Bugging Out by Noah Mann Page B

hadn’t been topped off since spring. And, adding insult to injury, that slow leak I’d suspected it to have in its regulator, the one I’d been meaning to get fixed, looked to have bled out what remained after a spring and summer of regular use.
    I cranked the burner off, then on again, and flicked the long lighter I held over the jets. A few spouts of flame glowed blue for a second, then flickered out, whatever gas there’d been in the tank virtually gone. I’d stocked up on smaller propane cylinders for a camp stove, and a dozen large bags of charcoal for the barbecue, but I’d mentally prepared myself for at least a few months cooking on the existing stove, in the kitchen, like any normal person would. Just a slice of my old life that I could maintain.
    Wait...
    I didn’t speak the word aloud, but even thinking it I felt a sense of relief rise. Possible relief . From the moment of my arrival early in the day until this very moment, I hadn’t opened the shutoff valve on the tank. The very same valve I’d closed at the end of my last extended stay during the summer. All I was getting was residual gas in the line between the tank and the house.
    “Idiot,” I repeated, for different reasons now, and tossed the lighter onto the kitchen table as I pushed the back door open roughly. I’d neglected to grab my jacket, and the evening chill was already settling in, biting at me as I moved down the side of my house and rounded the back corner. The propane tank, supported on its side like some giant white pill, rested just ahead, in the deep shadow laid by the generator shed, the very last light of day blotted out by the structure. I went to it and reached for the valve handle.
    But I stopped before laying a hand upon it. Even in the din of the coming night I noticed something.
    The regulator fixed to the outlet valve had been changed. It was dull metal and far from new, but it was different. Not the rusted mass that had topped the tank the last time I saw it.
    I grabbed the valve handle and twisted it open. Gas hissed through the regulator and into the buried line feeding my house. The tank wasn’t empty. The repair had prevented that from happening.
    But repaired by who?
    Instantly I felt exposed, turning to take in the sight of the darkened woods surrounding my refuge. I wore no pistol on my belt. Had no rifle slung. One or the other I should have had with me. Because, clearly, I wasn’t the only person who’d visited my refuge in the recent past.
    I glanced to the working regulator again, then returned to the house, closing the back door and locking it as night came fully. Gas was flowing again. The meal I’d planned from the small amount of fresh food I’d brought with me on this final trip was just minutes away. But I never cooked it. Never turned the stove on. Sounds from the great room made that impossible.
    Voices.

Nine
    T he pair of newscasters, a man and a woman, stared out at me from the television in the great room, taking turns speaking to the camera as the newsroom buzzed behind. Everyone both intentionally and unintentionally on camera seemed running on the juice that fueled the news profession when some crisis struck.
    Calm, though, was my reaction to seeing what I did. Borne of lingering tiredness, or simply from surprise at finding some connection to the world beyond my refuge, it set me into a mode of near stasis. I didn’t sit. Didn’t move. I just stood a few steps inside the great room and watched the first reports of the nation beginning to crumble.
    “Again, bear with us,” the male newscaster said. A graphic beneath identified him as Jim Winters, and his colleague as Stephanie Brent. “We’ve just managed to break through the signal that has apparently overrun all television broadcasts.”
    “And radio,” Stephanie added as Jim took a breath. “Cell phones, the internet. This takeover of communications has been total and widespread.”
    “Unprecedented,” Jim agreed, falling