Dark Days
Rough Roads
2nd edition
By Matthew D. Mark
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, businesses, organizations and events contained in this work are all a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Dark Days Rough Roads
Copyright © 2013 by Matthew D. Mark
Library of Congress Control Number applied for, Library of Congress Copyright registration completed.
All rights reserved.
46600 Vineyard
Shelby Township MI 48317
ISBN Info:
Hard Cover: 978-0-9890045-2-7
Soft Cover 2nd Edition: 978-0-9890045-4-1
E-Book: 978-0-9890045-0-3
My inspiration was born on December 4th, 1992 at 7:48am. Without her this story would never exist. Since that moment in time she has been my inspiration for life and for everything that I do. This is for you Kayla.
Love Daddy
Acknowledgements:
In fiction there is always a small bit of truth. Without my life experiences and the people I know and love, I would not have been able to create this story. I do not claim to be anything more than a former soldier, a man who loves his country, a man who loves his family and friends and most importantly a father who loves his daughter.
My parents Richard and Beverly have taught me that nothing in life is easy. They taught me that life will deal you the hardest hand that it can. It was through watching their hardships and their struggles, and how they overcame them that they taught me life’s lessons and how you can survive anything with hard work, perseverance and love. I love you both.
Each and every family member has played a pivotal role in my life one way or another. We’ve shared the best of times and we have shared the worst but we have always been there together. My brothers and sister, thank you all. Families are the last great institution that America has, never fail them and protect them always.
My girlfriend has been by my side the past several years and has supported me through everything I have done. Without her I could not have completed this project. Just being by my side has meant a lot to me. Love you sweetheart.
I wish to thank my ex-wife Candy. She and I brought our daughter into the world. Thank you for giving me such a wonderful child. After you and Mike read the story, please don’t tear out the walls. Thank you for watching her while she’s at school.
To all of those who I served with, all of the stupid things we did and all of the brotherhood we have shared. I would not trade it for anything in the world. I am privileged to have served with all of you. If you judge a man by the company he has kept, then I am judged among the best that there is.
Michelle, thank you for the horse information and contributions you made by letting me include you and your family in the story. It helped a great deal and I appreciate your friendship, stay safe. Each and every person whom I have met touched my life in one aspect or another. I always take away something from everyone I meet. Of course I can’t forget my cat Romeo and Max the mutant dog.
My sincere thank you to Kathleen K., and Michelle K., for the second editing and to Lacey O’Connor for the cover design.
Preface:
An alarm clock wakes you up in the morning, your coffee is brewed in an electric coffee pot. You use a computer or television to check your morning news. Your smart phone contains your daily, weekly, or monthly schedule along with the contact information for everyone you know and it connects you to the world. You rely on an automobile to take you to work, to school, to the store or someplace else. This auto is more computer than it is car.
The food you eat and the products you use are brought in by truck and rail, rolling computers as well. It’s cargo is stocked and inventory is electronically controlled. You pay by cash or most likely using a plastic card with a magnetically encoded stripe on it connected to your bank. Almost everything you do daily is affected in one way or another by technology.
This technology is run by electricity. A single spark to start it all. But we have to ask ourselves, without that spark, without that technology, how would we live? How different would life be? Could we still thrive? More importantly, if it changed today or tomorrow, could we survive?
Mother natures coronal mass ejections, sun activity, nuclear weapons, electronic weaponry and more can take that spark away in an instant. Mostly man made, however, we must look at the changing world around us and wonder. Out of 7 billion people, how many does it take? It takes only one. Millions of lives can be changed by only one. Yes, one person with an agenda, a grudge or a hatred for a nation.
The premise of the event in this book as illustrated above is made simple. What we can not simplify offers just as much opportunity to bring a nation and its people to their knees. Financial collapse as seen in Greece, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and more show how fragile economics are. We have spun out of control with our national debt and our own economy.
Each year as we stand in lines for flu shots the experts are trying to predict which strain will affect us most. Although the eradication of many of the World’s most devastating diseases has occurred, there still exists the samples that are easily propagated. Naturally evolving strains of disease evolve quicker than scientists can name them. Add biological warfare and nerve agents and it becomes incredibly concerning.
Natural disasters are frequent. People are still living in tents months after Hurricane Sandy. They lived in shacks or trailers for years after Katrina. Rising rivers, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, drought and snowstorms all affect our lives. From days, to months, and sometimes years. You must be able to survive. How many people can the government rescue at once? These disasters have shown us that it’s very few. These disasters can take the people away, who control that same spark.
A simple job loss and lack of income can affect you. The saying is “Stockpile beans and bullets.” If you look around, if you pay attention to world events and our own country and what has transpired in our short history, doesn’t it make sense to take some simple measures to protect you and your family? You’d be surprised how affordable it is to survive. I’d rather have it and not use it, instead of need it and not have it.
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 1
The weather outside was nice and the temperature was around 70 degrees. The sky was partly cloudy and a nice bright sun poked through the clouds. It was not too hot or too chilly outside, and with this kind of weather Roger Haliday did not expect any problems when the helicopter landed. It would be another routine medflight, if indeed there was actually a routine flight for these guys.
Haliday had been out circling the hospital campus in the patrol vehicle when dispatch had called and told him an inbound medflight w
as due to arrive in 10 minutes. Haliday shot over to the helipad, where he unlocked the gate and took the cover off the 150 pound beast of a fire extinguisher they called “Purple K”, named after the aviation fuel fire suppression chemical inside of it. The extinguisher was based on two wheels and always stood guard just inside the helipad’s fence.
Not wanting to get wind whipped by the rotor blades, he retreated into the vehicle and awaited the arrival of the bird. Hearing the telltale thump thump thump of the main blades, he watched closely as he had dozens of times before. Across the way, a few cars had stopped on the nearby side street to watch.
He reached down and turned off the vehicle’s strobe lights and also the vehicle. They usually kept the strobes on until they spotted the aircraft, but then turned them off as soon as they suspected the pilot had the helipad located. There was no sense in blinding the pilot with blinking lights while he was landing.
It was always cool to watch this sleek aircraft seemingly just land for no reason in the middle of a neighborhood. This of course was not the case. Stroke victim, burn patient, car accident or what not, someone needed extreme care and quickly. Still, it always drew curious onlookers.
He looked over at a large house that backed up to the helipad. Some genius built six brand new houses right next to it. Backing up against a helipad and parking lot was not worth the money these people spent for the homes they lived in. Not to mention it was the border of Pontiac, which was a less than desirable area.
One time, a resident had called and complained about a medflight coming in at 0700 hrs one Sunday morning. Haliday said, “Hey genius, in case you didn’t know, emergency medical flights generally aren’t scheduled.” The man just called him a smart-ass and hung up on him. A few weeks later, karma played a role when the man was hosting a picnic when another helicopter landed. Haliday still laughs about the flying plates, cups and napkins, whenever he thinks about it.
He called in to dispatch and told them to mark the time and that the bird was almost on the ground. They always marked arrival and departure times in case the FAA audited their records, even though he figured they never would. There wasn’t a response from dispatch, which wasn’t unusual due to the fact that dispatch was usually tied up with more important things. These were mostly caused because the campus was in the middle of a small city outside of Detroit, but just as notorious as Detroit for being a crack hood.
Haliday had unscrewed the top on his bottle of pop and started to take a sip when he noticed the problem. As he tilted his head back to drink, he looked straight at the Eurocopter wobbling violently as it spun toward the ground. Haliday ducked down using the engine compartment of the truck as a shield just as the helo struck the ground and exploded, sending pieces in every direction. A small piece of the tail rotor shot through the windshield of the vehicle, causing chunks of glass to fill the interior of the Tahoe.
Haliday slowly lifted his head and saw a wall of flames and a pile of machinery. There would be nobody coming out of that wreckage alive. He grabbed the radio mic again and called for dispatch to call the fire department. Again there was no response, so he took it upon himself to use his cell phone. A quick push of the power button revealed there was nothing but a dark screen.
He ran over to the beast and charged the system while holding the hose. He dumped every ounce of extinguisher agent on the flames, but it was useless. Looking toward the people who stopped to watch the landing, he could see them trying the same exact thing with their cell phones. This is when he realized what had happened. Life had changed drastically in a matter of seconds.
As he walked past the folks, they asked him why he wasn’t helping and his response was very unsettling. He simply told them there was nothing he could do. Not for the people in the helicopter and not for them. They had no understanding of what he really meant and just looked at him with puzzlement.
Haliday continued to walk back toward the hospital in a very quiet neighborhood with no noise, but the slight dull roar of flames from the burning wreckage made the only sounds anyone could hear. There was no music, no cars, no hum from the electric lines, no noise from anything at all.
Haliday walked past the ER and saw staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It was almost as if they would be able to do something about what was going on. It would have been comical, if it wasn’t for the fact that they really had no clue what would be transpiring in just a matter of a few short hours.
As he approached the dispatch office, he ignored those who were asking him questions. The dispatch officer was standing at the open door as a handful of people were asking her questions. Questions she could not answer. “What happened, was it a power outage, would the generators come on, why didn’t they, how come the phones didn’t work?” and many more. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know, I don’t have any answers myself.”
Haliday looked her in the eyes and said, “You need to leave.” She looked concerned, but not frightened. It was at this time, by telling her to leave, that he confirmed what she thought had happened. Thanks to Haliday, she was ready for the event. She grabbed her personal items and left the dispatch area. Haliday grabbed his personal items and left as well, passing by the people who could not believe the campus public safety officers were leaving them at a time like this.
Haliday walked into a bathroom. The bathroom was dark so he hit the surefire flashlight on his belt to light it up a bit and was slightly startled when he heard a voice, “Hey man, what’s going on in here? I came in to drop a deuce and the power went out. Everything ok out there?”
Haliday told him, “Don’t worry, everything will come out ok.”
The guy missed the joke. Haliday went back to doing his own thing. He commenced to quickly change from his uniform into regular old gray man camo. He put on jeans, a shirt and a ball cap. It would be stupid to look like any type of police officer, soldier or government agency robot. That would get you in deep trouble soon enough, so he decided long ago to just blend in. He knew elsewhere that the dispatcher either did the same thing or was doing the same thing.
Quickly stripping the gear off his duty belt and taking what he needed, Haliday then left the bathroom. He had his pack, which was dark maroon in color to blend in, and started toward an exit door located near the administrative hallway.
A voice called out and he walked down the darkened hall to talk to the public safety supervisor who had been helping set up the hospital’s incident command center in a small conference room. This was limited to a dry erase board and easel with paper.
The supervisor asked him where he was going. Haliday looked around in the room to see the admin staff with various managers and staff from other departments milling around. Haliday looked at the supervisor and said, “You have no idea what just happened and what’s going to happen around here.”
With a puzzled look the supervisor said, “What do you mean, it’s a power outage; we get them now and again.”
Haliday chuckled and said, “Not like this.” One of the managers heard the chuckle and took it upon herself to ask what was so funny.
She said, “This is no laughing matter; there will be a lot of inconvenienced people who will be upset.”
None of these people still had a clue. Haliday coughed loudly, in a very exaggerated manner, and asked for everyone’s attention. Most everyone stopped and looked at him.
“What you people fail to understand here is the fact that this is no regular power outage. This was an EMP, electromagnetic pulse from who knows where,” Haliday said.
Immediately, the maintenance director interrupted and said it was irresponsible to even mention an EMP, that it was simply a power outage. Haliday looked him in the eye and told him he could only hope. He briefly explained what an EMP was, and then commenced to explain how he knew this was what it was. The explanations were simple enough, but you would have thought he was trying to explain rocket science.
First off he explained the lack of power and
the fact that none of the emergency lights came on. Next were the generators, which were sitting quietly. After that he explained the lack of land lines and the lack of cell phones, not having power let alone a signal. Even the basic of all types of items was dead. As soon as he explained the helicopter crash, which they hadn’t even heard about yet, their jaws dropped.
More people started coming in and also gathering in the hallway to either listen to or add to the confusion. They started complaining about the fact that this didn’t work, that didn’t work, the staff needs this, and the staff needs that, the maintenance crew isn’t fixing anything, etc. They had no idea how far up the creek they were without the proverbial paddle.
The CEO asked the maintenance director when they could get power back and everyone awaited the answer. He stood silent, then repeated the question, which had an answer nobody wanted to hear. The maintenance director simply said that he honestly believed it was now indeed an EMP and there would be no power any time in the near future. He said there was simply nothing that could be done and then he turned and walked away. People were still dumbfounded and did not know what to do, so they just sat there. One lady spoke up and said that things could not be that bad.
Haliday moved toward the front of the room and everyone focused on him. He looked around, saw the infectious control officer and asked her how long the rooms and patient equipment could last without being cleaned. She responded by saying that in some of the isolation rooms, it would have adverse effects within a day. Within two days, about a fourth of the hospital would have undesirable consequences, and by the end of the week it would be a pure hell hole filled with far too many infectious diseases to even start naming them right now. This did not even include waste handling, lack of water for toilets and sinks, and linen exchanges that would not happen.
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