Another chapter, this time with the promised interview with someone from the electric company.
Chris Austin
Chris Austin is in his fifties with almost thirty years’ experience as a lineman. I caught up with him on the weekend, when he was headed out to fish in the lake. Chris stands at least six foot and is heavy-set but muscular rather than fat. His handshake was strong, even though I could tell he was holding back.
Tell me about the crisis as you experienced it.
At first we didn’t believe it, like everybody else. We were busy — all those storms, remember, lots of lines down from the broken branches — so we didn’t get much time to talk about it. And the news wasn’t much help, not at first.
Then the suits got all panicky. They were yelling for the governor to call out the National Guard — which she did, of course — but they wanted soldiers on every substation and patrolling the lines.
Mike Brown — he’s an okay guy, for all he’s a union boss — he said that was stupid. It’s not like the [obscenity] Russians are invading us —
Uh, sorry about that. It’s what he said, though.
Anyway, he said these zombies aren’t going to hit the substations or the poles. Why would they? They want to eat people. You put soldiers out there guarding things, and the zees are going to go after them, and the soldiers’ll cause damage fighting them. Just leave everything alone, he said, and the zees’ll leave it alone too.
From what I heard, there was a lot of shouting back and forth, but the suits said, “Okay, on your head be it.” Or something like that.
Good thing, too. You must have seen that picture, the zombie in his National Guard uniform with his rifle still strapped on? Of course, that was in California, where they were stupid enough to scatter soldiers all over the place guarding stuff that didn’t even need to be guarded … Sorry. It’s just my cousin, he’s in the National Guard. If we’d been that dumb, he could’ve ended up like that too.
Well. Even if the zees didn’t go after the poles, things break, you know? So that’s when they decided to put a bunch of us in a parts warehouse with some weekend warriors as guards.
Guards?
Hey, don’t get the wrong idea. We were all volunteers. Old farts, mostly, like me, and some young guys that didn’t have anybody to take care of at home. Oh, and this one guy, Jake, he left his wife and kids with her dad, and he came in with us. He said keeping the lights on was the best way to take care of them.
That’s what we all thought. Still think, too.
I agree.
Getting into the warehouse was like joining the army. We had to strip in this grimy little bathroom, and then let these doctors and nurses look us over. I’d’ve rathered have one of the men check me out. The old biddy who looked at me just sniffed at my tattoos. No, not going to show you. I did some dumb things when I was a kid. Anyway, if you had anything that even looked like a bite or even a scratch, you didn’t get in. Same goes for the Guard.
So there we were, all hanging out in this warehouse. Plenty of food. Cots, not real beds, and not really big enough. At least they kept the place warm. And the wifi worked, so you could see how bad things were in the big cities.
I stopped watching that after a while.
They called us out whenever there was an interruption. We had our soldiers, but being up on that pole, trying to fix the line as quick as possible, with Zee coming in moaning and howling, the rotten meat stink of them, wondering all the time if my safety harness was going to hold, and then our guys shooting … I don’t mind saying my knees still get a bit weak when I think about it.
But we got it done, and nobody got hurt. Not one of us, not one of our soldiers. And afterwards, when everything was quieted down, the governor came to shake our hands.
Didn’t know that, did you? She didn’t make a big deal of it, didn’t bring her pet photographers. Just came out to shake our hands.
Her hand was so little … even littler than yours.
He grins at me.
And it must’ve hurt by the time she got through, because she shook hands with everyone. Not just us, but the guys over at the sewage treatment plant, all the utilities, you know; the doctors and nurses; heck, she shook hands with the garbage men.
And she told us … Wait, let me get this exactly right. She said, “This is the highest accolade I can give you: you kept the lights on for us.”
What about — let me see — what about Jake? His wife and kids?
Oh, them. They were fine. And, you know, that’s what his kids are going to remember. He kept the lights on.