The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid Read Online Free PDF

patients to see.”
    “I wish you could meet my friend Scully. You think I live on island time? Scully could teach us all something about not worrying.”
    “Yeah, I heard all about Scully from the girls after their trip last summer. Casey got on a reggae kick I didn’t think would ever end. At least she and Jessica didn’t start smoking marijuana—as far as I know anyway—but she talked about Scully for weeks.”
    “I suppose he was the first real Rasta that either of them had ever met. Scully’s a good guy, definitely one of my best friends in the islands. The Rastas smoke their ganja, all right, but it’s different with them. It’s not about getting high and partying. It’s more of a spiritual experience—part of their religion—a path to enlightenment or something like that.”
    “Enlightenment? They seem like just another version of dope-smoking hippies to me. You don’t mess with that stuff, do you, Larry?”
    “I’m more into good island rum, especially when I’m anchored in a nice spot for the evening. I’m not saying I wouldn’t take a hit off the pipe now and then, but Scully knows better than to bring it on board a boat when we’re doing a delivery, and certainly not to bring it on my boat. It’s not worth the risk of getting a boat confiscated, and I won’t tolerate it at sea.”
    Artie figured drinking rum and taking a toke now and then sort of went with the territory for a yacht delivery skipper. Looking at his lean and tanned younger brother standing at the helm, his full beard and wavy hair bleached blond from the sun, Artie thought maybe Larry had been born two hundred years too late. He was an adventurer at heart, and this sailing life he’d chosen seemed to suit him well, and apparently agreed with him, as he looked much younger than his 38 years. Artie couldn’t imagine Larry in any other setting, as these islands had been his home since he had caught a ride on a boat out of Fort Lauderdale during his first Spring Break, and he never went back to college to finish out the semester.
    “It’s too bad Scully won’t be in St. Thomas while you’re here,” Larry went on. “But then again, who knows how long you’ll be here? Maybe you shouldn’t have come to the islands in 2013, Doc. Didn’t you know the world was supposed to end sometime around the end of 2012 or, at the latest, by 2013?”
    “Hah, hah; very funny, Larry. So the lights went out, and now it’s the end of the world?”
    “It would be for most people up there,” Larry said, referring to mainland America, a place he rarely even visited. “What would they do without their DSL connections? What would they do without TV? Yeah, it would be the end of the world for sure.”
    “I know it would be for Casey,” Artie laughed. “But seriously, if this were some kind of weird power surge or electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare, or whatever, and it really did knock out the power grid, it might take awhile to fix it, huh?”
    “Your guess is as good as mine. I know it takes a while after a hurricane comes through. Happens down here all the time, but they bring in crews from other places with all the stuff to repair the damage. Let’s just hope this is local to this part of the islands. Otherwise, it could be a real problem.”
    “I just hope there’s a landline or something working when we get to St. Thomas, so I can call Casey. If it was something local to the islands, she may have heard about it today and may be more worried about me than I am about her—if that’s possible.”
    Larry stayed at the helm for the rest of the approach to St. Thomas in the pre-dawn darkness. Under reefed sails, Ibis reached to the north at barely five knots, the fastest speed Larry dared to sail under these eerie blackout conditions where there could be more wreckage like the crashed plane anywhere along their course. They saw the 12-volt running lights of three other small sailing vessels as they neared the island, and as dawn