EMP Aftermath Series (Book 1): The Journey Home Page 2

  "I'm going to sleep. You should do the same and get a good night's sleep before school tomorrow, since you don't have television or video games." she said.

  Amy started up the steps, wanting to get upstairs before Kenny could start to whine about being bored.

  The house shook violently and an impossibly loud noise exploded throughout the house.

  Amy put her hands over her ears, dropping the candle to the floor as she crouched down to the floor and clung to the carpet.

  "Kenny," she yelled.

  The noise and shaking stopped as suddenly as they began, the house pitch black and eerily quiet.

  Amy grabbed the candle on the floor and turned it right side up again, wincing as the hot wax dripped onto her hand. Her ears rang with a high-pitched tone.

  "Kenny! Kenny, are you ok?" she asked.

  "I'm fine. What was that?" he asked. Kenny picked himself up and ran to the front door.

  Amy got to her feet and followed him into the front yard where he stopped suddenly, his eyes cast skyward. She followed Kenny's gaze into the sky.

  A huge ball of bright orange flame bloomed in the sky, silhouetting the houses across the street.

  Mary, her neighbor, emerged from her house directly across the street. Curlers in her grey hair, she came running across the street towards Amy, hand over her mouth, whimpering. She repeated the same phrase several times as she distanced herself from the home.

  "Oh my God, oh my God," she said. "It hit our house!"

  In the growing light of the column of flame, the damage to Mary's home was visible. The entire upper half of the roof had been destroyed, ripped off of the rest of the house, beams and boards splintered and snapped where they stuck upwards like crooked teeth. The chimney was broken clean off, shingles and bricks strewn across the remaining roof.

  Amy embraced her friend, hugging her tight. Mary trembled uncontrollably, tears running down her face as she clung to Amy.

  "What happened?" Amy asked, full of awe at the still growing fireball.

  Mary turned to look for herself. Over the top of her house, an enormous cloud of thick smoke and fire billowed some distance away, emanating from the fireball. The cloud grew in size, flames flickering along the central column.

  Just then, another explosion rocked the street, whipping her hair around her face as the wind from a shockwave hit them.

  Amy dropped to her knees, covering her ears against the noise. It wasn't as loud as the first explosion, but this one sent an even larger column of fire into the sky that dwarfed the first. Angry red and brilliant blue flames intertwined as the fireball expanded skyward.

  Mary's whimpering was drowned out by the screams and shouts of several neighbors, milling about in their front yards as they emerged from their homes.

  "Mary, are you sure you're OK?" Amy asked, looking her over for injuries.

  The woman nodded her head, setting the orange curlers in her hair shaking. Her hands trembled as she wiped away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  "What about Dan? Is he home?"

  "Oh my God. Dan. My Dan," she cried out, turning to run back across the street to her home.

  Just as she approached the front door, a stunned looking Dan stepped off the front porch, wearing his signature baseball cap and flannel pajamas. He hurried into the street, looking over the roof of the house at the billowing pillars of fire and smoke.

  "Holy jeez," he said. "What the hell is that? Somebody call 911."

  Amy pulled her phone from her pocket to dial the police.

  The screen was black, and wouldn't turn on. Had she plugged it in last night? Surely she had.

  She tried again, frustrated at the device, holding down the button to restart the phone.

  Dan held up his cell phone up with a questioning look. "My dang phone is dead. Is yours working?"

  "No," said Amy. "I'll go use the land line."

  Amy turned and ran to her house, making her way quickly to the kitchen. She picked up the telephone, and was greeted with silence. She clicked the receiver a few times, expecting a dial tone, or at least a little static, but she heard nothing.

  What was going on? The power was off, and the phone wasn't working either? Amy rubbed her temples, trying to calm her nerves. The phone line was still supposed to work even if the power was off, wasn't it?

  Dan shouted to her from the doorway, his voice full of terror. "Amy. Come quick, get out here and look at this."

  She ran back to the front door, stopping suddenly just outside the doorway, clutching at the open door for support as she looked to her left to where Dan pointed his finger, tracing a moving line across the sky from one pillar of fire to the next.

  She didn't see anything for a moment, but then recognition hit her. Tears began to streak down her cheeks as horror and disbelief filled her.

  A airplane glided along in eerie silence, briefly illuminated by the tall fiery red clouds of the airliners that had already crashed. It dipped lower and lower in the sky until it passed out of sight, hidden by the rooftops of other homes.

  A split second later a new explosion hit the street.

  Men, women, and children screamed in terror. Another blast of flame rose like a pillar in the sky. Neighbors clung to each other and shrieked, some fleeing back into their homes for safety, some running down the street.

  She watched as one of her neighbors got into his car and slammed the door shut. He banged the dashboard repeatedly, got out of the car, and pulled the engine hood open. Shaking his head in frustration, he kicked the fender and ran down the street.

  Amy turned to Dan, who stood open mouthed, his jaw silently moving, hands clenching and unclenching. A wave of pity and grief hit her as the realization dawned at his reaction.

  Dan and Mary had a grown son. He was a pilot.

  "Dan? What happened? What could have done this," she asked. "My home phone is dead. Our cell phones won't work, and the electric is out too."

  A ball of fear and worry formed in her stomach. She had an eerie feeling as she walked around the side of her house and into her back yard. She knew where the planes were coming from. They were supposed to be landing a few short miles south of where they were crashing. As she faced south in the direction of the Baltimore Washington International Airport, horror filled her as she made out several more columns of orange flame rising into the air from around the airport and surrounding neighborhoods.

  What in the world was happening?

  Chapter 3

  Awareness came to him slowly, his mind felt sluggish and unclear. Where was he? How did he get here? Why did he hurt so much?

  Jack shut his eyes tightly against the bright sunlight beating down, which was only adding to his splitting headache. His body felt like he'd been run through a meat grinder, aches and bruises on every part of him, but it was his head that hurt the worst. Jack looked in the rearview mirror and winced at the large lump protruding from his forehead. The bloody spider web of glass in the windshield left little question where the lump came from.

  Memories of the crash last night rushed back to him in a flood of emotions. The bright flash of light, the steering wheel twisting out of his grip as they went off the road. The car rolling and tumbling until they hit the tree.

  Tom!

  Jack sat bolt upright, sending shards of broken glass to the floor, and turned to his passenger in a panic.

  Tom lay in the same position as the night before, sunlight filling in the terrible details that Jack had guessed at the night before. When the rolling car had come to a violent stop against the tree trunk, a low lying branch had been broken in two, the shaft of the broken branch thrust through Tom's chest like a spear. He must have been killed instantly, impaled through the heart by the arm-sized spear of wood.

  "Oh God, Tom. I'm so sorry," he said. Jack turned his head. He couldn't bear to look at the sight of his friend's ruined body.

  He couldn't just leave him sitting there like that. Jack pulled his suit jacket from a hanger in the
back seat and gently laid it over Tom's face and chest, covering the gruesome wound.

  What the hell had happened? What was the bright flash of light that blinded him? Why had the car gone dark? Questions bubbled up in his mind as he carefully picked away the shards of glass resting on his belt buckle. He released the strap and stood up next to the car, leaning against the crumpled rear door, fighting off dizziness from standing too quickly. Once his head stopped spinning, he pulled his cell phone out to call for help. It was too late for Tom, but he had to call the police and let them know about the wreck, and call for an ambulance. The lump on his head definitely needed to be checked out by a doctor.

  Jack pressed at the buttons of his smartphone, frustrated when the screen didn't light up. He tried several of the other buttons and got the same result. The cell phone was dead. Had been hit or smashed during the crash? It didn't seem very likely. While he himself had been bounced around a bit, his head was the only serious injury. The phone was in his pocket and should have been safe.

  Jack took a seat in the driver's seat and pried the protective case off the phone. After pulling the battery cover open, he blew out the dust and reseated the battery, then tried again and waited for the screen to light up.

  Nothing. Dang it. He really needed this phone to work.

  There was one other phone he could try. Wincing as he rummaged through the wreck again, he pulled the phone from Tom's pants pocket.

  "Sorry Tom, I need this more than you do."

  It wasn't any use though. Tom's phone didn't work either.

  Everything clicked together in his mind. The bright flash of light from the exploding transformer, the power lines glowing white-hot before they burnt out, the car's lights going dark, and both of their phones were broken.

  Alarms went off in his head, screaming the answer to him. Years of talking about disasters and how they would really go down on Internet forums gave him the answer he needed. This was it, wasn't it? An EMP. It had really happened. Right?

  On impulse, Jack pressed the start button on his car. Nothing. Completely dead, not even the dashboard lit up.

  So many people had doggedly shut him down for so long, saying 'it would never happen', he just didn't trust himself anymore. He had to find more proof. He needed to make certain it was an EMP before he jumped to conclusions. But first he needed to clear his mind or he wasn't going to make it very far.

  Jack then rummaged through the wreck, trying to find some evidence to prove the butterflies in his stomach wrong. He tried his laptop, and then Tom's laptop, and every other electric gadget in the car. None of them would power on. What were the chances the wreck had destroyed everything, and the utility transformer blew out at the same time? Not likely.

  The North Korean ballistic missile that landed a few hundred miles offshore of California yesterday... what if they'd launched a second missile successfully? It couldn't really have happened, could it? He'd spent so much time thinking about disaster scenarios and planning for the aftermath that he really couldn't believe it was actually happening.

  What should he do now? He could stay here with the car and wait for someone to come along the highway to help. If he was wrong about the EMP, another car was bound to drive by sometime soon. If it proved to be true, he'd be a day behind schedule. He knew a day could mean the difference between life and death in certain situations. But behind what schedule, he had no clue. He hadn't planned on an EMP happening while he was away on a business trip.

  Stepping out onto the blacktop pavement of the highway, he looked up at the sun's position in the sky. It had to be at least noon.

  A sinking feeling grew in his stomach. This wasn't an interstate highway, but it was still a highway, no matter how rural. Plenty of traffic followed this route from Springfield to Kansas City, dozens of cars an hour at least. The car accident was clearly visible from the highway, there was no way you could miss it. Surely someone would have passed the wreck and stopped by now if other cars were still working. Right?

  Lowering his eyes from the sun, he noticed one other piece of evidence. High atop a utility pole sat another transformer, charred and blackened, just like the one that exploded the night before. Small fragments of the power lines hung loosely from the pole, however most of them had been vaporized by the massive electrical overload, and simply went up in a puff of smoke.

  Jack walked over and sat in deep shade of an oak tree, leaning against it's trunk. It wasn't so impossible, was it?

  An EMP device was much simpler to manufacture than a nuclear weapon, perfectly suited to the purposes of a country like North Korea. If they could lob a ballistic missile high above the United States, a nuclear powered EMP would devastate the United States.

  It wasn't the nuclear explosion that would do the damage, but the enormous electromagnetic pulse of energy emitted from the device would carry far across the country, bouncing around off the upper atmosphere. The energy surge would destroy any electronics in its path, burning out their sensitive components. The electrical grid was especially susceptible, because the power lines used to distribute electricity throughout the nation also acted as giant antennae, picking up the pulse of energy and overloading anything attached to it, just like the pole mounted transformers that exploded last night.

  Jack couldn't sit still any longer, consumed with worry and doubt. He left the shade of the old oak tree behind, and made his way to the car. Eying the contents of the trunk, he took stock of what he had available. His suitcase and a small bug out bag. It was going to be hot, and his clothes were blood spattered. Jack unbuttoned his dress shirt and tossed it into the trunk, removing a neatly folded t-shirt out of his suitcase.

  As he unfolded the t-shirt, he traced his fingers over the stitch work of the yellow and black patterned Tiger logo. Kenny's team colors. He pictured his older son standing on the pitcher's mound, eyeing down a batter. He'd worn that shirt to every one of his son's ball games. Where was his son now?

  Fear and a sense of helplessness hit him right in the gut. Kenny, his younger son Danny, and his wife Amy were over a thousand miles away from here. God help him. This couldn't be happening right now.

  Blinking back tears, Jack grabbed his Baltimore Orioles baseball hat and pulled it down on his head, weighing his options. What should he do next? Part of him wanted to stay with the car, clinging desperately to the belief that he was wrong, and there was no EMP, just a set of unlucky coincidences. It all added up thought, his car's electrical system had broken, and his cell phone... and Tom's phone... and the transformers. Running once more over the list of dead electronics at his disposal proved how unlikely that was, as much as he wanted it to be true.

  Amy would be worried sick about him by now. He didn't have a way to call her. He needed to hear her voice, to hear her tell him that she and the boys were safe. Maybe he could find a town with a working phone? Or somebody with a HAM radio or something that still worked. Either way, if he sat here waiting, he'd drive himself mad with nothing to do but worry about his family. That much he knew.

  Filled with a desperate need to call his family, resolved to leave the car and go find help. Somebody had to have a phone or a radio that worked. He grabbed his laptop bag out of the car and dumped the contents into the trunk. Everything he planned on taking would fit in the small bag.

  He slipped off his dress shoes and socks and exchanged them for a pair of white tube socks and comfortable tennis shoes. He rummaged through his suitcase, taking a few changes of clothes and his toothbrush.

  Last of all he grabbed the small black bugout bag from the corner of the trunk and tossed it into the laptop bag. It only weighed a couple of pounds and contained a bare minimum of supplies. Jack had ordered it online a few years ago when he'd seen it on sale. The kit came with three energy bars, some Band-Aids, a compass, and a foil emergency blanket.

  To that he'd added some other items he knew would be useful. A multi-tool, a water purifying straw, three wire snares to trap small game, a lighter, and an emerge
ncy fishing kit. It was everything he needed to start a fire, keep warm, cook his food, and sanitize his water. He stuffed the supplies into the laptop bag along with a bottle of water from the car.

  It wasn't much. He wished he had the much larger BOB from his Suburban. That one had a 9mm and a lot more supplies, but he'd been afraid to pack the 9mm in his company vehicle. That would be a quick way to get fired if anybody found out about it at his work.

  He'd also love to have the 1972 Chevy Silverado parked in his garage at his disposal. The old beast was probably still running, since it didn't have an on board computer or fuel injection. There was nothing to be done about it. Hopefully Amy would remember to try to start it up. He didn't have a bug out location, they just didn't have the money, but Amy was smart and tough as nails, she'd get some use out of it if she could.