All At Stake - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Lights Out in Vegas Book 1)

by Sean Patten

  “‘What’s going on’?” he repeated, confused. Then an expression of realization spread across his face. “Oh, you mean that sun thing?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah,” I said drily. “The ‘sun thing’.”

  “Bro,” he said. “You’re seriously worried about that?”

  Part of me was a little envious of Steve’s ability to be so calm about stuff like this—hell, about everything.

  “You really think if there was a problem they’d just tell us?” I asked. “You know how much panic that’d cause?”

  Steve waved his hand, the same dismissive motion that the man on the plane had done when the subject of the solar ejection had come up.

  “Listen, Justin,” he said. “I know this disaster-prep stuff…it’s, uh, your thing now. But it’s not healthy. You can’t be getting wound up about every end-of-the-world situation you hear about on a slow news day.”

  “You know what’s really unhealthy?” I asked, pointing up at the sky. “Being up there when an EMP hits.”

  “A what?”

  “An EMP,” I said. “Electromagnetic pulse. A burst of energy that’s enough to fry the hell out of any modern electronics. An aircraft might survive the blast intact, but landing it would be another matter entirely.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re the expert on this stuff, I guess. But I still think you’re worrying about nothing.”

  I refrained from saying another word, knowing it’d just result in him trying to talk me down like a crazy person who’d cornered him at a subway station.

  “But you did it,” Steve said. “The important thing is that you’re here.”

  Another broad smile beamed across his face.

  “And you know the second-most important thing?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  His eyes turned towards the front of the car, towards the bright lights of the approaching city.

  “That we’re in Las-fucking-Vegas, baby.”

  Chapter 3

  I had no idea what it’d look like to see a solar flare up close and personal, but I had a feeling it’d look a lot like the Vegas Strip.

  It was a hell of a thing, I had to admit. As much as I didn’t care for crowds, the engineer in me couldn’t help but appreciate what went into keeping a city like this running. All the workers and technology and infrastructure, all to provide a place seemingly solely designed to extract money out of people’s wallets with surgical precision and industrial efficiency.

  We made our way closer and closer to the city, the flashing neon lights hard to look at.

  “Damn,” said Steve, craning his neck to look up at the city. “This is really something else, isn’t it?”

  “I’d think an Angeleno like you would be used to this kind of spectacle,” I said.

  “LA’s great, yeah,” he said. “But there’s something about Vegas, something that no other city has.”

  He reached over and gave me another slap on the shoulder.

  “Come on, bro!” he said. “Look excited!”

  One question came to mind—“You know why we’re here, right?” But I let it go. The funeral was tomorrow and we’d have plenty of time to deal with it. I decided that if Steve wanted to cope by pretending he was here for a work party or some such, that was his prerogative.

  I, on the other hand, wasn’t really in the partying mood.

  “You’re not seriously over there worried about the sun exploding or something, are you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not that.”

  “You sure, J?” He moved over, cutting the already minimal distance between us down to almost nothing. “Because you look like you’re worried about the sun exploding.”

  “No,” I said. “Believe it or not, I’m doing my best not to get too worried about it.”

  Steve’s eyebrows flicked up.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, people are freaking out.”

  Steve glanced out the window in the direction of the packed sidewalks of the Strip, the place seeming like one big party.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone out there’s freaking out.”

  “I don’t mean them,” I said. “I mean…people who don’t really go outside.”

  It took Steve a second to realize who I was talking about. And when he finally did, his eyes went wide and he let out another barking laugh.

  “Oh!” he said, clapping his hands together. “You mean those lunatics on your doomsday prepper message boards.”

  “They’re not all lunatics,” I insisted. “Just, uh, most of them.”

  Steve chuckled again.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s the scuttlebutt in the camouflage crew?”

  “Are you asking because you want to know, or because you want to make fun?”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  I shook my head, then spoke.

  “You really want to know?” I asked.

  “I really want to know,” Steve said. “This is your thing, and I want to hear about it.”

  The clamor of the crowds outside the car grew louder and louder as we made our way further down the Strip.

  I sighed and spoke, still half-convinced he was going to laugh as soon as I started talking.

  “There’s no clear verdict on it,” I said. “Some posters are thinking it’s the end of the world, that it’s not going to be an EMP burst but a true coronal mass ejection, one that cooks alive everything on the face of the planet.”

  “Okay…” said Steve. “Horrifying way to put it, but go on.”

  “And some people are thinking it’s nothing, that the sun sends up flares all the time, and the worst that happens is, like you said, some minor power issues here and there, localized to random parts of the globe, if that.”

  “I like that better,” he said. “Now, the million-dollar question: What do you think, Justin?”

  “It’s…it’s hard to say,” I said. “The ‘Earth roasting alive’ theory is pretty out there, and I wouldn’t worry too much about that. But…”

  “But…”

  “I’m doing my best not to get caught up in it. Taking it all with a pinch of salt.”

  Another slap on the arm.

  “There we go,” Steve said. “That’s what I like to hear. Don’t get sucked down into that world, right? That’s how you end up in a concrete bunker a hundred feet under the ground with a rifle in one hand and a bible in the other.”

  “Yeah…,” I said, knowing that if the hardcore preppers were right, a concrete bunker would be the safest place to be.

  Maybe one like the one I’d been building. But Steve didn’t need to know about that.

  I took another look out the window, a thought coming to mind that I didn’t share with Steve: if something were to go down, a city like this would be the worst possible place to be. Thousands of people, all panicking and confused…it’d be a nightmare.

  The car came to a stop.

  “Hey!” said Steve. “What’s the holdup?”

  “Street’s blocked off,” said the cabbie. “Some kind of festival or something.”

  I looked ahead and saw that, sure enough, the roads were packed with people. All of them looked to be young, college-aged, and I was sure there wasn’t an alcohol level below .1 among them.

  “Hey,” said Steve. “Might be a good place to get out. Bet a couple of guys like us could clean up with girls like these.”

  “‘Guys like us’?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said. “Bachelors!”

  “Jesus, Steve. You gotta talk like that?”

  “Justin,” he said firmly. “You need to stop this.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Thinking like you’re married.”

  “I still am married,” I said, my tone sharp.

  “Legally, sure you are,” he said. “But she moved out back in December, bro. And God knows how long your marriage had been on the rocks before that.”


  “You’re really going to bring this up?” I asked. “Right here, right now?”

  Steve paused. It was clear that he’d realized he’d stepped on very, very thin ice.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just don’t like seeing you miserable, baby brother. And you gotta know that this limbo you’re in, where you’re kind of divorced but kind of not, it’s not doing you any good.”

  “I’m not ‘kind of’ divorced,” I said. “The papers are sitting at home, unsigned.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “It’s like your marriage is some coma patient being kept alive with hospital equipment. If you want to mourn, I get it—you’re more than entitled. But you’re not going to be able to start the process until you…pull the plug.”

  To illustrate his point, he made a tugging motion with his hand.

  Then he glanced down and saw my bare ring finger.

  “Ah. Well at least you finally took off the ring. That’s something, I guess.”

  “Are we done with the subject?” I asked.

  Steve sighed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re done.”

  He clapped his hand around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to at least try to get you to have some fun. No need to spend all your time miserable, you know?”

  I said nothing, and Steve removed his hand.

  By this point, the music combined with the din of the crowd was making it almost too loud to speak—a fact that suited me just fine.

  Then the cabbie laid on the horn, a soft thud sounding from the front of the car.

  “What the hell?” said Steve.

  We turned our attention ahead. I was expecting to see a half-naked drunk girl on the hood, laughing and carrying on. Instead, it was someone about as far from that as it got.

  An elderly man, dressed in ratty clothes, stood in front of the car. His hand was on the hood, the thud apparently having been from him slamming his palm down onto the car. He stared at us with hard, narrow eyes, then pointed to a hand-made sign he carried.

  “THE END IS NIGH,” it read, the words scrawled in thick black marker.

  “Move it, asshole!” the cabbie yelled.

  “Easy, easy,” said Steve. “Just some local color.”

  “Local color that’s right in the goddamn way,” the cabbie retorted.

  Steve glanced over at me and smirked.

  “I wonder if he posts on your message board,” he said.

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I looked ahead, my eyes locking onto those of the man. His expression seemed to be saying something, something I couldn’t ignore.

  “You. You know.”

  The driver laid on the horn once again, this time successfully making the man move. I watched his reedy figure and tangle of gray hair vanish into the crowd, but not before throwing one last glance over his shoulder in my direction.

  “Yo, Justin,” said Steve. “Earth to Justin.”

  “Huh?”

  Steve chuckled.

  “Maybe while you’re off in space you can figure out how to handle a solar flare,” he said with a grin.

  “Coronal mass ejection,” I corrected.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Steve pointed vaguely to the crowd, towards the area where the sign-carrying man had disappeared.

  “You and him have a moment?” he asked.

  I shook my head, both to disagree and to try to snap myself out of the last traces of my daze.

  “Nah,” I said. “He just gave me that crazy-guy look, that really intense stare.”

  “I know the one,” he said. “See it in LA all the time. Trick is to not even make eye contact to begin with. Otherwise, they start hassling you for money or start trying to sell you on a religion or some shit.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly.

  At that moment the crowd finally broke apart, and the driver was able to make his way forward. But as we continued on, the man’s eyes stayed in my thoughts, the eyes of a man who knew something, but more than that, knew that no one would believe him.

  Chapter 4

  The excitement on Steve’s face as we approached the casino was the perfect inversion of the hesitation on mine.

  “There it is, bro!” he said, leaning forward in his seat like an eager kid. “The Medley!”

  The exterior was a total monument to opulence in the way only Vegas could do it. It was a massive, golden building that stretched up into the night sky, Persian-style minarets cutting upwards into the dark. Spotlights projected criss-crossing beams of pure-white light, and an enormous fountain the size of a hockey rink launched jets upward in a meticulously choreographed fashion.

  It was one-hundred-percent not my scene. And the crowds of people in front, all gathered around the fountain, ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the jets of water.

  “Damn!” said Steve, eagerness dripping from his voice. “Look at this place!”

  The cabbie pulled up into the large, U-shaped driveway in front of the casino. With each foot we drew closer my stomach tightened more and more. I wanted to be as far away from these crowds as possible, and here we were driving right into the thick of them.

  The car pulled to a halt.

  “Forty-three dollars,” said the driver.

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Steve. “Didn’t I give you a hundred at the airport?”

  “Hundred was for cutting in line. Still got the fare.”

  Steve opened his mouth, ready to protest. I held up my hand to him and shook my head.

  He got the message, lifting himself to the side as he went for his wallet.

  “Nah, nah,” I said, taking my own wallet out of my back pocket. “I got this.”

  I took out a pair of twenties and a ten and handed them over.

  “No cash,” said the driver, tapping a sign behind his seat next to his picture taxi license that, sure enough, said “cash not accepted.”

  “No cash?” I asked. “Didn’t he give you cash at the airport?”

  “Cash is fine for a tip,” he said. “But for the fare, gotta be plastic.”

  This was a problem—I never carried a card.

  “Shit,” I said. “Only got paper money.”

  Without a word of protest, Steve quickly took out a fancy-looking silver card and handed it over to the driver, who ran it through a small device on his phone.

  “You still on that ‘no-plastic kick?” he asked me.

  “Still on it,” I confirmed, watching as the card was accepted. “And it’s not a ‘kick.’ You’ll never see me using one of those things.”

  “And why’s that?” Steve asked as the driver handed back his card.

  “Don’t need anyone knowing how I spend my money.”

  Steve chuckled as he put his card back into his wallet.

  “Why am I not surprised?” he asked. He opened the door and grabbed my bag before I had a chance to. “Come on!”

  With one last bracing breath, I opened my door and stepped outside. The air was as warm and light as it had been, and the noise of the crowd hit me like a train. As happy as I was to be out of the cramped backseat of the taxi, part of me wished I could be back in there away from all these people.

  Steve, my bag in hand, hurried up the sweeping set of stairs that led to the main entrances of the casino. A handful of enormous, serious-faced men in dark suits and sunglasses watched us carefully as we approached.

  “You ready for this?” he asked as we both stood in front of the threshold.

  “Not even a little,” I said.

  “Too bad,” he said with a grin.

  With that, we stepped inside.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The main floor of the Medley made Versailles look like an exercise in tasteful understatement.

  Rows and rows of slot machines, all chiming and ringing and flashing, stretched out into the distance, culminating in a deep pit packed with all manner of card tables. The wal
ls were covered in TV screens playing news and sports and everything else. The entire space was brightly lit, colors washing over the scene. Waitresses dressed in tight clothes, faces painted with makeup, made their way here and there delivering drinks to gamblers.

  It was an assault on the senses, designed to disorient and leave you wandering towards some place to spend your money, if only to have a chance to sit down and collect yourself.

  “Ho-ly shit,” said Steve as he dropped my bag at his side, his hands on his hips as he took in the scene. “Paradise. Heaven on freaking earth.”

  “That’s…one way to describe it,” I said.

  Before my brother had a chance to pick up my bag again, I quickly snatched it off the floor.

  “Where’s your stuff anyway?” I asked, realizing that Steve had no possessions with him over than a nice-looking brown leather messenger bag over his shoulder.

  “Got some tailor-made clothes waiting for me at this place downtown,” he said with a grin. “Sent them my measurements and told them to have the suit ready by tomorrow.”

  “The advantages of money,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, bro,” he assured me, placing his hand on my shoulder and leading me further onto the casino floor. “I’m happy to share the wealth.”

  “Not necessary,” I said. “But thanks.”

  Steve and I made our way to the massive black marble reception desk. A team of a dozen or so smartly dressed men and women were busy at work, and Steve made a beeline for the prettiest woman among them.

  “Evening,” he said, leaning on the counter and flashing the girl, a pretty brunette, a winning smile.

  She glanced up with watery blue eyes, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips as she took in the sight of well-dressed, handsome Steve.

  “Evening,” she said, her voice taking on a tone that was more sultry than professional. “How can I help you?”

  Steve leaned over the desk, just enough to edge into her personal space. Judging by her body language, she didn’t seem to have a problem with this.

  “Checking in for tonight,” he said. “Me and my little brother.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not, but I could’ve sworn that there was an extra emphasis on “little.”