Day Zero. Chris Jayne

      “No,” Louise said. “No. It doesn’t work like that. Even if the networks were out and we didn’t have a signal, our phones, the screens,” she clarified, “should still work.”

      “You’re right,” Sandy agreed tentatively. “So what’s going on?”

      The two women sat in silence, listening to the voices around them. Without warning, the curtain to their cubicle separated wide. Silhouetted against a small amount of light coming in through the emergency room outer doors was a man. “Do your phones work?” he asked.

      Louise had no idea who the man was, but he didn’t seem like a staff member. “No,” she said. “Neither of ours do. Do you know what’s going on?”

      “No,” the man snapped, and threw the curtain closed again.

      Suddenly, they heard shouting. “We have a staff emergency, we have a staff emergency,” a voice called out.

      “What the…?” Decisively, Louise stood and turned to Sandy. “Wait here.” Pulling back the curtain she walked out into the dark ER. Only two or three of the other eight cubicles had been occupied, so it was not particularly crowded.

      The physician’s assistant who had come into talk to them ran by. Louise caught her arm. “What’s happening?”

      “I’m not sure,” the woman said in a rush, her face frightened. “The generators didn’t kick on. There’s a couple people on ventilators in the surgical suite who need to be bagged manually and…”

      “The little girl with the broken arm?” Louise explained. “We were just leaving, but we didn’t get our script.”

      The woman threw her hands up and looked distractedly away, as the shouting at the door that connected the ER with the rest of the hospital increased in volume. Even in the dim light, Louise could see her uncertainty. “You can wait,” she offered. “But unless the power comes on, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t even give you a prescription unless we can enter it into the computer first.” She took a step away, then turned back and lowered her voice. “I probably shouldn’t say this but if it were me, I’d just go ahead and leave. She’s not hurt that badly. No point in sitting here. What they gave her will keep her knocked out for at least a couple of hours. By then, the power will surely be back on and we can call in the prescription.”

      Just then, behind them, the double doors to the ambulance bay banged wide open with a crash. There was enough light for Louise to see it was a police officer. “I need a doctor,” he shouted. “We got problems out here, people, big problems.” His voice was desperately out of breath, as if he had run a long way. “All the cars stopped working at once. We got at least a couple people hurt bad on Main. Car rolled right on to the sidewalk, ran over a woman with two little kids.”

      “Oh my God,” the PA gasped and ran off towards the officer. Louise, shaken, went back into the cubicle.

      “Did I hear someone say someone got run over?” Sandy asked, her voice now holding a note of real fear. “What is this, Lou?”

      “I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound good.” She looked around the cubicle. “Do you have a water bottle?”

      “A what?”

      “A water bottle.”

      Hesitantly, Sandy handed a half empty plastic bottle to Louise, who rushed to the cubicle’s small sink. The water appeared to be still flowing, at least for now. She filled Sandy’s bottle. Her eyes were getting accustomed to the dim light, and squinting, she realized there was an empty plastic bottle in the trash. She grabbed it out, and filled it too.

      “What are you doing?” Sandy asked, shocked. “You don’t know whose that was.”

      “Doesn’t matter,” Louise snapped. “We’re going.”

      “But we don’t have the prescription.”

      Louise caught her friend’s arm. “I don’t think we’re going to get it,” she said. “We need to go.”

      Sandy looked horrified. “But she can’t walk. And we can’t leave without the doctor saying it’s okay.”

      Louise rushed out of the cubicle, frantically scanning the ER. The PA to whom she’d spoken just minutes earlier had gone out the door with the police officer, Louise assumed. Other than one other man who stood, looking confused in the opening of his cubicle, wearing nothing but his boxers, the place seemed empty.

      All hospitals are the same, Louise reminded herself, and she rushed to the door where she was hopeful she would find… Yes! Tucked away in an alcove were multiple wheelchairs. Snapping one open, she scooted it back to where Sandy waited.

      “Where did you get that?” she asked. “Did they give it to you?”

      “I borrowed it,” Louise said. “Come on.”

      “I don’t think we should move her, Louise. Really.”

      “Come on!” Ignoring Sandy, she went and gently started lifting Marie off of the table.

      “What are you doing?” Sandy grabbed Louise’s arm. “Louise, you can’t take her!”

      As quickly and gently as possible, Louise lay Marie back down and grabbed Sandy by the shoulders. “Something happened, Sandy. Something bad. You need to listen and trust me. We need to get out of here, now.”

      Something in Louise’s tone got through to Sandy. In the dim light, Louise saw her friend’s face collapse with emotion. She glanced around the dark cubicle and finally, it seemed like the eeriness of the silent Emergency Room was registering. “Okay,” she whispered, and helped Louise gently ease the nine year old into the wheelchair. Frantically, Louise opened cabinets, and found a stack of blankets. She grabbed every one of them and stuffed them into the chair next to Marie.

      No one said a word as Sandy pushed the wheelchair containing her daughter, Louise walking ahead, out of the emergency room’s double doors into the parking lot, out into a world that had just changed forever.

      Chapter 3

      Angela

      Monday

      11:10 AM Mountain Time

      Interstate I-90 near Reed Point, Montana

      Angela Jones looked out at the terrain that flashed by the car, impressed by what she saw. Montana was absolutely spectacular, so different from everywhere she’d lived in the United States, and also very different from Albania.

      There, she’d grown up in the mountains, but it was nothing like this. Albania was deep valleys, sharp hills, small squalid villages, all rocks and up and down. The glimpses of the ranges she was getting to the north, towering over endless grasslands, were breath-taking, made all the more impressive by the fact that what she was at least fifty miles away, perhaps even more. From the highway, she was even getting occasional glimpses of the Yellowstone River.

      Angela had been tracking their progress on the map app on her phone, and she glanced at it now. Just a few more minutes until they’d be pulling off the Interstate and traveling north on a two lane road. Angela’s options were rapidly diminishing.

      She understood now, fully, why she was here. They needed someone whose FBI credentials were absolute and unimpeachable. Rossi, as a Miami cop, had some cache in Florida, but across state lines, he was a nobody. She was not. To get out of tough spot, they’d use her. By the time anyone checked that no FBI agent named Angela Jones was working in Florida - or now Montana - in any official capacity, they’d be gone. Her cover would be blown forever, but Saldata didn’t care. Couldn’t care. If they didn’t find and neutralize Lori Dovner, it was likely his life in the United States was over.

      Her options were narrow and getting worse. Reflexively, she opened her bag and checked for her gun. Ironic that they had taken away her burner phone and