“A what?”
“Electromagnetic pulse. A high-altitude atomic blast. If so then just about every electronic device and vehicle in the country, maybe even the continent, has just been wiped out.”
“Holy cow! Are you saying I’m gonna miss Masterpiece Theatre tonight?”
John let out a burst of nervous laughter and so did Al. Soon both men were grasping their bellies, clenching their teeth with the pain, both of them knowing that nothing about their situation was the least bit funny.
Chapter 4
“Diane and the kids,” John said once he’d regained some measure of control.
Al nodded. “I should go inside and speak with Missy. If we wait long enough, the power might come back on, don’t you think, John?”
There was a heavy dollop of desperation in Al’s voice.
“I might be wrong about all this, Al. Last thing I wanna do is play Chicken Little and have everyone running for the hills.”
The woman and man whose stalled vehicles were stopped dead bumper to bumper waved them over.
“And if you’re right?” Al asked.
“Then it won’t be long before law and order begins to break down. Think about it for a second. What part of our lives isn’t connected in some way to electronics? Then consider that most households have three days’ worth of food. Those eighteen-wheelers on the highways you’re always complaining about. Like it or not, that’s how over seventy percent of the goods we need make it to grocery stores. If the cars we see are any indication, the highways have become parking lots. My advice to you, Al, is to fill your bathtub and as many buckets as you can find with water. It won’t be long before even that cuts off for good.”
The worry on Al’s face was turning to panic as John walked back to his house. “Where are you going?”
“To get my wife and children,” John replied.
The man and woman came over then.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said to John. “I was wondering if you could give us a boost.”
“A boost isn’t gonna help you,” he answered.
Other neighbors came out of their houses, looking at one another with perplexed expressions. For most of them, this was the strangest power outage they’d ever seen. But with no cell reception, no radio, television, or even internet, there wasn’t any proper way of informing people what had happened.
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?” the man asked. “A boost’ll take less than five minutes.”
John saw he’d been driving what looked like a 2011 Chrysler 300. The computer chip in his car that controlled the fuel injection and other vital operations had been fried by the high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy. Vehicles manufactured before 1980 had fewer or no computerized components which made them an ideal choice. A diesel engine was even safer and offered the additional advantage of being compatible with certain alternative fuels like heating oil and kerosene. This was why John had opted for the 1978 diesel-powered Blazer.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to waste your time. I’m telling you it won’t do any good.”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Well, thanks for nothing.” And he stormed off.
Once the man and woman had walked away, John went to his F150 parked in the driveway. He slid behind the wheel, inserted the key and turned it. Predictably, nothing happened. A result that didn’t shock him, but he would have been foolish to not even try. He put the truck into neutral and took his foot off the brake, letting gravity roll it off the driveway and onto the lawn.
He then pulled open the garage door and inspected the Blazer. This would be the real test. Betsy was not only his primary bug-out vehicle, she was his last resort. It was one thing to create several contingency plans for yourself—an older motorcycle, for example—but when you had a family and all the supplies they would need, there just wasn’t enough room in his garage or his budget for another vehicle. He topped up the tank with fuel, got in and turned the key.
The engine roared to life and the sound was at once exhilarating and terrifying. With a community and probably even a city of stranded motorists, how long would it take before someone decided they wanted Betsy for themselves? Under the driver’s seat was the S&W M&P .40 Pro John kept as part of his preps. There were plenty more weapons in the gun safe in his basement office, but since his objective was a lightning-fast pickup, he wasn’t going to bother bringing an arsenal with him. Besides, the majority of people were currently in a state of confusion.
It would be another forty-eight hours, he predicted, before that confusion morphed first into panic, then desperation, and finally all-out violence.
All eyes in the neighborhood were squarely on John as he brought Betsy out from the garage. He jumped out and lowered the garage door. The man and woman who’d asked him for a boost earlier were speaking to one of his neighbors, Curtis. Now all three of them were looking this way, the woman’s hands on her hips in disgust.
But what was John supposed to do, give lifts to everyone in the city who was stranded? He’d been honest with both of them that a boost wouldn’t help them. He’d also made the quick calculation that going into details about what he suspected was an EMP attack would only lead to a string of endless questions. The truth was he didn’t even know himself if that was what had happened. For all he knew, the government had been testing some kind of future weapon and something had gone terribly wrong. Course, that was stuff best left for low-budget sci-fi movies, while EMPs were a real threat to the country and its infrastructure. The other unknown at the moment was how far-reaching this was. Was Knoxville the only city out or had the entire country gone dark?
John put Betsy into gear and rolled out of his driveway, wondering how long it would be before he got his answer.
Chapter 5
Diane’s Century 21 office was three miles from the house. In the old days, taking the highway might have gotten him there faster, but that was surely a parking lot and the last place John wanted to be.
He left their quiet, idyllic community of Sequoyah Hills and headed west along Lyon’s Pike. These were the back roads and not nearly as congested as the highway would be.
Soon he came upon cars stopped in the middle of the road. Some of them were already abandoned. Others still had people in them. A few had ventured to nearby houses, knocking on doors and asking for help. But like the man and woman who had approached John on Willow Creek minutes before, he already knew they were beyond help.
Weaving between stalled cars, John did his best to get there fast. A man in a gray suit holding a briefcase tried to wave him to stop. And he wasn’t the only one. As John had predicted, the Blazer must have seemed like a mirage in a desert of broken-down vehicles.
At the intersection of Lyon’s Pike and Northshore, a group of bystanders had gathered together. No doubt many were stranded motorists commiserating with one another over the situation, wondering how they might get the help they needed. With working cell phones they could have called AAA. One more symptom of the society they lived in—the first thought in people’s minds when there was an emergency was, “Who you gonna call?” They had lost all semblance of self-sufficiency.
As John approached in the Blazer, a few from the group stepped out into the road and he was forced to make a decision. Either run them over or slow down. On the plus side, Betsy’s doors were locked and the pistol was under his seat. Besides, they didn’t look particularly threatening. John reached down and set the S&W M&P .40 Pro on the passenger seat. The truck was high enough that they wouldn’t see it just by looking in.