Free The Pulse by Scott B. Williams

a large duffel bag out of the same closet where he had gotten the lantern. He said it was the gear that he took on the jungle expedition and also occasionally used for weekend canoe camping on the river near his parent’s cabin.

    “The problem is, we can’t carry all this stuff on the bikes, plus the food and water we’re going to need for the trip. I can carry much more on mine, since I’ve got a rack on it and it’s a lightweight bike anyway, but you two are going to have a hard enough time just pedaling those heavy clunkers you have even without any weight.”
    “Can’t we just wear our backpacks?” Casey asked.
    “Yeah, but it’s not ideal. If you keep them light with just your clothes and things like that, I suppose it will have to do. But too much weight that high up will wear you out and keep you off balance. It’s better to let the bike carry the weight. I think if you both carry your clothes in your packs and we strap some of the lighter, bulkier stuff like sleeping bags on the handlebars and under the seats, I can manage everything else we need.”
    “Didn’t you say the cabin would have everything we need?” Jessica asked.
    “Yes, but we can’t head out on a trip that far and count on getting there in a certain length of time. A lot of factors could delay us, considering what has happened, so we need to be prepared to be as self-sufficient on the road as possible.”
    “I would have never thought like that,” Casey said. “I guess that comes from what you learned in the jungle, huh?”
    “Just travel in general. I learned more from my parents than from anywhere else. We were always on the move, it seems. I learned that real travel, not the tourist stuff, requires flexibility in your thinking and the ability to adapt
to changing circumstances. We’re not going to be tourists. If we go anywhere while the grid is down, we’ll be travelers, and we had better be ready for anything.”

THREE
    THE ARRIVAL OF IBIS in the harbor at Charlotte Amalie brought most of the occupants of the other vessels near her mooring to their decks to wave and shout questions to the newcomers. Most simply wanted to know from where the two men in the schooner had sailed, and what they had seen or heard of the bizarre flash in the northern sky that was the first sign of the series of events that took out communications, the power grid, and most forms of transportation. Artie was still reeling from days and nights of constant motion, and felt his body still compensating despite the calm of the harbor in which Ibis floated peacefully, tethered to her mooring without rolling, pitching, or bobbing. He fought to steady himself while Larry was busy securing the sails and sorting out lines. When asked how far to the southeast of St. Thomas they’d been when they saw the flash, Artie replied with the numbers of the last coordinates the GPS had displayed before it lost satellite reception. These were numbers he would never forget, as they marked the point where Larry began navigating by dead reckoning.
    “We have no way of knowing how Martinique might have been affected,” Larry added after saying that those
coordinates from when the event occurred put them over a hundred nautical miles from their departure point.
    They were directing most of their answers to an older couple aboard a sleek, 50-odd-foot sailing yacht of modern design, with immaculate white topsides and polished metal fittings that indicated it was nearly new and well maintained. This boat, with the name Celebration displayed on her stern above the hailing port of Norfolk, VA, was the nearest vessel to Ibis , and the owners lost no time introducing themselves as Pete and Maryanne Buckley, inviting them to come aboard for a cup of coffee and more conversation.
    “Our dinghy’s already in the water,” Pete said. “I’ll come pick you up.”
    Pete rowed the rigid-bottomed inflatable alongside Ibis, explaining that the EFI-equipped 25-horsepower Honda outboard