By the Dawn's Early Light

by David Kershner

  Instinctively, he quietly backed up and went to the recess where he kept his Beretta. He wanted to activate the CCTV monitors, but the ambient light would give away everything. Instead, in one fluid motion, he grabbed the weapon and yanked the front door open. As he peered down the sight, he was startled to see Gregg sipping a cup of coffee holding his new son.

  “What are you doing?” Josh whispered so as to not wake the sleeping child. “I almost shot you!”

  “I’ve got Brent’s cell. Colonel James called. Said he just watched four birds take flight out of Minot. So I grabbed Declan, a bottle of milk, and a cup o’ Joe. Thought I’d come out here to see the show,” Gregg replied casually.

  “Crap. I’ll be right back,” Josh stated as he retreated back into the cabin.

  He quickly stowed his weapon and bolted back to his bedroom.

  “Sam!” he whispered forcefully as he shook her while trying to get dressed. “Sam! Wake up!”

  Samantha slowly began to stir. “What? Let me sleep.”

  “Okay, but you’re gonna miss the lightshow. They didn’t catch Abbas in time,” he replied and left the room.

  She threw the covers off and practically leapt out of the bed and followed Josh to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he navigated the cabin in near darkness.

  “I thought I’d enjoy some coffee while I watched. You want one?”

  “Seriously? How can you be so cavalier?”

  As he opened a cupboard and retrieved two mugs, he said, “What’s the sense in freaking out and panicking. We can’t control it. We didn’t have anything to do with it. Life will go on, albeit more slowly. Don’t get me wrong, parts of it are most definitively going to suck, but I have my entire family here. You, all three of my daughters, my friends... even a father-in-law of sorts.”

  Josh walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain, and gestured. “There are combat engineers and a Special Operations team in the barn. Hell, there’s an ex-President sleeping upstairs. As far as safest places to be right now, it’s either this farm or a weather station in Alaska.”

  By the muted light of the under cabinet lighting, Josh noticed Sam was only wearing a thin pair of pajamas. “Come on. How many times do you get to see something like the Northern Lights in rural Ohio? Grab a blanket out of the closet, it’s kind of chilly. I’ll have your coffee on the porch waiting for you.” Then, with a smirk on his face, he added, “Oh, and find a bra. Those things are flying all over the place.”

  Sam quickly covered her chest under her crossed arms.

  “I suppose that’s for the crack I made earlier,” she replied rhetorically.

  “Yup,” Josh answered all the same.

  Samantha sighed and resigned herself to the inevitable. She noticed him smiling as he continued to monitor the night sky through the window.

  “What the hell are you grinning at?” she proclaimed.

  “Oh, nothing,” he declared casually. “It’s just that I followed Reggie’s and Chester’s advice and stock piled some stuff. I budgeted a monthly allowance and procured what I could as insurance. I’ll show you once the sun is up and the group stops freaking out. You’d be surprised what you can sock away with only a couple hundred dollars a month for a decade.”

  In the distance, the 5:30 train could be heard making its way through the rural Ohio backwoods. The rumble of the engine and the steel wheels mating with the tracks was unmistakable. Josh glanced down at his watch and smiled his crooked little smile.

  “Manna from Heaven and right on time too,” he said to himself.

  Sam just shook her head and went off to retrieve the blanket.

  As she exited the room, she whispered, “I suppose the solar panels marked on your railroad maps were inspired by those two as well?”

  “Yup. Today’s gonna be a real interesting day,” Josh replied as he filled their mugs.

  Before heading out to join Gregg, he struck upon an idea. Worth a shot, he thought.

  “How much time we have?” he asked as he poked his head out of the front door.

  “No idea, probably five minutes or so,” the new father answered in a hushed tone.

  Josh walked with purpose back to the kitchen, opened their junk drawer, and retrieved a screwdriver. He entered the closet door in the foyer and accessed the breaker box. Once the main breaker was in the ‘off’ position, he worked quickly to remove all of the breakers from the electrical panel.

  Sam cursed the pile of plastic when she stepped on them.

  * * *

  At 5:31 PM Moscow Time, Russian made ABM-4 Gorgon anti-ballistic missiles intercepted the three European and Asian continent inbound MIRV tipped Minuteman III’s. From 5:28 AM to 5:32 AM EST, the continental United States was awash in the aurora borealis. Green, red, and yellow waves of light danced across the sky from the outer banks of North Carolina to the shores of the Pacific.

  While the bulk of America and her citizens slept, all of the mass transit systems, long haul truckers, and cars of various make and models slowly came to a stop. If it didn’t have a carburetor, plugs, and wires the vehicle became a glorified, and more often than not, a very expensive paperweight.

  Hydro-electric dams, nuclear reactors, as well as water and sewer pumping and treatment stations across the U.S. ground to a halt. Some did so gracefully, but a hand full did not. Reliable electrical and water sources blinked out of existence. The Internet, smart phones, and advanced computer systems were a thing of the past.

  The two million residents of Manhattan were stranded on an island. Fortunately, they had the capability to walk to the outer boroughs on a half dozen bridges.

  After meeting heavy resistance on their initial assault, the Prime Minister received a ‘tip’ from his Iranian counterpart. Their forces quickly moved their flotillas as far out to sea as possible in the allotted time. There they sat and waited, completely unaffected by the atmospheric detonations. When word came from Downing Street, the group was prepared to occupy the now defenseless cities and ports of New York, Baltimore, Virginia Beach, Charleston, and Miami. Unseen by Dallas’ band of HAM radio brothers, the PM’s second wave were assembled and lay in wait near the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as off the southern end of Baja, and the northern edge of Graham Island on the west coast of Canada.

  The Gulf of Mexico contingent was assigned to handle Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston. The western most forces would begin their pacification operations in San Diego, the port of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. All major means of waterborne escape were soon to be closed. The only aspect of the invasion force that could have potentially been affected was already safely anchored in the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port southwest of Hopkins International Airport. At 6:00 AM, the Royal Marines would mount their hardened armored assault vehicles and helicopters and drive less than a mile down East 9th Street to the Federal Reserve Bank and make a withdrawal. The citizens were about to wake up to the reality of an occupying army in their streets.

  Abbas’ timing spared hundreds of thousands of airborne travelers in the U.S. as many flights had not taken off yet due to the early morning hour of the attack. Had the detonation occurred during peak flight operations, the death toll from the passengers and the people on the ground quickly and easily would have reached six digits in a matter of minutes.

  Lifesaving operations currently underway ended in darkness as backup generators failed to initiate their start-up protocols. Patient’s dependent on machines to live almost immediately coded and died. Anyone with an older style pacemaker simply didn’t wake up. Several million people in the care of hospitals and convalescent homes never had a chance to see the dawn of a new day. Those that were hospitalized, but required round the clock monitoring, would only last as long as their medications held out. After that, millions would meet their end, painfully. The Prozac nation would descend into chaos and mayhem as soon as the anti-depressant and anti-psychotic meds were exhausted.

  As far as Suhrab knew,
the great die-off was beginning. The man was grinning wildly as the blaring screen of static displayed on the old tube style television blinked off. Through the window he saw the pre-dawn sky lit up with waving strands of light.

  Allah be praised, he thought as he shut his eyes and finally got some sleep for the first time in days.

  * * *

  The three adults sat sipping coffee as the night’s sky was illuminated for as far as the eye could see. The infant child slept as he was passed from one adult to the other. The colors and the patterns were awe inspiring. It’s was nothing short of a Fourth of July fireworks show.

  When it seemed as if the light show overhead ended, but two continued further off to the east and west, Gregg muttered, “Damn,” under his breath.

  “What?” Josh asked.

  “Stupid scopolamine.”

  “What does that mean?” Sam wondered aloud.

  “I was hoping that this was it. That it was just the lone aurora. Can you see how there isn’t anything really in the middle anymore?”

  “Yeah, so?” Josh answered.

  “That means that Abbas figured out how to program all three warheads. He must have jettisoned them separately so there’d be a spread of a couple hundred miles. If he followed the generally accepted apogee altitude for ballistic missiles, they could have conceivably been released then. No one really knows for sure because it hasn’t been tested, as far as I know. Those things, in theory, could have been a thousand kilometers apart by the time the detonated.

  “In any event, it looks as if he blanketed the entire lower forty-eight.” He paused for a few moments and then added. “I hope they find that little bastard and put one in his head.”

  Josh, his fiancée, and their new compatriot watched the sky by the dawn’s early light as the horizon was lit up by the various phases of the high altitude explosions.

  As the aurora’s neared their end, Josh said, “Well, I guess there’s no going back now.”

  “You’re telling me,” Sam stated incredulously.

  The two men cocked their heads at her with questioning looks.

  “This little show just cost me a personal family fortune over four hundred and fifty million dollars!”

  Gregg spat his mouthful of coffee across the porch.

  “Whoa!” Josh exclaimed.

  Choking of what remained of his coffee, Gregg added, “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!” He managed a hard swallow and added, “Holy crap! Where did that come from?”

  “My dad started Hyloset almost forty years ago. It was nearly a two billion dollar a year company when I went to bed last night. I didn’t even get laid for my trouble!”

  A deep ruckus belly laugh emanated from the two men.

  As Josh wiped tears from his eyes he glanced over at Sam. She was visibly pissed.

  He quickly straightened up and compassionately said, “You never told me it was that large, but we talked about this, hun. Were you able to get some of it out and converted into something more tangible?”

  “Not as much as I would have liked, that’s for sure. Most of it was medical gear for Basilia. I added some antibiotics and over the counter stuff, as well as a formula and diapers for Declan. I was just getting started. I didn’t see the need for good and silver, not with that cache under all that rock. If push came to shove and we do ever need some gold for barter, I guess we could dip into the piggy bank in the tunnel. Take out a couple bars and break ‘em up or melt them down or something and distribute it to the townsfolk so everyone has some form of currency for bartering. People are gonna need something more than chickens, bullets, and canning supplies to trade after a while.”

  Josh slowly brought his head back and his face took on that far off look Sam had seen when Dallas would plant barely the thought of an idea.

  “I did it!” she proclaimed. “I finally planted something in that wired mess. What is it? What did you think of?”

  Her future husband only glanced at her with his crooked little mischievous grin at her.

  “Señor? Do you see this?” Juan announced from a distance as he approached on foot and motioned skyward.

  Josh quickly looked down at his watch, which was still functioning because it needed to be wound.

  “Dang. Sorry, Juan. I got caught up watching the light show.”

  “Si, no hay problema,” he relied casually in Spanish. “How soon can we try and start machinery to see what survived?”

  “Chester and Scott said the final phase only lasted a few minutes. Unless there aren’t any objections, I’d rather play it safe and not try for a few hours. Everything living out here can go on just fine with a minor delay. The greenhouses might be the exception. We should probably check on the pumps and batteries to see if the shrouds actually worked.”

  “Do we know, ballpark, what made it?” Sam asked. “They didn’t really get into all of that when they briefed us.”

  “According to the Tin Hatters, and what I’ve read, no one’s sure what will or will not survive an EMP. It’s all educated guesses and circumspect based on decades old atmospheric test fires. Chester messed around with it for them for a few years and what he found scared the daylights out of him.

  “The last major high altitude blast was almost sixty years ago. According to those results, low altitude satellites are definitely toast, we know that much. If it was ‘on’ and plugged in to the grid, then yes, it’s probably fried too. The rest of it could very well be a crap shoot.

  “Was it ‘off’, but plugged in? Then it’s probably gone. Was it ‘off’ and NOT plugged in or was it ‘on’ and running on batteries? Maybe it survived and is okay. It’s really going to come down to how well the device was engineered. How hardened were the components designed to be? What were the thresholds?”

  The three just sat there and stared at him with blank looks on their faces.

  Seeing this, he sheepishly concluded, “Ya know. Stuff like that. We’ll find out more in a few hours.”

  When no one spoke, he said, “What?”

  Gregg blinked first and said, “Where do you come up with this stuff? You’re like a freaky little savant or something.”

  “Most of it is online, or was. That and I got people,” Josh replied with a smile.

  “So what’s with the pile of circuit breakers on the floor in there?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, that? That’s a hunch. I’m curious if the E1 or E2 phases will jump the line and fry the stuff that’s still plugged in. I don’t think it will. If I’m right, once the borealis is done, I’ll put the breakers back in, throw the transfer switch, and see what the generator turns on… and yes, the genny had a cover as well… Tin Hatters to the rescue.”

  Chapter 4

  The First Days…

  “Yes, Prime Minister. It appears as if the event is over,” the Royal Marine Major said in response to the question on his hardened SAT phone. “We monitored President Rayburn’s communication to the other nuclear nations and we believe we shut everything down on the bridge and in the engine room in time. The Captain is following protocol. The systems are set to be tested according to those timetables.”

  “When will you know what was affected, Major?”

  “The ships were hardened by design and most of our vehicles have been as well over the years. However, but to what extent is still uncertain. If we do manage to get anything to start, we’ll have to either try to repair the damage on the ones that didn’t or tow the pieces off of the ship and leave them at port.

  “Sir, having said all of that, I would like to request a delay until 08:00 local time before attempting to execute our assault on the city and the Reserve facility. We have the element of surprise and we are detaining all of the dock workers as they enter the port. No one knows we are here. I’d prefer to not risk the men and machinery if it’s not absolutely necessary.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line while PM Goodspeed contemplated the request.

  “How many vehicles do you have onboard,
Major? Find something that is expendable and try and crank it up. I’ll hold,” the PM responded through gritted teeth.

  The career Marine pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Not realizing he was doing it, the man started shaking his head at the device in disbelief. Since when does the Prime Minister direct military operations?

  On the far side of the Atlantic, Goodspeed heard, “Sergeant, climb in that ‘Husky’ in the back and see if she starts.”

  Thirty seven hundred miles away, the throaty roar of the engine made the PM smile.

  “Right, very good,” the Major said and the engine was shut down. The man put the phone against to his head to speak and concluded, “Given this development, I’d like to retract my request, and offer a new timetable, sir.”

  “I thought you might. You have fifteen minutes, Major.”

  * * *

  “Well, the cows still seem to work,” Gregg sarcastically observed as one lifted its tail and began crapping in the pasture.

  “It’s a good thing to,” Josh replied ignoring the sarcasm. “We’ll need the fertilizer. Same with the chickens.”

  From behind the pair, Josh’s daughters approached.

  “You couldn’t come over and wake us up so we could see it too?” Layla whined somewhat annoyed.

  Their father glanced at his watch and he turned toward them.

  “Uh, Gregg, what time was the first detonation again?” he asked the man nonchalantly.

  “If I’m not mistaken, I believe it was on or about zero 5:30… that’s in the AM in case you were wondering,” he answered as he crossed and arms and leaned back against the fence railing.

  “And what’s the time now?” their father said as he held his wrist up for him to see the face.

  The newest resident let out a long slow whistled. “I believe that watch there says it’s quarter ‘til eleven.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Heather interjected. “Smart ass.”

  “I sure am glad that our efforts here today have allowed you girls all that extra shut eye, aren’t you Gregg?”