The flash zone was actually an insulation zone. High-voltage lines were exposed, cooled by the air and wind, which meant that the air and wind also carried some current, always affected by humidity. The higher the voltage, the larger the flash zone could become. With lines at five hundred thousand volts, Jay would never get close before the current discovered him and decided to use his body as a convenient means of doing the only thing it cared about-returning to the earth. With lines at lower voltage, the Faraday suit would protect him, but at half a million?
They’d have to identify him by his boots.
He put the hot stick and tool bag in the truck and then paused to handle the Nomex and steel-mesh suit, thinking of all the times he’d worked in it while the current crawled over him like a swarm of insects. Dangerous, yes, but he’d worked with poise and confidence. Until the day he saw Tim’s face, or what had remained of it.
Jay dropped the suit, stumbled to the garage-floor drain, and vomited.
Eli Pate arrived two hours later, walking casually up the street from downtown Red Lodge. If he was concerned about watchers or a trap, he didn’t show it. He looked every bit as calm as he had when Jay found him at the kitchen table.
“How are you feeling, Jay?” he said when the door was open. “Calm, cool, and collected? I hope so. It’s a big day.”
“Do I get to see her?”
Eli Pate smiled warmly as he shook his head. “Not just yet. Now, we’ve got plenty of catching up to do, I know, but let’s stay in motion while we do it. You’ll drive, per the norm. I’m more of the shotgun type of guy, you know?”
Jay said, “What do you actually want? What in the hell do you think this is going to accomplish? You might take the power out. They’ll put it back on. And for what?”
Pate’s smile didn’t waver. “I’m the ultimate theorist, Jay. In a nation where people love to say that all they have to fear is fear itself, they have created quite fertile ground for terror. I’ll take the power out and they’ll put it back on, you say, simple as that. I’m not so sure I agree. When people are faced with events they can’t understand, they rush for a narrative that explains it. Rush right past the truth. When the lights go out? I’m interested in seeing what stories come out of the darkness, my friend.”
52
The engine sounds had come and gone again, but they hadn’t returned, and it did not take long before Lynn Deschaine began to muse on the possibility of escape.
“How is the fence electrified? There’s no way they have power lines out here. I don’t hear generators running.”
“A windmill. Violet is very proud of it.”
“You’re serious?”
Sabrina nodded. Her swollen nose prevented her from breathing except through her mouth, which left her throat dry and cracked, so even talking hurt.
“So if we stopped it from turning, we would cut off the power?”
Sabrina shook her head. “I doubt that. The windmill would feed batteries, I think. That way the current can be stored and controlled. Actually, that’s not right. The current is always alive. The only thing that can be stored is power.”
Lynn said, “Okay, I’ll confess-I’m stone-stupid when it comes to electricity. I bought another charger for my phone once before I realized I’d accidentally turned off the power strip the original was plugged into. If a fuse blows, I’m calling an electrician. Who would probably tell me it isn’t actually a fuse. This is the bad side of apartment living, I guess. I’ve always had the maintenance guys, right? I’ve never had to pause to learn. But there has to be another way to shut off the power to that fence without going right to the batteries or the circuit breaker or whatever.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sure there is. Did your husband ever talk about his work?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. He’s the guy who turns the power back on. So…why does it go off?”
“Jay does high-voltage repair. I don’t think it’s the same thing as this.”
“Here they’ve got a power source, and they’ve got current traveling through wires. Isn’t it basically a microcosm of what he does?”
Sabrina nodded slowly. It should be. Whether the power came from a nuclear plant or a windmill or a battery, the idea was the same-generation, transmission, distribution. Lynn’s question was a good one: Why does it go off?
“Weather, usually,” Sabrina said to herself.
“What?”
“I’m thinking of the causes of the outages. Weather. Limbs fall on lines, or trees knock them down completely, or there are what Jay calls the squirrel suicide bombers.”
“Pardon?”
“Rodents making contact with a live wire. They’ll get fried, and if the shock doesn’t blow them clear and they get stuck in the equipment, it creates a fault.”
“Why?”
“Because the system is set up to protect itself. Just like a fuse or a circuit breaker. If it encounters something that could create a larger problem, it shuts down. A breaker trips, a fuse blows, whatever. You ever notice how your lights blink sometimes before they go out completely?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the system trying to clear the fault. It will try two times. If you get two hard blinks, the next one won’t be a blink. The next one is a shutdown, and it will be out for a while, because now they’ve got to send a crew out to fix it.”
She was remembering their first home together, a crappy rental in Billings, Jay explaining this as they lay in bed. That was the first time he’d talked about the squirrel suicide bombers, tickling her neck, making a stupid squirrel sound that had made her laugh.
Lynn said, “See? You do understand it.”
She supposed she did. At least the basics, at least a little more than most.
“So how do we create a fault that actually lasts?” Lynn asked. “One that doesn’t immediately come back on or that can be fixed by flipping a breaker?”
Sabrina took a deep breath, tried to put herself back in that house in Billings. What caused outages beyond equipment failure? Animals, storms, limbs.
“Maybe we could throw a limb up on the fence?”
“Did you see any limbs out there?”
“No.” Sabrina also wasn’t sure that the system wouldn’t just blow the limb clear, achieving nothing. The fault had to be one that lasted. What was bad, beyond equipment failure? Or, maybe a better question, what caused equipment failure?
She closed her eyes, remembering that warm, wonderful night in their first home together, Jay’s fingertip tracing over her skin as he talked.
If two energized lines touch, say good night for a while. The system does not like that.
Okay. Line-to-line contact. But how did you make one of those copper wires touch another without getting shocked yourself? She hadn’t seen any insulated electrician’s gloves lying around. Again, the idea of throwing something onto the wires was possible, but whatever you threw would have to bridge the lines and be conductive, able to transmit electricity between the two. Water or a piece of metal or…
Sabrina lifted her left hand, her shackles jingling.
“How long is this chain?”
“What?”
“Three feet, maybe?”
“At least. Could be four. Long enough to let us stretch out and lie down. At least three.”
Sabrina nodded. She mimed a tossing motion with her right hand, like pitching horseshoes.
She said, “I think I could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Use our shackles to kill that fence. The live wires are bare, not insulated. They aren’t spaced that far apart either. If I could toss these up there and get them to hook, we’d have line-to-line contact. That’ll make things go dark in a hurry.”