Tipping point, p.1
Tipping Point, page 1
TIPPING
POINT
RAIN STICKLAND
Copyright © 2015 Rain Stickland
Cover design copyright © 2015 Amanda K. Woods
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to persons living or dead are either strictly coincidental, or have been fictionalized to a very great extent, such as in the case of known political leaders. Cities and towns named are real, as are many roads and highways, though the makeup of both has been altered a great deal in nearly all cases outside of their general placement on a map.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9949500-0-0
DEDICATION
To my daughter, without whom I would be living a less-than-stellar life.
To my friends, whose encouragement has been life-altering.
To my current and future readers, who make it possible for me to be a writer.
And for the people of Muskoka and Parry Sound, who will be the first to tell you that there is a great deal of artistic licence taken with the towns in this book, though the stunning natural beauty is an undeniable fact.
CONTENTS
1 - Unraveling
2 - Taking Stock
3 - Making a Point
4 - One Strange Encounter After Another
5 - Explanations are in Order
6 - Confessions and Combustion
7 - The Good, the Bad, and the Very Bad
8 - Much Ado, and then Less
9 - Tripping the Moonlight Fantastic
10 - Boundaries, but No Goats
11 - People Staring at Goats
12 - Zero Dark Seven Million
13 - Nostalgia and Gerrymandering
14 - Access Granted
15 - Revelations
16 - The Sailing of the Flirtationship
17 - Carpe Diem
18 - Drum Rolls and Fanfare
19 - Breaking Some Eggs
20 - Cry Havoc
21 - Ferret Business as Usual
22 - Home on the Strange
23 - Beyond Full Capacity
24 - Knotty by Knature
25 - Let the Games Begin
26 - Middle Ages Spread
27 - Shoring Up the Defenses
28 - Parting Shots
Epilogue - Still Waters
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks go out to the following people, for their advice and assistance:
Amanda K. Woods, for a cover that was so much more than I could ever hope to achieve.
Steve Kovacs, for his expertise in firearms that steered me away from a really big mistake.
Marlin Woosley, for his willingness to critique and scrutinize with complete honesty.
Sarah Lyons Fleming, for additional advice on covers and writing in general.
Bruce and Jean Horst, for giving me a place to begin my writing journey in the public eye.
There are many, many people who deserve a place on this list. There may not be room for them all here, but there’s plenty of room in my heart for my gratitude. Thank you all.
1
UNRAVELING
They might not have been zombies in the truest sense of the word since they hadn’t died and risen from the grave, but they were damn close as far as Mackenzie was concerned. The ignorant and uninformed hadn’t even noticed the disaster that was about to take place around them.
But Mac had been watching, and planning, and she was not going down with that particular ship. She gave it a week, max, before the shit really hit the fan, and she wasn’t going to be stuck in a city with half a million people when it went dark for the last time.
“Cam, we’re out of time. We have to go.” Cameron didn’t argue.
Cam helped her mother pack up the only important things that were still in the apartment, which included their two ferrets. An hour later, they were heading north, already hitting rush hour traffic on the 401. It was the middle of the week, and most commuters were going in the opposite direction, but Mac was still jittery. There were a lot of lights out along the way.
Another hour saw them as far as Barrie, coasting on the 400. Once the signs started displaying the Highway 11 logo, she took a deep breath and let it out. Whatever happened to their old city now, they were ahead of it. She was glad she’d dropped off a big donation of ferret food at the shelter just outside Toronto. They would be okay for a little while.
Mac engaged the voice-to-text feature on her BlackBerry.
“Text to Mitch Corelli,” she said, enunciating clearly, and giving the phone a moment to process.
“Mitch, you need to leave Hamilton. Pack what you can in your car. Only what’s important, where you can’t stand to leave it behind. Head for my home town. Please don’t stay in the city. I don’t think you know what’s happening. Text me back and let me know you’re on your way.”
She told the phone to send it. It was the best she could do for her ex for the time being. If she spoke to him on the phone he would try to argue, or worse, laugh her off. He’d never taken her concerns seriously, and she didn’t think he would now. Mac may not have been in love with him for many years, but she still cared what happened to him.
A few minutes later her phone read out his response.
“Give me a break. I’m not going anywhere tonight. I’m working.” She engaged her voice-to-text again to respond.
“Okay. Good luck. You’ll need it. Bye.”
Apparently Mitch rethought his decision to brush her off, because there was a different tenor to his next text half an hour later.
“What the hell is going on, Mac?”
She shared a look with Cam. Something must have happened in Hamilton to modify his attitude so drastically. Instead of texting back and forth with him, Mac decided to hit the next off-ramp. If he was willing to listen, she needed to call him. Besides, she wanted to know what was going on. She held her breath as she waited for him to pick up.
“Hey, Mac. What the hell? Things are fucked up here!”
“First tell me what’s going on there right now. You changed your mind pretty suddenly, so something must have happened.”
“People are completely fucking crazy right now, that’s what’s going on. They’re nuts! The power went out again just after I got your last text. Didn’t think much about it, since it’s been so shitty lately. I’m making deliveries so it doesn’t really matter to me unless people can’t pay, but then I just don’t drop off their stuff. No biggie.
“Then I get to one place and this guy starts in on me like it’s my fault the power is fucked up. When there’s no power the Interac machine isn’t always able to take payments. Probably their internet is down, right? The next place I get to it’s the same thing, and these people are even crazier. If I wasn’t such a big guy I’d have been very worried. Fucking guy was carrying a baseball bat when he answered the door. What’s this all about?” Mac nodded to herself. It was what she’d expected.
“Do you remember Pierre, the guy I used to work with? He was my boss for a while.”
“Yeah, the dick that laid you off, right?”
“That’s him. Anyway, he told me something when I worked there. He worked for Ontario Hydro during the Northeastern Blackout. Some sort of planning executive.
“Anyway, one of the reasons he left was because of his disagreements with them regarding coal and nuclear plants. They were supposed to bring the nuclear plants online and shut off the coal, but they went ahead with the shut-downs without ramping up the nuclear. He told me back then that the brown-outs and rolling blackouts would get progressively worse until the whole system collapsed. That blackout was nothing compared to what we should expect, according to him.” She took a deep breath for the rest of it. This was where the conversation could turn, so she chose her words carefully.
“Pierre basically told me the whole system was going to go down, and it might very well be permanent. He told me what to watch for, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m not talking about some drunk plowing into a transformer and knocking out a few blocks or whatever. Those are meaningless. What’s happening are outages that have no reasonable explanation other than a system overload. Every week it’s getting worse and people are starting to go nuts, as you just saw for yourself.”
“Yeah, okay, but you’re telling me I should get out of the city entirely. I don’t get the connection.”
“Okay, follow me here. The outages are increasing in frequency and duration, right? Refrigerators can’t even keep food from spoiling now. With no power, most gas stations aren’t able to pump fuel. No fuel means no food delivery to replace what’s gone bad. You’re delivering booze, which isn’t something people actually need, and people are already getting pissed when you can’t give it to them. What do you think is going to happen in the next few days if the power supply gets worse? I would bet you don’t even have a week’s worth of food in your cupboards, right?”
“About that, yeah. So you’re saying there isn’t going to be any food in the city? That’s a little paranoid don’t you think? They must have some sort of contingency plan to keep the supply runs going.”
“Are you sure you want to rely on our government to take care of you? How much confidence do you have in them after the number of times they’ve screwed you over? Bureaucracies don’t operate well in emergency s
“What kind of option? What’s up north?”
“Remember my plans for a big hunk of property and the whole off-grid thing?”
“Yeah. You talked about it enough.”
“Well, we pulled it together mostly. We’ve got everything up there waiting. It’s not finished, or pretty, but I didn’t want to wait anymore. You don’t want to be in Hamilton when the shit hits the fan, Mitch. Seriously. With the number of people already living in poverty there, it’s going to crash and burn faster than most places. Poor people are going to have a lot less food stocked up in their pantries. The drug supply is going to run out, and any addicts will be jonesing.”
Mac could hear the skepticism and hesitation in his silence. She knew if she said anything else, though, it would work against her argument. She had to let him absorb and think about it.
“Fuck, Mac. If I leave the city I’ll lose my job. If you’re wrong about this, my boss is not going to be understanding if I tell him I walked away on the word of my ex-wife’s conspiracy theories. He’s gonna slam the door in my face.”
“Mitch, if I’m wrong you’re not exactly going to be on the street. Even without the shit hitting the fan, your life will actually be better off if you come up north with us. We’re going to be completely self-sustaining, and until we are we’ve got all the supplies we need to tide all of us over. I was hoping to have everything done before we went up there, because that was always the plan, but circumstances being what they are...” She trailed off, not bothering to reiterate her concerns.
“We need to get moving. You too. It’s going to be hard for you to get out of the city if things start going bad. We’ve got all the comforts of home up there, and lots of little toys you’re going to love. No bills, nothing but privacy. I’ll send you the directions. Make sure you have your phone and GPS completely charged for the trip.”
At this point Mac was almost sure Mitch was convinced. He was an intelligent man, and lately he’d been expressing the desire for a life of peace and quiet. If that was the case, and the world was going to hell, the last thing he would want would be to get stuck in the middle of it. Still, she wasn’t going to beg him to save his own ass.
“Fuck it. It’s not like I’m working my dream job anyway. Send me the directions.”
“I’ll text them to you as soon as we’re off the phone. You’ll have to call me when you get close, though. Even with full directions you’d never find the driveway. I need to be at the road to guide you in.”
If Mitch actually followed through, it’d be one less thing to worry about. She knew what he was like, though. He might intend to do something, but things always seemed to come up. She exchanged a glance with Cam and put the car in gear.
The old BMW 3-series was her long-distance and running-around car. She had a truck up north for any heavy-duty stuff. A four-wheel-drive with a winch and all other vital equipment, including a supply trailer. It would come in handy setting up the new building. They had a building there for temporary shelter, but it was meant to be a garage. The prep work had been done for the main house, but it wasn’t up yet.
As they drove past Gravenhurst, Mac felt happier. She’d been looking forward to this. Cam’s job was the only reason they had remained in Hamilton. Mac worked online, which she could do anywhere, but making money had become unnecessary.
“Do you think he’ll come?” Mac was jarred a bit by her daughter’s abrupt question. The silence in the car had been going on for a while.
“Damned if I know. You know what he’s like. Says one thing, does another, in one ear, and out the other,” she rhymed in a sing-song voice. Cam snorted.
“No kidding. Well, it’s not like I want him to die or anything, but we’re better off without him.” Mac nodded in agreement.
“What made you decide that we had to leave today? I mean, I heard you muttering, and you warned me it might happen soon, but did something major happen on the news or something?”
Mac chewed her lip, trying to find a way to explain it without it turning into the usual educational two-hour lecture she tended to indulge in.
“With the outages, people are already protesting. These aren’t activists working for the greater good. They’re people who only care about their own inconvenience and discomfort. Then you’ve got the people who have loved ones with health conditions adversely affected by the heat and humidity. You heard what I said to Mitch about food. The whole situation is about to turn.”
“So, basically people are turning into animals, and you think it’ll get a lot worse, really fast. What’s the plan then? We’re not going back are we?”
“Not this time.”
“What about my friends?”
“I don’t want to see them get hurt or starve to death. We just need to make sure the garden and bulk supplies are okay first. A quick check should be enough, and then you can give Kirk a call.” Kirk was Cameron’s best friend from high school.
Mac’s own best friend was in the States, and he had a pretty good situation there. She was thankful she’d managed to talk him into setting up an amateur radio station. Even when their phones went down, they might still be able to talk to one another.
“It’s too bad we couldn’t wait until fall before we had to leave. It would have been nice to see the leaves turning as we got into Muskoka.” Mac smiled. She knew how her daughter felt. It was their favourite season.
“Well we’ll be up here for the whole season, so if we want to see the leaves we won’t have to miss a single day. Why do you think I planted so many maple trees? Best fall colours, ever.”
The closer they got to Rosseau Falls, the narrower the road became. It was just barely enough for two cars to pass one another. As soon as they pulled off the main road, however, it became pretty much a single lane.
The road they were on didn’t actually have anyone living on it. Their driveway was the only one. All other properties in the area had their driveways on a different side road. It had truly been the ideal parcel for them. They wanted no interaction with neighbours.
Having Cam’s best friend and his girlfriend come stay with them might be a risk, but it was a calculated one. They were social only with people they liked, much like Mac and her daughter, and she got along with them very well for the most part.
They were getting close to the property, and she’d long since removed the telltale reflective number marking the property entrance, so she had Cameron direct their high-powered UV light ahead of them on the road. Finally she saw the marked tree. She slowed to a stop and got out of the car.
Mac walked over and placed her thumb on the biometric pad concealed in a hole at the back of the tree. The two halves of the bush-covered gate swung open. She was careful to brush the crisp dead leaves back over the pad, and walked back to the car when she was done.
The scent of pine and spruce saturated her olfactory senses as she inhaled deeply. To her it was the smell of home. She could also smell the water from the small river that cut through their land. It hadn’t been hard to find a property with surface water in Ontario.
White willows grew past the riverbank opposite the building sites. She knew they were there because she’d been the one to plant them. They might need a source for salicylic acid.
The buildings weren’t visible from the road. There was a veritable forest between the road and the current building. She’d spent a lot of time on Google Earth and Google Maps, deciding exactly how to place things, so nothing was left to chance.
She drove through the gate and slowed the car once she’d crossed the pressure plate. Mac waited until the gate closed completely behind her, and then continued on to their temporary home.
It was ugly from the outside. There was no getting around it. She hadn’t bought a steel building that was designed to look like a regular home. She’d bought the A-style that was vaguely house-shaped, but didn’t fool anyone. The two garage doors didn’t help.
