by William Oday
Cade heard splashing nearby and another jolt of adrenaline spiked his heart rate as he imagined sharks arriving to tear into him.
But it was another survivor.
The twenty-something kid he’d gotten free of the seatbelt. Dark hair with curls plastered to his face. Thrashing around like he’d never been in water deeper than a bathtub.
Cade swam over and the kid tried to climb him like a tree. He got dragged under before he managed to break free and get back to the surface.
The kid reached for him again.
“Stop!” Cade bellowed in his face. He shoved one of the seat cushions at him. “Get on that and take a few breaths!”
The kid complied, but Cade could see he was barely holding it together.
“What’s your name?”
“We’re going to get eaten by sharks, aren’t we?”
That was the last thing Cade wanted to talk about. “What is your name?” he repeated, this time emphasizing each word.
The kid’s head stopped bouncing around and finally settled on Cade. “Hudson.”
“Hudson what?”
“Hudson McKinney.”
“Okay, Hudson McKinney. We’re going to survive this, but you’ve gotta keep your head on straight. Got it?”
“How? We’re stranded out in the middle of the ocean.” The panic was again taking over. “We’re going to die out here!”
Cade grabbed his cushion and pulled him close. He pointed at the dark city. “See that?”
Hudson nodded.
“We’re going to swim there.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Do your legs work?”
“Yeah.”
Cade spun him around and aimed him at what looked like the nearest outcropping of land.
“Then start kicking because we either get to shore or the current’s going to drag us out into the Pacific Ocean.”
Hudson didn’t need any more encouragement than that. He started off in a frenzy of splashing.
“Keep your feet under the water!” Cade yelled as he swam alongside. One, swimming like that wasted a lot of power. And two, sharks were attracted to thrashing movement as it typically indicated injured prey.
Hudson’s kicks smoothed out and soon they were making progress toward the distant shore.
Cade settled into the rhythm of the movement. The exertion warmed his body and his chattering teeth quieted. Too soon, thoughts arose that did absolutely no good whatsoever.
They were surrounded by endless black water, and who knew what was lurking in the depths below.
A jagged-edged fear started to build in his gut, but he gritted his teeth and shut it down. The only way he was going to make it was to keep it together and keep going.
They’d been swimming for what seemed like hours when Hudson stopped and fell behind.
Cade paused and glanced over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“We’re never going to make it! I’m exhausted. I’ve got nothing left.”
Cade surveyed the shore and the kid had a point. It still looked so far away and the current was inexorably dragging them closer to the Golden Gate bridge and the open ocean beyond. But he knew from a lifetime of hiking in the Rocky Mountains that you could see something in the distance and it could feel like you weren’t making any progress for a long time. But if you kept going, there would eventually come a point when you’d look up and realize you were almost there.
This was no different.
Or so he hoped.
“What’s the most important thing in the world to you?”
By the look on Hudson’s face, the question clearly caught him off guard. “My fiancé, Amelia.”
“Okay. I want you to picture her face when she finds out you’re dead. Think about her pain.”
He was quiet as he wrestled with competing emotions.
Cade waited. But he couldn’t much longer. Either this kid had to choose to fight or give up and die.
“You’re an asshole,” Hudson said as he started kicking again.
“Sometimes.”
They continued on for another interminable stretch, but then it happened.
The dark silhouettes of the city rose into the air above them. A marina filled with boats off to the left. Ahead was some kind of naval ship straight out of World War II.
“Come on! We’re almost there!” Cade yelled over his shoulder.
One last push and they made it into a protected cove. A sandy beach with gently lapping waves rolling in and out.
Cade stood on the sandy bottom and unwound his arms from the cushion. He pushed it away and staggered out of the water. He continued on above the waterline and then fell to his knees. He dropped his bag and took a second to gather his wits. Sand coated his skin like a fine grit sandpaper and already he could feel the wet clothes leeching the heat out of his body.
Hudson collapsed next to him and sobbed. Uncontrollable spasms as he let out the horror of what had just happened. “I didn’t think I was going to make it.” His words came out in staccato, shuddering bursts.
Cade peered into the darkness of the city that sprawled out before them. He wondered if anyone else would survive. If the girl he’d helped had gotten out.
In the distance, a crash of shattering glass was followed by the terrified shriek of a woman.
Hudson bumped into him. “What was that?”
“Don’t know. Not close enough to worry about.”
“What kind of power outage knocks out cars too? How is that even possible?”
Cade knew how it was possible. It was something he’d read about and hoped would never happen. His phone had cut off. The plane had shut down. The enormous fire likely another downed plane. The entire city had gone dark.
There was only one explanation that made any sense.
Arguably the worst disaster that could happen.
“We’ve been hit with an EMP.”
His mind jumped to the next conclusion. His daughter was in Las Vegas with a friend. He knew their hotel and room number. Considering the proximity, the EMP would’ve taken out that city too.
Which meant she was in danger.
Terrible danger.
One way or another, he had to get to Vegas as soon as possible.
4
The elevator doors opened and Lillian Bowman stepped out onto the viewing deck of the Eiffel Tower Experience in Las Vegas. Then she turned around and went back in because she had to drag her best friend out. “You’re not going to die, Piper.”
“You don’t know that!” Piper said as she leaned back and her black strappy heels skidded over the floor. A tight, black knit dress showed off her ample curves, which was exactly the point.
“Stop being a baby. You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s called survival instinct and it’s not my fault that you don’t have it.”
Lily managed to shuffle her friend out onto the viewing deck and waited for the doors to close behind them in case Piper decided to make a dash for it. With the doors closed and the elevator heading down, she let go and approached the metal mesh that enclosed the platform. She ran her fingers over the screen, thinking it was basically the same kind of hog wire that people used for fences back home in Durango.
Piper edged up behind her. “I feel like a bird.”
“Because we’re up so high?”
They were over four hundred feet in the air with the bright neon lights of the city below stretching out in every direction. A cool breeze a promise of the colder temperatures to come.
“No, because we’re in a bird cage.”
Lily looked around and it did look strikingly like a bird cage with the wire mesh coming up from the floor and wrapping overhead to the central column that housed the elevator. “It’s cool, huh?”
Piper snorted. “That wasn’t the thought running through my mind, no.”
Lily grasped the mesh and peered south along the strip to see if she could make out their hotel. She wasn’t positive, bu
t she thought she saw a sliver of the parking garage between two buildings. Her mother’s old Volvo 240 station wagon was somewhere on level five. They’d driven it here the night before.
Her mother called it reliable. She and Piper called it the Beige Barfinator. It was so ugly, other station wagons made fun of it. That was the joke, anyway. Not one they ever shared with her mother because they didn’t want to lose the privilege of using it.
She gazed down at the bustle of activity on the strip far below. She liked it better from a distance. Growing up in Colorado, she’d fallen in love with the land. Hiking, fishing, hunting. There was plenty to do in and around Durango, but those were her favorites. She didn’t wear Wranglers and cowboy boots—not her style—but she was nevertheless a country girl to the core.
Not that she had much of a style, as her best friend since second grade frequently noted. Piper called her style practical, and it wasn’t a compliment. Brown was her favorite color, because practical. Brown didn’t stain as easily as bright colors and it didn’t have something to prove like black. Brown trail shoes, tan cargo pants and a chocolate brown moisture-wicking long sleeve shirt.
So what if her style was a practical mashup of REI and Costco?
Las Vegas shared Piper’s distaste for anything practical, which was part of the reason why Lily had never had any desire to visit. If it weren’t for this weekend being Piper’s bachelorette party, she never would’ve come. And she still wouldn’t have come if Melanie and Skylar hadn’t bailed. She didn’t blame them. Life happened. Ironically, they were both bummed not to be here while Lily was the total opposite.
Still, this particular attraction was worth a visit. Sure, it was a half-size Eiffel Tower in the heart of Las Vegas instead of Paris. But it was still amazing. She’d always dreamed of visiting the city of love with a special someone.
There were only two problems with that. Okay, probably more, but there were two big problems. One was that a vacation to Paris was insanely expensive and her family had never been exactly rolling in the dough. And money had been especially tight ever since Grams got sick.
Got sick.
That made it sound like the flu or something where she might get better.
Parkinson’s wasn’t like that. People didn’t recover like getting over the flu. It was a long, slow excruciating decline. And they were right in the middle of it.
So, this Eiffel Tower in Sin City was the closest she was going to get to the real one in the city of love. The other problem was that she hadn’t dated anyone since breaking up with Colton nearly a year ago. She’d moved on and was ready to jump into the dating pool again if and when she found the right person.
Colton, on the other hand, somehow still harbored the delusion that they would get back together. He’d gone full stalker mode. Always asking her friends how she was doing. Driving slowly by the house. She’d told her dad about it. Big mistake. He confronted Colton one time and would’ve beat the crap out of him if her mother hadn’t been there to stop it.
So, this Eiffel Tower was pretty awesome considering the real one wasn’t an option.
Piper spun her around and wrapped her in an embrace. “Kiss me, my darling!” She leaned in for a ridiculously theatrical kiss, but Lily pulled away. Piper put her hands on her hips and struck a petulant pose. “Are you rejecting me? Is it over between us?”
She was such a drama queen. Always had been. It was funny, most of the time.
Lily noticed several of the surrounding people watching and flashed Piper the Do not embarrass me! look that they both knew so well.
Piper responded with the Gah, I was just kidding! look that they also knew so well.
“Can we just enjoy the view for a few minutes?” Lily asked as she turned back to the screen.
“As long as it’s just a few minutes. I will never forgive you if we miss a single minute of the show.”
“Don’t remind me.” Against her better judgement, she’d agreed to go to a male dance revue. The ones where muscle head guys strip off their clothes and do ridiculous things in front of a horde of screaming women. She gagged a little thinking of it.
Lily pushed it out of her mind. She was the maid of honor and here to ensure the bride-to-be had a great time while also staying out of trouble.
She rested her forehead against the mesh and breathed in the night. The pale moon above, so small and sad compared to the glaring, glitzy lights below. Passenger jets came and went to McCarran Airport to the south. The flat desert encircled the patchwork grid of the glowing city.
Directly below, the spectacular fountains of the Bellagio built toward a climactic ending. The colored columns of water swaying to the score of classical music that they could hear all the way up there. The red lights of cars going one direction and the yellow lights of others going the opposite way. Like strings of Christmas lights. Uncurled stripes from a candy cane. Crowds of people bunched up at street corners, then spilled into the street when the traffic lights changed.
So many people.
Too many.
As good as it was to be there for her best friend, Lily was definitely looking forward to being back home in the mountains.
The Bellagio’s show of water and lights was going all out now. The music booming and the fountains blasting sprays that drifted with the wind as they fell back into the enormous pool. The occasional puff of mist tickled her face.
“Admit it,” Piper said. “You’re happy I talked you into coming.”
Lily was about to throw her a bone and say yes when something happened.
The fountains went dark and the music cut off. The glaring lights of the strip went dark. The holiday lighting of the crawling traffic snapped off. The entire city blinked off. It was like someone hit a giant light switch that controlled everything.
For a few seconds, it was totally silent. Or maybe Lily didn’t hear anything because her brain couldn’t compute what was happening.
And then the sounds rushed in all at once.
Cars crashing on the street below. A few with lights still on, now spotlighted by the sea of surrounding shadows. People screaming. Worried mutterings from the other people on the observation deck.
A quiet voice whispered in her ear. “What just happened?”
Lily’s brain was still trying to catch up.
And when it did, the realization that arrived sent a chill up her spine.
Her dad had said something like this could happen, but she’d never thought much about it. It was too far away and too unbelievable to matter. But looking out across the city that had seconds ago been saturated with a rainbow of light, she knew the impossible had just happened.
And worse, she remembered what he said would happen next.
She turned to Piper and grabbed her shoulder, harder than she meant to.
“We have to get out of the city.”
5
Lily dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen on but couldn’t get a signal. “Does your phone work?”
Piper was just staring through the mesh at the chaos unfolding below.
“Piper, does your phone work?”
She slowly turned, not all there.
“Try your phone. See if it works.”
“Okay,” she mumbled as she pulled it out of her purse. “Hang on. It’s rebooting… Strange. It had three bars a minute ago.”
Lily retrieved a headlamp from her backpack. She was about to flick it on, but then stopped. If she turned it on, the other dozen or so people would notice and maybe one of them might wonder if she had anything else useful in the bag. Maybe they would try to take it to find out.
How long before people turned on each other to get what they needed?
Like anything, it depended on the person and the situation. Good people and bad people lived everywhere. It was just that a big city had a lot more of both. And Las Vegas was a big city like no other. It was a magnet for the desperate and deluded. There was a darkness that lurked beneath the skin-d
eep gloss.
Lily had a bad feeling that the hidden side of Las Vegas was going to come out front and center. She pulled Piper close and whispered in her ear. “Listen to me. This is serious. I think it was an EMP, and—”
“What’s an EMP?” Piper blurted out.
“Be quiet,” Lily hissed in her ear. “We don’t want anyone up here freaking out.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “But what is that?”
“It stands for electromagnetic pulse. It can happen from a solar flare or from a high altitude detonation of a nuclear bomb.”
“A nuclear—”
“Shhhhh!”
“The power went out. That’s all!” Piper said.
“Have you ever heard of a power outage shutting down cars? How about basically all of them?”
Piper didn’t answer. Of course, she hadn’t. No one had. Regular power outages didn’t do that.
“You think we were attacked?” Piper whispered.
“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is we have to get to the ground and get out of the city.”
“Get down? We’re over four hundred feet in the air!”
“Lower your voice!” Lily hissed.
“We have to wait for someone to come help us. They’ll get the power back on and then we’ll get down.”
Lily shook her head. “You’re not getting it. The power isn’t coming back on. Not anytime soon. My dad’s the expert on it, not me. But he said that power would be down for a long time. The pulse is picked up by power lines that act like giant antennas. It fries transformers and anything connected to the grid. Lights, computers, refrigerators, whatever. Anything that uses microchips is especially vulnerable, which is almost everything these days.”
“That doesn’t mean help won’t come.”
“Look down there,” Lily said. Out of the hundreds of cars lining the strip, only a few still had headlights on. One of them was roaring down the sidewalk, mowing over whoever was unlucky enough to be in the way. Several cars were burning like bonfires. A doomed figure engulfed in flames stumbled away from one. A human torch with arms flailing, and then the person collapsed on the pavement and stopped moving. The screams of the dying and injured echoed in the air.