48 Hours - Hardcover

Forstchen, William R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765397919 ISBN 13: 9780765397911

Verlag: FORGE, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

From the New York Times bestselling author of the smash hit One Second After series comes 48 Hours, a nail-biting and prescient thriller about a solar storm with the power to destroy the world's electrical infrastructure

In 48 hours, the Earth will be hit by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from the Sun, a Carrington Event that has the power to shut down and possibly destroy the world's electrical infrastructure. To try and prevent permanent damage, everything goes dark prior to the hit: global communications are shut down; hospital emergency generators are disconnected; the entire internet, media broadcasting, and cell phone systems are turned off.

Will the world's population successfully defend itself in the wake of the CME, or will mass panic lead to the breakdown of society as we know it?

William R. Forstchen is at his best in 48 Hours, a tale of the resilience of American citizens when faced with a crisis.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

WILLIAM R. FORSTCHEN is the New York Times bestselling author of One Second After, One Year After, and The Final Day. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Purdue University, with specializations in military history and the history of technology. Forstchen is currently a faculty fellow and professor of history at Montreat College, near Asheville, North Carolina.

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48 Hours

By William R. Forstchen

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2018 William R. Forstchen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-9791-1

CHAPTER 1

DAY ONE

LAKE OF THE OZARKS, MISSOURI

DARREN Brooks fumbled as he tried to slap the alarm clock into silence, knocking it off the nightstand. The two little bells on top of the clock, with a tiny clapper between them, slamming back and forth, continued to ring, its tinny sound nerve-jarring.

"Oh, for God's sake, Darren, turn that damn thing off," Darla moaned from the other side of the bed.

He leaned over, groped around. It must have slid under the bed.

"Darren!"

"Okay, okay, I got it," he mumbled, pulling back the heavy wool blankets and cursing softly as his feet hit the cold floor.

Getting down on his hands and knees, he reached under the bed and grabbed the annoying antique, jamming a finger between the clapper and bells to silence the little annoying monstrosity at last.

The switch — where was the damn switch? He poked around the back, feeling for the lever, then his finger slipped off the clapper and, though muffled, the damn thing rang again.

"Darren!"

A memory hit of all those old cartoons where Elmer, Daffy, whomever, tormented by an alarm clock, just threw it out the window. He found the switch and flicked it down, and the devilish machine fell silent.

He was still tempted to throw it against the wall, but wisely decided to just put it back on the nightstand. Now half-awake, he stumbled to the bathroom and out of force of habit flicked the switch.

And of course, no lights came on.

"Damn. Power is still off." He sighed.

"It's freezing in here," Darla said. "I kind of figured it's down again."

There was no need for lights to just relieve himself. At least the water supply was gravity fed from the town's storage tank — that was, as long as they pumped it full while they had power, which had been on for several hours the previous evening. He scurried across the freezing-cold floor and scrambled back under the covers, Darla muttering an affectionate curse as he pressed his cold feet up against the backs of her legs, but then she sighed as he snuggled in closer. She stood not much more than five foot two at a 110 pounds or so, and he was more than double her weight, six foot four, and bearlike. He wrapped his arms around her, the two nuzzling closer for a moment.

"Don't fall back to sleep," she whispered.

"Yeah, I know."

Absolutely content with life at that moment, he held her tight, kissing her on the back of the neck.

"You need a shave." She laughed softly as he rubbed his chin stubble against her upper back, a hint of a seductive note in her laughter.

"No, stop it," she finally said. "You've got to go to work."

"Later, then," he whispered into her ear.

"Promises, promises," was her sleepy reply as she pulled the heavy blankets back over her shoulder as he drew away, turned, and put his feet on the still-icy floor. He fumbled in the dark for his slippers, put them on, picked up his heavy bathrobe from the corner of the bed, and trekked out to the living room. The fire was still going. He opened the glass doors, fed in several more logs, closed the doors after opening the flue wider, then went into the kitchen, turning on the battery-powered lamp he had rigged up to the kitchen chandelier.

For southern Missouri in December, it was damn cold, well below freezing outside, frost glistening on the deck railings and on the cover of the hot tub, which they had shut down and drained three weeks earlier when the problems had started.

Always efficient and thinking ahead, Darla had set out the night before, a two-pound can of coffee and an old-fashioned percolator that had been stored in what they called their "prepper stash," down in the basement. Filling up the pot with water, Darren now spooned coffee into the basket to be placed at the top of the percolator, put the lid on, and turned on the kitchen stove. At least that still worked because it was propane. They used to have a tank topped off with five hundred gallons of the stuff, but in the weeks after power had gone on the blink, they had been far too profligate in burning it up with their home generator to power and heat their four thousand–square-foot house, figuring the grid would be back up soon enough. Once things got back to normal, they'd just order up a propane truck to come out and fill them back up again. But things had not come back to normal, and they realized they might be in for a long haul with a cold winter, and the fifty gallons left should be hoarded only for cooking. The woodstove could provide sufficient heat for the living room and kitchen area, and at least they could cook indoors, unlike more than a few neighbors who on cold evenings stood shivering outside, cooking on their barbecues.

In the last few days, Darla had even passed out nine buckets of freeze-dried food from their emergency supply to neighbors who were coming up short, each bucket with enough food to keep a family of four going for a month. They had always factored in a thought regarding their neighbors and friends in a time of crisis — that was just part of their nature — but they could only give out a few more one-month buckets of food before having to think about their own long-term needs. Surely, though, they both hoped the damage to the power grid and overall infrastructure of the region from the solar storm of three weeks past would be repaired and life would soon return to some semblance of normalcy.

Neither of them wanted to think about the grim mathematics of what might happen to their emergency food supply if things still were not repaired a couple of months from now, especially given the reports, starting yesterday, that another solar event might be brewing.

The water in the coffeepot heated up, and there was the first hissing pop as it began percolating. Darren loved the sound of it. It reminded him of his grandmother's home, a small farmstead, as if from another age, up in the back hills of the Ozarks. The soothing nostalgia-inducing sound from the coffeepot grew louder, the dark brew splashing up against the small clear glass globe atop the pot. When he spent weekends at his grandparents' house, Darren always got the job of watching the pot until the coffee was jet-black, and they would then let him have a few warming sips, heavily laced with fresh cream from their cow tethered in the barn. The advent of the Mr. Coffee machines and then the little K-Cups had, in nearly all homes, resulted in relegating a percolator coffeepot to the basement or the trash pile. Buying one for use in an emergency had been one of many smart moves that were now paying off. And besides, he loved the sound of it, and somehow — maybe it was just psychosomatic — the coffee did seem to taste better.

He went back into the living room, taking in the vista offered by the two-story-high glass windows of their home. Their house, a log cabin of contemporary design, was situated atop a high ridge rising nearly two hundred feet above the Lake of the Ozarks. It faced southeast and at this time of year provided a perfect viewing point for the sunrise, which was beginning to unfold, the deeper indigos giving way to scarlet and brilliant shades of pink.

Darla shuffled out, bundled up in her oversized, rather funny-looking camouflage-pattern bathrobe with matching slippers — a Christmas present from him last year — went into the kitchen, pulled down two cups from the cabinet, and poured out their hot coffee, plain black, fresh cream no...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: FORGE
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765397919
• ISBN 13: 9780765397911
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar