FAMILIES FIRST
A POST-APOCALYPTIC
NEXT-WORLD BOOK SERIES
VOLUME 1
LANCE K. EWING
Families First ~ A Post-Apocalyptic Next-World Book Series
Volume 1
Copyright © 2019 by Lance K. Ewing
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of authors’ rights.
ISBNs: 978-0-9996765-8-5 (Kindle) / 978-0-9996765-9-2 (trade paperback)
First Kindle and paperback edition: April 2019
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To my wife, Hannah, our three awesome crazy boys, Hudson, Jax and Hendrix,
and to my mom, Shareen, for her tireless editing of this first book.
Chapter One ~ Dallas, Texas
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Brian left the office at 6:45, at the end of a beautiful spring day spent entirely indoors.
“Hi, Honey,” he said to his wife, Linda, phoning her as he always did on his way home.
“Hey, Sweetie,” she replied. “What’s shakin’?”
“Just heading home, ready for our big night binge watching Breaking Bad on Netflix…
“IDIOTS!”
“What?” asked Linda.
“No, not you, Honey. Sorry…there are two guys racing down the freeway, acting crazy. I can see them about a mile back in my rear view. They don’t give a shit that the rest of us are just trying to get home in one piece!”
“What do you want for dinner? I can do spaghetti or chicken chili—both microwave.”
“Hold on… I’m sorry, Honey. I’m just going to get off the freeway at the next exit.”
Brian put on his right turn signal when he felt the first hit. The muscle car impacted his rear bumper, spinning him in a circle. His truck spun in the air, side over side, and came to rest with the driver’s side down on the pavement.
“Brian! Brian! Can you hear me?!” Linda yelled, with his phone still on speaker.
“I’m here, Linda,” he spoke in a quiet, labored voice. “I don’t know where my phone is but I can hear you.”
“Are you OK?” she asked.
Brian heard ringing and loud banging but couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
He felt a crunch in his chest with each labored breath. He looked down and saw a bone protruding from just to the right of his sternum. Being a Chiropractor, he knew it was a rib and was trying to figure out which one. “No pain,” he said aloud. “Why is there no pain?”
There was a loud bang beside him as a gray minivan rolled past him, landing on its hood with a thud on the pavement, no more than three feet from his line of sight.
“Oh no…god no,” he moaned.
“What is it, Brian?”
“Oh no… It’s a little girl, no more than eight years old, and she’s gone…she’s just gone.” He stared into her eyes—cold, lifeless, and full of potential she would never know. “I need to cover her up but I can’t move… The whole family was thrown from the van and the others appear to be all critically injured.”
“I’m so sorry,” Linda said. “Are you going to be OK?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I love you…and I want to pray… Pray with me?”
“Dear Lord, please watch over my husband.”
“No, no…sorry, Honey. I meant I want you to pray with me… “Oh Lord,” he said in a quiet, slow voice. “Please bless this beautiful, perfect little girl that I see just outside my reach. Make her whole again in your kingdom of Heaven. Please give her family the strength to move forward without her, and may they find some peace in their lives. In your name, I pray. Amen.”
“Honey, are you there?” came the repeated question from Linda.
* * *
“We’ve got DOAs,” announced the first officer on the scene. “A 7- to 9-year-old black female on the ground. And another one in the truck—a 40- to 45-year-old white male. Two adults and one more child needing an ambulance now!”
* * *
I got the call later that night from Linda. She was devastated, as I could imagine. She was also concerned about Brian not showing up at the office anymore.
I extended my sincerest condolences to her and offered to help in any way needed. I also assured her we would place a memorial in the office.
That was the first promise I would not be able to keep in this next world…
* * *
“Daddy, Daddy!” was coming from the monitor just ten minutes after they went to bed. I went upstairs, as I always did, expecting some kind of disturbance from the boys. I was reminded of something my father always said about kids. He would say any two will play just fine and any three will fight.
My wife, Joy, and I were blessed with three little boys. The twins, Hudson Cruz and Jax Sullivan, just turned four last week. Hudson has always been a cool kid, earning his middle name of Cruz. Easygoing most of the time and always up for an adventure. I always said he would be the first to break an arm.
Jax, not to be confused with Jaxon or Jackson, is a straight-laced kid, always following the rules. He thrives on routine and always knows best. He may have a hard time when he realizes he has to be an employee before he jumps into the CEO position at his first job!
Hendrix is the third in the whirlwind trio. With both him and Jax having red hair and about the same size, most people think they are the twins. Hudson, with brown hair and big “doe eyes,” as the girls would say, takes after his Daddy.
Hendrix is only two and already outweighs his brothers. He doesn’t take any crap and I pray he does not become the bully I see in the news these days. When I was a kid, bullies were always around and there was no school committee with zero-tolerance rules to put them on the 6 o’clock news. They bullied until someone fought back. Funny…nobody likes to get hit.
After about fifteen minutes, they were finally asleep. An hour later it’s time to pee the boys one last time and watch an hour of Fox News. I could watch politics for hours. Joy can’t understand it. She always says, “How can you watch that crap? It’s always the same every night.”
“I assure you it’s not—tonight Indiana just voted for the Republican nominee and picked Trump by a large percentage. Cruz, the last God-fearing candidate, just announced he is leaving the race… You now get Trump or Hillary.” How did it come to this? I thought. “I’m going to bed,” I told Joy.
* * *
Sounds of the ocean filled the room. The clock read 5:10 a.m. This is my new schedule, I thought. It’s been a while since I’ve been up this early.
I gave myself an hour to get my chores done and be out the door. I was going to miss seeing my kids for breakfast and dinner three days a week. My commute from McKinney to Dallas was about an hour and fifteen minutes each way. I made it to the office in thirty-six minutes this morning—not bad…
My long commutes over the past eight years became just tolerable as I started listening to post-apocalyptic audiobooks by American, Fortschen, Rawles, Hemming, Freeman, and others. I was fascinated by these books and the knowledge of the authors. I would have to pause the audio every few minutes and Google something like carbine, some battery power bank system, or fish mox antibiotics. I should really know some of this, I often thought to myself, just in case.
I pulled into my office at 6:45 and was the first one there. I was a Chiropractor by trade and had this office for the past eight years. I had not arrived this early in three years, filling a management position to spend more time with my wife and kids. Today was my first big day replacing our departed associate Chiropractor until we found a new one.
If I had known that the world as I knew it, as we all knew it, would end today, I would have had a good breakfast and kissed Joy and the boys good-bye.
* * *
The morning was busy and I was finding my routine after a long absence of treating patients.
The entire staff already knew about Brian and we agreed to discuss it after the noon break. Just after 10 I was taking my fourth X-ray and completing my cervical series on a new patient. The digital X-ray pulls up the image almost immediately and I was waiting for the last one to upload.
The computer screen went blank and the light room went dark. I apologized to my patient. “Hold on,” I told her, as I reached into my right front pocket for my iPhone. Thanks, Mr. Jobs, for the phone light, I thought. I have used it numerous times in a jam.
But my phone wasn’t working. The screen was dead. “Oh shit!” I exclaimed. “Excuse me?” asked my patient. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Just having trouble with the light on my phone… Let’s go up to the front office for now.”
I led her up to the front area in complete darkness. I had forgotten that there were no windows in the back of the office. At least I knew my way. As we reached the front, there were a dozen patients and staff huddled around the front desk, talking about the power outage. “No big deal,” said a rehab tech. “It happens a few times a year in cloudy weather.”
“I don’t see any clouds,” said a middle-aged man with wire-rim glasses. “Maybe you didn’t pay your electric bill?” I recognized him from a week earlier, when he was complaining about doing his rehab therapy. “I just wanted to get a quick adjustment,” he had barked. “I don’t care about all this other fluff. You’re just trying to bill my insurance for a bunch of extra services.” The Doc explained to him that he needed the therapy to actually improve, but he didn’t seem to get it. I wanted to set him straight now, but I had bigger concerns pressing.
“I saw a bright light, like a lightning bolt, right before the lights went off.” “Yeah, me too,” added two more patients. Next came a muddled discussion of what may have happened, each person talking over the others.
“I’ll be right back,” I announced to no one in particular, as I grabbed my car keys and headed out to the parking lot. No one even noticed I had left. I was praying to hear the beep as I pressed the remote to open the driver’s side door, but I knew it was unlikely.
As I pulled my skeleton key out of the fab and stuck it in the door, my mind was racing. This is a waste of time, I thought, but I guess I have to be sure before I scare the hell out of my staff and the patients that haven’t walked out the door yet.
I stuck the key in the ignition, said a quick prayer, and turned it slowly. Nothing…no turning over…no dinging sensors…no lights…nothing…
This is it, I thought… For over a year I had been telling Joy about electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs.
Joy has been my wife for ten years now. She is beautiful with a tall, slim build and fiery red hair, with a personality to match! She always shoots straight, so I thought she should know what could happen right here in our great country.
At first she thought I was a bit crazy and didn’t understand how a small nuclear weapon could bring down an entire country without initially killing a single person. “It’s hard to understand,” I would tell her. “Most people think of a nuclear weapon dropping out of a plane over a city like Hiroshima or being shot from the ground by some crazy dictator.”
The idea of an EMP had always fascinated me. Not that I would tell most people I knew, but I was surprised it hadn’t been used against us yet. The amount of Plutonium is very small, about the size of your hand, they say. “And you don’t even have to enrich the Plutonium, like Iran has been trying to do,” I would tell Joy. All you have to do is buy one. Just one or two of these things can take out the three U.S. interconnected power grids, like a game of dominoes. “Maybe we will get lucky,” I told her. “Texas has its own grid. If that stays up, we will just secede by default; but if it’s the only one to go down, we will just walk to Oklahoma. It’s only an hour’s drive,” I added.
“Yes, but we will be walking with three kids and a dog,” she pointed out. “Maybe the casinos just across the border will have power and we can get in some blackjack,” I joked. “Ha ha,” she quipped. “I don’t like any of this talk…and don’t go scaring the kids!”
“All right, all right, but there are three things you need to remember,” I said in a serious tone.
“Number one: If the power goes out anywhere, check your phone. If it’s on, it’s probably going to be OK. If it’s not working at all, then try to start your car. If that doesn’t work, the party is over.
“One last thing, Honey. If you’re in your car and it just stops working, pull over as safely as you can and look around. If most or all of the other cars on the road are stalled out, get your stuff and check under the mat in the back of your car. Grab everything you see and start walking straight for home.”
“What’s in the back of my SUV?” she asked with some surprise.
“Check it out tomorrow,” I said, knowing full well she would not. “Just don’t forget it if you ever need it.”
I had left her four large bottles of water, eight energy bars, three boxes of waterproof matches, seven cans of Chef Boyardee, some raviolis, and spaghetti with meatballs. They all had pop-tops in case she couldn’t work the can opener on the Swiss Army knife. And last, but certainly not least, there were two cans of spaghetti in tomato sauce with cheese—my personal favorite. Can opener required with these guys, but so worth it.
The small backpack fit all of these items, plus some light rain gear, an M&P shield 9mm pistol with two extra loaded seven-round magazines, fifty extra shells, a Swiss Army knife, hurricane matches, flashlight, sunscreen, and $600 in small bills, none over $20.
* * *
As I sat in my truck and realized it was never going to start again, I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts.
I had an office full of good God-fearing people who had no idea that their lives had just been irreparably changed. I felt something like jealousy that they had just a little longer to live in blissful ignorance of what was about to happen. Sadness washed over me as I realized most of them would probably not be alive in three months.
Get your shit together, I told myself, and at least give these people the information they need to give them a shot at surviving this.
As I walked back into the office, the conversations had started to change.
“Doc?” I heard from over my shoulder. It was Adam, one of our best rehab techs. “Yeah, Adam. What’s up?” I asked, trying not to sound alarmed. “Well, we all checked our phones and no one can get a signal. They won’t even turn on. And a couple patients tried to leave, but their cars won’t start. They are all asking me what to do, but I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“OK, Adam. Will you please gather everyone at the front of the office and I’ll talk to them in about five minutes.” “Just the employees or everyone?” asked Adam. I replied, “Everyone who wants to stay to hear what I have to say. It’s the most important meeting you have ever been to, trust me.” “OK, Mr. Trump,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll get them together.” He was a good guy and I knew he was joking around.
That will be the last joke you tell for a while, I said under my breath.
Five minutes later, like clockwork, everyone left was waiting anxiously to hear what I had to say. I had done biweekly meetings with the staff for the past eight years, including most of these employees for the past few years, so I wondered what they were expecting.
“Thank you for staying here for a few mi
nutes. I am going to talk for about twenty minutes and will answer as many questions as I can. After that, I’ll be leaving.”
“Leaving where?” asked Jill, our billing manager. “Let’s just start at the beginning,” I suggested.
“There are only two things that I know would cause this kind of power outage—cell phone malfunctions and cars that won’t start, all at the same time.
“The first is a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). It’s a massive solar flare from the sun. There are solar flares nearly every day, but it takes just one big one in just the right direction to cause major destruction to unprepared countries.
“The second and more likely cause, I believe, is called an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse. It’s a scud missile with a small amount of Plutonium or nuclear material, about the size of your hand. This can be made by any country that has nukes but is more likely just purchased on the black market by Isis, or possibly North Korea.
Next World Series (Vol. 1): Families First Page 1