Read Winds of Change for Free Online

then
Chuck went and got a bright idea which reminded us of everything we
were trying so hard to forget.
    “The radios we sell use batteries. We sell
batteries. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”
    “Maybe it had something to do with the fact
that the world was falling apart all around us,” Steven reminded
him. “But let’s all make a note to self in the future. In case of
Biblical catastrophe, never forget that the radios in Kingsley’s
Hardware and Appliance use batteries.”
    “You don’t have to try and be cute about the
whole thing,” Chuck said. “And it’s not Biblical. It’s Al
Qaeda.”
    Chuck fiddled with the radio for several
minutes before realizing that he’d put the batteries in backwards.
Steven and I laughed at him. He never did things the right way, but
he was determined where he wasn't skillful. The batteries went in
correctly the second time. The speakers hissed with static and bits
of random speech that were too garbled to be understood.
    Chuck rolled the dial through the gamut of
stations. All we picked up was white noise and machine gun bursts
of chatter, even on the stations that were normally strong enough
to bleed through into several frequencies. We did hear someone call
for help once over the airwaves. That was enough to make all of us
groan and to fear for our own lives. Then the static quickly turned
to silence. It was almost as if Chuck had turned the radio off
entirely. But the little red light on the side of the radio glowed
like a smoldering coal. The radio was definitely on, there just
wasn't anybody left to broadcast.
    The silence was even worse than the news we
had feared. It meant that this wasn’t a narrow window of disaster.
Whatever had happened out in the world was affecting a surrounding
radius of several hundred miles at least. Help wouldn’t be coming
any time soon. And those that did arrive to lend a hand would
definitely have their work cut out for them. There was no telling
how long it would take them to get to us.
    "Looks we're screwed," Jesse Weaver said,
spitting a long stream of tobacco juice behind one of the cash
registers.
    “Don’t think like that,” Vera chided her
husband. “Try to be positive and have a little faith in God. Do
something you’ve never done in your life and believe.”
    “I believe I’m going to die here,” Jesse
said. “That’s what I believe.”
    "Just because we can't pick up any stations
around here doesn't mean anything," Leland said, unwilling to let
our hopes die such a swift death. "There's obviously something
wrong with the atmosphere outside. That's probably what's
interfering with the radio signals. I'm sure there are still people
manning the stations. In fact, it’s very likely that people in the
next state are eating supper, tucking little ones to bed, making
love, doing everything they normally do. It's probably only a
matter of time before somebody outside the radius of the disaster
figures out that something's wrong and alerts the authorities. I'm
sure we'll be all right if we just stay put. Somebody will come to
our rescue eventually."
    "I don't like that approach," Steven said.
"I'm not comfortable putting my fate in someone else's hands. I say
we try and make contact with people in one of the businesses
nearby. We stayed alive, why couldn't they have?"
    "We haven't even been trapped for two hours
yet," Pete, the plumber, replied. "Why don't we give it a little
time and see how it goes?"
    "I think Pete’s right," Jesse Weaver spoke
up. "There's no need to rush out and get ourselves killed. If
nobody comes to our rescue, we can always die later. I, for one,
don’t like being stuck here any better than anybody else. But I’m
not so impatient that I’m willing to risk my life when it might not
even be necessary. If we wait one day and nothing happens, that’s
one thing. If we wait an entire week and nothing happens, that’s
another. Besides, if this is some sort of terrorist attack, then we
might be