by William Oday
Sam blew out a steadying breath. They were both good kids. Usually. It was just tough sometimes. Even more so with their father gone.
She used the light on her phone to head out to the front yard to get a better look. Hidden Valley Circle was on a hill on the west side of town. From the front yard, they could see a broad stretch of Durango below.
She stepped outside and found Gary in his front yard next door having the same idea. “Looks like the outage hit the whole town.”
He turned and marched over with a flashlight in hand. “Maybe. Does your phone have service?”
“Uhh, no. I was trying to text Cade and the signal died.”
He nodded. “You mind trying something for me?”
“What?”
“Can you try starting your truck?”
She looked at him strangely. “Why?”
“Humor me.”
It sounded pointless, but he’d helped her cart in an armload of groceries so she’d go along.
“Be right back,” she said as she went inside. She returned with the keys. She unlocked the F150 and climbed in. She inserted the key and cranked the ignition, expecting the throaty engine to rumble to life.
Nothing.
She tried a few more times, but the batteries were dead.
How could that be?
She’d driven it to school and then to the grocery store and it had worked fine. It was bigger than she liked, but Lily and Piper had taken her Volvo to Las Vegas.
She climbed out, perplexed at how it could suddenly have a bad battery. “I don’t know what happened. The battery must’ve died. It was fine all day long.”
Gary nodded, a knowing look on his face. .
“What?”
“I know what happened. An EMP happened. We’ve been attacked by a hostile foreign power. Probably North Korea or Iran if we’re taking bets.”
13
Soaking wet and chilled to the bone, Cade took in the surroundings. A small stretch of sandy beach with a squat white building that looked like one of the old paddlewheel steamboats that used to ply the Mississippi River. A couple of docks extended out into the water to the left. A reproduction of an old pirate ship next to that. The towering silhouettes of a dense cluster of skyscrapers in the distance. A small hill covered in trees to the right.
None of it familiar because he’d never set foot in the city.
And if he wasn’t careful, this first visit would be his last.
The pale light of the moon bathed the city in shades of blue and black. Bright orange pockets of fire dotted here and there. More than had been there earlier. A section of the horizon to the south glowing orange.
It took a minute to accept that he was still alive.
And then another to remember that that could change in a heartbeat.
What next?
He needed to get out of the city as soon as possible. San Francisco was a densely populated urban area surrounded on three sides by water. The Golden Gate bridge connected it to the north and the Bay Bridge connected it to the east. There was nothing but ocean to the west and more people and congestion to the south.
The Bay Bridge was his way out.
To where exactly, he didn’t know yet.
But he had to get to his daughter. Why did this have to happen when she was stranded in a big city in the middle of the desert?
He silently cursed. The frustration of being so far away and so powerless to help nearly overwhelmed him.
No.
He had to stow that. It wouldn’t do any good. And besides, that was the nature of disasters. They didn’t wait for it to be a good time to happen. They just happened. And those that survived dealt with the aftermath as best they could.
His teeth chattered and it took focused effort to keep from shaking. First things first. He needed out of these wet clothes.
He turned to find Hudson curled into a ball on his side. “Hey,” he said as he touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
The kid uncurled and stared up like he had no idea who he was. His whole body shuddering with the cold or the adrenaline or both.
“Get up. We need to get warm.”
Hudson allowed himself to be pulled up.
Cade guided them over to a concrete bench and proceeded to peel off his freezing, clinging clothes. He was yanking his socks off when he glanced over and noticed Hudson sitting there looking miserable.
“Hudson, get out of those clothes. I’ve got extra.”
The kid nodded and followed suit.
Cade dug a headlamp out of his bag and used it to ferret out a set of clothes for each of them. That was it as far as clothes went. The rest of what he’d brought along for the job was in a bag in the plane’s cargo compartment at the bottom of the bay.
He finished getting dressed and breathed a sigh of relief when he slipped on the dry sneakers he always kept in his Get Home Bag. Construction boots were great for a job site and backcountry hiking. They were less so for walking long distances. And worse yet walking long distances while soaking wet. He tied his bootlaces together and secured them to the outside of the bag.
“Where do you live?” he asked while Hudson buttoned up a flannel shirt.
“In the Solaire.”
He said it like everyone knew what that meant.
“Can you be more specific?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a luxury condo building in the Rincon.”
The Rincon?
“How far away is it?”
Hudson pointed toward the grouping of skyscrapers. “Those buildings are the financial district. It’s on the other side. A couple of miles from here.”
Cade nodded as he considered that.
“What’s your name again? Sorry, I don’t remember.”
“Never told you. It’s Cade.”
“Cade, thank you.” His eyes dropped to his new clothes. “For saving me. For not leaving me behind.” He choked up. “For all of this.”
“You can buy me a beer later.” He finished packing up and slung the bag over his shoulder.
“What did you mean when you said we’d been hit with an EMP?”
The kid had no idea. Which also meant he had no idea of what was coming. The aftermath. The collapse. The carnage to come.
“An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse. It can come from a natural source like a coronal mass ejection or a manufactured source like a nuclear detonation.”
“It doesn’t look like we’ve been hit with a nuclear bomb.”
“A nuke detonated near ground level causes the kind of damage you’re thinking of. An EMP is different. It comes from detonating a nuke high up in the atmosphere. The blast waves don’t make it down here.”
“Then it’s not so bad, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that. The resulting gamma rays interact with the upper level atmosphere to create a cascading electromagnetic pulse that destroys anything connected to the grid and a lot of things that use microchips. It’s essentially an unimaginably powerful shock.”
Hudson chewed on that. “Why do you think it was an EMP and not a power outage or something else?”
“A few reasons. I was texting my wife and it shut off at the exact same time the lights and everything cut off in the plane. The city went dark as well. Not just the streetlights and buildings and houses. The cars too. All but a few blinked off. No regular power outage could do all that. The only thing I know of that could do that is an EMP. A single nuke detonated two to three hundred miles above Kansas or Nebraska could potentially wipe out the entire country.”
“So we’re at war?”
“Don’t know, but probably.”
“Could’ve been worse, I guess.”
“You’re not seeing the whole picture. An EMP causes destruction in so many different ways. There are 4000 planes in the air over the continental United States at any given moment. That’s around half a million people that just went through some version of an emergency landing. How many landed and how many crashed? I don’t know. But you ca
n bet that tens of thousands didn’t survive. Maybe hundreds of thousands.
And that’s just what’s happened in the air. What about traffic on the ground? How many car crashes happened from traffic lights and headlights going dark and people losing control of their vehicles?”
Hudson’s jaw dropped open.
“And it’s only going to get worse. An EMP kicks a modern society back to the 1800s in an instant.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it for a second. With the grid down, that means no electricity. People don’t realize how much we depend on access to reliable electricity. It’s not just about keeping your fridge cold and keeping the lights on. All those high-rises require power to distribute air and water. The vast majority of vehicles made from the early eighties and on use microchips to improve efficiency, comfort and safety. Just like our plane, those vehicles are now toast. That means no more trucks bringing in fuel and food and supplies to a city that absolutely depends on those timely deliveries. What about sanitation? No trucks to make the weekly trash pick up. Between that and a dwindling supply of clean water, it won’t take long for an outbreak of cholera or dysentery to hit. I could go on, but you get the idea.
No place is going to have it easy. But big cities are going to fall the fastest.”
Cade stopped himself from piling on the doom and gloom. He’d probably already said too much and there was no point pointing out the worst news of all. A congressional commission of experts released an EMP report that spelled out all the different ways that an EMP would wreak havoc on the nation. It concluded that ninety percent of the nation’s population would perish in the first year. Ninety percent.
He kept that to himself.
The kid was already holding on by a string. A tattered string, at that.
Hudson’s face was slack. He was starting to see the big picture. Then he perked up. “But surely the government will come in and sort it out.”
“Not likely. Remember Katrina? That was a regional event and FEMA absolutely failed the people of New Orleans and surrounding areas. And that was when they had access to all the vehicles and fuel and supplies they needed. If you expect the government to rescue you, you’re betting your life on it.”
“You make it sound so hopeless.”
In many ways, it was. But there was no point to wallowing in despair.
“We should go.”
“My fiancé. She’s working late tonight. We need to get her. It’s on the way.”
Cade nodded before taking one last look at the dark expanse of the water. He’d somehow survived a plane crash and drowning and now was stranded halfway across the country from his daughter in Las Vegas and his wife and son in Durango.
He turned away and started walking. Because that was the only way he was going to get back to them.
One step at a time.
14
They headed southeast on Columbus Avenue because it was a straight shot to the financial district and also because it was a wide city street. Cade felt the acute absence of defensive firepower and wanted as much space to react to potential threats as possible. They threaded their way through the maze of vehicles clogging the road. His head on a swivel and senses attuned for danger.
Many cars had been abandoned, but many still had people in them. The doors locked and windows rolled up. Their occupants eyed him and Hudson suspiciously as they passed. Several had already been broken into. Shattered windows and doors left open the evidence of the crimes.
Small groups of people flitted by here and there. Darker shadows sliding through the surroundings. Some with flashlights swinging back and forth before they disappeared around a corner. A few even said hello as they passed, like this was all just another evening in the city.
They would find out the truth soon enough.
The thin shell of civility and cooperation that was required to make any large gathering of people possible would begin to crack once people realized that the situation had fundamentally changed. When they realized that life as they knew it one minute before the event was gone. And it wasn’t coming back for a long time, if ever.
They passed an elongated pyramid-shaped building and entered the tall canyons of the financial district. The height of the surrounding structures swallowed the moonlight.
Cade walked with his fingers clasped around the headlamp so that it emitted just enough light for them to see what was directly ahead. And hopefully not enough to attract unwanted attention.
They had to make a run for it when a group of thugs started after them. But the chase ended minutes later either because they were too fast or because their pursuers had never been intent on anything more than harassment and intimidation. Whichever it was, it would get more serious at some point. Predators like them and others would stalk the streets searching for easy prey.
They continued on and eventually stopped in front of a brick building with a sign hanging above the glass door.
Furry Friends Day Care
Hudson pushed the button beside the door.
“That’s not going to work,” Cade reminded him.
“Oh, right.” He knocked on the glass and waited. “Amelia is a certified Canine Care Professional.”
“You mean like a dog sitter?”
“Well, yeah, only with a certificate. She’s studying to become a Vet Tech. Sometimes, I think she’s more devoted to animals than me.” He rapped on the glass again. “Not really, but kind of.”
“I know the feeling.” He didn’t add that it was the opposite with his dog, Dennis. Sam loved Dennis as much as anyone could love a dog, but Cade loved him like a third child. In her mind, there was a clear distinction between their children and the dog. In his mind, it was less clear.
A young woman appeared at the door and waved at Hudson before letting them in. “Honey, what are you—”
Hudson fell into her arms and started crying. “Amelia, oh my God. I love you so much. I thought I’d never see you again.”
She hugged him tight while Cade secured the door.
“Hudson, what happened? Are you okay?”
He sniffed back the tears and they pulled apart.
She eyeballed the clothes. “What are you wearing?”
“They’re his clothes.”
She shot Cade a questioning look. “What’s going on here?”
Cade and Hudson took a few minutes of rapid-fire back and forth to bring her up to speed. But the look on her face made clear she was having a hard time believing any of it, especially anything about the EMP and what it meant.
It was hard to blame her.
But in the end, Cade didn’t care. Whether she believed it or not, it was real and they needed to get moving. He had no desire to be wandering the streets of San Francisco in the early hours of the morning. “Listen, do you have any groceries at home?”
“Uhh, not really,” Hudson said. “We do takeout or delivery pretty much every night. There are so many delicious ethnic food places in our neighborhood.”
“Nothing in the fridge?”
He shrugged. “A bottle of Sriracha and a few beers.”
“What about non-perishables?”
“You mean like canned goods and stuff like that?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know. Some crackers. Oooh, half a bag of wasabi peas.”
“What about a flashlight, emergency radio, extra batteries, stored water, basic medical supplies? Any of the basics?”
Amelia offered a thin smile. “We have a box of band-aids.”
Cade shook his head. These people had the means to be reasonably prepared for emergencies and yet chose to live like every day would work out just like the one before. That was fine, until it wasn’t. But by then, it was too late.
“Do you have any cash?”
Cade had a couple of hundred dollars tucked into a secret compartment inside his belt, like he always did when he was traveling, but he couldn’t afford to donate a single dollar. Not with the journey ahea
d.
Hudson dug out his wallet. “I’ve got forty bucks.”
“What about at home?”
They both shook their heads.
Cade ran a hand over his face.
“Hey, it’s no problem. I have credit cards and there’s an ATM in our building.”
“Those won’t work anymore. Whatever digital money you have in the bank is probably gone for good.”
They didn’t like the sound of that.
Cade didn’t either. Especially considering all the money he’d just earned was in the same boat. His stomach grumbled and for the first time in a while he realized just how hungry and depleted he was. He dropped his bag and rifled through the contents.
A stainless steel water bottle, an Israeli bandage, a first aid kit, a magnesium fire starter, disposable lighters, cotton balls soaked with Vaseline for tinder, a headlamp, a mini flashlight, spare batteries, a multi-tool, two hundred yards of 550 paracord, the Rand McNally compact road atlas, a compass, sunglasses, sunscreen, compact binoculars, work gloves, a plastic poncho, an emergency bivvy bag, an emergency wind-up radio, duct tape, water purification tablets, an N95 dust mask, black Sharpie markers and tablet of paper, extra socks, extra underwear, no other clothes because they were wearing them.
Most of it in Ziplock baggies and interior pockets to keep it clean and organized.
He found the energy bars and pulled out a bag full of them. A blue Sawyer Mini Water Filter fell out and rolled across the tile floor. Cade grabbed it up and tossed it back into the bag.
“What was that?” Hudson asked.
“It’s a portable water filter.”
“Why do you carry it around in your bag?”
Cade didn’t feel like getting into it. And especially not with two people that, while nicer than many, were completely clueless when it came to being prepared. He decided to keep it short and sweet. “In case I ever need it.”
Amelia cast him a dubious look. “Are you one of those survival preppers like on TV?”
The way she said preppers told him all he needed to know about her feelings on it.
“If you’re asking me if I believe it’s a good idea to have a few basic essentials on your person when you’re traveling far from home, then yes, I’m a prepper.”