The Pulse: An EMP Prepper Survival Tale (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Good Morning, Janice

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

Janice faced rush-hour traffic every morning.
She always found herself battling against the clock, as it took no
less than an hour on the highway to get to work. Miraculously, she
would make it to work by 9:00 a.m. every time. All of this, she
supposed, could have been avoided by getting up and leaving
earlier, but her body didn't seem to allow it. Janice was stubborn
in her routines, and rushing to work was one she wasn't going to
change, despite any benefit to her sanity. Halfway to work she sat
back and listened to a talk radio show, "Earl & Company in the
Morning," in which they discussed nothing of great significance. It
was all about jokes and laughs. Sometimes she didn't want to be
inundated with the news and seriousness.

In World News, the Middle East was raging
with violence, as terrorist networks and so-called "sectarian
groups" had effectively seized control of several countries in the
region. Russia was moving on previously held territories in Europe,
China was quickly advancing into the top spot as the world's top
superpower, and they had already overtook America as the world's
biggest economy. Iran and North Korea were unstoppable in their
pursuit of a large nuclear arsenal. And this was in addition to all
the problems occurring within the United States. It was too much to
listen to at times. Too much to take in. To avoid depression,
Janice listened to the humorous and trivial banter of "Earl &
Company" instead.

Janice worked for an employment agency and
recruitment company, Terry Services, Inc., a "temp agency" sourcing
skilled workers for outside businesses. Her job involved processing
applicants, scheduling interviews, and assisting walk-ins with
appointments and general information. Each day was busy from open
to close, but she also noticed a troubling lack of temporary jobs
available overall. Sometimes her agency couldn't find applicants
any work.

"Well, how did you get this job?" a
frustrated man who couldn't find employment asked her.

"I applied for it like anyone else," she
answered.

"Lucky you," the man said, storming out of
the office. As a result, applicants were upset and
short-tempered.

Janice pulled into the vast
parking lot, just before nine, and saw that people were already
lined up outside the building, looking for work. She thought it was
ridiculous how people expected to find work the moment they walked
in. Janice approached the front entrance, and pushed past the line
of people at the door. She wanted to help them, she liked to help
them
—it
was her
job
—
but
it seemed simply overwhelming for a Monday
morning. She walked inside the building, past a cramped and full
waiting lobby. She went down a hall, and entered her
office.

A knock came at her door. Janice looked up
and saw her co-worker, Laura standing outside her office. "It's a
madhouse out there," she said to Janice.

"I expected it to be busy, but this is just,
I don't know. Mondays, what can you do?" Janice said. She looked at
her watch. It said 9:08.

"Time to get to work," she said, sitting down
at her desk.

“Good luck,” Laura said, walking away.

She had twenty applicants to process for
temporary positions. The first was a man named, Josh Tracey, a
computer analyst recently laid off from an IT firm. He was
overqualified for most of the positions available, but would take
anything they had. Janice went outside to the lobby and called out
her first appointment. "Mr. Tracey?" she said. A thirty-something
nebbish man who sat squished between two other applicants on the
waiting room couch stood up.

"That's me," he said, walking towards
her.

"How are you this morning?" Janice asked. Mr.
Tracey was wearing a faded suit, and his bushy hair was unevenly
cut, looking as if he did it himself.

"I'm doing well, thank you for asking," Mr.
Tracey replied.

They went to her office, and she closed the
door.

"Have a seat, please,” she said, pointing to
the chair in front of her desk. Mr. Tracey sat.

Janice continued. “So today is orientation.
There's additional paperwork to fill out, orientation, and then
we'll set you up with your new temp job.”

"Baggage handler at the Savannah
International Airport?" he asked, reading over his paperwork.

"Yes, that's correct," Janice said.

Before Mr. Tracey could respond, the overhead
lights flickered out. Simultaneously, the screen on Janice's
computer turned blue, and then shut off. There were no windows, and
the room was extremely dark. It took a moment for her eyes to
adjust, but Janice could see Mr. Tracey sitting in front of
her.

"You OK, Mr. Tracey?" she asked.

“I'm fine,” he said from the darkness. “What
the hell happened? Who turned out the lights?”

Janice stood up and looked around. “Excuse me
for a moment; I just need to see what's going on here."

"Did your people forget to pay the power
bill?" he asked with a laugh.

"I certainly hope not," Janice answered. She
got up and left her office to check out the lobby. The lights were
out there as well.

"Power's out," a seated man from the lobby
said.

"I see that," she answered. She left the
lobby and walked past her office and down the hall to her co-worker
Laura's office. There were no windows in the hall, and it had
gotten dark very fast. She knocked, and Laura told her to come in.
Janice opened the door. Sunlight beamed in through the tall windows
behind Laura's desk. "I was right in the middle of drafting our
newsletter,” Laura said, clenching her fists. “Son of a bitch, I
forgot to add it to the share drive. Ugh!"

"I'm sorry," Janice said. “I don't know why
it went out.”

"Who the hell knows,” Laura said. "There's no
storm. Not a damn cloud in the sky."

Janice shook her head. "Hopefully it will
come back on soon. I have a lot of people waiting out there. I'll
talk to you later." She walked back down the hall as Laura stared
at her screen in a daze.

Back in her office, Janice found a small
flashlight in the top drawer of her desk. She pulled it out and
turned it on. Mr. Tracey had wandered off, and he was no longer
there. She could hear co-workers outside her office complaining
that their cell phones weren't working. The scenario seemed
familiar. It was something Mark used to talk about. Something
called an EMP attack that destroyed power systems and electronic
devices. Something that would take the country back to the 1800s in
a matter of seconds if it could really happen. She dug her phone
out of her purse and saw that it had fared no better than the
others. The screen was blank, as if all its power had been drained
away. Janice sat at her desk and thought for a moment.

"Excuse me, miss, just what in the hell's
going on here?" an angry old man asked, breaking her concentration.
He had left the lobby and found to her office, a highly irregular
move for an applicant.

"One moment, please, sir," she said. She
picked up the receiver of her land-line phone to call her boss,
Brian. There was no dial tone. It was as if the phone wasn't even
plugged in. She slammed the receiver down in frustration. She got
up from her desk, and pushed past the man. “I'm sorry, I don't know
what's going on.” The man was not satisfied, and yelled at her as
she walked away from him. He reeked of alcohol.

Janice left office of the temp agency and
decided to look elsewhere in the three-story building. The
elevators weren’t working, so she headed for the stairwell. People
were exiting, hurrying down as she was climbing up. She searched
the second and third floors and found them to be the same as the
first: dimly lit, full of confused wanderers.

She went back down to the first floor and
exited the building. She was met with an unruly cluster of people
on the bottom floor. Various job-seekers from all walks of life had
convened outside the doors, lost and aimless. They wanted to know
why the power was out. They wanted to know how much longer before
everything magically came back on. Many of them held cell phones,
frantically trying to get them to work. Without the guidance of
their electronics, they looked to Janice for answers.

She was about to make her way back inside
when she noticed an unusual quietness from the nearby highway. She
could see the highway from the parking lot. It looked to be frozen
in time. Vehicles sat motionless in what looked like early-morning
gridlock. Nothing was moving, not even an inch. Janice stared,
waiting for one of the hundreds of cars on the four-lane highway to
move. Suddenly, she noticed something else: drivers and passengers
were exiting their cars then circling them, looking perplexed.

Her boss, Brian, called out to her from
outside the building as she walked to her white 2015 Toyota
Corolla. "Janice, where ya’ going?" he said, standing with his
hands on his hips.

“Damn,” she thought. She was about to
leave.

She turned around and yelled back, "I just
have to get something out of my car."

She unlocked the driver's side door and
stepped in. She stuck the key in and turned the ignition switch. At
first, she thought she was doing something wrong. She checked the
dashboard to make sure that the vehicle was in park and tried
again. The SUV wouldn't start, and Janice had no clue why. She
tried the engine ten more times, getting nothing. She tried it in
neutral, reverse, and drive to no effect. Her hand was tired from
turning the key so many times. She walked back to the building in a
daze as her boss greeted her sarcastically.

"Little bit of car trouble?" he asked.

"Looks like I'm not the only one," she
answered, signaling to the motionless gridlock on the highway.

Mark pedaled home in haste, hoping that, for
some unexplainable reason, Janice hadn't left for work yet. As he
rode up their driveway, he saw that her car was gone. Mark thought
for a moment, considering whether to drive their bug-out vehicle to
Janice's office and rescuing her. But maybe her car worked after
all. Maybe she got lucky. Mark didn't know the range of EMP blasts.
He didn't know if its effects had spread across town, across the
state, or over the entire country. He noticed his elderly next-door
neighbor sitting on his front porch swing. Mark stepped off his
bike, practically drenched in sweat. He had taken off his suit
jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but there was no escaping the
sweltering heat. He checked his cell phone again. It was still
dead. His neighbor looked peaceful on his porch swing, in perfect
contrast to the chaos Mark had fled.

"How's it going, Mr. Harper?" Mark
called.

Mr. Harper leaned forward on his cane and
squinted. He worse a short-sleeved buttoned-up shirt tucked into
his dress pants, colorful red suspenders, and a braided sun hat. He
fanned himself leisurely with a paper fan.

"I'm doing fine, how about yourself?" he
said.

Mark walked closer and stood under the shade
of Mr. Harper's chestnut tree.

"Doing all right. Bit of a scare today with
the power. It's like some kind of blackout. How are you holding up
here?" Mark hoped that Mr. Harper would say that the power was
running fine.

"Blackout?" Mr. Harper said. "I didn't even
notice it. Just been sitting on my porch drinking some sweet tea."
Mr. Harper held up a glass and finished the last of it. Just
looking at the empty glass made Mark thirsty. He had to get inside
to see everything for himself. Whatever was happening, Mr. Harper
was oblivious to it.

"Well, I gotta pick Janice up from work. I'll
see you later, Mr. Harper," Mark said, waving.

"You tell her I said hello," and he began
swinging back-and-forth.

"Sure will," Mark responded. He walked up the
steps into his home and unlocked the front door, hoping to find by
a cool, air-conditioned living room when he stepped inside. That
wasn't the case. The power was out. Mark walked around the living
room, dining room, and kitchen checking each appliance. Nothing
worked. He opened the refrigerator and looked in. Only darkness.
The motor wasn't running, and it would be only a matter of time
before all the food inside spoiled. Mark leaned against the counter
thinking to himself.

“What are we going to do?” Mark muttered out
loud. “What in the hell are we going to do?”

He thought of their food storage in the
basement and how most of it was expired. He thought of their money,
their assets, and their online accounts. He thought of ATMs, and
not having in cash, and looters. The banks would soon be the most
chaotic places imaginable, next to the supermarkets and gas
stations. The bug-out house was a consolation to his worries. Mark
considered their options. He needed Janice's input. Traveling to
Milledgeville and leaving their home behind was a huge step, but a
necessary one if things got worse.

Mark went to their backyard shed. He opened
the wooden double-doors and found their bug-out parked inside,
covered with layers of dust and grime. They owned an American
classic: a red 1970 Plymouth Road Runner with a rear spoiler and
lots of attitude. The door squeaked open, and Mark climbed into the
driver's seat.

He wasn't surprised to find that the car
wouldn't start. He hoped simply because the battery was dead. For
that reason, they stored three car batteries on a shelf in the shed
along with ten five-gallon cans of reserve fuel. Frustrated, Mark
popped the hood and grabbed some tools to disconnect the dead
battery so he could install a replacement. He was confident that
the car would start in the end. If it didn't, then he would have to
rethink his entire strategy. He was not looking forward to riding
his bike to Janice's office in ninety-degree heat. He swapped out
the batteries and ensured that the replacement was tightly
connected. He sat at the wheel, placed the key in the ignition, and
paused. He really didn't want to find out. If the car didn't start,
he would be devastated. "Please," he said under his breath.
"Please..."