More canisters flew into the air, striking the ground, and rolling as they exploded into colorful clouds that spread down the street. Rob led his family in one long chain, out of the smoke and farther down the road. The unruly crowds were getting more dangerous, and he feared a stampede.
A thundering crash echoed down the street, followed by an explosion of glass and metal. People stopped, stunned and frozen in their tracks. An enormous cargo truck, wide enough to take up all three lanes, barreled down the street, smashing cars and heaving them out of the way with its front-end plow blade.
The machine tossed vehicles to the side in wrecked heaps, and showed no signs of slowing down. With smoke billowing from its exhaust pipe, the truck chugged down the road at a steady speed of thirty miles an hour, tossing cars aside with startling precision and no regard for anything in its path.
Rob pulled Mila close and shouted over the din surrounding them. “We’ve got to get through! Follow me!” Rob pushed his way through the crowd and they made it to the corner on Eighty-fourth Street. They ran as fast as they could down the sidewalk, joining others, hysterical and desperate to get as far away as possible.
Soldiers dropped from ropes all around them as Black Hawks circled the city.
“Let’s go. Try to keep up,” Rob said.
Kelly was falling behind. Her legs could only move so fast. Mila kept a tight grip on her hand, slowing just enough for her to keep up. Mila suddenly lost Rob’s hand as he quickly moved ahead. She shouted for him, drowned out by the noise of the truck.
The disorder in the streets shocked her senses. Helicopters, panicked screams, voices blaring from intercoms above, roads blocked with motionless vehicles, and the methodical destruction of vehicles was unbelievable. It couldn’t have been happening. But it was.
After a quarter mile, they reached Park Avenue, only to find two green military cargo trucks clearing the roads like snow plows. Anyone in the road soon discovered that the trucks were not stopping—no matter what. Commuters jumped out of the way and watched helplessly as their cars were crushed and swept along the road like debris.
Rob looked north down Park Avenue. Platoons of armed soldiers walked behind the trucks, scanning the road. The Black Hawks continued to blare from overhead. With blocks to go, the odds seemed insurmountable, but they had no choice but to push on. “Everyone stay together,” Rob said.
Kelly, close to tears, wrapped her arms around Mila. “I’m scared. Why are they doing this?” she cried.
Mila was helpless to move with Kelly attached to her. Rob pulled Josh back as he tried to run ahead. “Wait,” he said.
He went over to Mila and picked Kelly up, holding her in his arms against his chest. She was trembling and drenched with sweat.
“All right,” Rob said to Mila and Josh. “Now we move. And don’t stop until we get to the car.”
They moved forcibly through the crowds, trying to stay focused on their narrow path ahead, trying to ignore the impossibility of what was happening around them.
Race to the Cabin
After a long, exhausting journey, they finally neared the parking garage. Sirens wailed from every direction. Smoke and tear gas rose into the city skyline, toward the top of skyscrapers. New York City was a disaster, and the sooner they escaped, the better. The three-story parking garage offered temporary refuge. They were all exhausted and equally shaken—Rob’s arms strained from carrying his daughter, Josh in a state of shock, and Mila rendered nearly catatonic.
“Guess we should have taken the subway,” Mila said in a dry tone.
Rob’s laughter was uneasy. “Guess you’re right.”
They had no clue if the subway was still operational or not. Metro stations from Manhattan to Queens had been swarmed with no way for them to enter. Sad as it seemed, they were safer above ground.
Looting had begun along the way, in small doses, but apparent in nearly every storefront they encountered. The city looked to be in a full-scale riot. Smoke. Gun shots. Vandalism. Sirens. Helicopters circled above as trucks bulldozed through gridlocked traffic throughout all five boroughs.
The Datsun looked untouched—a glistening jewel, covered in dust and debris. He pulled the keys from his pocket, confident that the car would start, but a little nervous anyway.
“All right, everyone. In the car,” he said, unlocking his door.
Josh stood back and scanned the car. “In this thing? Where’s the Kia?”
Kelly and Mila were already inside, happy to be off their feet. Rob walked to Josh and pointed outside the parking garage to the streets below. “You see what’s going on out there?”
“I do. But I don’t understand it because you won’t tell me anything.”
Rob gripped his shoulder. “I told you that I’ll explain everything once we get home.”
Josh crossed his arms and huffed.
“What is it?” Rob asked.
He looked up, saddened. “My friends from school. I made fun of them for having to stay in the museum. I didn’t know…” His voice trailed off and he hung his head.
“None of us could have seen this coming. But all that matters now is how prepared we are.”
“Are we prepared?” Josh asked.
Rob looked ahead. He could see smoke and fire rising from afar, deep in the city. “I believe we are, yes.” He then gently ushered Josh in the back seat. After he got in, Rob took a seat and took a deep breath. He stuck the key in and turned the ignition to the glorious sound of his internal combustion engine.
He turned to Mila, exhaling in relief. “Thank God.”
Mila unfolded the map, and looked at the route back. There was no way to avoid the highway, and she was certain things had gotten worse. “Just get us home safely,” she said.
“I plan to,” Rob said, putting the car in reverse.
Kelly was quiet, still shaken. Josh, on the other hand, fired off a litany of questions.
“Is it like this back home, too?” “What shut the power off?” “Who were those guys dropping out of the helicopters?” “Why were those trucks pushing cars out of the way?”
“It was an EMP,” Rob said, backing out and trying to answer one question at a time.
Mila turned around to face Kelly. “Honey, are you all right?”
Kelly nodded. She looked pale, possibly dehydrated. Mila quickly pulled some water bottles from under her seat and passed them around. Josh and Kelly gulped them down.
“An EMP? You mean like that thing in Last Earth?” Josh asked. Last Earth was a popular science-fiction show from a few years ago that portrayed the effects of an aerial EMP over a small town. Josh and Rob had watched it all the time.
“Nothing is official, buddy. I did see a blast in the sky outside my shop. After that, everything just seemed to have stopped.”
Josh pressed his face against his window, trying to look out beyond the parking garage with renewed interest. “Whoa. I can’t believe it.”
They drove down the ramp past the guard shack and onto a road brimming with parked vehicles. Rob had just enough room to maneuver around and toward the expressway on-ramp, less than a mile away. Hordes of people lingered and gawked at the one moving car on the road as Rob drove over medians and sidewalks, narrowly avoiding them along the way.
Fighter jets stormed by again, followed by a fleet of helicopters. At first glance, it appeared to be a massive military exercise, but what they had seen was no training exercise.
Rob turned to Mila, handing her the emergency radio. “Here, give it another try.”
She turned the dials searching for a signal. This time, Mila wasn’t getting anything at all.
“I just don’t understand it,” Rob said. “Why aren’t we being told what’s going on?”
He drove up the on-ramp toward I-87, staying to right side of the road just over the white line and onto the grass. His driver’s side door was within an inch of a line of vehicles. The highway fared no better than the city streets, as hundreds of people walked along eve
ry lane and blocked the shoulders.
“This is going to be tricky,” Rob said, feeling anxious. Mila turned the radio knob back and forth intermittently. Frustrated, she brushed her black bangs away from her eyes and set the radio on her lap.
“How could something like that happen? In this country?”
“The response time is what gets me,” Rob responded. “Two hours after an EMP strike, and there was already a full-fledged military operation in downtown Manhattan.”
“Did those look like American soldiers to you?” Mila asked.
Rob scoffed. Not even he had considered the idea of their being foreign. “Mila, come on! Of course they were American soldiers.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Rob thought for a minute. He didn’t have an answer. He laid down on his horn, trying to clear the ranks of people walking along the side of the road.
A large group turned around, startled, and slowly made space for Rob to drive through.
“This is ridiculous,” Rob said, getting frustrated. “These people have the whole damn road to walk down and they have to block the side.”
“They’re just as confused as we are,” Mila said.
They continued north as Rob repeatedly pressed on the horn to clear a path. The last thing he wanted to do was hit someone—but people were making it more and more difficult as he progressed. Up ahead, one particular group of young people saw the Datsun coming and began to look for a way to block their path. Their friends had already tried waving Rob down but had been ignored.
“What is it?” Mila asked, squinting ahead.
“Just some punk kids,” Rob said.
A half-mile up the road, a group pushed a vehicle into the right shoulder, blocking their path. Rob pushed the gas, flooring it.
“Hold on tight,” Rob said, as they shot forward.
He swerved back into the lane, narrowly missing a parked dump truck and sped through a small opening in the middle of the road between two cars. The punks, unprepared for Rob’s maneuvering, tried to chase him down, but it was too late. The Datsun continued on unabated.
Rob swerved through open spaces in the road and then back onto the shoulder, where they were safe for the time being. With thirty miles to go, the radio suddenly caught a signal, broadcasting a message similar to the one they had heard before.
“Residents are advised to stay indoors until utility services can properly be restored to affected areas.”
Rob listened carefully as Mila turned up the volume up all the way.
“An unexplained aerial magnetic wavelength has disabled power grids across the country, also affecting stand-alone personal electronic devices and vehicles within forty thousand feet of the mass spectrum. A reported nine interconnected substations and transformers have been compromised, disabling power and mobility for hundreds of millions of Americans.”
The broadcast had yet to delve into exactly what the government was doing. Rob waited impatiently, and after a few seconds the broadcast resumed.
“Government officials are closely monitoring the situation while advising residents to stay off the streets and out of highly populated areas, where riot-control measures are currently being implemented.”
“Riot control?” Mila asked. “Is that what that was?”
Rob took Mila’s hand in his while keeping a careful eye on the road. The broadcast then switched to another long, high-pitched tone, followed by a repeat of the earlier message.
“This is a message from the Emergency Alert System. This is not a test. All residents are advised to stay indoors…”
The Datsun shuttled down the road as they left the smoking city behind them, headed back home where they could hunker down and wait for everything to blow over.
Refuge
“Will everyone just calm down? I told you that we’re going to be OK. We’re prepared for this!” Rob said as they crossed the I-287 over the Hudson River.
It had been an exhausting and dangerous journey back home avoiding cars and angry pedestrians. Kelly was upset, Mila was on edge, and Josh was asking too many questions. Stress began to weigh down on all them, especially Rob. .
After avoiding another angry mob on the road, he slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “This is ridiculous. Why can’t these people just move out of the way? We should have never moved here!”
“Calm down, Rob,” Mila said. “You’re doing fine. Just get us out of here.”
He turned to her with understanding. Mila herself was tired and fatigued, but she had done everything necessary to retrieve their children from a volatile situation. And they had succeeded. The next step was simple: grab everything they could and bug-out to the cabin. Rob couldn’t believe they were actually doing it. In his mind, they were already there and safe. But they still had a ways to go before any such fantasy materialized.
Rob glanced into rear-view mirror at the kids.
“You guys doing all right back there?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
Kelly nodded, still in a quiet state of shock after what they had been through.
“Yeah, I guess,” Josh said. “But I don’t understand why we have to go to the cabin. Why not just stay at the house? What difference does it make?
“We have a plan,” Mila answered. “And we have to stick to the plan.”
“Sounds like a pretty dumb plan to me,” Josh said, scoffing.
“The longer we stay at the house, the harder it will be to leave. And trust me, we would have to leave at some point.”
“Yeah, but—”
Rob cut him off.
“I understand it’s not an easy thing to ask of any of you. But it’s the only way.”
Mila looked back at Josh with an attempt to console him. “It will only be for a couple of weeks.” She then turned to Rob. “Right?”
Rob nodded. “A couple of weeks tops.” He knew, however, that it could be much longer. What else could he say? After what Kelly and Josh had been through, Rob didn’t want to fill their heads with the true reality: that they could be there for months. A total grid shutdown posed detrimental effects for years on end, or things could go back to normal in a matter of months. Whatever the outcome, he knew that adapting to a survivalist lifestyle would have to be gradual.
Josh threw his hands. “I don’t like this one bit.” He shook his head in frustration and spoke in a hopeless, defeated tone. “Why did this have to happen? Who did this to us and why? I just… don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry, Josh. I really am,” Rob said.
The car went silent again. Josh looked out his window, not saying a word as they passed another lines of cars parked on the interstate. The emergency radio crackled. Mila held it up, tilting the antenna, trying to get a better listen to the broadcast.
“Highways from the West Coast to the East, from the Midwest to Southern states are at a complete standstill. Seventy-five percent of the nation’s power grids are reported as non-functional as the federal government and emergency response management agencies have reportedly implemented measures to address the growing crisis. Air space has been restricted nationally to military only. Residents of all affected areas are advised to remain in their homes until assistance can be given.
“Those left stranded on highways and roads are urged to remain calm and wait for assistance at emergency refuge centers. They are not encouraged to remain on the roads, which are being cleared for official transportation of casualties as well as other emergencies… More details to follow.”
Then the broadcast ended.
Mila clutched the radio, stunned. If what they had heard was true, things were far worse than he could have imagined. Rob had hoped… hoped that the EMP had encompassed a limited range. But any such optimism was now gone.
“We have to get to the cabin tonight. There’s no other way,” Mila said adamantly.
Judging from what they had seen in the city, the United States was either undergoing some kind of foreign invasion, or the government had resorted
to extreme measures to handle the crisis.
***
Their neighborhood was largely the same as it had been earlier that day. The garbage truck was still there, long abandoned. Any cars in the driveway in the morning were still there. Anyone not home earlier didn’t look to be home now. There was an eerie quietness to the street, but it was a breath of fresh air after the city. Rob made it back to the house with a half-tank of gas left. It was late afternoon, and the evening was upon them—where anything could happen.
They pulled into the driveway, and Rob asked Josh to jump out and open the garage door. The Datsun was a hot commodity, no matter where they were or how safe they felt.
“Everything looks fine here,” Josh said. “Why don’t we just wait here, sleep on it? The power could be back on in the morning for all we know.”
“Please just open the garage door,” Rob said.
“I’ll do it,” Mila said, opening her door.
“No,” Rob said, touching her arm. He looked into the rear-view mirror. “Do what I asked.”
Josh huffed and got out of the car. As he walked to the garage door and pushed it open, Mila said, “He’ll come around at some point. Don’t worry.”
“I know,” Rob said.
After opening the garage door, Josh went inside the house through the garage without looking back.
Rob spoke in a hushed tone. “We think it’s difficult getting the kids to adjust tonight? Imagine tomorrow. The more they get settled in, the harder it’s going to be.”
“I don’t mind going to the cabin,” Kelly said from the back seat.
Rob turned. “That’s good. Now we all have to pack and be ready. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yeah,” she said in a flat tone.
He pulled forward into the garage, unnoticed by anyone on the street. Their neighbor Ken was nowhere to be seen. It was late afternoon and they were already losing daylight fast.
“Nice to see that we’re all on board,” Rob said. “We’ll load up the car and get on our way.”
No Power: EMP Post Apocalyptic Fiction Thriller Super Boxset Page 73