Then, inadvertently, he fell into a slumber.
Chapter Nine
Lance jolted awake to the sound of his son's voice.
“Dad, some people are trying to break into our car!”
Lance turned around and looked at his car, which was about fifty meters away. But no one was there. “I don't see anyone,” he said, turning back around.
“They were just there,” Tyler said. “They were trying to open the doors.”
Lance heard a vehicle take off, and immediately realized his son was telling the truth. They had not been the only people in the vicinity. He stood up and looked around. He still saw nothing. “We should get going.”
Tyler grabbed the soccer ball, then joined his dad and walked back to the car.
The fifty meter walk back to the car was a long one. Lance was highly alert, trying to watch out for anyone in the area that might be there to attack him. “Wait, stay here. I want to make sure no one is hiding behind the car.”
Tyler stopped and stood still, ten meters away from the car. Lance walked around his vehicle in a circular motion.
“Okay,” Lance said, letting Tyler know the coast was clear.
* * * * *
By the time they reached the Wyoming and Idaho border, the sun was beginning to set.
Lance could hardly keep his eyes open. He decided to exit the highway and pull over at a rest stop. The area looked vacant, with the exception of a pickup truck that was sitting in the parking lot. It looked modern, maybe a few years old. It had probably refused to start after the EMP.
Lance unbuckled his seat belt. “Are you coming in?”
“No.”
“We might not stop again for a while,” Lance warned. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, stay in the car and keep the doors locked. I'll be right back.”
* * * * *
The welcome center was abandoned, but the doors were unlocked.
Lance went into the restroom and listened to the creaking door close behind him as he passed through the entrance. He turned on the sink, but all he got was a strange sound. There was no water output.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Only four days had passed since the power outage, so he looked relatively the same. But he wondered what he might look like a year from now if the power didn't come back on.
The mere thought of it sent a chill down the back of his neck.
When the door to the restroom opened, Lance initially assumed it was Tyler, perhaps changing his mind about staying in the car.
But it wasn't.
Instead, it was two men who appeared to be in their early forties. One of them walked toward Lance, while the other man stood by the door.
Lance headed for the door, when suddenly, the man walking toward him pulled out a knife. “Give us your car keys,” he demanded.
“My son is in the car,” Lance said. “I'm not giving you my keys until I know my son is safely out of the car.”
“We're not here to negotiate,” the man with the knife said. “Give us the keys.”
Lance began to reach for his pocket.
“Reach for them slowly,” the man said.
Lance slowly reached into his pocket clawed around. He didn't have a knife of his own. He only had a small box cutter, but it was in the car. He reached for the keys and extracted them slowly.
“Slide them across the floor,” the man standing near the door said.
“I want to make sure my son is safely out of the car first,” Lance said.
“I heard you the first time, and this is still not negotiable,” the man with the knife said.
“Then you're going to have to take them from me,” Lance said. His pulse was racing. He could hardly believe what he just said.
“You have three seconds to give us the keys before I hurt you.”
“You might be able to do that, but I can hurt you, too. These keys can be used as a weapon. All I'm asking is that you let my son go.”
The two assailants looked at each other.
“Alright,” the man by the door said. “We'll go out to the car with you. Stay between us, and don't even think about running.
“Put the knife away, though,” Lance said. “I don't want you to scare my son.”
The assailant put his knife into his sheath. “Stay close to us. I'm going to keep my hand on this sheath, and if anything goes wrong, it won't take longer than a second for me to reach for my knife.”
* * * * *
When Tyler saw his dad walking toward the car with two strangers, he didn't immediately sense that anything was wrong.
“Tyler, open the door,” Lance said.
Tyler looked at him confusedly.
“It's okay, open the door.”
Tyler opened the door.
“Go into the welcome center, okay?”
“But dad . . . “
“Just go into the welcome center.”
Chapter Ten
Tyler stepped out of the car and began walking toward the welcome center.
Lance noticed that Tyler had hit the master power lock switch to unlock the door before he let himself out. All the doors were unlocked now.
The next thing Lance felt was a hit to the side of his head. Before he could react, he felt another hit to the side of his head, and then another. His surroundings spun around him, and then he fell to the ground.
“What are you doing?” the assailant asked. He took several steps back, shocked.
“He was planning to kill us all along,” the other assailant said.
“What makes you think that?”
Tyler stopped and turned around, watching in horror from the outside of the welcome center.
“Just get the keys!” the assailant shouted, unsheathing his knife. He was still standing several steps back, not wanting to get too close.
Lance thought about his son's future. What would happen to his son if he died? The thought was motivational enough to send a bolt of energy through him. He turned over and kicked his attacker's ankles as hard as he could, tripping him and knocking him over.
“Hey!” the man with the knife shouted.
Lance jumped back up and rushed toward the driver's side of the car. The man with the knife chased after him.
Since Tyler had hit the master lock button, all the doors were open, which meant Lance wouldn't have to waste precious moments unlocking the door. He swung the car door open and threw himself into the driver's seat, slamming the door just in time to avoid the man with the knife. He started the engine and hit the power lock switch, securing the doors.
Tyler was still standing outside the welcome center building. He was almost in a dreamlike state, as if the things he was seeing were not yet fully registering with him.
Lance floored the accelerator and raced toward Tyler.
“Let's go!” the assailant shouted.
They knew Lance was not going to leave without his son. If the assailants could get to Tyler before Lance did, they might be able to gain the upper hand.
Lance's car was certainly moving faster than they could run. But since he had to stick to the pavement, he had to take the long way to get to Tyler. The assailants were able to take a shortcut by cutting through the grass to reach the welcome center.
Lance got there first, but just barely.
Tyler came charging toward the passenger's side door. He could hear the footsteps of the assailants rushing toward him. He tried the handle and realized it was locked.
Lance scolded himself for not remembering to hit the power lock switch. Not wanting to unlock all the doors and risk having the assailants enter through the backseat, he reached across the seat and manually unlocked the passenger's side front door.
Tyler swung the door open and closed it.
Then Lance took off, just in time to avoid the assailants.
* * * * *
After driving for several more hours, Lance finally felt the adrenaline begin to fade. The jarring situation
he had been in earlier had left him wired, but his exhaustion was beginning to overpower that.
Tyler was already asleep in the backseat when Lance pulled into the parking lot of a national park. After turning off the car, the interior car lights stayed on for a minute. When they shut themselves off, Lance and Tyler were in complete darkness.
Sleep found Lance in a matter of minutes.
* * * * *
Tyler woke up around dawn to the sound of his dad pouring gasoline into the tank. A minute later, Lance got into the car and started up the engine.
“Are we almost there?” Tyler asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Lance said.
They took off down the road, and shortly after, they approached a sign that said:
WELCOME TO OREGON
The Silent Darkness
An EMP Survival Thriller
By Blaze Eastwood
Text Copyright © 2017 Blaze Eastwood
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means without the
prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
More From Blaze Eastwood
Chapter One
Benton made a slight left turn and merged onto the highway. It was Friday night, but it was ten o' clock, well past rush hour, and yet, traffic seemed heavy.
The sports segment on the radio came to a close, and then the weather report began.
Tonight, we can expect light drizzle, with a low of seventy-three degrees, the voice on the radio said. Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy, with a high of eighty-seven degrees.
Experts are calculating a twenty-three percent chance that the solar flare which took place yesterday could lead to a coronal mass ejection. Ken Livingston, a member of the Department of Defense's Science Board, claims the number is just an estimate, and the exact probability for a CME is unknown.
Livingston has also said the sun has a solar cycle that consists of periods of silence and activity. The silence refers to inactivity. These periods come along with changes in the size and frequency of manifestations, including flares.
Since a CME can damage power line transformers, along with other components, Livingston has advised the public to store important electronic devices in Faraday cages or bags. Although there is no guarantee that a Faraday cage or bag will provide full protection, they reduce the chance of electronic equipment being damaged.
I'm Rob Murray. The next news forecast is at ten-thirty.
The radio station went to a commercial break.
Benton slowed down to fifteen miles an hour after encountering a long line of idle cars.
Lights were flashing in the distance.
There was a car accident.
That's when he heard the cheerful-sounding ringtone.
He somberly extracted a cellphone from the right pocket of the black workout pants he wore and looked at the caller id.
The name AMANDA lit up the screen.
It was his wife.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Did you by any chance go grocery shopping today?”
“Yeah, I'm on my way back from the store right now.” He worked at the gym, which was right next to a grocery store, so he often did most of the grocery shopping.
“Good,” Amanda said enthusiastically. “That's one less errand I have to run. I'm on my way out of the house to pick up Katie. She's at Lizzy's house.”
“Okay, sounds good,” Benton said. He peered through the right side of his windshield. Cars were exiting the highway in droves.
“See ya soon,” Amanda said.
“Bye.”
The row of cars in front of him began to progress slowly, and then they came to an irritating halt again.
Benton could see the crash site now. A full-sized van was lying on its side, taking up three lanes. Behind it were three other vehicles that were damaged in the collision.
Cars were continuing to exit the expressway in droves.
Benton joined them, maneuvering his way over to the far right lane and taking the OFF ramp.
* * * * *
After he had exited the highway, the steering wheel started to become difficult to turn. It caught him by surprise, startling him.
Who was working on my car most recently? He thought angrily.
He had picked up his car from the shop the day before, where they had been working to repair a power steering fluid leak.
Then he realized the dashboard was not lit up like it usually was, and the cars around him were swerving back and forth, clearly experiencing difficulties of their own.
Benton shifted into NEUTRAL and tried to restart the engine, but to no avail.
The street lights had all gone out, and his car was cruising through the darkness at thirty-five miles an hour without the luxury of power steering.
Emerging from the darkened far side of the street was an SUV, heading straight toward him. The driver was halfway in his own lane and halfway in Benton's lane, swerving back and forth.
The only light present in the area was coming from the moon and a couple of headlights on an old pickup truck that still seemed to function without any problems.
It was dark, but not pitch black.
Benton turned his steering wheel as far as he could to the right, listening to the screeching tires on the approaching SUV. He coasted around the corner, just barely avoiding a collision with the larger vehicle.
When Benton's vehicle lost the remainder of its momentum, he parked along the curb near a suburban household.
The sounds of motors revving in the streets were no more, and the illumination from TVs and lamps that often jutted out the living room windows of people's houses were nonexistent.
He checked his phone, then tucked it back into his pocket in disappointment.
No signal.
He took the keys out of the ignition, then stepped out of the car, looking baffled and uncertain. He brought the grocery bags with him.
There were at least a handful of stranded drivers all along the suburban road, most of them still puttering away at their cars, trying to get them to start.
Benton's own residence was in an urban area, and it made him wonder what the city streets looked like. They must have been a disaster.
But maybe the power outage hadn't reached the city, he thought optimistically.
Then he remembered the warnings about the CME. He also remembered the threats of the electromagnetic pulse that could accompany it.
But it couldn't be . . . Could it?
Chapter Two
Extending his arms slightly in front of himself, Benton clawed his way through the silent darkness, searching for a source of light. But there was no source of light available, at least not that he could see.
The driver with the old pickup truck had disappeared down the street, taking the illumination from the vehicle's headlights with him.
He hit the power lock button on his key fob to arm his car. But when he didn't hear the sound his car always made when he armed it, he realized the battery was no longer in use.
The whole car was disabled; the battery, the engine, and all of the electrical components.
After nearly tripping, he realized he had made contact with the rough concrete curb that he had parked his car next to. He cautiously took a step forward, made his way onto the sidewalk, an
d began walking down the block.
I have to get home, he thought. Amanda will think something horrible has happened to me.
Then he remembered she had told him she was on her way to pick up Katie, their seven-year-old daughter, from her friend's house.
Benton and Amanda also had a five-year-old daughter that had likely gone along for the ride to Lizzy's house. Amanda wouldn't want to leave Stephanie home alone, so that meant his whole family was out there somewhere, walking home in the dark, or worse . . .
What if they're . . . Don't think like that, he told himself.
Stricken with concern, he began to wonder if they were okay.
He also thought of himself, wondering what would have transpired if he had been on the highway going fifty-five miles an hour with all the other vehicles when the power went out.
He heard the voice of a woman asking if anyone had a cellphone with a signal, to which the other stranded drivers responded, “No.”
It was muggy and unseasonably warm for the middle of June. It felt like late July. Benton was in good physical shape, so carrying the grocery bags weren't a problem. But the ice cream would be melted by the time he got back home.
When he reached the metal post at the end of the block, he looked up and squinted in the dark, trying to read the street sign. It was too dark to read. But he was pretty sure he had taken the Peterson Rd exit when he left the highway, which meant he was approximately four miles away from his house.
He stood still and surveyed the next block for a few moments, the same way he would survey his front porch through the window before answering the doorbell when it rang unexpectedly at nighttime. Then he moved forward.
* * * * *
After traveling nearly three and a half miles through the dark, he made it back to his own neighborhood and realized the power was out there as well.
The only moving vehicle he had seen in the last hour and a half was the old pickup truck back on the suburban road.
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