She cut across the street, weaving through the dead vehicles, and swerved around a small crowd that was gathering around two men who were arguing loudly and yelling into each other’s faces. She knew that fights and scuffles were likely to start breaking out and didn’t want to be around when fistfights inevitably escalated into something a lot deadlier. She also had no idea whether the police, national guard, or even the army had some sort of plan for an event like this, but she suspected that they’d be getting involved sooner rather than later, and also guessed that a large part of their response would be restricting people’s movement. She had to get out of this place before the authorities shut it down and locked everyone in, which she was sure would happen.
As she walked along the sidewalk, she glanced into the cafés and stores she passed. They were filled with similar scenes of the unfolding chaos. The lights were out in every store, which wasn’t a problem, seeing as it was midday and clear and sunny, but the staff was getting frantic and trying to placate increasingly agitated customers, and it looked as if fights were about to break out in more than just one or two stores.
Mary hurried along faster, doing her best to maintain a façade of calm on the outside, but feeling increasingly anxious with her pulse racing and breathing quickening. She veered off down an alley, taking her usual shortcut, and then broke into a run.
She exited the alley, slowing down to a brisk walk to keep up the illusion of calmness, and then made a beeline for her apartment building. The tall, ten-story building was located on a smaller road, but even here, there was a jumble of dead cars clogging up the street, and crowds of worried and confused people standing around, with some talking and some arguing.
When she got to her building, a sad and familiar sight greeted her. Sitting on the stairs leading up to the main doors was a scrawny, nerdy teenage boy, looking sullen and morose. His nose was bleeding, and one of his eyes was purple and swollen. Mary’s heart broke at the sorry sight of him; this was her neighbor, James, who lived across the hallway from her. What was more, she knew full well who had done this to him.
James didn’t notice her until she was right next to him, but when he looked up, his narrow, angular face didn’t register any sort of surprise. He was too deep into this bout of depressing sadness to feel any sort of shock, and he had collapsed so deeply into himself that he hardly even seemed to have noticed the mess of dead cars on the street and the crowds on the sidewalks.
“He said it was my fault, Aunt Mary,” he whimpered, his eyes puffy and red with tears. “He said I broke the TV with my Xbox, but I didn’t even touch it today. I don’t know why it won’t turn on, but it’s not my fault. But he wouldn’t listen, and he blamed me like he always does.”
“Your dad’s been drinking again, huh?” she said, sitting down next to him and putting a sympathetic arm around his shoulder.
“He passed out on the sofa last night with half a bottle of whiskey in his hands,” James said, sniffing and wiping the tears from his cheeks, “and finished it off before breakfast. He started on another one right after he ate. I tried to stay away from him, but then the TV broke around half an hour ago, and so did my phone, for some reason, and then he came after me.”
“Why didn’t you go to school today?” Mary asked.
James shrugged. “I woke up late. I didn’t sleep much because he was yelling at the TV all night and throwing shit around and breaking stuff. I think I only fell asleep at five or six in the morning.”
Mary sighed and squeezed James’s shoulder. His father was a violent, deadbeat drunk who lived off inheritance money, and his mother had run off with another man years ago. Seeing as her own husband had walked out on her many years ago and she’d had to raise Ann on her own, Mary had always felt a lot of sympathy for James, who was also being raised in a single-parent household. Ann and James had been friends since a very early age, and more often than not, James would sleep on their sofa, especially when his father would hit the bottle harder than usual. Sometimes these benders would last for days.
“You should have knocked on the door,” Mary said. “You know the sofa is there for you any time.”
“I didn’t want to wake you guys up,” James said forlornly.
Mary felt immensely guilty, not just because she felt as if she hadn’t been there for James the previous night—even though she hadn’t known about his father’s bender—but because she knew what sort of fate she would be abandoning him to. Once she got the bug-out bag and another bag of supplies out of this apartment, she doubted she would come back for a very long time, perhaps ever.
Raw emotion stabbed through her, twisting in her guts like a rusty knife; she thought of James almost as an adopted son. She’d watched him grow up, had helped him with his schoolwork, and comforted him whenever his drunken father abused him like this, and he was like a sibling to Ann.
Her heart wanted to take him with, but her brain said no. James was unathletic, unfit and uncoordinated, and could barely see a few feet in front of him without his glasses. Aside from one camping trip that she’d taken him on—which he hadn’t enjoyed at all, being a kid whose favorite activity was sitting on a sofa, playing video games—he knew nothing about the outdoors. He would absolutely be a liability when it came to escaping the city, and Mary’s rational side knew that she had to put the survival of herself and her daughter first. Bringing James along could jeopardize their entire mission to escape.
She steeled her will and forced herself to suppress the billowing emotion within her. She slid her arm off James’s shoulder and made herself stand up, fighting back the tears and choking on a knotty sob that was rising in her throat.
“I have to go, James,” she said, choking on the words. “Put some ice on that black eye. You’ll be okay.”
With a heavy heart, she jogged up the stairs to her third-floor apartment. She headed in, grabbed her bug-out bag from the back of her wardrobe, and then pulled two large hiking backpacks out as well. She stuffed a few clothes from her wardrobe into one of the bags, then went to Ann’s room and hastily picked out her daughter’s most practical clothes and shoes.
She got changed out of her mechanic’s coveralls and put on some hiking gear. She put her toolbelt back on, though; there were plenty of useful things in there that could come in handy.
After that, she went to the kitchen, put all the bottled water she had into the backpacks, and threw in the mini gas cooker and aluminum pots she used for camping, and tossed whatever dehydrated foods she had into the bags. She threw a few cans of beans in, too, but the backpacks were already getting heavy, and she didn’t want to overload them.
She slung one backpack over her shoulders and wore it on her back, and then wore the smaller bug-out bag backward, wearing it on her chest. She had to carry Ann’s backpack in her hands.
Before she stepped out of her apartment, she stopped and took one last, heartbroken look at the place. She’d just finished paying off the mortgage the previous year and had put so much effort into decorating and remodeling this place, turning it into the cozy urban nook she’d dreamed of ever since she’d been a little girl. It was where she’d raised her little girl, where she’d made so many memories. It was her refuge from everything, the place she felt safest in all the world, and now she was being forced to leave it behind. A tear rolled down her cheek, and her lip quivered with sadness.
She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to steel her will against the avalanche of grief that was about to erupt inside her, and then she stepped out into the hallway, shut the door and locked it, perhaps for the final time ever.
“Going hiking, Mary?”
Mary looked up and saw one of her neighbors, Taylor Smith, coming out of his apartment. He was a lawyer in his forties and was a good-looking man who always dressed well. He was, however, arrogant and snarky, and while Mary feigned politeness whenever she had to interact within, she had no love for the man. He, on the other hand, usually made no attempt to disguise his disdain for blue-co
llar workers like Mary, even though she made a good salary as a specialized mechanic.
“Not exactly,” she said, walking away and trying to avoid being drawn into a conversation with him.
Taylor, however, seemed to be in quite a talkative mood. “You know,” he said, following her and completely ignoring the hints she was dropping, “the strangest thing just happened. I was working on a case in my home office—big client, a multinational firm, millions of dollars at stake,” he said, smiling smugly, “when my computer just went dead. Now, this isn’t your usual Chinese crap. It’s a top-of-the-line MacBook, you see. Only three months old. And then—”
“Look, Taylor, I’m in a hurry,” Mary said, speeding up her walking pace, “and I’m sorry about your computer, but I don’t have time to talk.”
“Well, it’s just so very strange,” he continued, ignoring her, “that my iPhone and iPad are also dead! Have you checked your TV, and whatever piece of shi—um, your computer you have in there?”
Mary rolled her eyes and stopped. She figured she might as well tell him, just to get him off her back. “Okay, Taylor, do you really want to know what’s just happened, and why your fancy electronics aren’t working?”
“If you have a theory, go ahead and enlighten me, please!” he said, grinning smarmily.
“There’s been an EMP attack. I don’t know who’s behind it, where it happened, or why, but I’m absolutely certain that this is what’s happened. Everything electronic, from your toaster to your freakin’ iPad, has been fried and will never work again. You can kiss your law career goodbye because there are far, far bigger things to worry about now than lawsuits and multinational corporations. I’d start by trying to figure out how you’re going to keep yourself alive once the faucets run dry. If you’re gonna stick around here, I’d suggest you go fill up your bathtub with water before the supply gets shut off, if it even works now anyway. After that, I’m sorry, I don’t know what other advice I can give you.”
Taylor stared at her with an incredulous look etched across his face. “Good God,” he eventually murmured. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of these goddamn tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist maniacs! Sheesh, I should have known. Ha! Man, this day is just getting crazier and crazier.”
“Goodbye, Taylor,” Mary muttered, and then she turned around and jogged down the stairs.
He yelled out something else behind her, but she ignored him; she had no time to waste on morons like Taylor.
She headed out of the building, fighting back the tears when she saw that James was still sitting on the steps, looking crushed. She knew that she had to do what was best for herself and her daughter, though, and forced herself to walk past him without making eye contact.
With every step she took, though, guilt gnawed at her with increasing persistence, until, a few yards from the building, she was forced to stop. She knew that as much of a liability as he might end up being, she could not in good conscience abandon James to his fate here. She turned around and walked up to him.
“James, sweetie,” she said. “What I’m about to say might sound a little crazy, but you need to listen to me very carefully, and do exactly what I say…”
3
Ann stared, fascinated, at the beautiful diorama before her. She had always loved visiting museums, ever since she could remember, and history was her favorite subject at school. She’d been looking forward to this field trip for weeks, especially since a new exhibit on the lives of the first East Coast colonists in this area had just been opened.
“It’s amazing that they survived here with so little, surrounded by this vast wilderness, and hostile tribes,” Ann murmured, staring at an incredibly lifelike mannequin, dressed in authentic 16th-century clothes.
“Yeah, uh, I guess,” said her friend Sandy, whose eyes were glued not to the impressive diorama display but instead to the screen of her phone in her hand. “Oh my God, did you see what Kanye tweeted last night?”
Ann was paying about as much attention to Sandy’s celebrity gossip as Sandy was paying to the museum exhibits, though. “Uh no, I didn’t,” she murmured, her eyes moving on to a mannequin of a colonial soldier, wearing a steel breastplate and a steel helmet, holding an arquebus, with a sword and scabbard on his hip. In the background, a huge taxidermized grizzly bear reared up on its hind legs in the trees and shrubs.
“Well like, he and Kim have like, been having this argument—”
Sandy stopped mid-sentence as the entire museum was plunged abruptly into darkness. The whole group of teenagers—the ninth-grade history class—started buzzing with excited chatter, and some of the boys began making mock ghost noises and laughing boisterously. At the head of the group, the teacher, Mr. McCallum, tried to quieten them down. “Hey, hey, it’s just a power outage people; let’s not act like hooligans, please! Just stay put, I’m sure the power or backup lighting will come on any second now.”
“Why the hell is my phone dead?” Sandy whined. “Jeez, just when I was like, about to see what Kim tweeted back! Gimme your phone, Ann, I like, have to see what Kim said.”
Ann took her phone out of her bag, but in the thick darkness, Sandy couldn’t see the frown forming on her friend’s face.
“What are you waiting for?” Sandy muttered, annoyed. “C’mon, gimme your phone.”
“It’s dead, too,” Ann murmured.
“Yo, why the hell is my phone dead?” one of the boys near them said.
“Mine’s dead too!”
“Yeah, something’s wrong with my phone too!”
“And mine, it’s freakin’ dead. It’s bricked!”
“Everyone, calm down!” Mr. McCallum yelled over the chorus of increasingly agitated voices. “Calm down, please!”
The initial atmosphere of mischievous delight at the power outage was quickly changing, and Ann could feel an aura of panic and fear buzzing in the air around her. Suddenly, as if a row of dominos was falling in mind, a conversation she’d had with her mother a few months ago popped into her head. The realization of what this apparent power outage really was had hit her like a speeding truck. “Oh my God…” she whispered into the blackness.
Sandy, however, seemed completely oblivious to the rising tension in the air. “I can’t believe this stupid phone died! It’s only, like, two months old!”
“Sandy, we need to get out of here,” Ann whispered in a low, urgent voice.
“Yeah, I know, right? This stupid field trip has been so boring, and there’s that café across the street from the museum with real fast Wi-Fi and a totally hot barista, and—”
“I’m not talking about skipping school to go hang out at some café,” Ann said. “This is serious, Sandy, I think something terrible has happened.”
“Uh, it’s just, like, a power outage or something, Ann.”
“Everyone, I want you to take the hand of the person closest to you, okay?” Mr. McCallum said. “It looks like there’s an uh, a problem with the backup power, so we’re going to slowly move in the direction of the exit, all together now.”
Ann’s mind was racing. Her mother had, one night, sat her down and told her about a range of distinctly scary possibilities and had mentioned that she had a plan in place if anything like any of them happened. Regardless of what the disaster was, Mary’s instructions to Ann had been the same: don’t get roped into a large group of people, stay away from crowds, stay out of large buildings, don’t trust anybody you don’t know very well, stay away from public places, be as stealthy as possible, and get to the meeting spot without delay.
The meeting spot in question was an old oak tree on the school grounds; if there were any sort of disaster or school shooting or terrorist attack, and Mary and Ann were not together, Mary had said she’d head straight there and had told Ann to do the same. Ann knew she had to get there immediately, for all the signs pointed to this being an EMP attack—one of the most disastrous and chaotic of the scenarios Mary had discussed.
“It’s not a power ou
tage. It’s…” Ann paused; she was pretty sure that it would be a complete waste of time to try to explain to Sandy what an EMP was. “It’s a terrorist attack or an act of war,” she said. “And we’re not safe in here.”
“A terrorist attack? I didn’t hear any, like bombs or anything.”
“Just trust me on this, Sandy. I promise you; this is something bad—really bad. We shouldn’t stick with the class. We should get out of here and get back to school. My mom has a plan for situations like this.”
“I can’t even, like, see my hand in front of my face,” Sandy said. “How the hell are we like, ever gonna get out of here?”
“I’ve been coming here since I was in kindergarten,” Ann said. “I could navigate this place perfectly in a blindfold, which is pretty much what I’m gonna have to do. Come on, let’s go.”
“Everyone, have you joined hands yet?” Mr. McCallum asked.
“It’s now or never,” Ann whispered, the urgency in her voice plain to hear.
“Okay, okay,” Sandy whispered back. “Let’s do this.”
They fumbled in the dark for a second or two before finding each other’s hands, and then, once they had interlocked their fingers, the pair of them quietly slipped away from the rest of the class. Ann visualized the layout of the museum in her mind, taking slow, careful steps. She came here every few weeks—every time a new exhibition opened—and had been doing so far many years, so she knew where she was going.
“Okay, if we keep going straight,” she whispered to Sandy, “we’ll be passing the Native American exhibits.” She visualized the exhibits and did her best to project a lifelike image of them into the impenetrable darkness to her left. She had to imagine she was walking past the exhibit, and picture it as vividly in her mind as possible to get the distance right.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 2