another idea."

"And that is?" asked Pam.

Vince hesitated.

"We get them to smoke weed. It's a great painkiller."

He motioned to the kid beside him. He must have been sixteen. The kid smiled awkwardly and produced a huge bag of marijuana.

"These people are suffering from smoke inhalation, even burnt lungs," hissed Pam, wide-eyed and motioning around at twenty beds we had littered on the floor, "and you want me to get them to smoke?"

Vince and the kid stared at Pam.

"Wait!" said the kid. "We could make, like, brownies, or, no...tea! We could make some tea. Add a little alcohol to help dissolve the THC. That'd work."

Pam's face softened. "That's actually a great idea."

Someone on a bed cried out in pain.

"Can you get it done right away?" asked Pam.

The kid nodded, and Vince told him to go up to the sixth floor and ask Chuck for whatever he needed.

At that moment Vince's cell phone pinged.

It had been pinging all day and night from people joining the mesh network he'd started.

After showing Sergeant Williams how to install the software, we'd asked him to get as many people as he could to start using it. The more people that were connected, the further messages could travel. Vince had also gone out to neighboring buildings with some memory chips and explained the procedure. Judging by all the incoming messages, Vince and Sergeant Williams had been busy.

The mesh network had gone viral.

Already hundreds of people had joined, with dozens more every hour. People were finding ways to charge their cell phones, whether with generators or solar cells or by digging out and starting cars. Someone posted a general broadcast message to everyone connected, explaining how to pull out a car battery and hot-wire it to charge phones.

"Could you broadcast a message asking people in our area for some more pot?" I asked Vince. He nodded and pulled out his phone.

"We can pick it up on the way back."

We were going back up to Penn, to bring in the worst of the wounded. Two of them were in need of critical care, beyond what we could provide. Tony was rigging up backpacks with harnesses attached to makeshift sleds we could pull through the snow, and I walked over to the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs to see how he was doing.

As I arrived at the stairs, he was just coming up, noisily pulling his cargo behind him. Luke had been there helping him, really just running around and arranging piles of empty water containers, but he loved being near Tony. Tony had him under one arm as he came up the stairs.

"Emergency lights have finally given out," he said as he saw me. He put Luke down and Pam came over to take him upstairs. "We better start saving the charge on the headlamps. Batteries are scarce."

I nodded and reached down to help him haul the sleds up. We slid them into the lobby.

"You're the best skier," said Tony, picking up the harness-backpack he'd jury-rigged together, demonstrating how to use it. "I think you and I should do the hauling, and bring Vince along for backup."

Vince shrugged. "Sorry man, surfing is more my thing than skiing."