Grid Down: A Strike against America – An EMP Survival Story- Book One Read Online Free PDF Page A

week. Everyone at camp lived with a communal spirit. They hunted, fished, and rotated security watch—everything Rob had studied extensively about temporary bug-out communities. It had to work. It was their only chance.  
    At 9:00 a.m., Josh and Kelly began their chores in the family garden, where sweet potatoes, turnips, and zucchini gradually blossomed.
    Their comfortable lives in the Nyack suburbs had been drastically uprooted. Everything was different. Though every day offered the possibility that things would soon go back to normal.
    Kelly plucked parasitic caterpillars from plants and handed them to Josh to kill with his pocket knife. Next, they had to clean the chicken coop and feed the chickens. Then they were to help Mila with the laundry. It was more work than they had ever done on a Saturday before the EMP, and they weren’t alone.
    Gabrielle and Antonio, two siblings from the Santos cabin across the way, were also out and busy. Antonio, a fifteen-year-old with jet-black hair just past his ears, looked over at them and waved.
    Josh and Kelly waved back.
    Gabrielle, a skinny girl with long, dark hair past her shoulders, was Josh’s age too. She looked much like her mother, Mayra, and nothing like her boisterous father, Carlos. Their parents were originally from the Dominican Republic and had experience living off the land. But the outdoors life was as foreign to their kids as it was to Josh and Kelly.   
    The Atkins’s, a Long Island family of six, weren’t up yet. Their cabin was right next door. The parents, Brad and Ashlee, had four children in their early teens. For Josh and Kelly, it was nice to have other kids around, but they got along more with the Santos kids overall.
    Josh stabbed another caterpillar and dropped it on the ground. “So I told Dad that it’s time we at least check things out, you know?” he told Kelly. “How much longer can we live like this?”
    They swatted as gnats flew around faces. Kelly was in suspenders and had her blond hair tucked under her hat. Josh wore a baggy T-shirt and cargo shorts and fully expected to get dirty and sweaty within the next hour.
    “It’s not that bad out here,” Kelly answered.
    “Oh, come on,” Josh snapped. “You can’t stand it, and neither can I.” He kicked a patch of soil into the air.
    “I miss my friends,” Kelly said, kneeling on the dirt and pinching another caterpillar off a tomato plant.
    “Me too,” Josh said. “I can still see them sitting there in the cafeteria when we left. I can’t stop thinking about them and what happened to them. And what was happening in the city.”  
    Suddenly, they heard the Santoses’ goat make a “Maah” sound as it was led past the garden by Antonio.
    “Ah, look. Hailey is out,” Kelly said with a smile, pointing.
    “I don’t care about that stupid goat. I want to go home.”
    Kelly stood up and frowned at her brother with a raised brow. “You need to chill out. Everyone is doing their best out here. It’s all we can do.”
    She walked past him toward the chicken coop. “Now come on. We still have a lot of work to do.”
    Josh looked up past the trees and into the sky—a blue, cloudless abyss. “If only I could build a damn rocket.” He then followed Kelly to the box-like coop on the side of their cabin, where chicken wire enclosed the area. They could hear their three chickens clucking and went inside.

 
     
    ***
     
    Later that afternoon, Rob assembled a meeting with the camp residents at their makeshift town hall: four wooden benches, a podium of stacked boxes, and an overhead canopy. It was where they came together to discuss important matters and plan for the weeks ahead. Everyone arrived at the agreed-upon hour and took their seats, many of them tired from a day of labor. A gentle, cool breeze blew past as Rob took the stage, a foot-tall wooden platform, and began flipping through his notebook.
    Carlos and Mayra Santos had arrived, along with Peter and Krystal