NightFall (5 page)

A group of teenagers walked by Rob
with their cell phones up, tapping at their screens.

“
Anyone getting this?” a
lanky kid with a backwards hat and baggy jeans asked.

“
My phone’s dead, dude.
What is this shit?” a long-haired skater said.

“
All of ours are. That’s
what I’ve been trying to say,” said a girl with short blonde
hair.

Rob walked past the
teenagers and gave them a quick warning.
“Your phones aren’t working because this area has been hit
with an EMP.”

Their faces were clueless and rife
with confusion.

“
Electromagnetic pulse,”
Rob said. At least I think that’s what it is. The best thing I
would recommend is for all you kids to get home as—” he stopped.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school anyway?”

Their faces lit up with
nervousness and they scattered just as two bicycle cops came from
around the corner and pedaled down the sidewalk, observing
everything it seemed. They appeared calm and focused, both wearing
bicycle helmets, Oakley
’s, and belts with
radios, and their pistols, and badges.

“
Officers, you must help
us. We’re stranded!” a man in a wrinkled dress-shirt shouted as
they passed.

“
Make way, please,” said
the officers. One of them had a mustache and a booming voice of
authority.

“
Why aren’t our cars
working?” a woman in the crowd asked as the officers whizzed past
her.

The other
officer—clean-cut, round-faced, and identified on his badge as
Larson, signaled for the crowd to step back.—
“Everyone just needs to remain calm. All we know is that
we’re dealing with a temporary power outage.”

“
Yeah, but our cars?” a
frazzled man added. He held up his cell phone. “Our cell phones,
too. How do you explain this?”

“
We don’t know anything
about that, sir. A transformer malfunction might have sent some
crazy signals out there that may have disabled portable electronics
as well.”

Rob walked away and toward the parking
lot to find his car.

All the makings of a
high-altitude nuclear EMP,
he thought,
looking around.

He approached his Chevy Impala in the
corner and pulled his keys out, ready to give it the test. His
remote key didn’t unlock the doors. After opening the door
manually, he jumped behind the wheel and tried to start the engine.
Nothing. Not even a flicker of light on the dashboard or a wheezing
from the engine. His car was dead.

“
Damn,” he
thought
.

Rob left the parking lot and looked
around. Many people were still at their cars, some pushing them
down the street in a last effort to keep moving. As many of those
around him clutched their cell phones feverishly, Rob could see the
panic in their eyes.

“
Work, damn you, work!”
one man shouted at his phone.

The collective desperation made Rob
fearful of things to come, when suddenly a thought jostled his
thinking.

Josh and Kelly.

He ran down the sidewalk and took a
sharp left on Cedar Street. Pro-Survival was a few shops down. He
pulled his keys from his pocket, dangling them in the air, and then
jammed the master key into the lock.

He flung the door open, and as the
bell sounded, he ran in, and slammed the door. The lights were off
in his store. The air conditioner, too. He stayed low and moved to
the front counter where the land-line phone was. With the receiver
to his ear, he heard nothing. It was as if someone had unplugged
it. He tried his laptop. It was dead.

In his own way, he could
understand the frustration of the people outside, and the panic
they began to show in such a brief amount the time. Without his
phone, he couldn
’t contact Mila, and she
couldn’t contact him. But he did have a GRMS handheld radio. He
only hoped she would remember to have one on her as
well.

Perhaps the range of the
EMP strike was relatively small.

But Rob knew it was wishful thinking.
From what he’d read, an electromagnetic pulse could span
continent-sized areas if detonated at heights of two hundred feet.
This was it—the moment he had been preparing for all his adult
life.

There among all his
prepper goods, he began to plan. If things got worse in town in the
time it would take to bring power back to Nyack,
they
’d have to bug-out to the cabin. But
he couldn’t get too ahead of himself.

First thing was to get his
family together. He peeked out from behind the counter to the front
store window. The coast was clear. He grabbed a bug-out bag from
the display window, threw it over his shoulder and tried to
leave
, when someone began banging on the
door, rattling the bars. Rob stooped back down, hiding as the
banging persisted.

“
Rob, come on, man. Let me
in!”

He could recognize that voice
anywhere. Bernie was back. But what did he want? Probably what
everyone else wanted: answers.

Blackout

Having not slept long, Mila awoke on
top of the covers in her darkened room. The blinds were closed. The
room was stuffy, and when she looked to see what time it was, the
alarm clock on her nightstand was off. Something felt strange and
out of the ordinary.

The ceiling fan was off, as was the
air conditioner. As she raised her head from the soft pillow, she
wondered if she was still in some kind of dream. Sleeping during
the day was disorienting enough. Even worse with the sounds of
construction and lawn maintenance going on all day. Oddly enough,
things were quiet, both in and outside the house.

She wanted to go back to
sleep but was curious about the power being out. There was no
storm. They
’d paid the power bill. She
looked around to see what time it was, but the alarm was off. She
slowly got up to check her cell phone charging on the dresser
across from the bed.

With a stretch, she walked over to the
dresser tugging at her white nightgown which had bunched around her
legs. It was eerie how lifeless a room could be without
electricity, the air so still and quiet.

She reached for her
phone-still plugged in. It
s screen was
blank. The charging light wasn’t on. Thinking that she had maybe
turned it off, Mila pressed and held the power button. Nothing
happened. The phone had probably died, she thought, after the power
went out, with no electricity to charge it. It made sense to
her.

She glanced at her three-piece,
queen-sized bed. The blankets were tossed around and hanging over
the side. As enticing as the thought was, she chose to investigate
further. Something wasn’t right, and she was going to find out what
had happened.

She walked down the hall,
past both Josh and Kelly
’s rooms, and into
the living room. A subdued sunlight shone in through the thin
drapes covering the window. She approached the front door, where
the keypad for their home alarm system was. The digital screen was
blank, which was odd, because the system was supposed to have a
back-up power supply in the event of a power outage. She pressed
buttons on the keypad, just to see if anything would
happen.

“
Unbelievable,” she said
under her breath.

She unlocked the front
door and opened it, squinting as she looked outside. Their
neighbors across the street, the Rockwells, didn
’t look to be home. Their cars weren’t in the driveway, and
the garage door was shut. The barks of neighborhood dogs echoed in
the silence.

She grabbed her keys and a jacket and
opened the as sunlight hit her face. She walked to the driveway,
blocking her eyes, to where her silver Kia Sportage was
parked.

Her retired neighbor, Ken Blackwell,
stood at the end of his driveway looking around in his straw hat,
suspenders, and gloves. He was an old-fashioned man, who spent most
of his mornings in the backyard tending to his vegetable
garden.

“
Morning, Mila,” he
said.

“
Good morning, Ken,” Mila
said, startled.

“
How’s that night shift
treatin’ you?” he asked.

“
So far, so good,” she
replied. She stuck the key in the door and opened it.

“
Goin’ somewhere?” he
asked.

She turned around and
brushed her dark hair out of her face.
“No. The power’s out, and I just wanted to check on
something.”

“
Lost power here, too,”
Ken said. “Looks like the whole street is down.”

She got in, put the key went into the
ignition, and after a careful turn, all she heard was a sputtering
click. She tried again. Nothing.

“
I’m sure whatever it is,
it’s temporary,” Ken said in his usual calm tone.

Distracted, Mila agreed with him and
walked to the end of the driveway.

Houses on both sides of
the street were quiet with little activity. Three houses down, she
saw her neighbor, Allen, with his sleeves rolled up messing with
the engine of his Ford Taurus. She turned the other way and saw a
garbage truck broken down in the middle of the road,
it
s doors and hood open, with two garbage
collectors examining the engine.

“
You all right?” Ken
asked.

“
Yeah,” she said,
returning to the house. She felt the warm hood of her car as she
walked by, and thought the other car they had in the garage; a red
four-door 1979 Datsun
, their bug-out
vehicle. The vehicle they had for a number of reasons: the low gas
mileage. The easy-to-repair-parts. The low-key design. And most
importantly, the lack of computerized components susceptible to
electromagnetic pulses. The more she began to add things up, the
more resolute she became.

She waved to Ken and went
back inside, straight to the kitchen in search of the Datsun
keys.
She opened their miscellaneous
kitchen drawer and searched through tape, pens, markers, receipts,
and finally discovered a key chain with some old keys on it. She
snatched up the keys and went to the garage.

From what she understood about nuclear
EMPs, they produced damaging electrical currents with the ability
to disable and destroy power grids and electronic components. Upon
impact, high-frequency surges travel to the ground and trigger
electrical components to exceed their voltage.

A solar flare phenomenon
was something else she had heard about. The sun regularly releases
broad flashes of powerful magnetic rays that, if they reached
Earth, would damage electronics considerably. Whatever
had
happened, Mila
needed to get moving.

She stopped at the living
room window when she noticed a man walking by. He looked lost and
out of place.
His hair was short and
disheveled, and his face looked dirty. He wore a blue mechanic’s
jumpsuit and walked with a slight limp. A cigarette rested behind
his left ear.

He glanced at the house and then kept
walking. Mila backed away from the window, out of fear of being
seen. After a moment passed, she took a quick look and didn’t see
anyone. She raced through the living room toward the garage and
opened the door, instinctively flipping the light switch. There
wasn’t even a spark.

She walked inside the
darkened garage passed a large shelving unit on the side of the
garage stocked with canned goods and emergency food kits. The
dust-covered Datsun was right across from the shelves. Her hands
clutched the door handled and pulled open the squeaky
driver
’s side door. She sat on the smooth
vinyl seat as its rusty springs squeaked.

“
OK, here we go,” she
said, putting the key in the ignition.

With one turn, the engine sputtered to
life. It choked and heaved as black exhaust blasted out of the
tailpipe. Mila pressed her foot against the gas pedal as the
dashboard lit up with a barrage of engine lights. Excitement
gripped her heart.

But there was so much to be done, she
didn’t even know where to start. If an EMP was at play, she knew
the plan: they’d bug-out to the mountains. The most important
thing, she knew, was getting the kids.

She revved the engine
while examining the fuel gauge. They were at half a tank. They
would need more to drive to the city and back. She
turned the ignition off. It was time to get Rob,
get the kids, and move on to the bug-out phase. Surprised by how
naturally the thoughts came to her, she felt in control. Whatever
happened had happened. The question was, what was she going to do
about it?

There was running water, still warm.
Mila took a quick shower and got ready as fast as she could. She
threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, put on a pair of sneakers,
and opened their closet.

Inside was there biometric safe. She
unlocked the safe and looked for her snub nose .38 Special
revolver. It rested there next to their passports and an envelope
containing five hundred dollars in cash. She grabbed the revolver,
shut the safe, and looked around. There was something
else.