by Mike Kraus
Rachel sighed again as she opened the dryer. Damned elevator, breaking like that, just when —
A deep rumble caught Rachel's attention, and she stood up from the dryer, clothes in hand, head cocked to one side, listening. Another deep rumble passed through the house, shaking the appliances and causing the wall of canned food behind her to rattle ominously.
What the…
Another rumble, louder, more forceful. Then another, and another. Before Rachel could so much as turn around to head back up the stairs, the room shook violently and the upper door slammed shut. Rachel heard a muffled scream from behind the door and started to run up the stairway. At the fifth step, another tremor hit, causing her to lose her footing and fall backwards, slamming onto the floor and skidding up against the washing machine. Just before Rachel blacked out, she saw the effects of one last tremor as it shook the brick loose from in front of the bottom door to the staircase. The door slowly swung shut just as a bright light began to emanate around the edges of the door at the top of the stairs. Rachel could swear that she heard echoes of the screams of her husband and daughter as the darkness enveloped her.
5:45 PM, March 28, 2038
Nancy Sims
Clearly it had all been a dream, Nancy thought as she walked back to her new office in Miami. The taste of fresh seafood was still dancing on her tongue as she returned from lunch, and she felt the warmth of the sun beating through the windows on her back as she sat down and turned toward her computer. The dream had been so real, yet here she was, at her new job, settling in and enjoying her new life in Miami.
What an odd dream, though, she thought. Nancy frowned as she typed in the password for her computer. Wait, why is the keyboard so warm?
"Mark!" she half-shouted down the hall. "Is the A/C turned on? It's really warm in here!"
Receiving no answer, Nancy’s frown deepened. She got up from her desk and walked into the hall. She gasped as the normally bustling office was suddenly devoid of the people and cubicles that had filled it just moments ago, now replaced by rows of drooping corn and a blazing summer sun.
"No, no, no. This isn't happening. This isn't real!" she shouted, as the rest of the office disappeared around her. Nancy's vision blurred heavily and she fell backwards towards her office door. Seconds later, she opened her eyes and saw the harsh reality surrounding her.
As Nancy woke up, she realized that the office had been a dream, and this, instead, was reality. At least I’m alive… I think, she mused, fighting against a splitting headache that was forming behind her eyes. Nancy looked around at what was left of the interior of her vehicle, noticing that every window had broken and the airbags had all deployed. The SUV was filled with empty white sacks that hung from the front and sides of the interior. A thin layer of dust caked everything, including herself. The roof was heavily dented from multiple rolls, but thankfully she had left the sunroof cover closed, though it had been ripped off in the last roll before the vehicle came to a rest.
A dull pain radiated from her chest where the seatbelt was strapped. Nancy tugged at her shirt, gasping at the extensive bruising that appeared along her chest. As she wiggled her extremities and touched each of the hundreds of scratches and scrapes on her body, she slowly realized that she was relatively unharmed, even if she looked like she had been through a warzone.
Coughing, Nancy tugged at her seatbelt and then reached down to unfasten it. Just as the button clicked, she realized that the car was upside down. Six inches wasn't far enough of a fall to do serious damage, but it was enough to make her immediately regret it. She kicked a few remnants of glass out of what was left of the passenger window, pulled herself out and struggled to her feet. Leaning against the car and shielding her eyes from the midday sun, she took in the surroundings. Ahead of her, towards Kansas City, a thick black cloud of smoke hung on the horizon and the faint smell of ash and fire reached her even though she was still many miles outside the city. Turning around, she looked back and saw more black smoke drifting along the horizon from the Denver area, dissipating as it spread across the plains. The memory of the bright flashes came flooding back, and she put a hand to her temple as if to will the headache away along with the memories.
11:21 PM, March 26, 2038
Leonard McComb
Distant booms thundered far overhead as Leonard regained consciousness. He blinked several times, trying to clear away the darkness that enveloped his vision when he realized that it wasn't his eyes that were the problem. The entire light system in the tunnels was out. While not a completely unusual event, it did mean that there was a major break in a line somewhere.
"Must have been caused by that damned earthquake," he muttered. Leonard reached up to his head and then cursed as he realized his hardhat and headlamp had fallen off. He groped around, feeling at the edges of the collapsed pipe until he felt the firm cold touch of the plastic hardhat. He could tell just by the feel of it that it had been cracked in several places, but there was no discernible damage to his head beyond a throbbing headache. Thank heavens for small favors, he thought. Feeling around on the helmet, Leonard found the headlamp on the front and flicked it on. The bright beam cut through the dark pipe he was in, illuminating the collapse at the closest end. As Leonard panned the light around, he saw that the pipe was broken and chipped in several places, but the end he had entered through looked intact.
Leonard turned himself around and started crawling out of the pipe, holding the headlamp and hardhat in one hand as he crawled. Distant booms still thundered, and Leonard paused for a moment to listen to them. While they weren't as strong as the original rumbling that had sent him diving for cover in the first place, they were definitely coming from the surface, which meant that they had to be incredibly powerful to penetrate through this many layers of dirt, rock and concrete. Could be pipelines rupturing in the tunnels, or aftershocks. What do I know, though? I'm an engineer, not a geologist.
Reaching the end of the pipe, Leonard stood up, placing the hardhat back on his head and panning the headlamp around the room. Most of the damage seemed to have been caused by parts of the ceiling caving in, with man-sized chunks of concrete scattered around the room at odd angles. The aftershocks (or whatever they were) were coming less frequently now, but with each one, a cloud of dust was exhaled into the air, and small chunks of the ceiling rained down around him. Leonard glanced around, searching, and then spied what he was after. With a grunt, he pulled a piece of concrete off of his shoulder bag, hoisted the bag over his shoulder and checked the contents. Aside from a healthy deposit of concrete inside, it was intact, including his lunch pail and spare hardhat that he carried with him. He pulled out a sample-sized bottle of whisky from the bottom of the pail, drained it with a gulp, then pulled out the intact hardhat and put it on his head. He attached his headlamp to it and set aside the spare in the bag.
"Priorities first," he muttered, as his tongue and throat grew warm from the whisky.
11:47 PM, March 28, 2038
Marcus Warden
Breathing heavily, Marcus stopped running and leaned against a nearby tree, bracing himself as he fought to catch his breath. He had spent the last three hours jogging through the forest, heading back towards his car parked on the outskirts of the national park. Once he had woken up and the shock had worn off, Marcus realized that all of his electronics had failed. His cellphone, satellite phone, emergency radio and flashlights had all stopped working right around the same time that the first flashes brightened the night sky. Fortunately, the moon was nearly full and had provided plenty of illumination to his hasty gathering of his camping gear. As he took a sip of water from his canteen, Marcus looked up at the sky and noticed that the moon seemed somewhat dimmer, as though a layer of tinting had been spread over its surface. In fact, the entire sky had that look, with the stars and the moon both not providing the same amount of illumination they had just a few hours ago. "Shit," he said, looking at his watch, "Ten till midnight. It'll be mid-afternoon before I get o
ut of here." While the valley he was in had provided relief from civilization (and protection from the apparent cataclysm unfolding in the outside world), climbing uphill meant that he had to double his speed and triple his effort to get out of the valley and back to his car in any reasonable amount of time.
Marcus pressed on, a thousand thoughts filling his head as he jogged around trees, scrambled up over rocks and traveled a winding path up and out of the valley. Was this just some type of test? There were no reports of tests, and surely no agency would be testing a bomb this close to a national park. What if it was war? Tensions with the Middle East had been higher than ever, but surely not this high. What about the office? The business, the contracts... mom and dad. His throat seized up as this thought passed through his mind.
Marcus didn't have a wife, and his girlfriend was more of a casual acquaintance than an actual relationship. Marcus never had time for other people, being as busy as he was with his work, but he always had a special place in his heart for his parents. Now in their sixties, Marcus had set them up in a small house in Richmond once his company passed the ten million dollar mark. They had refused at first, but Marcus was determined to convince them to move back to Virginia and settle down. Slowly but surely, with the help of weekend visits and extended vacations, he gradually wore them down and managed to convince them to move into a townhouse purchased by his company. They had insisted on paying rent, which he dutifully accepted and then secretly slipped into a private fund that funneled back into their checking account. Marcus suspected that they knew what he was doing, but he also knew that they were too proud to bring it up, so the charade continued, helping to fuel a closer relationship that all three of them cherished.
Marcus was starting to regret the decision now, though. If this wasn't just some hoax or test and those really were bombs exploding, then he didn't think someone would be targeting any random place on the East Coast. If there were bombs this close to DC, there would have to be some in DC, and if there were some in DC, there could have been one in Richmond, too. Marcus shook his head, forcing the thoughts out of his mind, willing himself to move faster. He had to get to his car, get to civilization and find out what was going on.
7:20 PM, March 28, 2038
Nancy Sims
Nancy spent the better part of an hour in shock as she sifted through her car, alternating between crying and smiling grimly as she found pieces of her life scattered in and around the remains of the crash. A water bottle was a source for some cheerfulness and hope while a shattered photo frame sent her into tears for several minutes. Eventually she managed to scrape together a few intact granola bars and several unbroken water bottles.
With one last look at the car, she began to head east along the road toward Kansas City, or what was left of it. As much as she wanted to just sit with the car and wait to be rescued, she had a feeling that help wouldn’t be coming any time soon.
As the sun beat down overhead, she pondered what could have happened. Not having any formal "hard science" education, Nancy relied on what she read in supermarket tabloids and picked up during late night internet sessions, where a search on Pomeranian poodles would end three hours later with an in-depth video explanation of the inner workings of a thorium reactor. While Nancy was, at heart, an accountant, she nonetheless tried to expand her horizons as often as she was able. This self-learning streak didn’t come naturally to her, but ever since her husband died, she tried her best to continue practicing what he had taught her about never ceasing to learn. This informal extended education did little to help her decipher what had happened beyond the speculations that another world war had started or that the apocalypse was at hand. The cloud formations on the horizon certainly weren't natural, and neither were the initial explosions that she saw right before her wreck. Whatever it was that caused the destruction, the smart thing was to keep moving east towards the city in hopes of finding other people who might be able to help her.
2:35 AM, March 27, 2038
Leonard McComb
While the labyrinth below the city was impossible to navigate under normal conditions, it was nothing compared to now. The entire topology of the caverns, pipes, sewage systems and thousands of hallways and chambers had dramatically changed. Even for a seasoned veteran like Leonard, the journey out of the city was taking much longer than he would have liked. Three hours into his trek, Leonard swung open a door, looked around and groaned as he realized that he was back where he started — for the second time. Screw it. I'm not getting out this way, he thought. Leonard plopped down on a chair-sized chunk of concrete that had fallen from the ceiling and looked around, contemplating his next move. Clearly he wasn't going to be able to get out the way he had come in. Even assuming there was still a way out, it would be next to impossible to find it before he ran out of food and water. Looking down the expanse of a nearby sewer pipe, an idea flashed into his mind that both excited and repulsed him at the same time. You've got to be kidding me, he thought. Still, what’s worse, dying of dehydration or drowning in raw sewage?
Leonard sighed and gazed woefully at the empty whisky bottle, still lying on the floor from when he had discarded it earlier. Fine time I picked to try to cut back on the drinking. He sighed again, stood up, walked to the cracked opening of the massive sewage pipe and gingerly climbed in. While this particular section of pipe hadn't been used in years, he was more concerned with where it led than with what it used to transport. Three miles of this particular pipe would, if memory served, give way to an underground causeway where all the local sewage lines linked together and dumped out into the Hudson. There was supposed to be a sewage treatment plant somewhere before the river, but budget cuts had led to more of an "open gate" policy instead of a "treatment" one. Not having been to that particular plant in years, he wasn’t sure if that policy still stood, but given the budget constraints the department was under, he wouldn’t doubt it. Still, Leonard knew of no other way to get out of the tunnels without going back the way he came, and that could take weeks to do, if it was possible at all. The advantage that this particular path gave him was that it went deeper underground than any other nearby pipeline large enough for him to travel through. Leonard hoped that deeper meant less damage, but there was only one way to find out. With any luck, a few hours of travel would put him on the edge of the river, just in time to see the sunrise.
4:15 PM, March 28, 2038
Rachel Walsh
A faint sniffling sound was the first thing that Rachel heard as she regained her senses. It was soon followed by the feeling of a warm damp spot moving over her nose and mouth. Opening her eyes, she saw the familiar face of her family's lab staring back at her, happily licking away the dirt and grime around Rachel’s face. With a groan, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around at what remained of her basement. Whatever had caused its destruction had completely leveled the house, obliterating the upper levels and ripping huge holes in the concrete and rebar structure that surrounded the basement. Fortunately for her, though, most of the debris had been sucked up and out of the basement instead of crashing down on top of her. Light from a full moon filtered down through the swirling dust overhead as thick clouds floated past, causing the stars to appear as a vague glow instead of their normal bright points.
Sam licked at her face again and Rachel cracked a slight smile, returning the favor with several pats on his back. "Didn't we teach you to stay out of the basement?" Speaking these words sparked her memory and she froze, remembering what had transpired in the seconds before she blacked out. Struggling to her feet, Rachel fought off a wave of nausea and a pounding headache, moving towards what was left of the stairway leading up into the main section of the house. Like the rest of the basement, only parts of the stairway remained, the rest having been sucked out with the blast. Rachel pushed aside the remains of the door and worked her way upwards, climbing the mound of concrete and wood that used to be the stairs. A hole roughly the size of a door was at the top of the pile, a
nd she pulled herself up through it, blinking as a sharp wind bit into her tearstained face, speechless at the devastation that surrounded her.
Her once beautiful two-story house and idyllic neighborhood were no more, having been replaced with a scene out of Mad Max or one of the video games that Jeremy liked to play on the weekends. Rubble, burned trees, scorched earth, shingles, wooden boards and every other type of building material imaginable was laid out as far as she could see. A cold wind shocked her bare shoulders, carrying smoke and dust along the ruins. After her initial shock at the sight wore off, she remembered again why she had come out.
"Jeremy? Julie??" Rachel called softly at first, and then her voice rose to a fevered pitch, screaming the names of her husband and daughter as she made her way across the broken remains of the foundation of her house, stumbling across the wreckage in search of her family. The rational part of Rachel's mind knew what the truth was, but her heart couldn't accept the evidence that surrounded her. Regret for over a thousand nights away from her home and her family flooded over her as she fell to her knees and sobbed. In the blink of an eye her family had been wiped from the earth and she felt, for the first time, the pain of a loss that had started years ago and was only now made painfully obvious. Rachel curled into a ball in the space where her kitchen once stood and sobbed uncontrollably as Sam gently pawed at her feet, whimpering along with her.