“I hope we get there in time,” Phil murmured, staring ahead, half in a daze, his thoughts now on his wife and son. “I really hope we get there in time…”
6
David and Alice jogged up to the fourth floor of the parking garage, and before they headed over to Alice’s car, they took a look out over what they could see of the city. At least one of the skyscrapers nearby was on fire, and the city was belching out towers of black smoke from all over.
“This is not looking good, not at all,” Alice said. She and David would have to cross some of the burning areas to get to her apartment. Thankfully, the block on which her apartment building was located did not seem to have been affected by the explosions and fires…at least not yet.
“Who’s setting off these bombs and starting these fires?” David asked. He was trying to put on a brave face, but Alice could clearly see the worry and fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know, but we have to get to the apartment right away.”
“How long are we gonna have to stay there? Is Dad coming to help us? I- I wanna go home, I wanna get out of here, Can’t we just, like, walk home?” David pleaded.
“David, listen to me,” Alice said, holding her son by his shoulders and staring straight into his eyes. At over six feet in height, he towered over her, but with every syllable his mother uttered, he felt as if he shrank a few inches. “I know you’re scared, and it’s okay to be scared. Look, I’ve got everything we need to survive for a while in that apartment, and your dad knows that he’ll find us there. We can’t just walk out of the city right now; we’ll barely make it to the outskirts by dark. Then we’d have to try to get through the suburbs into the woods in the dark, and then what? Sleep on the ground in the woods? I’ve got a flashlight and a compass in my bag, but even so, we might get lost. And I’m willing to bet that the woods are going to be more dangerous than ever tonight…”
“There won’t be any mountain lions or anything this close to the city,” David said weakly. “C’mon, even I know that.”
“It’s not wild animals I’m worried about, Davey.”
“You’ve, you’ve got a gun in your purse…”
“Yeah, and there’s another for you in the car, but I’m praying that we don’t have to use them,” Alice said, shaking her head. She was still reeling from the surreality and craziness of it all, and trying to maintain a brave front for her frightened son was exacting a mental and emotional toll on her. “David, please, for your sake and mine, just do what I tell you, okay? I know it’s scary. I know everything is uncertain and the world’s been flipped on its head, but you have to trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
David breathed in deeply, doing his best to calm himself. He bit his lower lip and nodded.
“Okay, Mom. Okay, I trust you.”
She gave him a quick, tight hug, and then led him over to her car, a late model Toyota SUV.
“How are we gonna open it?” David asked. “Surely, the remote won’t be working?”
“I’m not going to use the remote,” she said, taking out the tactical survival knife and the pair of leather gloves she always carried in her handbag. “Stand back.” She put the gloves on and used the glass-breaker attached to the knife to smash a hole into the rear passenger window. Then she used the blade to knock any remaining glass fragments from the window before leaning in, lowering one of the passenger seats and pulling out a black backpack from the trunk. She tossed the backpack to David. “Take the gun out and slip it into your belt. The knife, too,” she instructed.
While David was doing this, she got a pair of sneakers out of the car and discarded the pumps she was wearing to put on the more practical shoes.
Inside the bag were a 9mm pistol and extra ammo, a survival knife, headlamps, a large medical kit, space blankets, water purification tablets and a water purifying bottle, a portable gas stove, some dehydrated meals, duct tape, face masks with dust and smoke filters, some bandannas, lightweight, stab-proof vests, and hand sanitizer.
“Whoa, you really are prepared for anything, Mom,” David remarked.
“Did you think your dad and I were messing around when we taught you all that survival stuff?” Alice asked, a hint of annoyance coloring her voice. “And I’ve shown you this bag before, but your nose was too buried in that damn phone of yours to pay attention.” She stopped here, realizing that now was not the time to be giving her son a lecture. “Anyway, tuck the pistol somewhere where it isn’t too conspicuous, then put the stab vest on under your shirt. Hand me one too, please. We don’t wanna draw attention to ourselves, but we need to have things where we can get to them quickly.”
“Okay, Mom.” David took off his T-shirt and slipped a stab-proof vest on, while Alice took off her blouse, stripping down to her bra, and put hers on too. After that, they got dressed again, and Alice gave a satisfied nod when she saw that the vests weren’t really visible beneath their clothes unless one looked very closely.
“Put the backpack on and let’s go,” she said. Before heading down to the ground level, Alice took a few moments to survey the city, taking note of where the fires and smoke plumes were, and mapping out a route in her head that would allow her to bypass these locations without taking too much of a detour.
When they got out of the garage, they saw more people wandering around; the crowds were growing larger and denser, as Alice had suspected they would. People were also beginning to move with more of a sense of direction and urgency now, rather than aimlessly milling around in confusion. The confusion and worry were still there en-masse, of course, and in addition, there was real fear in people’s eyes after the sounds of explosions, gunfire, and screaming. Alice guessed those people who didn’t live in the city would now be trying to get out of it, while those who had apartments within its confines would be trying to get home where they could hole up against the unknown terror.
She wondered who was responsible for the fires, gunshots, and explosions. Were they mere looters and opportunistic criminals pouncing on the opportunity, or was there something more sinister going on? Given that an EMP had been used, she had to assume it was the latter, and that this was all part of a coordinated attack. By whom she had no idea, but if they were vicious enough to deploy such a device, they had to be extremely dangerous. One thing she was sure of was the fact that she’d need to stick to alleys and side streets. If there were any more explosions—and there almost certainly would be—it was most likely that they would happen on main streets. Terrorists like those who had attacked the city would want to cause maximum damages and exact maximum casualties from their bombs and missiles.
She led David across the main street, half walking, half jogging, wanting to move fast but not draw attention to herself, and then hastily swerved into an alley to cut across the block. The alley was deserted, but Alice wasn’t about to let down her guard. She kept her handbag positioned across her midriff and kept her right hand in the bag, with her hand curled around the grip of her pistol in there. If necessary, she could whip the weapon out in the blink of an eye. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, though.
“Quickly, Davey,” she urged, breaking into a fast jog now that there weren’t other people around. She intended to move through the city in this exact manner, zigzagging toward their destination, running when she could, and walking as briskly as possible when there were other people around.
Another explosion boomed like a clap of thunder in the distance, followed by more bursts of gunfire and screams. Alice looked back at David, who had stopped in his tracks. The fear in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Come on, Davey,” she said, doing her best to sound calm. “We’ll be okay as long as we keep moving.”
He swallowed slowly and nodded, trying to force down the fear. They jogged through the alley and got to another main street, which they crossed as quickly as possible, weaving their way through a throng of confused and frightened people. David stopped for a few seconds, watching wide-eyed as two men got into a violent
scuffle a few yards from them. Alice strode on a few yards before she realized David was no longer next to her. She spun around, with a sense of rising panic swelling rapidly within her and saw him staring at the brawl.
“David!” she snapped. “Ignore them, get your ass over here and—”
There was a flash of blinding light followed immediately by the loudest, most skull-splitting boom Alice had ever heard, and for a brief and terrifying moment, she felt a sickening, lurching sensation and the horrifying feeling that she was airborne and spinning. Then everything went black.
7
“This is as close as the forest track will take us,” Phil said as they approached a fork in the bumpy dirt track. “Right will take us deeper into the woods, away from the city, left, to the edge of the northern suburbs.”
“How close do we get before ditching the truck?” Wyatt asked as he veered left.
“Keep going another mile or so,” Phil said. “From what I remember, there’s a lookout point around a five-minute hike off the track. It’ll give us a view of the northern suburbs and the city itself. I’ll take a good look with the binoculars from there and then decide how close to take the truck.”
They drove onward, and Wyatt dropped the pace somewhat so they could keep an eye out for the landmark that marked the start of the trail: a huge, moss-covered boulder. After around a mile of driving, they swung around a bend in the road, and Phil caught sight of the boulder, half-hidden by thick summer undergrowth.
“That’s it. Pull over,” he said.
Wyatt pulled off the road and killed the engine. “You go on ahead, Phil. I’ll keep an eye on the truck and the road.” He took out the .357 revolver; with its 6.5-inch barrel, it was the most accurate of the handguns for ranged shots, and he didn’t intend to let anyone get even remotely close to the truck.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Phil said, hopping out and racing down the overgrown trail.
It only took him around two minutes to reach the lookout point, and when he did, he drew in a sharp gasp of shock. For the last twenty minutes of driving, their view of the sky had been obscured by the tall trees of the forest. Now that he had a clear view of the city and the sky above it, though, he was able to see just how much had happened in the last half hour. A number of new plumes of dense, black smoke had appeared in different locations throughout the city, and when he looked through his binoculars, he could see that a few of the skyscrapers were actually on fire. A distant boom echoed across the valley. Powerful blasts of some sort were exploding through the city. An equally ominous sound accompanied these thunderclap bangs, the muted rattle and chatter of faraway gunfire.
“Shit! Son of a bitch, shit!” Phil cursed himself for not acting sooner. All he could think of was the fact that his wife and son were somewhere down there, stuck in the middle of whatever anarchic violence and chaos were erupting. “Breathe Phil, breathe.” He forced himself to take a few deep breaths and calm himself. Panicking wouldn’t allow him to help Alice and David. He had to think rationally and act logically, despite the situation of extreme stress and pressure—something that, thankfully, he’d developed a talent for in his years as an aerospace engineer.
He pulled the binoculars back up to his eyes and forced himself to look away from the burning city, focusing instead on what he could see of the northern suburbs. While the roads weren’t clogged with dead cars like those of the city were, there were certainly enough abandoned and crashed vehicles littering the streets of the suburbs to make a passage through them more difficult.
Of course, he could easily just drive over sidewalks and people’s lawns, but any working vehicle, especially one driving like a maniac, would draw all sorts of attention. And, considering that violence and gun battles had already broken out in the city, attention was the last thing he needed. People would be getting desperate, and he wouldn’t want to get into any sort of situation in which he and Wyatt might be targeted by carjackers or other criminals who wanted the truck…and who’d be prepared to kill to get it.
“I can’t take the truck through the suburbs,” he muttered to himself, scrutinizing the suburban streets through his binoculars. “It’s too risky.”
Having to walk through the suburbs to get to the city, however, would take hours, and expend a lot of energy. Phil wished for a moment that he hadn’t loaned out his spare bicycles, but the brief regret quickly passed; his workers had needed them to get home, and he didn’t regret helping them at all.
“There’s gotta be another way in, a quicker way,” he murmured, “an inconspicuous way.” He surveyed the suburbs and the outskirts of the city, rapidly running a number of ideas through his head. Then, as his gaze fell on the sparkling ribbon of water that wound its way through the suburbs and into the city—the same river they’d crossed in the truck earlier—he had his eureka moment and knew exactly what to do. Without another moment of hesitation, he raced back to Wyatt and the truck.
“See anything?” Wyatt asked when Phil came crashing through the undergrowth.
“Enough to know that we can’t waste a single moment,” Phil said. “You get driving, I’m gonna get busy in the back of the truck to save time,” he continued, jumping into the bed of the truck. A large locked trunk was bolted to the front of the bed, closest to the cab.
“What are you doing?” Wyatt asked.
“Preparing to get us into the city quickly and quietly, without having to walk for hours through the suburbs,” Phil answered. “Look, there’s no time to talk,” he said. He had unlocked the trunk and was taking out a hand pump. “Hop back in, drive another two miles, and then take the right fork when you get to it, that’ll take us down to the river again.”
“It’ll be deeper there,” Wyatt said, looking doubtful. “We barely made the last crossing, and I can tell you right now, Phil, that as tough as the old girl is, if the water is even an inch deeper, we’ll be swept away,”
“We’re not going to be crossing the river there,” Phil said, rummaging in the trunk. “Just trust me, okay? Drive to the river, and my plan will be ready by the time we get there.”
“All right,” Wyatt said uncertainly. He climbed back into the truck, started it up, and took off down the dirt track, while Phil began putting his plan together in the back.
8
“Good thing you had it back there,” Wyatt said when he hopped out of the truck.
“My dad rammed home the whole ‘be prepared for any possibility’ thing when I was a kid, and it’s stuck with me ever since,” Phil replied. His arms and shoulders were burning from the intense exertion of the last ten minutes, but he’d succeeded in what he’d needed to do: with a hand pump, he had inflated the small rubber dinghy, one of a number of very useful items he’d long since packed it into the bug-out box in the back of the truck.
Wyatt had parked the truck up in a clump of trees close to the riverbank. Across the river were the last houses of the suburbs, which were eerily silent. No sign of life could be seen from any of the houses. Either the occupants had left, or they were hiding in their basements in fear. On the horizon, the air over the city was thick with black smoke, and they heard more explosions and scattered gunfire every couple of minutes.
“Here, put these together,” Phil said, tossing pieces of oars to Wyatt. “I’m gonna get some branches.” While Wyatt started screwing the oar pieces together, Phil took a machete out of the bug-out box and went off to cut some branches off the nearby trees and shrubs. “There’s an ax in there, too,” he said to Wyatt as he started chopping. “When you’re done with the oars, you can help me cut.”
“Will do,” Wyatt grunted. He wasn’t too happy about having to travel in a rubber dinghy on the rushing river, especially one as tiny as this—it could barely seat two adults—but he knew that the boat would save them many hours, as well as the effort of trudging on foot through the suburbs. Once he’d put the oars together, he dragged the dinghy down to the water’s edge and leaned them against it, and then he jogged bac
k up the bank to grab the ax and help gather some branches.
A couple of minutes later, Phil and Wyatt had gathered enough branches and foliage to cover the truck. As urgently as Phil wanted to get into the city, he knew he had to hide the truck; this was their lifeline to get them all safely back to the ranch once he’d rescued Alice and David. The two of them made sure the truck was properly concealed, and then they packed some backpacks full of useful items from the bug-out box, locked up everything, and then hurried down to the river.
Phil could see that Wyatt was nervous about getting into the dinghy, so he clapped his hand onto his friend’s shoulder and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze. “I’ve done white water rafting in far crazier rivers than this one, Wyatt. It’ll be a bumpy ride, but don’t worry, this little rubber duck is tougher and a lot more seaworthy—river worthy, I guess you could say—than she looks.”
Wyatt swallowed slowly, his eyes still glistening with traces of fear, but he nodded stoically and climbed into the dinghy. Phil pushed the dinghy out until he was knee-deep in the water and then jumped in. The dinghy wobbled and lurched, but stayed stable enough, and once the two of them began paddling the boat smoothed out.
“We just have to get into the meat of the current,” Phil said, “and once we’re into, it’s a matter of just keeping the nose facing forward. By the way, brother, keep a gun on your lap where you can reach it easily. I don’t think we’ll see anyone on the banks while we’re moving through the suburbs, but that’ll definitely change once we get into the city. You keep your eyes on the right bank. I’ll keep my eyes on the left.”
Wyatt nodded, his hands white-knuckled on the oar as they traveled over a series of minor rapids. Once they were through them, he took out the .357 and laid it across his lap. Phil kept one of his .45s on his lap as he rowed.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 19 | EMP Ranch Page 4