Without even watching to see if she’d obey, John stepped into the kitchen, and Thomas overheard muffled conversation.
Juliana just nodded, bounding off into the bathroom. Thom could hear her start brushing. Was Anna ever this obedient?
He grinned, and his thoughts must have shone on his face because John jumped right in, “She’s being good because we have company. Usually, it’s a fight to get her to bed. She likes you and wants to impress.” He smiled. “Plus, she knows the consequences of acting out in front of others.”
Thom nodded. John seemed like a fair man. A good man.
A beautiful woman with golden caramel skin and dark hair entered from the kitchen holding two mugs.
“Thom, I’d like you to meet my wife, Talia.”
Thom rose to shake her hand, and she set the mugs down and wrapped him in a hug.
“John told me what you did to help them get home. Thank you.”
Thom could feel his face start to flush. It had been a long while since he’d hugged a woman other than his Anna.
“You’re welcome, Talia, but really it was John who saved the day. I wouldn’t even have realized we were being followed. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened if he and Juliana hadn’t been there to help me.”
She smiled softly, revealing two perfect dimples in her cheeks. “Please, sit, and take a mug. It’s milk. I figure it’ll be one of the first things to spoil, and I don’t want the calories going to waste.”
There were a few noises from the hallway, and Juliana appeared, ready to be tucked in. She ran over and gave Thom a quick hug goodnight before Talia went to tuck her in for the night.
“Thom, I’d like to talk with you about what it is I think is going on out there. Give you a fair playing field before you head out into the unknown to get Anna.”
He nodded. “I’d like to hear what you think.”
And so he told him.
It was, in his opinion, either an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or a coronal mass ejection (CME). Either option was bad. The CME was marginally worse and farther-reaching than the EMP, depending on the strength.
The phone call Thom had received from Andrew led him to believe it was an EMP, and Thom let John know his feelings. He looked like someone had punched him in the gut. “Was afraid of that,” was all he said before continuing.
It was safe to assume that all non-shielded, non-military-spec electronics had been fried. That included most cars built within the last 30 years and pretty much anything that operated with the aid of a computer. If the outage was from coast to coast, millions of people would be dead within a few weeks.
A panel of experts had estimated an event of this scale would kill 70%-90% of the population of the United States.
Apparently, the experts also said it would take anywhere from one to three small yield nukes detonated about 300 miles above earth to wipe out the electronics of the entire northern hemisphere.
Several thousand had died in the first minutes after the event, with hundreds of planes in the sky across the U.S. going down immediately. The fires would kill more.
Next would be the old, sick, and weak. Anyone dependent on dialysis, life support, perhaps even pacemakers. The diabetics would last a while longer, but they, too, would eventually pass. Without a stable temperature, the shelf life of insulin would rapidly deteriorate.
Within days, the water taps would run empty. Without a reliable, clean source of drinking water, folks would turn to other sources; water from the gutter, rivers, ponds, and streams, loaded with all sorts of bacteria and viruses. This, along with the lack of flush toilets, would lead to huge outbreaks of cholera and dysentery.
Then the starving time would hit. Sure, the Midwest had already planted most of its wheat, corn, and soy for the year, but without the machinery to fertilize, irrigate, harvest, and transport, much of it would go to waste.
Good news all around.
Sometime during the talk, Talia came back and started to tend to Thom’s wounds. She started with his head and finished by unlacing his boots and treating his numerous ruptured blisters, even giving him some moleskin bandages to cushion them.
They offered to let Thom stay the night, but the more they talked, the more he realized that he should be on his way. The real trouble would start soon enough. John told him that most folks have less than a week’s worth of food stored at their houses, so Thomas knew he needed to get out of any highly populated towns before then.
Talia put together a small care package for him, including some thick hiking socks, a refill of his camel pack with nice clean water, and an honest-to-goodness MRE that would provide nearly 2,000 calories, along with a couple of sealed Mylar bags of beans and rice.
“I’d ask you guys to come with me, but it looks like you’ve been planning for something like this,” Thomas said.
“Something like it,” John agreed. “Started soon after we had the emergency training at the department. Knew that if I wanted to help anyone, I’d have to take care of my family first. Once I felt I had that covered, I started putting ‘care packages’ together for the neighbors, like those beans-and-rice bags. They won’t last forever, and it’ll take some cooking to get them soft, so go hungry if you think there’s danger nearby. A hungry man will smell food a long way away.” He took a sip of his milk and continued. “This world is going to need good men now more than ever, Thom. You get to your daughter and be one of those men. I started planning with my neighbors about a year ago. The folks on my block are mostly prepared. We might pull through. Going to make a go of it.”
Thom nodded.
“If you guys need to get out of town, I’m headed to Jackson Nursery, south on 63 from Columbia, about 30 miles. That Air Force guy I told you about, Andrew? It’s his family’s place. He said they’d let me in. If I get there safely, I’ll tell them about you and your family.”
It was John’s turn to nod.
“Time to go, Thom. You ready?”
“Think I’ll make it all right, John. You just take care of your family. I’ve got a long way to go to get to mine. Might be I make it back this direction. You mind if I jot you guys down on my map?”
He smiled. “We’d be honored, wouldn’t we, Talia?”
The woman smiled. “Any friend of John’s is a friend of mine.”
Unfolding the map, Thom took a pen and circled the address.
“Let’s see that. Where’d you say home was for you?”
Thom handed him the map and the pen and pointed to his house about 15 miles north of the river.
Clicking the pen, John drew a route for Thom.
“These are the roads you’ll want to take. Cross the river at the bridge on Broadway. If it looks like it’s blocked, I’d head to the next bridge down. It used to run car and rail traffic, but it just runs rail now. Folks might not think to cross there, and it won’t be clogged full of dead cars. You’ll need to start thinking a bit outside of the box. Most of the folks here will try and get home the way they always get home. They’ll follow their commute, sticking to major highways most of the time.” He swallowed, and continued, “This isn’t the best idea. Pretty soon, folks will start looting, if they haven’t already. Might take a bit for that to happen, since social media is down.
“Good folks’ll take a while longer to start going crazy, but the lawless ones’ll be taking advantage soon.” Gunshots punctuated the night as if on cue to emphasize his point. “Most likely some shop owners defending their stores from looting. You remember the L.A. riots? Same situation.
“You’re going to want to stick to the lesser-traveled routes. If you usually take I-35 north the entire way home, find some other routes that achieve the same goal. Stay to the side of the road, just off of the shoulder if you can. If you see something blocking the road, exit the highway and wait a
t least ten minutes for signs of activity before you move further.” He looked up at Thom, checking for comprehension. Thom nodded that he understood, and John moved on.
“I’ve also marked some roads you’d never want to take on foot during a normal night. I wouldn’t step foot in them even during the daylight hours now if you can avoid it.”
He extended a hand again, and once more Thomas took it, wrapping him in a hug with the other arm. Handing the map to Thom, he said, “You get out of the city, Thom. You get home and stay safe.”
“You do the same, John. When all of this is over, I’ll stop by and we can have some barbeque and a beer sometime.”
John nodded. “When it’s all over.”
Episode 2: The Road North
Chapter 1 – Into Darkness
Stepping into the street and seeing the door of the Willis home close behind him made Thomas Monroe’s heart sink. It meant heading from safety into danger, from the known into the unknown, and, very importantly, from light into dark.
He needed to get home, about 15 miles north of Kansas City, to a town called Liberty. There, he’d gather some things and head toward Columbia, over 100 miles away, to pick up his daughter from college. Next, they’d head south to the Jackson Nursery, where they’d hopefully find refuge from one heck of a storm.
The overcast night sky promised rain, filtering out the majority of starlight, and the moon was nowhere to be seen, which meant that the only light Thom had to navigate by was the eerie glow of the fires burning all over the city.
As John had mentioned, fire would be an issue. Moments after the EMP struck, power lines and transformers were hit with a massive energy spike that fried them, melting some of the lines and causing many of the pole-mounted transformers to burst into flame.
This, combined with the fact that emergency response vehicles wouldn’t start and the issue of plummeting water pressure, meant that, without a miracle, much of the city would burn.
The wind was rushing east, away from the Willis home, and he prayed it would continue to do so.
Taking John’s advice, he began heading toward the Broadway Bridge. The number of people on the street was less than Thom had anticipated, which gave him a sort of relief, but it also concerned him. Humanity had always been led to believe that there’s safety in numbers, so to be on his own again was a bit unnerving.
Thom kept to the darkness and tried to remain unnoticed as he walked down the street, but he soon realized that the road he was on was starting to slope downward into a sharp turn. He’d driven this road five days a week for the last couple of years and had never taken the time to really look at it.
There were huge retaining walls on each side of the road, and the stalled cars were starting to get extremely tight. Thom stopped and stepped behind one of the vehicles, remembering what John had told him earlier about potentials for ambush.
Taking a careful look around, the pieces clicked into place. He was being herded into a funnel. About a hundred yards ahead, Thom could see the path between cars open up a bit wider right before the road disappeared into the turn. It could have been nothing, but the hair on his neck was standing up, and it was there, he guessed, that an ambush would be waiting.
Back-peddling quickly, and staying low, Thom managed to trace his route back and took a different exit, leading deeper into the city. Adding distance to his trip home was a hard reality, but at this point, avoiding a potential ambush was his first concern. Better to get there slower than to be dead quicker.
The smoke thickened as Thom delved farther into the downtown area, and soon he had to stop for a breather. Taking a minute, he removed his pack, took out a handkerchief, and used a little precious water from his camel pack to wet it down. Tying it around his face helped filter some of the soot from the air and made his passage a bit more comfortable.
Zipping his bag and hefting it back onto his shoulders, Thom took a second to tighten the straps so that the weight rested properly. That’s when he heard the first shot.
Ducking behind the engine block of a nearby truck, one of the few parts of a car that he’d heard would actually stop a bullet, he peeked underneath. He was met almost immediately with another shot that struck pavement three feet to his left, sending speeding chunks of asphalt up to greet him.
“Toss out your bag, and we’ll let you live!”
“All right, all right. Just give me a second!”
The shots stopped, and he looked around desperately, knowing that they were most likely pinning him down in order for someone else to flank him. All of those afternoons playing paintball with Anna were coming in handy. Voices were shouting to one another, but Thom’s adrenaline was too high to discern what was being said.
Okay, think, Thom. Look around. There’s a bar to the left of you on this side of the street. Across the street is an alley. Up the street is an unknown, but from the smoke, I’m guessing the fire’s raging the further I head into town. Heart pounding in his throat, he tried to calm himself. He needed to breathe, but his mask was making it difficult, and he began to hyperventilate. In a panic, Thom yanked the mask off, gulping in greedy breaths of thick, acrid smoke. As a result, he spent a few precious seconds coughing as he tried desperately to tie it back on.
The shots had stopped, and Thom knew he only had a moment. He heard a mechanical sound that he assumed was someone dropping a magazine to insert a fresh one, but he’d made his choice and was halfway across the street when he heard the bolt slide into place, making the attacker’s weapon ready to fire once again.
The world moved in slow motion, then, as Thom sprinted across the street. He glanced left and noticed an attacker taking aim. The guy looked like a kid, no older than his Anna. He dove, then, and instead of coming up in a roll like an action hero, he ended up cracking his shoulder and elbow hard on the pavement, sending a jolt up his arm, causing it to go numb from the elbow down.
Rising quickly, he winced as a chunk of brick powdered beside his head, stinging his vulnerable eyes with its dust. Diving into the dumpster, Thom covered himself in trash as far as he could burrow.
The explosions were starting to die down, and Thom could still hear the pursuers searching for him. The dumpster stank of rot, but it beat being dead.
Finally, he calmed his breathing, sure they’d hear him if he couldn’t get himself together.
Gunshots rang out, and Thom selfishly hoped whoever it was would lead them off of his trail. They seemed a bit farther away this time.
Sitting there, quite literally covered in filth for what seemed like an eternity, he began to hyperventilate again. There was something about the smell and the enclosed space. He needed to get out, but it took ages before he could gather the courage to lift the lid and peek out.
Thom had to get out of there, and he hoped the gunmen weren’t already blocking the bridges out of town yet.
Taking a deep breath (a mistake, in hindsight; it smelled of everything rotten in the world), he steeled himself to exit the bin.
That’s when the hand thrust in and grabbed Thomas Monroe by the hair.
Chapter 2 — Anna’s First Night
Anna finally collapsed into her bed around 1am, covered in soot, her mouth tasting of ash. She’d spent most of her night manning a bucket brigade to put out some of the numerous fires around campus.
The cinderblock walls did little to drown out the noise from the outside world, so she pulled her thick down comforter up over her head.
The knob of the door leading into her dorm room rattled, and she held her breath, hoping whoever it was would pass. Her heart beat in her chest as if it were trying to escape; she pulled the blankets around her tighter than before, as if a layer of fabric filled with goose down would somehow shield her from an attacker.
She had the presence of mind to move her dresser and desk against the door
before climbing into bed, but she was so completely bone-weary that she knew she’d have little chance fighting someone off if they made it past her rudimentary blockade.
I wish Dad was here, she thought to herself for the millionth time as the person in the hall continued to test the knob, and then stopped. Footsteps continued down the hallway.
She exhaled quietly, relieved that whoever it was had moved on for the time being. Break-ins weren’t exactly common in the dorm rooms, but there were folks like this who tested locks. A person would head down the hall for five minutes to buy a Coke from the vending machine, get back, and find her phone or laptop missing. It was a constant reminder for residents to always have their doors locked, even when they were inside.
Suddenly, there was a loud crash against the door, and then another. Someone was trying to break his way through. Scanning the room for any sort of weapon she could use, Anna settled on a lamp her grandfather had helped her make before his passing. It was made from a bowling pin from her seventh birthday party. Her grandfather had been an electrical contractor and had introduced her to the power of electricity. He was the reason she wanted to be an engineer.
Unplugging the lamp, she wound the cord around her left fist, took out the bulb, and stripped off the shade. The doorframe gave way with the third crash, and the assailant began to push through the barricade.
Anna struck the bowling pin lamp against the edge of the bookshelf, snapping off the fixture for the lightbulb. She wound the cord around the narrow end of the pin and used the remainder to tie her hand to the weapon. She’d go down fighting.
A fourth crash, and ambient light poured in from the hall, blocked only by the large shadow of the intruder.
“You want me? Come on, then!” Anna shouted and charged.
Chapter 3 — Tunnel Vision
Breakdown: Season One Page 4