Also in the bag was a first-aid kit, some medicine, emergency blankets, a small camping stove, a multitool, a water purification bottle, spare socks and underwear, a knife, a small hatchet, a roll of duct tape, a length of sturdy nylon rope, and a 9mm pistol.
With the gas mask on, he was at least able to breathe. Although the mask bought him a little time, he knew he had to get out of here as quickly as possible. The first person he looked for was Bill, but there was no sign of him in the office. Then, Jack caught sight of something that clued him in about what had happened to Bill. The windows had all been blown out, but a few still had shards of glass in the frames. One long, sharp chip had blood on the end of it, and a scrap of blue fiber—the same blue as the suit Bill had been wearing.
“Oh God,” Jack murmured as the horror of his boss’s fate hit him. The man had been hurled through the window by the force of the explosion and had plummeted twenty floors down to his death. He couldn’t bring himself to look out of the window to confirm his theory; he knew in his bones that it was true.
Jack swallowed a dry gulp of dread and fear and did his best to force some vigor and confidence into his aching muscles. He strode out into the communal area with the hatchet in his hand and immediately saw two bodies lying face down in the wreckage. He knew who they were and could tell right away that neither of them was breathing.
He fought through the wave of grief and sorrow that hit him; there would be time to deal with the deaths of his friends later. Right now, survival was all that mattered. He hurried over to another private office and saw that its occupant was, like the two who had been out in the communal space, dead.
Aside from the receptionist and the people already accounted for, there had been nobody else there. Now, with one last person to check on, Jack raced through the wreckage, skirting around the fire burning in the middle of it, and made a beeline for the receptionist’s desk.
Before he even got close to it, he realized that one other person in the office had survived the explosion. He quickly heard a soft whimpering coming from under the rubble of what had once been the woman’s desk.
“Help,” the receptionist, Carrie, was gasping plaintively. “Help, somebody … help me,”
“I’m here!” Jack yelled, veering around another fire and sprinting over to the pile of debris. “Carrie, it’s Jack! Hang in there; I’m gonna get you out of there!”
“Please, hurry,” she gasped. “I’m hurt … I’m hurt bad…”
Jack found that the need to save another person’s life had injected a fresh boost of strength into his veins and had fortified his sense of determination and drive. That was helped, of course, by the fact that the fire was spreading rapidly through the office, and time was running out.
He started ripping and yanking wreckage out of the way and hacking at pieces of it with his hatchet. His sense of urgency grew when he saw one of her legs sticking out from under the debris.
“Almost there!” he yelled, ripping the last few pieces of metal away.
Carrie, a young woman in her early twenties, was bleeding badly from a long, jagged cut on her lower leg. But worse than that, her right forearm had been broken a few inches above her wrist, and her hand was dangling at a grotesque angle from her arm. The bone, thankfully, hadn’t pierced the skin. Jack had done several advanced first aid courses and knew exactly what to do.
“I’m sorry, Carrie, but this is going to hurt for a few seconds, but I have to do it, okay?”
With tears in her eyes and coughing from the smoke, Carrie nodded. The shock of what had happened was too overwhelming for her to even think of disagreeing or arguing. Jack searched hastily for two pieces of rigid and sturdy debris to serve as a makeshift splint. Then, to properly see what he was doing, he had to lift his mask, which meant that it wasn’t long before he, too, was choking on smoke.
It would be a crude fix, but there was no time for anything more sophisticated at this point. Jack took off his sweater, rolled up one of the sleeves, and handed it to Carrie. “Bite down on this,” he said.
Teary-eyed, she took it and did as he said, and then he did his best to put her hand and wrist back into place and set the broken bone. And the moment he touched her arm, she screamed, an ear-splitting howl of sheer agony, even with the sweater sleeve she was biting down on muffling the sound.
Jack did his best to get through the unpleasant task quickly. Soon enough, Carrie’s arm was set and wrapped, with a makeshift splint of two broken wood pieces and some duct tape. After that, he tied a tourniquet around her bleeding leg with his sweater, then helped her to her feet and slipped his gas mask back on so he could at least breathe more easily.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
She tried a few cautious steps, limping, and nodded. “It hurts, but I can manage,” she said.
“Okay, then we have to get out of here. Come on, follow me. If your pain gets worse, let me know, and I’ll carry you.”
She nodded, and they hurried out of the office, stumbling through the billowing clouds of black smoke that had almost filled the place. They ran through the gloomy reception area to the elevators.
“Take the stairs!” Jack yelled when he noticed Carrie staggering toward the elevators. “Those don’t work!”
Carrie groaned, looking as if she were going to burst into tears again but nodded and followed Jack to the stairwell … and when they got there, they found that a roaring inferno of intense flames blocked the way down.
5
The water was already up to Kate’s chest, and the seatbelt was jammed.
“Oh God, oh my God,” she gasped, her panic levels rising as rapidly as the icy river water filling the car. She wriggled and writhed and struggled with all her might against the seatbelt, but it just wouldn’t budge, and what made things even worse was the freezing water, which was quickly starting to numb her limbs and make movement even more difficult.
She tried to reach for her handbag, which was in the passenger seat's floorboard—she kept a folding knife in there at Jack’s insistence. If she could just reach her purse, she could get the knife and cut herself out of the seatbelt. But the water was up to her chin now, and her fingers, fishing through the icy water, could only reach the passenger seat itself, not the handles of the bag.
“Come on, come on,” Kate gasped, straining as hard as she could against the seatbelt, stretching her arm … and then, finally, her fingers brushed against the handles of her pocketbook, which was swirling around the passenger seat area due to the motion of the gushing water.
The water level was up to her lips now and rising fast, and she knew that she could only take one more breath before water would cover her nose, too. That was it. It would either be her final breath before escaping the vehicle, or the final breath she ever took. She sucked as much air as she could into her lungs, and then the water covered her nostrils.
She was so cold that it took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to expel all the air from her lungs—an instinctual reaction to the extreme cold—and simply hold the breath in, all while trying to curl her fingers around the handles of the bag.
The water rose higher, covering her eyes, and now she could neither see nor breathe. Sheer terror almost caused her to lose consciousness, but thoughts of her daughter and her husband and the grief they would feel at her passing boosted a fresh surge of determination through her veins.
Through the icy, all-consuming murkiness of brownish-green, she lunged forward so hard that it felt as if her ribs were cracking against the seatbelt, but the pain was worth it. Her fingers curled around the handles of her handbag. She yanked it through the water toward her, feeling her lungs beginning to burn and tighten, hungry for fresh air. Fighting through the almost paralyzing panic that was doing its best to suffocate her, she fumbled blindly in the bag, her hands seeking out the one object that could save her. Seconds ticked by, each of them feeling like minutes, until finally, she found the knife.
Her lungs now felt like they’d been
filled with some sort of searing, noxious gas, and every cell in her body was screaming out for a breath of fresh air, but there was nothing around her but icy, murky water. The car was submerged and slowly sinking into the depths of the river, and if it got too deep, Kate knew that even if she made it out of the vehicle, she might drown before reaching the surface.
She flipped the knife open and sawed frantically at the seatbelt. It felt as if she were making no progress, and every passing second, she grew more light-headed. Her lungs and throat were about to implode, but finally, the blade cut through the seatbelt. She dropped the knife into her bag, hooked the straps around her arm, and pushed with her feet against the driver’s door, gaining a little momentum so that she could begin swimming. She could barely see anything in the terrible, icy darkness, but managed to feel her way through the interior of the vehicle until she found the open passenger-side window.
Using the last of her failing strength, she pushed herself through and swam upward, toward what seemed to be light through the silty, murky water. Her lungs couldn’t hold out any longer; it felt as if someone were strangling her from inside her chest, and instinct was screaming at her to open her mouth and suck in air—air that did not exist here.
“Susan! Jack!” she screamed in her mind. “I won’t die like this; I won’t leave you like this. I won’t!”
And then, just as she couldn’t hold her breath for even a split-second longer, her head broke through the surface. She had never tasted anything as sweet as that first breath of air she sucked into her lungs the instant her mouth broke through the surface. For a few moments, she simply bobbed there, breathing in deep, life-giving gulps of air … but she soon realized that she was far from safe. The frigid water had numbed her body almost to the point at which she could barely move, and it was slowly paralyzing her. She had crashed right into the middle of the river, and either shore was a good fifty-yard swim away. Right now, she could barely keep treading water, let alone swim to safety.
Nonetheless, she knew she had to try. She couldn’t give up now, not after nearly dying a few seconds ago. She started moving in the direction of the riverbank toward which she’d been heading. She could barely feel her limbs, and the cold seemed to be seeping into the marrow of her bones and slowly shutting down her internal organs, but she kept going, stroke by stroke.
Progress was painfully slow; it seemed to require immense effort to cover even a single yard, and the river’s current, although sluggish, was persistent, and made the tortuous swim even more difficult.
After a few yards, a terrible realization hit Kate: she wasn’t going to make it. The cold was too intense, and she was rapidly losing control of her limbs. She could barely keep herself afloat, let alone complete the few hundred strokes that would be needed to get to the far shore.
A single tear rolled down her cheek as she realized that she would die here, like this, so close to escaping, yet so terribly far.
But then, just as all hope seemed lost, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a boat coming toward her.
6
Susan hadn’t ever walked through this neighborhood. She had only seen it through the window of a car, and the only section she was really familiar with was the little area immediately around the dance studio. As soon as she was two blocks away from the school, she started to feel a lot more threatened, and any illusion of safety the familiarity of the dance school had provided quickly fell away.
However, this was no ordinary day in the neighborhood. The city was under attack by an unknown enemy. While Susan was aware of the terrible danger the rockets streaking through the sky presented, part of her felt strangely safer during this time than she would have on a regular day when traveling through this neighborhood. Thus far, the missiles seemed to have been directed at the far side of the city, and she hadn’t heard any gunfire breaking out … yet. Also, with the spate of car accidents, the thousands of dead cars jamming up the streets, the fact that everything electronic had spontaneously died, and the terrifying explosions rocking the city, everyone was panicking and far more concerned with survival than focusing on a middle-class white teenager running through their neighborhood.
People were racing around in a panic or stumbling around in a confused daze, and very few of them paid any attention at all to Susan as she navigated the streets. She noticed a large group of dangerous-looking people who had wrapped bandannas and T-shirts around their faces. Some of them had makeshift weapons like baseball bats and crowbars in their hands, who were gathering with predatory intent outside a large electronics store, their hungry eyes on the big-screen TVs in the display windows. Two nervous-looking security guards were blocking the door and yelling at the growing crowd, but Susan could see that the group intended looting. The two security guards wouldn’t be able to hold them for long. Susan didn’t want to be around when they charged the doors and the guards started shooting.
She gave the mob a wide berth, increasing her speed to get past them as fast as she could. Her focus was on getting to her mother as quickly as possible. She was trying to pay attention to her surroundings and identify any potential threats or dangers. She focused primarily on scanning the endless rows of dead cars, searching for the familiar sight of her mother’s red SUV.
More crowds were gathering, and people came out of their apartment buildings, all looking around in worry and confusion. One or two of them turned their heads and stared with either suspicion or surprise at Susan, who stuck out like a sore thumb in this part of town. However, most were far too worried about the distant explosions and the streets’ chaos to care about her.
As she ran, she grew increasingly anxious. Susan still hadn’t spotted the SUV, and she was almost at the bridge that spanned the broad river. She jogged across the street, keeping her eyes peeled for the vehicle, but she still couldn’t see any sign of it. What she did see, though, was a large crowd of agitated people up ahead, blocking off the road. They stood outside a building that looked like it might have been some sort of government office, and like the group she’d seen outside the electronics store, these people seemed primed for a riot. She didn’t want to go through the mass of people. She could almost taste their aggression in the chilly air, so she took one last look toward them, scanning the row of dead cars for her mother’s SUV before taking off on a shortcut down a side alley.
Susan thought she heard footsteps running down the alley behind her, and her heart began to beat a little faster. She didn’t want to slow down to look over her shoulder, so instead, she simply sped up, feeling a rush of relief as she approached the end of the gloomy alley. However, just as she was about to speed out of it, she was forced to skid to a halt. A large, muscular young man stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. The leering, gold-toothed grin he flashed at her told her that this was no accident, and cold dread flooded her system when she heard the telltale sound of running footsteps slowing down behind her.
“Well, well, well, look what we got here,” the young man in front of her said, stepping slowly, deliberately toward her, flexing his muscles. “A little dancer who lost her way.”
Susan didn’t know if the men had noticed the pepper spray in her hand, but she subtly flipped the switch into the ready position, suspecting that she may well have to use it. “I’m in a hurry,” she said, trying to sound calm and confident, but sounding anything but. “Just let me pass, please.”
“Shake that tight little ass for us, baby, then we’ll let you go,” the man behind her said.
Both men stepped closer to her, and the leering smile faded rapidly from the first man’s face. “I ain’t playin’ around, girl,” he growled. “Lemme see that ass, shake that ass for us. You ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘til you shake that ass fo’ us. Come on, take off that hoodie, let us see them tight clothes you be wearin’ in the dance class.”
“Get away from me!” Susan snapped, whipping up her right hand and aiming the pepper spray at the first man’s face. She heard the second man stepping toward her,
so she swung around and pointed it at his face for a few seconds, too, trying her best to come across as intimidating.
The second man grinned evilly, baring a mouth full of crooked teeth, with a couple missing. “What you gon’ wid’ dat, lil’ girl? Gimme some a’ dat hot sauce?” he mocked. “I like it hot. I do, I do, I do, c’mon, hit me wid’ it.”
The first man reached into the pocket of his baggy jeans, which were hanging so low they were almost falling off and whipped out a butterfly knife, which he twirled in his fingers. “Don’t fuckin’ make me angry, girl,” he growled. “You try sprayin’ that shit in my face, you gon’ bleed, I promise you that. Now take off that hoodie, let me see what you got under it. Do it, bitch. I’m losin’ my patience wid’ you.”
The two men were closing in on Susan, and she knew that she had to make a move before they were on her and it was too late. “Okay, okay,” she said, feigning compliance. “I’ll take off my hoodie, just relax, I’m taking it off now.”
“Drop the hot sauce,” the second man demanded. “Drop that shit on the ground first.”
Unbeknown to her two assailants, Susan was not only a dancer. For a few years, she’d been taking a weekly Krav Maga self-defense class—again, like carrying pepper spray, at her father’s insistence—and now that she’d pushed through her initial period of panic, the things she’d learned were coming back to her. The first thing she’d learned was to identify an escape route. The second was, if a fight were inevitable, to search her surroundings for anything she could use as an improvised weapon to do as much damage as savagely and quickly as possible. Then, strike hard and strike viciously.
She had identified a weapon, and now she knew the only way she’d be getting out of this situation would be to use it. “Okay, I’m putting the pepper spray down now,” she said. “Just chill, let me set it down.”
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 55