by Thunboe, Bo
EMP STRIKE
EMP APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL THRILLER - Book 1 of 4 in the EMP STRIKE SERIES
BO THUNBOE
Weston Press, LLC
Published in 2021 by Weston Press, LLC
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, organizations, places, events, or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Brian D. Moore
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-949632-08-8(ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-949632-09-5(trade paperback)
Weston Press, LLC
Naperville, IL
www.thunboe.com
Created with Vellum
Also by BO THUNBOE
EMP STRIKE SERIES
EMP STRIKE
CHAOS REIGNS
CAMP DEFIANCE
END GAME
JAKE HOUSER MYSTERY SERIES
WHAT CAN’T BE TRUE
HOWEVER MANY MORE
AS IT NEVER WAS
PAST MADE PRESENT
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 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
PREVIEW OF BOOK #2 IN THE EMP STRIKE SERIES
Acknowledgments and Authors Note
About the Author
1
Dan Fallon didn’t like driving late at night, but Mary wanted him home for… something. He didn’t remember what because when he was preparing for trial, he left the family stuff to her. It was probably something one of her kids was doing. Most likely Erin. Sean’s extracurriculars had dropped to zero by the time he graduated from high school.
The Lincoln ate up the highway, the suspension smoothing out every crack and frost heave the payment threw at it with only a well-muffled whump of its tires. Sitting in the leather cockpit alone felt like freedom after his stress-filled week in a courtroom stuffed with lawyers and nervous clients. But his preparation paid off and he extracted three admissions on the stand that convinced the plaintiffs to settle for pennies on the dollar, which saved his clients tens of millions of dollars. To celebrate, they’d taken him out for dinner at Des Moines’s best steak house. It had been a fun evening—cut short when Dan insisted he had to get on the road—but his real celebration would come when he got his sixty percent cut of the firm’s bonus for the pre-verdict settlement. He planned to sock away that entire check for Erin’s college tuition. That kid was a real go-getter.
Whatever Erin had going tomorrow, Dan would be there. He didn’t have a dad growing up, but he’d watched a ton of TV and TV dads always showed up. Showing up was the one thing he’d gotten right since Mary’s kids moved in with them.
A mileage marker appeared in the snow-swirled tunnel his headlights carved in the darkness. Dan checked his speed and recalculated his ETA—he’d be home by 4:15 a.m. A few hours of sleep and he would be good to go for whatever Erin was doing. Yes, it had to be Erin. Sean spent his free time playing video games and reading science fiction, not doing anything they could watch. But he was a good kid and would figure it out. Mary just needed to give the boy a little room to find his way. Continually asking him how college was going and what he wanted to be didn’t help him.
Dan sped under an overpass, the rumble of the car’s exhaust bouncing back off the concrete. A blinking light ahead, the bright turn signal of a boxy sedan flying down the merging on-ramp. It was the first car he’d seen in many miles but Dan still glanced at his side mirror before changing lanes. It was clear, so he nudged his car toward the passing lane. An energetic drum solo erupted on the radio and he followed along on the steering wheel…ba-dum, de…
Silence.
Dan eyed the dark face of the radio. He must be in a reception dead zone.
As his car entered the passing lane, Dan nudged the steering wheel to straighten out but nothing happened. “What the hell?” He looked down and saw that the tachometer read zero. His engine had quit, which meant he’d also lost his power steering and power brakes. He gripped the wheel with both hands and twisted it hard. Slowly, the big car began to straighten out, but the shoulder was coming fast.
He stomped on the brakes, his butt coming off the seat, and the car started to slow.
The left front tire hit the rumble strip, then the shoulder, gravel peppering the wheel well.
He turned the wheel even harder, hands slipping on the leather. The tire dropped off the shoulder, caught on the turf, and dug in. The front end nosed down and the physics of weight and momentum took over and the car lurched into a wild spin. That’s it, Dan thought. Now I’m not going to make it home. He held onto the wheel, arms locked, body thrown back and forth between the door and the shoulder strap.
The car jerked to a stop and swayed on its springs until the shocks settled it down.
Dan released the steering wheel and shook the tension out of his forearms. That was… something. Sean and Erin always asked about his work trips but their eyes glazed over two minutes into any story about one of his cases. This story would keep their attention.
He reached to pull his smart phone out of his briefcase but a sharp ray of light spiked in his eyes. He put his hand up to block the glare and the light broke into two bright orbs rushing at him.
Headlights.
“Shit!”
2
Sean checked the clock as he waited for the next round of Call of Duty to load. It was 1:18 a.m., but after sleeping past noon he still wasn’t tired. But so what? When he got sleepy, he could stretch out right here on the basement couch. He planned to spend most of Christmas break down here avoiding his mom. She’d been on him since the moment he got home: Are you in the right major? You can’t support yourself playing video games. W
hat do you want to be? He had no idea what he wanted to be. The idea of working in an office made him sick, he wasn’t good with his hands, and he didn’t like confrontation so couldn’t be a lawyer, cop, or soldier. What did that leave—salesman?
“Come on, come on!” On the right side of the screen, names cycled in and out of the player lobby as the gaming gods tried to match him up with enough people to form two teams for battle. Three names popped in and the countdown began but then two popped out and the process started over. “Shit!”
“S-Dog?”
He snatched his headset off the floor and put it on. “This is S-Dog0621,” he said. “Is this the great Bandico-419?”
“The one and only. I’m joining your lobby.”
His friend’s handle popped onto the screen. “Where’ve you been, Bandico?”
“My dad took me out for a beer.”
“That’s awesome!” Sean wondered if Dan would take him out for a beer when he turned twenty-one. Probably not. Dan shied away from traditional father-son activities. “What did you have?”
“One of those IPAs. It was so bitter I think—”
The TV screen went black.
“Bandico? You there, Bandico?”
Nothing.
Sean pulled off the headset. The house was silent. Even the furnace in the back room, which blasted or hummed all winter long, had gone quiet.
He kicked the footrest down, bounced out of the recliner, and banged his shin on the coffee table. “Shit!”
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and thumbed the button to use its light but nothing happened. He pressed the button several more times without result, then quit and stood still. On the far wall, a faint light spilled into the basement from the window well and he waited as his eyes adjusted, the ping pong table taking shape out of the blackness, then the couch, and finally his chair. He shuffled to the bottom of the stairs and hit the light switch. Nothing.
An eerie tingle crept up his spine. Could they have—No! That can’t be what happened.
But he knew how to test it.
He held a hand in front of him as he climbed the stairs. When he felt the door at the top, he pushed it open and stepped up into the family room. Moonlight reflecting off the skim of ice on the Paget River at the bottom of their yard flooded in through the patio door and back windows. He walked through the family room and kitchen and into the dark laundry room. He felt his way to the last cabinet above the dryer and pulled it open, the caustic scent of detergent spilling out around him. He found the solid cylinder of the flashlight right where he expected it to be. He thumbed the switch.
It worked.
Check.
He used the flashlight to find this mom’s keys on top of the dryer, then opened the door into the garage. Wind rattled the garage door and a tongue of cold blustered under it. Sean hunched his shoulders against the chill as he climbed into the mini-van. He pushed the key into the ignition.
“Let’s see.” He held his breath and turned the key. The dashboard lights went on, but the engine did not crank over. Check. He turned the knob and the headlights bloomed bright, flooding the garage with harsh glare. Check. He turned the lights off and darkness flooded back in.
He climbed out of the van and set the flashlight on top of the garbage can, aimed into the empty slot where Dan parked his Lincoln. Sean pulled the snow blower out of its spot against the wall, opened the gas line, set the choke, and pushed the primer bulb. He yanked the starter rope. The engine coughed twice, but didn’t start. He gave another yank and it broke into a clattering roar. Check. He let it run for a few seconds before shutting it down again and closing the gas line.
He stood there in the silent garage, exhaust fumes dissipating in the cold air, the wind buffeting the garage door and whistling through some invisible gap between the jam and weather stripping.
The bastards had actually done it.
3
Erin was too pumped up from winning her Taekwondo matches to sleep.
She kicked the covers to loosen their hold on her feet and pushed herself higher in the big bed so she could see the TV over her toes. Not that she was really looking at it. She had her smartphone in her hands and her iPad next to her, but having the giant TV all to herself right at the foot of the bed was so cool she had to use it and turned it to a station streaming country music videos. She swiped and tapped her way into the tournament website and found her bracket. There she was! She zoomed in and grabbed a screenshot and posted it on Instagram without comment. The heading was enough: Semifinals.
She scrolled through the brackets to Cammie’s weight class and found her name. And stared at it. They’d been friends since kindergarten: lots of birthday parties and sleepovers and tournaments and homework sessions. But in a split-second, everything changed.
Erin’s face warmed and a tingle ran from her toes to her fingertips as she re-lived their soft, lingering kiss.
It wasn’t her first kiss. That had been with Ed Fleck. They’d been friends since they were three, but the summer after eighth grade, Ed grew four inches and his voice got deeper and he suddenly started acting… weird. Looking at her and touching her arm or shoulder when they talked. Then he’d kissed her while huddled over a science report. The kiss surprised her, just like Cammie’s had. But Ed’s kiss had felt like… an invasion. Cammie’s kiss felt like an invitation.
She closed the browser and opened her photo file and scrolled through her pictures of Cammie. She had dozens of them. Most were of the two of them, but she’d taken three without Cammie knowing it. She didn’t have candid shots of anyone else.
Maybe I’m gay.
She let the idea settle, but didn’t feel anything. She would if it were true, right? She tried again, out loud this time.
“I am gay.”
Still nothing. Maybe she just liked Cammie. TV shows implied that every girl tried kissing another girl at some point, usually in college. Maybe Cammie is just my girl kiss.
She needed to talk it out with someone. But not Cammie. And not one of the other girls on the team. None of them could keep a secret.
Which left Mom.
Erin glanced at the other big bed. Convincing Mom to let her stay overnight alone when Missy went home had not been easy. Calling this late would freak Mom out and Erin would never get to spend the night alone again. Plus, she couldn’t ever just talk with Mom. Mom always wanted to fix everything. She’d want to fix this. Fix Erin.
She tossed the phone down. It would have to wait.
She picked up her iPad, brought up her movie app, and flicked through the menu. This must be how Dan felt on all his lawyering trips—nobody telling him when to eat, or what to watch on TV, or when to go to bed. She could get used to this. The Princess Bride scrolled onto her screen. She tapped it open, propped the iPad against her knees, and sighed happily. She and Sean had long sections of dialogue memorized and yelled them along with the movie. “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!” She leaned back and relaxed as the movie started…
* * *
She snapped awake.
The iPad screen was black.
The TV was off.
The room was dark, only a weak glow coming in the window.
The power must have gone out. She tossed the iPad onto the other side of the big bed, then slithered down under the covers and closed her eyes.
She had a big day tomorrow. Mom and Dan would be there for sure, and probably Sean too. If she won her weight class Dan would be so proud of her!
As sleep took ahold of her, Cammie’s face drifted into her mind and she felt warm all over.
4
Mary Fallon clutched her pillow and pushed her face deeper into its softness, willing herself to relax and fall back to sleep. If she didn’t get enough sleep—or eat right, or avoid stress— her medication didn’t do its job. When it failed, she failed—as a mom and as a wife.
“Mom! Wake up!”
A pinch on her shoulder.
&n
bsp; “Mom!”
She opened her eyes.
Sean. He held a flashlight aimed at the ceiling, its diffused light filling the room. She twisted around and sat up with her pillow clutched to her chest. “Did something happen to Erin? What—”
“This isn’t about Erin.”
“Thank God!” She shouldn’t have let Erin stay the night, especially after the other girl went home when she was eliminated from the tournament. A mother should—
“Mom! Are you with me?”
“Yes!” Mary shot a glance at the clock but Sean stood in the way. She put the pillow behind her back and scooted higher up in the bed. “What time is it?”
“After one, but don’t freak out about me still being up. I’m an adult and can—never mind. I need you to listen.”