End Days Super Boxset (166 page)

Mark walked over to the front of car, and stood over the engine, not knowing where to start. He tried to put the pieces together. The entire scenario he was witnessing seemed familiar. He'd read books about it, science fiction dystopia books detailing a massive strike against every electrical circuit—from a network server down to a clock radio. Such destruction was initiated by a magnetic pulse with voltage so enormous it caused a blowout in all things electronic. If something ran on an electronic chip of any kind, which most things—then it was toast. Too many signals alerted him to something much more significant.

"What do you see?" Evelyn called from the driver's seat. She gripped the wheel shaking it. Her chances of making it to the meeting in time seemed unlikely with each passing minute." To Mark, nothing in the engine looked out of the ordinary. The car battery was connected at both ends. Everything was intact. Nothing was burnt, fried, or exploded. Mark held his hand over the engine and felt slight warmth but again, nothing unusual.

"Everything looks normal," Mark answered. "Try it again."

Evelyn turned the key again. There was no click or spark. "Nothing," she said. "Dammit!"

Mark left her hood open and squeezed back through the cars. "I don't know what to tell you, Evelyn. I'll try my car."

"Please do," she said looking up in desperation. "I'm already late for my meeting."

His blue Cavalier was waiting for him, but provided no answers. He turned the key as Evelyn stood nearby tapping her heel on the ground nervously. The Cavalier was dead. Instead of the dashboard lights coming on or the A/C kicking in, his car was no better than any of the other useless hunks of metal now littering on the highway. He didn't want to admit it, but he could only make one reasonable assumption: an EMP had been launched against the city.

"Nothing?" Evelyn asked in surprise as Mark climbed out of his car. "What's going on? Did someone mess with our engines? Gangs maybe? What kind of sick joke is this?" She was frantic and rambling to herself, and Mark tried to approach her with calm.

"Evelyn, this was no accident. And I don't think it's simple vandalism either. This could be a coordinated attack. It would explain the power going out at Barnie's. Your phone not working. Our cars not starting."

"What are you talking about?" she asked in disbelief while fishing for her phone again.

"I'm talking about an Electronic Magnetic Pulse. An EMP. If someone launched one as a nuclear strike, it would disable everything that uses circuits or computer chips. Our power grids, communications, and mobility would be no more. This is some serious shit."

Evelyn stared at him through her sunglasses with serious doubt. "How could such a thing happen? It's not possible." She pulled out her cell phone and swiped the screen. "I'm calling a tow truck. I don't want to leave my car here with hoodlums running all over the place."

Mark looked around and saw mass confusion in the parking lot. Agitated people stood beside their cars, trying to get their phones to work.

"Calling a tow truck might be a problem. If the cell towers are out, you're not going to get anything out of that phone." Mark pulled his phone from his pocket to verify. Normally the screen displayed the date, time, and weather. It was as if his phone had shut off. There was nothing but a blank screen.

"This is ridiculous," Evelyn said. She held the power button on the phone with her thumb, and became lost in a cycle of frustration and helplessness.

"You might have better luck walking to work at this point," Mark said, gaining her attention.

"I don't know," she said. "In these heels?"

Mark wasn't sure what to tell her. She was his boss, after all. In the event of an EMP, he knew that he had to get home to Janice. That was first. A long-term scenario of an EMP was predicted as "catastrophic" by the very commission who authored the study he had read a few years back. It would take weeks, perhaps months, but sooner or later things would reach a breaking point. People would grow desperate as necessities dwindled. Mark didn't want to think of how bad things would get after that. Survival for him and Janice was about taking action while things were still normal.
Before
they fell apart. He approached Evelyn and put his hands on her shoulders, startling her.

"Evelyn, I can promise you this. If you need help, stick with me, and I can get you home to your family. The power is not coming back on. You have to believe me."

She gave him a look of understanding then backed away, out of his reach. "So you're saying you're not coming into work today?"

"There's not going to be any power there either. All the cars on the lot, every last one of them, will be in the same shape as yours or mine.

"I appreciate your concern, Mark, I really do. I'll be fine though. Nothing right now is more important than getting to that meeting. Maybe I'll just walk, like you suggested."

There was no time left to convince her of anything. Mark gave her a genuine smile of hope. "Best of luck to you, Evelyn. Thanks again for the coffee."

As he walked away, she went back to her car, and studied it in a state of denial. Mark went through the parking lot and onto the sidewalk that ran along the main road. His house was about five miles away, and he figured he could make it on foot. He would get the bug-out car and pick up Janice from wor
k
, bu
t
there was no guarantee that the bug-out car would even work. They had stored it over the years in the backyard shed for the express purpose of an EMP scenario, but he couldn't remember the last time he had started it.

Time was of the essence. A turn of good fortune arrived when he saw a bicycle store in the line of shops ahead. He walked quickly down the sidewalk, maneuvering around dazed people who blocked his path. Every person's face was buried in their nonfunctioning phones. They desperately pleaded with them to work. It was sad to see so many people so reliant on indifferent pieces of plastic that offered them no answers. Mark attempted to stay focused and not get diverted from his task, even though he wanted to explain to everyone what he believed to be happening.

The bike store, like every other store, was dark inside and completely without power. The sales clerk, a tall skinny man with short wavy hair and a polo shirt, stood against the counter messing with his cell phone. The entrance door was propped open, and the man took little notice of Mark when he walked in. The small store was full of bikes lined up against the wall and hanging from the ceiling. Mark checked his wallet and, much to his relief, counted one hundred and twenty dollars in twenties.

"How ya’ doing?" Mark politely asked the man.

The sales clerk looked up surprised. "Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn't see you come in. This shit with the power is crazy."

Mark scanned the store for a possible purchase. "It sure is. My car broke down, and I'd like to purchase a bike." He didn't have time to burden the man with his EMP theories.

"Yeah, I noticed a lot of cars like that. Could be the busiest day of the year for me if this keeps up."

Mark laughed. He was surprised the store hadn't been cleaned out yet.

"So what kind of bike you lookin' for?" the clerk asked. "Wait, a minute," he added. "Do you have cash?"

It was a strangely direct question, but Mark understood the clerk's predicament.

"Yes, I have cash," he answered.

The clerk breathed in relief. "Good then. Our credit machines are down, and I can't very well take IOUs."

"I understand completely," Mark said.

"What can I help you with then?" the clerk asked.

Moments later, Mark emerged from the store with a 10-speed Huffy Mountain Bike. It cost him $110 plus tax, and while he could have gotten something cheaper, his instincts suggested reliability. Mark rode the bike down the sidewalk weaving around pedestrians who, themselves, seemed lost and confused. Any police officers with the misfortune of being stranded found themselves hounded and mobbed with questions of what was happening. "I wonder," Mark thought, "if I'll ever see my car again."

Monday September 21, 2025 8:30 A.M. Milledgeville, GA

James pulled into the faculty parking lot of Georgia College thirty minutes before his morning class started. He liked to arrive early and go over his lesson plan briefly before class began. His office was a short walk from the parking lot to the humanities building. Inside, he took a seat at his desk, cluttered with notes and history books, and placed his briefcase on the oak surface. A tall bookcase stood nearby, stocked with many fiction, nonfiction, war history, and literature.

The new semester brought a slew of fresh-faced undergrads that James had gotten to know over the weeks. They were a good group of kids and, James enjoyed their energy, spirit, and eagerness to learn. For his first class he’d prepared a lecture on the Civil War. The war fascinated him, not just because of its high cost
s—
the largest number of war deaths in American histor
y—
but because of the complex and traceable events that led to the war and ultimately into a divided country. There were major lessons to be learned from the Civil War, lessons he would focus on during his lecture.

James gathered his notes and took one last sip of coffee from his oversized mug. In the corner of his desk sat a dusty ten-year-old framed picture of James, his ex-wife, Anne, and his son, Cliff. He didn't have a more recent picture, and until he did, the dated family photo would remain.

He walked into his classroom, carrying a satchel over his shoulder and a coffee mug in his hand. His wore gray tweed coat, pants, white dress shirt, and blue tie. Five minutes to nine, and ten of his fifteen students had already taken their seats.

"Good morning, class," James said as he walked to his desk at the front class.

The students, most of them fresh out of high school, said hello and nodded back politely.

"Good morning, Professor Cook," a girl seated in the front row said.

James placed his satchel on the table next to his podium, and proceeded to go through his lecture notes. A massive dry erase board hung behind him, covering nearly the entire length of the wall. He grabbed a nearby marker and wrote the day's date on the board: Monday, September 21, then wrote, The American Civil War (1861-1865).

It was almost time to start class. James put his glasses on and turned to face the class at the last of the stragglers slipped into the room and sat in the back.

"Good morning again, everyone, I hope you had a great weekend. I know most of you labored hard on school work and abstained from anything remotely relaxing and fun."

The class laughed politely.

"Last week we had discussed at length the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Hopefully, you learned a lot about those events in high school. And I hope that you were able to gain a more advanced perspective from our discussions. With that in mind, I want to stress the notion of the significance of war itself; the reasons we go to war, the high costs involved with these decisions, and the end result of years of battles and bloodshed. War is an exercise of force, whose purpose is to achieve a desired goal. Sometimes that goal is just, like ending slavery in the Civil War. Other times the goals are ambiguous; World War One, for example. It is my view that no meaningful change in history or society occurs except as a result of war. This is not to say that I'm pro-war. Terms like pro-war and anti-war don't really mean a thing.”

He paused for a moment before continuing. “Though they do mean something in an ideological sense, what I want us to discuss are the events that lead to wars, the execution of those wars, and how society rebuilds and reconstructs itself after such catastrophic bloodshed."

The students remained quiet, attentively listening.

"Behind me I've written the dates of the Civil War, an event that we're all familiar with. It is the costliest and most significant war in America's history. It showed the true results of a fractured republic. It showed what it means to be a divided nation, and the results of that division when compromises can't be met. We can theorize that had Lincoln accepted the southern states’ call for secessio
n—
eleven states in all—the war could have been avoided and slavery would have existed for another century or longer. That, among other dilemmas, was what our sixteenth President faced when calling on Union troops to defeat the Confederate army. The Civil War began April 12, 1861 and officially ended June 22, 1865. A long and difficult reconstruction process followed throughout the South in attempts to repair the war-torn and decimated landscape so that it could rejoin the Union. The fundamentals of the war were fairly simple. One side wanted to split from the main body while the main body itself wanted to remain intact. So let's think about this. Could a Civil War of such magnitude possibly ever happen today? Could we imagine such a thing? Do we believe that such a thing is beyond the realm of possibility?"

The class was silent at first. One student in the middle row raised his hand.

"Yes, Eric?" James said, pointing.

Eric lowered his hand and spoke. "Of course it is," he answered.

"And why is that?" James asked, pacing in front of the dry erase board with his hands locked behind his back.

"Because there will always be divisions," Eric said.

"That's true. Some divisions are greater than others. Many philosophers throughout history have suggested that to exist is to exist in perpetual conflict. But what about our nation's motto, 'United we stand, divided we fall?' Are we dishonoring those values when division is created?"

Eric thought for a moment then answered. "I guess it depends on what kind of divisions those are."

"Very good, Eric, very well said," James replied, satisfied. He turned to his class after picking up a textbook from the table.

"Let's open our books to chapter three and dive right into the years leading up to the Civil War." As James continued, the lights in the auditorium flickered rapidly then went out. The momentary distraction threw James off a little. He tried to look at the book but could barely see anything. Faint light streamed through the small windows near the high ceiling, preventing the room from falling into complete darkness. Small chatter began to grow louder when the overhead lights showed no signs of coming back on. Several students were even more perplexed to find that their laptops were dead. At the very moment the lights flashed, their laptop screens went blue and shut off. The synchronized outage of all things electronic was eerie to say the least, but no one could pinpoint the cause.

"That's strange," one student said out loud. "What the hell happened to my Mac?"

Other students, with their tablets and cell phones out, felt the same abject confusion.

"All right everyone, let's just stay calm. The lights should be back on soon." Though he wasn't sure of this himself.

"Yeah, but my computer went out too, and it's running on battery. How did that happen?" A girl in the front row called out.

Murmurs from the class followed.

"What do you think is going on, Mr. Cook?” another boy asked. "My cell phone's dead too."

In unison, all the students in the class took out their phones and tried to get them to work. To their near horror, they were met with blank screens, as if all their phones had been synchronized to shut off at the same time.

"Please, everyone, put your phones away. We don't want to get carried away here. Just give it a couple minutes, and the lights should be on."

"I'm not getting anything on mine. It won't even turn back on," a disappointed boy said, pressing the power button of his iPhone.

"Me neither," another male student added.

James placed the history book on the table and sighed. As long as the lights were out, he was going to have trouble maintaining the students’ attention. He leaned against the table and waited, deciding to listen to what the students were saying. Something hit him. A pattern emerged, and he suddenly perked up. “It couldn't be,” he thought. “That's insane.” Or was it?

He was a prepper after all. He drove a 1979 F150 for a reason. Years ago, James had bought the truck not only for its affordability and low maintenance but because he wanted to be prepared in the event of EMP attack. Conventional wisdom suggested that a magnetic pulse powerful enough could disable all vehicles with a microprocessor, electronic wiring, or computer parts. On the other hand, James had also read that such claims were considered a myth. He read that most cars
wouldn't
be affected anyway because wiring and electronics are well shielded against electromagnetic interference. There was no real certainty either way. At the very least, James knew that diesel engines, like that in his Ford, had no ignition system and would be protected against electromagnetic manipulation; at least that was what he hoped.

James's mind began to wander, as he still hadn't fully accepted that anything so serious had interrupted his morning lecture. He students were still griping about their electronics when he excused himself from the classroom and went down the hall to check on his colleagues. The first thing James noticed was that the lights were out all over. The building had no power. There was no air conditioning, no emergency lights, no functional vending machines, nothing. He stuck his head into the office of one of the adjunct professors, a thirty-something named Pat, who taught English composition. Pat sat at his desk staring at the blank screen of his laptop.

"Good morning, Pat. Everything okay?" James asked.

"Damn power went out, right when I was in the middle of grading one of my student’s online assignments." Pat buried his face in his hands in frustration. "This is unbelievable. Nice fucking timing."

"Yeah, same here. I was in the middle of a lecture.”

"I don't understand it. My laptop wasn't even plugged, but why would it go completely dead like that?"

"I don't know," James said, thinking. He tapped his fingers against the wall, trying to think of ways to offer Pat some help, but didn't really know what to say.

"Have you talked to anyone else?" James asked.

"Nope," Pat said, putting his face back in his hands.

James looked around. "I gotta talk to my class; I'll catch up with you later.”

"This is a nightmare," a distracted Pat mumbled in weary defeat.

James walked back down the hall, looking through the windows of the other classrooms. Each room had the lights out. One of the double doors flew open as a classroom of students, clearly frustrated with the power outage, entered the hallway and walked out of the building. James opened the door to his classroom and found that most of his students still remained. Only a few had left, most likely in frustration.

"Power's out through the entire building," James said. "I may have to find the Faculty Director and see what he wants to do."

"None of our phones work, not one," one of his students, Ryan, called out from the middle row. James stopped to think for a moment. He had left his cell in the truck accidentally
and had no way of verifying it for himself. He asked Ryan if he could take a look at his phone. Upon examining it, he could see that the screen was completely blank. James pushed the power button, but nothing happened. There seemed to be something more to the case than just a random power outage. He began to put together the pieces, and offered the class a theory.

"I think it's fair to say this power outage is a huge distraction. We'll wrap things up so I can investigate."

"What do you think happened, Mr. Cook?" Ryan again asked.

"I don't know for sure, Ryan. Our electronics have been disabled," James answered.

"How?" a girl in the front row asked. The students were looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"So far everything looks to me to be consistent with an EMP type scenario. How many of you have heard of an EMP?" A few students raised their hands.

James continued. "An electromagnetic pulse is capable of sending a burst of energy into the air that can be fatally damaging to electronics. The threat of a nuclear EMP weapon was a very real concern back during the Cold War, but it's since become more of an unlikely threat. The purpose, however, of engaging in electronic warfare would be to eliminate the entire infrastructure of a country in order to create panic and chaos. I'm not certain, but it would explain your laptops and cell phones not working."

"What should we do?" Ryan asked.

"I would go home and stay indoors for the day. Just lay low until the problem is fixed. If you're able to stop by the store, see if they have any power. If not, stock up on what you can with cash."

"Cash?" a girl said laughing.

"Yes, cash."

The ultimate question entered James's mind. He wanted to go to the parking lot and see if his truck would start. He wanted to see if any vehicles were working. "Class is dismissed for now. Everyone stay safe and keep in touch with me, that is, if you can get your cell phones working. I'm hoping this will all pass soon."

The students slowly got up, grabbed their bags, and left the auditorium, still in a great state of confusion. Cell phones, smart phones, tablets, Wi-Fi, and the Internet. They couldn't imagine life any differently.

James walked down a hall towards the parking lot when the Faculty Director, Dr. Ron Keppler, stuck his head out of his office and called him in. "James, can I talk to you for a minute?" he asked. James stopped, and entered the office. "Please have a seat," Dr. Keppler said. There were two vinyl chairs in front of his desk. An enormous bookcase stood against the wall behind him. James sat on the chair farthest to the left as Dr. Keppler studied him.