by Jeremy Lock
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down trying to find some news on the radio. He knew that the internet would be down and the laptop would be useless, for the moment. He checked through the AM and FM bands and found nothing on the air. Jessica came downstairs freshly showered and grabbed herself a cup of coffee and sat down next to Jason.
“So, what’s going on?” she asked.
“Get Allie in here so I can explain to her as well.” Jason answered still fiddling with the radio.
Jessica had a concerned look on her face, it must be serious she thought as she walked into the living room to get Allie. When the both returned and sat down Jason started explaining his morning.
After finishing the story he said “As I’m sure you both noticed, nothing electronic is working. Cellphones, TV, the fridge are all down. This radio and laptop were down in the bunker and protected from the pulse. The freezer in the basement still works so we should be able to keep that food good for a little while.”
“What bunker?” Allie asked confused.
Jason explained the room, the faraday cage and what was in it.
“How come I didn’t know it was there?” Allie asked. She seemed upset that she had been left out.
“We didn’t tell you because we didn’t want you to worry” Jason said. He also didn’t trust her to keep quiet about it but he didn’t say that.
“Is this why we have all the food down in the pantry?” she asked.
“Yes, we keep all that food in case something bad like this was to happen.” Jason said.
“How did you know something was going to happen?” She asked.
“I didn’t ‘know’ this was going to happen, but I suspected that something bad might happen and wanted to protect you and your mother.” Jason said.
Jessica had always thought Jason was crazy with his prepper ideas until about 6 months before they had built the house. He sat down with her one night and had a stack of papers in front of him. After about 4 hours of her telling him he was crazy she finally started to understand where he was coming from. It wasn’t too difficult to understand his concerns after looking at it objectively. National debt was skyrocketing at an unprecedented rate; unemployment was through the roof, inflation was worse than anytime other than the great depression. Then Jason showed her what the government had been doing to prevent the collapse: Printing more and more money, playing with interest rates, and record numbers on food stamps. The depression would have hit years before and probably corrected itself had the government had left it alone, but the politicians were looking out for themselves and not the people. They wanted the power and the governments reach had never been so long. A full 49% of the US population was now receiving Government assistance and now every politician catered to them. The average taxpayer was too busy with their daily life to notice and the main stream media and its biased reporting never let them know there was a real problem. Eventually the bottom was going to fallout and it would make the great depression look like a small bump in the road. “And that’s when it will really get bad” Jason had thought but never shared. The Government would step in to “fix everything” and the constitution would be gone, along with all the freedoms it afforded.
“So when will the cellphones work again?” Allie asked.
“Years” Jason answered.
She just stared at him for a moment her mouth open. “Seriously?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“What?! No way! You’re lying!” Allie screamed running to her room.
“Well, that went well” Jason said.
“She will come around. I’ll go talk to her in a bit.” Jessica said drinking her coffee.
Jessica had a very good idea what was going to happen to their country and knew it would be several years before society would rebuild and they would be very trying years. But she also knew that they would have it easier than most.
“So was it a nuke or a CME?” she asked.
“I’m assuming it was a nuke, probably high altitude” Jason said and also explained the news reports about the military base explosions, the emotion in his voice was obvious.
“They didn’t say what bases?” she asked.
“No, it was only 5 minutes before the EMP so there were few details” he replied.
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Well, I think you should freeze a few gallons of water so we can keep the fridge up here cool until we use up the food. In the meantime I need to get some sleep, I suspect Jeff will be here by this evening and we can really get started.” Jason said.
Jeff was Jason’s best friend and fellow prepper. He was a paramedic working in the inner city of Newark whom Jason met 10 years before when Jeff had joined the local Volunteer ambulance company. Jeff was placed on Jason’s crew for Jason to train and they soon became inseparable. They both were into hunting, guns and the outdoors and soon found themselves spending a large amount of time together. Jeff rented an apartment about 15 miles away and commuted the near hour long commute to Newark three or so days a week working 12 hour shifts. Thankfully he worked the overnight shift so traffic was never an issue in his commute, and since his shift ended at 6am Jeff should have had plenty of time to get home before the blast, he was probably still asleep. Jason headed towards bed and Jessica started filling up water bottles.
Chapter 3
Jeff was not having a good morning. His night had gone well enough; it was busy, but it was always busy. Around midnight he had gotten a call from the Departments Assistant Chief asking him to stay at work until 10am, there was a call out and they couldn’t get anyone to come in till then. Jeff jumped at the overtime, he was trying to save up enough money to buy a house and his single life and hobbies put a strain on his bank account. That’s where the good had ended. At 6am his regular partner went home and he was stuck with Lashonda. Lashonda was a 26 year old black woman who was born and raised in Newark and thought she was god’s gift to the EMS services. Jeff had worked with her a few times but had made sure to avoid working with her as much as possible. It was her way and that was it. She decided where they were eating, who was doing what on each call and what was listened to on the radio, which drove Jeff crazy the most. Jeff enjoyed rock and country music and could tolerate some rap music, but Lashonda only listened to the most gangster rap, which couldn’t even be played on the radio, so she brought it in on her IPod. It was just terrible, so Jeff had gotten into the habit of turning on his country music any chance he had while Lashonda was treating a patient in the back of the ambulance, which pissed her off to no end. It was entertaining to Jeff until he found out the Lashonda had gone to the Chief in an attempt to get him into trouble. He had gotten a call from the Chief, who was also a close personal friend of his families thankfully, who informed him what Lashonda had attempted and told Jeff to watch his back. That was 4 months ago and Jeff had successfully avoided her until this morning. Jeff was in no mood to deal with her shit and told her as much and said that if she tried to put her rap music on he would personally smash the radio to bits. So they rode in silence with the icy mood clearly apparent in the air.
They had just finished their 3 job and were about a mile from the hospital, on their way to their 4 job, when the pulse had hit. Lashonda sat there trying to restart the ambulance which wouldn’t respond, no matter how many times she turned the ignition. Jeff tried his radio and found it was dead along with his cellphone. When he saw all the other dead cars on the road he knew what had happened. He tried to explain what an EMP was to Lashonda but she had no interest in anything he had to say. He grabbed his bag and walked back to the station leaving Lashonda turning the ignition. He knew he had to get out of the city as fast as possible; things would start to go bad in the city first and then it would spread. Jeff got back to his car and popped the trunk. He reached under the driver’s seat and grabbed his small Glock 26 pistol which he had strapped under the seat. He had been carjacked a couple years before and wasn’t about to have it happen agai
n. He put the gun in his waistband and then went to the trunk. There he pulled out his “bug out bag.” It was just a backpack with a small supply of food, water and ammunition along with a small tarp, some warm clothes and a fire striker. He kept it in his car for an event like this where he would have to walk the nearly 50 miles home. It was a prospect he did not look forward to. He knew he would have better luck getting out of the city at night but that was many hours from now and in the meantime the city would soon turn into a war zone. He grabbed his gear and prepared to get out of the city.
Looking up Jeff saw a young man looking at him from about 25 yds. away. The kid could only be 12 or 13 years old but he was wearing the gang colors of the 187 street Blood Set. Jeff was on high alert; he reached behind his back and gripped his pistol. He began walking down the street towards the kid, looking for any movement. The kid had his hands in his enormous hoodie sweatshirt and was sitting on a mountain bike. As Jeff approached he noticed the kid beginning to pull something out of his pocket. Seeing this Jeff smoothly drew his Glock in front of him and screamed “freeze” while positioning himself behind a mailbox taking cover. The kid’s gun had hung up in his sweatshirt and when seeing Jeff’s muzzle pointed at him knew he was beat. The kid quickly put his hands up and the small automatic fell out of his pocket to the sidewalk. Jeff stood up with his gun still trained on the kid.
“Kick the gun away” Jeff Ordered.
The kid complied and Jeff noticed tears in the kid’s eyes. Jeff reached down and grabbed the small pistol placing it in his pocket.
“Get off the bike,” Jeff ordered and the kid complied.
Jeff then ordered the kid to put his hands up on the building wall where Jeff quickly searched him for other weapons, as he had practiced with Jason a hundred times. The kid was full on crying at this point and Jeff almost felt bad. This kid was born into a bad situation and not many were able to crawl themselves out of it. The kid was probably raised by a single mother who worked 2 jobs just to keep food on the table and was therefore never home. The kid probably had no idea who his father was and therefore spent much of his free time on the streets looking to find the missing thing in his life, attention. And he had found it in the street gang. They offered him friendship, importance and most importantly money and power. The social welfare programs, while seemingly for the greater good, only prolonged the endless poverty and suppression of the overwhelmingly minority inhabitants of the inner city. Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life was a well-known proverb and yet the government just kept giving out the fish, so very few learned how to earn for themselves.
“What’s your name?” Jeff asked.
Between the tears the boy answered “Akhim.”
“Alright Akhim, here’s the deal. You are going to give me the gun and the bike and in exchange I will give you this car.” Pointing to his 2008 Subaru Impreza. “The car isn’t running but I need to get home now and don’t have time to play with it, deal?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah, deal” the boy said between sobs.
Jeff knew it wasn’t a fair trade, as the car was never going to run again, but he figured the bike was most likely stolen and it would allow him to get to Jason’s in a day or two instead of 3 or 4.
“Ok, get out of here boy!” Jeff yelled handing the kid the keys.
The boy ran down the road as fast as his legs would take him. Jeff got on the mountain bike and started pedaling to the closest exit of the city. He knew he needed to head North West to get home but that would mean he would have to ride through East Orange which was probably as dangerous as Newark if not worse. He decided to head north and go through the towns of Bloomfield and into Montclair where he would be much safer. Then he could start moving more westward. His plan was to stay on as many county and local roads as possible. The highways would be packed with stranded motorists who would be getting more and more desperate as time went on. He pedaled hard down 1 street toward the highway, this was dangerous, but time was more dangerous than population in his estimation. He pedaled as hard as he could down the road weaving through the stalled cars and perplexed motorists who barely noticed him. Occasionally he strayed onto the sidewalk which earned him a few shouts and colorful hand gestures from the normal pedestrians but so far he hadn’t run into much trouble. He knew there would be more people the closer he got to the intersection with the major highway so he remained vigilant. He wished that he had been driving his jeep when this all hit. He had a 1979 cj5 jeep which he and Jason had completely rebuilt a few years before. It had a 6 inch suspension lift and big mud tires that could go anywhere and it was also nearly EMP proof. No computer to operate the engine. Just a few fuses to change and he would have been on his way, but the big v8 was very bad on gas and with gas over $5 a gallon he stuck with the Subaru or his motorcycle most days. As Jeff approached the intersection with the highway he was on high alert. There were tons of people here, all out of their cars talking. Most of them were just people trying to get to work, but you never knew. He coasted through the intersection with his Glock in his front right coat pocket so it would be easily accessible. He made it through the intersection with barely an errant look in his direction and began to relax. He was almost out of Newark and that much closer to safety. He turned off 1 street onto Park Avenue and took the park trails towards Bloomfield Avenue.
As he approached Bloomfield Ave his radar went off. There in front of him was a group of 8 young men, all Hispanic, wearing MS-13 gang colors. He knew he was in trouble; MS-13 was the most violent gang in the country and feared even by much larger gangs like the Bloods and Crips. He hadn’t traveled this park often and didn’t know that this park was MS-13 tagged territory. When he was about 50 yards away he slowed to a stop, the gang members saw him and were talking to each other in Spanish. Jeff looked around and didn’t see any real option to get around. Both sides of the trail were heavily wooded and didn’t open up until he would be in range of the gang bangers. His Glock carried 10 rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber and he had 2 extra magazines in his left pocket. That was 31 rounds. He quickly looked at the small automatic, it was a cheap .380 caliber but appeared to be in reasonable condition and it appeared to have 7 rounds. Jason looked back at the group; they were still there, walking towards him, hands in their pockets. He knew he couldn’t ride around them and riding through them was suicide, but he had decent cover here and assumed that like most gang bangers, they couldn’t shoot so he had that to his advantage. He took cover behind a large oak and waited for them to come into range. At 25 yards on the range he could shoot a 4” group with 25 rounds. He figured he would let the guys get to about 35 yards and then take one down and hopefully the rest would run.
Using the oak for support he came up to one knee, leaned his arm against the tree pushing both hands out in front of him in a traditional weaver stance, aimed at the biggest of the gang members and fired. The round struck home and the rest of the gang members ran for cover pulling out their weapons. The man he had hit was lying in the middle of the trail holding his right leg and cursing in Spanish. Jeff had already retreated behind the tree and observed the men. Jeff tried to hear what the man was yelling but a volley of fire from the bad guys gave him a good idea what he was saying. Thankfully for Jeff none of the guys even hit the tree he was hiding behind. After a lull in the fire Jeff peered around the tree again and saw another man trying to help the big gang banger up. One of the others must have seen Jeff because a shout preceded another volley of fire his way. He took cover again and waited. During the next lull he came up ready. He brought his gun up ready to fire and when the two men were in his sights he fired 2 rounds hitting the helping man twice in the chest and both men fell. Another volley of fire caused Jeff to scamper back behind the tree, which one round actually struck this time. The big man began yelling again but this time there were no rounds following his commands. Jeff had about enough of the big man’s voice and figured without their leader the rest w
ould run and hide. Jeff popped out from behind the tree firing, he fired 3 rounds, one hit the man in the abdomen and one hit him in the neck.
Jeff tripped as he tried to get back behind the tree and fell to the ground hard, knocking the wind out of himself as a multiple bullets flew over his head. When he hit the ground he lost his grip on the Glock and it bounced out of his reach. He tried to get up but a sharp pain in his ribs brought him back. He tried to catch his breath and look for threats. He slowed his breathing down and tried to ignore the pain in his ribs as he sat himself up. He looked down where the 2 fallen men still lay on the path. He saw two of the other men looking in his direction as they slowly moved towards their boss. Jeff pulled the small .380 out of his pocket and aimed it towards the threat. He knew his chances of hitting anyone with this gun at range would be pure luck but he didn’t want to look defenseless. The first man reached his boss and his fellow gang banger, he yelled something to the others and the remaining 6 men began to retreat. Jeff made sure he saw all 6 men leave before he relaxed a little and put the .380 back in his pocket. He slid himself back around the tree and that’s when the shakes took hold. He had been able to control his adrenaline through the fight due to his countless hours of shooting and training but now it all hit him in a rush. His hands shook so violently he was unable to pick up his Glock from the ground. He just sat there and tried to control his breathing until the shakes had passed.