After her navy stint, Diana had used the GI Bill to attend college. She had majored in psychology because the human mind fascinated her. Not so much how it worked as the delusions it fostered. Its capacity to deceive itself was boundless.
Diana had become interested in how the mind and its beliefs affected personality. That had led her to her research on dominance, which, in turn, led Kurt Carpenter to her. And here she was, on her way to his compound, hoping to ride out the end of the world in one of the few places on earth designed to do just that.
Diana smiled, thinking of how nice it would be to see Kurt again. She reached for her thermos.
And her plane died.
The Boena bucked as if hit by a gust of wind. The electronics blipped out and the props stopped spinning. Far to the west, a strange luminosity lit the sky. There was no sound other than the shear of wind as the Boena dipped and began to lose altitude.
Diana fought down a spike of fear. She knew what to do in a situation like this. She still had control, limited control, but there was every chance she could bring the plane in for a safe landing.
She was over western Nebraska, somewhere in the vicinity of North Platte. The country below was mostly farmland. Nebraska had never suffered from a lack of flat ground, so she should be able to find a spot to set down.
Flying a plane without power was a lot like driving a car without power. It took concentration and strength and iron nerves.
Diana banked slightly and peered out of the cockpit. She needed a field or a road or highway. Patchwork squares of farmland grew in size. A green patch became com and a yellow patch became oats. A ribbon of brown was a dusty country road.
She decided to try for the road. A straight stretch looked long enough. There were no cars or trucks. Provided she didn’t hit a rut or pothole, she should be able to bring in her bird.
Her angle of descent was just right. She aligned the plane with the middle of the road and braced for the bump of her wheels setting down. She was so intent on the road that she didn’t pay much attention to the fences on each side.
She landed perfectly. She was moving fast, but she had plenty of space. Already she was thinking of what she would do when she got out. Too late, she saw a dip that ran the width of the road. The nose dropped, there was a shriek of mangled metal, the plane bounced, and then it slowed and went into a spin.
Diana had fleeting glimpses of sky and field and road. The Boena hit the fence and she heard metallic twangs that reminded her of guitar strings being plucked. A pole loomed, and she shrank into her seat and covered her head with her arms. The impact jarred her. Her tail rose and she thought the plane would flip over, but it crashed back down.
Then all was still.
Diana lowered her arms. The plane was in a ditch. The broken pole lay over a partly crumpled wing. Strands of wire were tangled everywhere. But she was alive. She unstrapped herself and climbed out, then stood on the wing and sniffed. She didn’t smell fuel.
The blue sky mocked her. She turned in a circle. All she saw was farmland. Not a building anywhere. To the north were low hills.
Diana tried the radio, but it wouldn’t work. Nothing would.
EMP effect, was her guess. She got her backpack and her bottle of water and out of habit reached for her laptop. Without power it was a piece of junk. She wouldn’t lose anything essential, though; it was all backed up on disc, and the discs were in her pack.
The ground felt spongy after so much flying. Diana hopped up and down a few times, then headed north along the road. She didn’t look back. Her past was behind her in more ways than one.
She hadn’t gone far when movement in a belt of trees between fields alerted her to wildlife. She expected deer, but instead saw two coyotes staring back at her.
Usually, coyotes weren’t dangerous. But Diana shrugged out of her backpack. At the top was the last item she had packed: mace. She hefted it, thinking it was too bad it had been in her backpack when Harold Pierce had come at her. She would have loved to spray him smack in the eyes.
Diana looked up. The coyotes were gone. She stuck the mace in her front pocket, slid her shoulders into her backpack, and set off down the road, seeking a sign of habitation.
It was a gorgeous sunny day. The temperature was pushing ninety-five but she didn’t mind the heat. She never had. It was cold that got to her.
She admired the fine blue of the sky and the puffy white of the clouds, and reflected on the irony that on the other side of the world, at that very moment, the sky was choked with radioactive dust.
Diana wondered how far the EMP effect teached. She wondered, too, with rising concern, how she was going to get from Nebraska to Minnesota before the deadline.
Kurt Carpenter had a timetable. Those he selected had exactly one hundred hours from the moment the first nukes detonated on U.S. soil to reach the compound. And that was the best-case scenario. As Carpenter had put it to her, “I can’t jeopardize the welfare of the majority for the sake of a few. Our only hope of weathering the worst of it is to hunker in out bunkers and stay there until the radiation levels drop.”
A hundred hours was a lot of time. Diana could make it to Minnesota by car, provided she could get her hands on one. But they looked to be scarce in this particular part
