by Ryan Casey
I swallowed a lump in my throat and looked down the length of the road. I knew I could wait for someone to come help me. No doubt the army or the SAS would move in to take control of the situation.
But I knew what an attack on communications and electricity was going to do to the people here. When you take away communication and connectivity, you take away a new organ that the human race has grown so dependent on.
And when you take away communication and connectivity… you take away the illusion of order that those things create.
This was going to descend into chaos.
Fast.
Far faster than anyone could imagine.
I took a deep breath and I looked all around me. I looked at the screaming people. I looked at the smoke. I looked at the fallen telegraph poles.
And in spite of every instinct in my body telling me that somehow, things were going to work out, I knew what I had to do.
I had to gather some supplies.
I had to get back to my family.
But first and foremost, I had to get the hell away from the busy areas.
And I had to take advantage of this situation before it spiralled out of control.
Chapter Five
I walked down the gridlocked road past the mass of people and tried to keep my focus on moving forward.
It was late morning and the brightness of the sky had receded somewhat. Well, not completely, but enough that I could at least see the sun peeking through the clouds again. The further I walked, the more aware I became of the scale of the disaster, and the more certain I grew that this was something EMP-related—whether terror or natural, I couldn’t be sure. The abandoned cars, unable to start up. The phones, smashed after a surge of electricity hit them. Telegraph poles on top of cars, people tangled up in the wires. Crying, bleeding bodies. Static corpses.
The stench of death.
I knew I had to get away from here. I couldn’t stay here. If this was the chaos that had unfolded in a matter of minutes then it was going to get worse before it got better. And I didn’t want to be here when it really did get worse.
I looked up in the sky then and I saw something as I tried to zone myself out from the cries of the dying.
There was something falling towards the earth.
I narrowed my eyes. I couldn’t quite make it out. At first, I thought it might be a bird or something like that.
But then I jumped to the next logical conclusion in the Superman speech. Is it a bird? Is it a…
Well it wasn’t a bloody Superman.
So it could only be one thing.
I held my breath and watched this plane fall from the sky, my entire body going cold. It was far away. Far enough that it wouldn’t cause me any direct damage. But still. The thought of the thousands of aircraft in the sky. So many of them would just be in freefall right this second if this were an EMP, raining down on the earth.
I glanced up nervously. I might be able to get myself away from here, but there was no knowing what kind of hell I’d be walking into further down the road.
I thought of all those poor people aboard the plane as I watched it move faster to the ground. Going on holiday. Returning from a trip around the world. So many stories, all believing they were safe up there in the sky, all—
I heard the explosion even from this distance and I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I saw the smoke rising already.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. There were thousands of planes above Britain on any normal day. If even half of them cut out, then that was… well, hundreds of thousands of lives lost right away. Then there were the electrical shocks. The pacemakers cutting out. The cars that would crash into one another as soon as the engines failed. The nuclear power plants going into meltdown.
So many people underestimated just how lethal a single EMP might be. They thought the real threat was to communications devices, and that they’d be able to ride it out eventually.
But they discounted the sheer number of people who would die within a moment of the EMP.
And then there were the people reliant on medical deliveries. The mass of people who already visited A&E in a normal day. The ambulances. The people on life support machines. The people in intensive care. The people under the knife, their skulls halfway cut into in an attempt to remove a tumour.
So many people, going.
So many people, gone.
I was lost in thoughts and still had my eyes closed when I heard the cry for help.
I turned around and saw a man sitting in the passenger seat of a car beside me. His wife was at the wheel. She was clutching her chest, struggling.
On the front of the car, a telegraph pole rested.
“Help,” the man said. “My—my wife. She’s… she’s got a bad heart. She needs to get out of here. Please.”
I walked slowly towards the car.
But then, looking at the telegraph pole, the way it was still sizzling, I stopped.
“Please,” the man said, tears rolling down his face. “We need your help. Please.”
I looked at him and then at the telegraph pole and I felt a weight fall to the pit of my stomach. Because I knew the truth.
There was no getting them out of this situation.
If I touched that telegraph pole, I’d die.
And then there was no way I’d be able to get back to my family.
I needed to get back to my family.
I sniffed back some building tears and I looked at the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Wait. No. Please. Please help! Please!”
And as I walked away from the car, I couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt creeping through my body as I listened to the man’s repeated cries for help.
I could’ve helped.
I could’ve tried to help.
Instead, I’d left them.
I’d wanted to help, but I’d left them.
I kept on going until I was far enough away that their screams were out of earshot.
But I could still hear them echoing around my skull, and see the man’s judgemental, desperate eyes looking right at me, into my soul.
Chapter Six
Even though I was finally off the main road, it soon became clear that the panic and the chaos wasn’t just confined to that location.
The light from above, although dimmer, still shone down and cast a haunting glow around the streets I was on. Cars had slammed into one another. People were standing outside their homes desperately trying to make calls. There was a palpable tension building, as I noted a few police officers trying to gain control of the situation. But they were just as lost as everyone. The struggle wasn’t confined to the everyman. This was something that affected everyone.
The weirdest thing I saw? An old woman walking her Dalmatian, smile on her wrinkled face. She glanced at me. And in her gaze I saw not a care in the world about the events unfolding. She’d seen it all, or so she thought. She believed that ’cause she’d lived through wars and threats aplenty, there was nothing that could possibly put the world on its back. Everything was going to be okay.
How wrong she was.
I heard a shout over by the terraced houses on the other side of the park that the woman was walking her dog through. When I looked, I saw a man on the floor, blood pooling from his head. The woman beside him was screaming at the police officers, one of whom was holding a baton, another trying to defuse the situation. I could see the panic in their eyes. They were just trying to keep a lid on things. But little did they know, people’s realisation that the police really didn’t have any control was growing at a faster rate than they would’ve imagined.
I saw more people gathering round, a few pushing the police for what they’d done to the man, for whatever reason they’d done it.
I could sense the tension building.
And this was just a matter of hours in.
Seeing this lack of law and order made me even more committed to wh
at I knew I had to do. I was going to have to find a shop and stock up on supplies. I didn’t have a thing in my possession. I’d left my car behind, something that weirdly, I hadn’t even thought twice about at the time. It just seemed like the natural, right thing to do.
So I was going to have to get a rucksack and I was going to have to fill it with essentials—not just for my journey home, which I would also need to get planning. But also for when I got home, too.
Because from the looks of things… this wasn’t just something that was going to resolve itself overnight.
This was serious.
I kept my head down and made sure I was out of view of the police officers, who were trying their best to contain the rapidly escalating situation in front of the terraced houses. I kept on walking, hopeful and certain that eventually I’d find some kind of shop. I wondered how long it’d take for the looting to truly kick in. How long would it be before people started to take advantage of a chaotic situation? Usually it took less time than many thought it would. Think of the London riots of 2011. No sooner had the protests got violent that the looters joined in. People take advantage of a lack of order. It was going to be unfolding imminently, if it wasn’t already.
I just had to make sure I was first to the good stuff, and that people didn’t know as much as I did about the kinds of foods and equipment needed to survive in a world like this.
Well. I’d never survived in a world like this before. Maybe I’d be completely wide of the mark. There was only one way of finding out…
I passed by a group of teenagers, all of them complaining that their phones weren’t working, that they couldn’t send any snaps to their friends. And that summed it up. That perfectly captured this society’s attitude towards a major event like this—of which I was certain it was at this point. People didn’t care about the threats their universe or their enemies could pose to them. They didn’t think those concerns were twenty-first-century ones, so they ignored them. Conflict was a thing of the past. Disaster was a thing of the past.
But really, in the grand scheme of history, the children of today have lived in rare times of peace. I knew I’d lived in rare times of relative peace, too.
It was easy when you lived in that world to convince yourself you were going to be okay forever, no matter what.
It only took a disaster like this to come along and make you realise just how grossly unprepared you really were after all.
I walked a little further, keeping myself to myself, the screams of that man I’d left in the car still radiating in my ears, filling my body with guilt.
I couldn’t have helped him.
There was nothing I could’ve done for him.
You could’ve tried.
The voice inside my head sounded like Sarah. It made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
I could’ve tried.
I could’ve, and I hadn’t.
I took a deep breath. He was on the motorway now, and I was here. If I’d tried, I’d be dead too.
And I couldn’t die.
Not when I had a family to get home to.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I almost missed it.
I stopped.
There was a supermarket in the distance.
It was already filling with people, all rushing inside, grabbing trollies.
I swallowed a lump in my throat and tightened my fists.
I knew what I had to do.
Chapter Seven
I knew it wouldn’t take long for society to crumble in the wake of whatever solar event was clearly occurring. I knew the looting would start eventually. I knew there’d be a mad scramble for the best supplies. And I knew that there would be conflict. People would make groups of their own. Those groups would attempt to coexist, to pull together. But naturally, something would pull them apart. Maybe it would be supplies. Maybe it would be a sheer overload in numbers.
Or perhaps it would just be that urge to lead that is embedded deep within each and every one of us. That desire for ultimate power.
Even if you deny it’s inside you… you know damn well it’s there.
But as I stood at the entrance to the supermarket, I couldn’t help but be taken aback by what I was witnessing.
The supermarket was already filled with people. Some were running down aisles with over-stuffed trollies throwing everything they could into them. There was shouting, conflict building as people argued over who was entitled to what, and how much was reasonable for a single family to take. The cashiers looked on, jaws agape, like they didn’t know what to do—and like they weren’t in a position to resolve the situation in the first place.
Which they weren’t, in truth. Money in its old paper form wouldn’t mean a thing if the blackout really did have long-term consequences.
And the more I witnessed the chaos, the more I believed that fact might well be true.
I saw some of the supplies these people were fighting over and I felt pity for them in a way. Part of me wanted to go over there and tell them that it was no good raiding the freezer sections; that it was pointless grabbing televisions, clearly stocking them up to sell when the world got back to normal. Because everyone had to assume that things wouldn’t return to normal. It was the only way of preparing for the worst.
I would share information on the best supplies to gather, the best things to salvage.
But unfortunately, I was just as desperate for those supplies as everyone else. They were just as important to me as they would be to everyone else.
This was no time for sharing and camaraderie.
This was a time for preparing for the storm to come.
I wouldn’t say I was a “prepper” per se. I mean, would anyone in the UK?
But still. I knew a thing or two about the best things to go for in case of an emergency like this.
It was time to see what my internet research and fascination with prepper fiction could offer me in terms of skills and knowledge.
If they failed… well, Sarah could have the last laugh. She’d been right about their uselessness all along.
But I was feeling cautiously optimistic.
First, I made my way to a section of the store that was unsurprisingly quiet. The section containing the bags and the rucksacks. If I was going to gather supplies, I was going to need something inconspicuous to keep them in.
I examined the rucksacks on the shelf opposite me. Something black was best because it didn’t stand out. Anything bright was a no-go. And honestly, the camo design was overrated too, because it had military connotations, which might make my supplies more of a target to thieves.
I had a “bug out bag” of supplies like that back home. Stupidly, I hadn’t brought it with me, mostly out of sheer naivety that my interest in basic survivalism was just that: an interest. It wasn’t anything that was ever going to have a wide-reaching impact on my real life. It was just a silly little hobby of mine.
What I’d give for that bug-out bag right now.
Really, bug out bags were packed to help the carrier survive approximately seventy-two hours in case of an emergency. The ideal things to keep in one? Water, food, food preparation equipment, clothing, shelter, bedding, a heat source, first aid gear, hygienic things, tools, something for communications, something for self-defence. So a fair bit.
But right now I had to think about essentials more than anything. Tools, I could pass on for now. Comms devices… well, I wasn’t intending on communicating with anyone.
Food. Water. They were the essentials for my journey back home. They were the main things I needed to focus on right now. Even though I knew water was heavy and that really I should be looking for longer term solutions of water-collecting, I still had to make the most of the water on offer while I could. It wouldn’t always be so easy to find it in the future if this EMP strike was as devastating as I believed they could be, after all.
I made my way to the food aisle, passing an old man pushing a very anaemic looking trolley along. He didn
’t look distressed by his situation. Just accepting, like he’d faced up to the new pecking order in the world already.
It was sad to see. But there were going to be far worse things to witness when I got out of this place and onto the road, especially as time went on.
I threw some peanut butter—a great source of protein—into my rucksack. Then I grabbed some canned beans, rice, ramen noodles and powdered milk. Rice and beans were going to form the bulk of meals in this new world, so stocking up on them was essential. I mean, I had my little self-sustainable patch back home, which would help matters. Cows, hens, a field where I could grow crops. In the long run, I was sorted—as long as my wife and I took major efforts to sustain it.
But I needed to get there first, so I needed some things to aid me.
I grabbed a lighter and some matches, as well as a pan. I picked up a few protein bars, which should carry me through the day. I got a few packs of jerky too, which although I hated, I knew was another good easy source of protein—something essential when I was going to burn so much energy on my journey.
I even managed to get myself a few cans of water, which had been ignored as the bulk of people went straight to the bottles.
Everything was going well until I saw the woman.
A man had hold of the bottles of water in her hand. She was trying to hold on desperately. She looked over at me, fingers slipping from the bottles.
Then the man pulled the water away from her, and she fell.
She hit her head on the side of the shelf. She gripped it, then looked up at me for help.
I stood there frozen. The men who had taken the water bottles were long gone. This woman was hurt. I needed to help her. Or at least give her something.
But something happened.
That fear.
The fear of not having enough to get to my family.
The fear of not being able to get to my family at all because I wasted my time.
No. I couldn’t help her. I had to get back home.
I had to keep moving.
I took a deep breath and tightened my grip on my rucksack, supplies weighing heavily on my right shoulder.