Being alone and possibly stranded in the mountains after driving across the country for the last two days wasn't doing anything to calm Allison's slightly frayed nerves. In fact, the long days and few hours of sleep only served to make the young doctor all the more on edge and jumpy. That would have explained the gasp she let out and the shiver that jolted through her entire person when she was spoken to from behind. Whipping around, her back now to the door of the cabin, Allison clasped a hand over her rapidly beating heart. Now, she was faced with the sight of a man who had an impressive beard and an ominous looking gun. Again, Allison couldn't help but think that this was how horror movies started; the situation was cliché and typical so far—all around bad.

It was much to Allison's surprise, however, this this man seemed friendly. In spite being shouted to in what she thought might have been Swedish, he was now offering her something to drink, and his pleasantly rough voice sounded genuinely concerned. Just from looking at him, Allison thought this man could have been a park ranger, and he more than likely [i]wasn't[/i] some loon that had plans to kidnap her and keep her in his basement. 

“No,” she breathed a soft laugh, tense shoulders finally relaxing, “thank you, though. I'm trying to get down to Portland, and my GPS quit on me. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction?” 

Allison was completely unaware of what was going on below the Cascades. Little did she know that she was safer stranded than trying to continue on into the city where small waves of panic was already setting in. A grid failure had been talked about by the military for years just to keep the public on their toes, but the majority of people in the US didn't take that sort of thing seriously. When disaster was at their doorstep, no one had the first clue what to do.