Impact: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival series (Cloverdale Book 1)

by Bruno Miller

  “What the…” Vince and Cy both flinched, and for a moment, Vince thought a plane had crashed, but to his horror, the sudden burst of light was followed by a rumble that shook the walkway, and he knew it was much worse than that.

  “Don’t look at it!” Vince yelled over the noise. Temporarily blinded, people froze in their tracks. Something big had happened—something more than a plane crash. As the glow of the light faded, Vince heard another rumble and then felt the pedestrian bridge begin to move.

  “Run! Now!” He grabbed the other side of Cy’s bag and the two sprinted for the end of the walkway.

  Cy looked around, confused. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not good,” Vince huffed.

  The rumbling was growing louder now. As they reached the end of the walkway and entered the parking garage, they looked back and saw windows shattering in a chain reaction that accompanied the now deafening roar of the once distant rumbling noise. One after the other, starting at the terminal side of the walkway, the panes of glass exploded inward, spraying glass fragments on those unlucky enough to still be in the walkway. The only other sound Vince could hear over the noise was the screams of the people caught on the bridge as they were ripped to shreds by the glass shrapnel. No one was left standing in the walkway. Vince considered going back to help, but as he looked at the bodies and the pooling blood, he realized there was no use. They needed to save themselves—if they could.

  Mouth open, Cy stood motionless as he stared at the scene unfolding in front of them.

  “Come on,” Vince said, grabbing Cy’s shoulder and shaking him. “We need to get to the car!”

  After a few seconds Cy snapped out of his daze and turned to look at his dad.

  “Let’s go!” Vince urged.

  Cy remained silent but nodded in agreement as the two dashed through the parking garage.

  Vince could feel movement under his feet. What could make that much of an impact? Vince glanced back at the walkway and it was gone. Now there was only a gap of empty space between the parking garage and the terminal. Thank God they hadn’t gone back to try and help anyone.

  Other people in the garage were running around and yelling. Relieved to finally have reached his car, Vince unlocked the passenger side first. He quickly ran around and got in the driver’s seat. Cy threw his bag onto the rear bench and buckled in as he stared at the empty space where the walkway had been.

  Vince heard more explosions in the distance. They sounded like the first one but lacked the rumbling noise. Bursts of light shone through the partially open exterior walls of the parking garage.

  The wagon roared to life as Vince fired it up. He spun the wheels and backed out of the parking spot. He slammed it into gear and the tires screeched again, this time carrying them forward. Calm down, calm down, he repeated under his breath as he tried not to panic. Others had found their cars, but no one else was pulling out and leaving. Vince and Cy were the only ones moving, and although Vince felt guilty about it, he was glad; he could quickly exit, descend the spiraling ramp, and leave the parking area.

  As they neared the end of the exit, a large crack formed in the concrete column that supported the center of the structure. He mashed down on the gas pedal and sped onto the open road. He felt better now that they were out from under the building, but they were far from safe yet. The road forced them to drive past the terminal, where he would have been if he picked Cy up at the curb like he originally planned.

  There were no other cars moving, but people were running everywhere and he had to slow down and swerve several times to avoid hitting anyone. He passed a few cars parked at the curb and saw smoke rising from their hoods. Nobody was leaving. Why? Then it dawned on him, what was going on, although he resisted the thought at first.

  Now that they were out in the open and could see the multiple mushroom-shaped smoke plumes rising in the distance from every direction, he could no longer deny the obvious.

  He looked at his son “You okay?” he asked.

  Cy didn’t answer. He was busy staring out his window and taking it all in.

  Vince raised his voice a little. “Hey, Cy. You all right?”

  Cy turned to look at him and said what Vince hadn’t wanted to. “They’re nukes, aren’t they?” He stared at his dad blankly.

  Vince nodded slowly. “I’m afraid so… I think EMPs.”

  Chapter Six

  A loud mechanical whine coming from behind them cut their conversation short. They turned to see a large commercial airliner puncture the roof of the terminal and explode in a ball of fire that obscured the tail section and extended upward hundreds of feet over the building.

  Another plane got their attention and landed a couple hundred yards away on the tarmac. Wheels still up, it bounced off the runway and seemed to float in slow motion for a moment before making contact with the ground again. A shower of sparks engulfed the fuselage as it careened out of control down the runway and into the grass. The plane pitched and caught a wing on the ground, spinning it around like a toy and ripping the wing off. It finally came to a stop and rolled onto its side in the trench it plowed through the mud.

  Vince thought of the people on board the planes and felt bad for them. He tried to take some consolation in the thought that the passengers in the last plane would probably live. But most of the ones who survived would be badly injured, and that meant they were as good as dead now. Before Vince could give it any more thought, Cy slapped the dash with both hands and braced for impact.

  “Look out!” Cy shouted.

  A man in a blood-stained suit and with a crazed look on his face ran straight into their lane. Vince swerved just in time and narrowly avoided hitting him. The big Ford wagon heaved to the side and fishtailed with a loud screech as the tires fought for traction on the dry asphalt. Vince wrestled the wheel and straightened the car out.

  “Lunatic!” he yelled. He gripped the wheel tightly and focused ahead. After he regained his composure, Vince felt bad for yelling, and it dawned on him that the poor guy was probably blind from the nuclear flash.

  “That was close!” Cy turned to watch the man for a second before looking at his dad.

  “EMPs?” Cy’s forehead wrinkled.

  “HEMPs to be precise. High-altitude nukes that create an electromagnetic pulse.” Vince kept his eyes trained on the road ahead. They were almost past the terminal; just a little farther and they’d be out on the open highway. He was anxious to get away from the airport and the city.

  “You mean like in the movies, where everything shuts down?” Cy asked.

  Vince nodded. “Exactly like that.”

  He swerved again, this time to avoid several cars blocking the right-hand lanes; some of them were on fire now and burning out of control. Cy turned his attention back to the nightmare unfolding outside the car. As they neared the end of the roundabout, Vince saw the open highway ahead and pressed down on the gas pedal. The sudden acceleration caught Cy off guard and forced him back into his seat.

  “Whoa! But how are we still running when all these other cars are broken down, and why are they burning?” Cy went back to looking out the window as they passed the last of the smoldering cars parked near the arrivals curb.

  “The EMPs create a surge of electricity or a pulse, and by the looks of it, enough of one to cause some circuit overloading. Add a little fuel to the mix and you’ve got problems.”

  Just then another loud explosion sounded, and Vince glanced in the rearview mirror to see a large fireball rising from the runway. Another plane had fallen from the sky.

  Cy turned in his seat to take it in. “This is crazy! Do you think this is happening everywhere?”

  “Let’s hope not. They have systems in place to intercept missiles.” But as they left the airport and the city behind them, it was obvious that whatever system the government had in place to intercept missiles hadn’t done any good here or anywhere else they could see.

  Now that they were cle
ar of the airport, Vince surveyed the landscape and didn’t like what he saw. There were large black plumes of smoke rising from every direction, some close and some distant. This certainly wasn’t the only area affected. It was worse than he thought, but his immediate concern was what he saw behind them—or the lack of what he saw.

  Absent from the skyline over the city were the high-rises and office buildings of Indianapolis. In their places, thick, grayish-black smoke filled the air. Visible pieces of debris floated in the chaos. In the brief openings between clouds of smoke, he caught glimpses of a much different Indianapolis. The high-rise buildings that normally reached skyward were now mere shells of concrete and rebar, hollowed out and stripped down to jagged rubble by the force of the blast. The buildings lacked glass and no longer reflected the bright morning sun. He continued to check the rearview mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of the downtown area, but the thick black smoke had obscured their view completely, and the farther they drove away from it, the less he could make out.

  Vince wondered if the same scene was unfolding under each one of the ominous-looking clouds on the horizon. They were scattered across the landscape as far as he could see. He looked over at Cy, who had pulled his phone out.

  Cy looked up at him blankly. “Nothing.”

  Vince turned the knob on the radio and adjusted the dial. As per his expectations, the only sounds were static and a few electronic whines and pops. He checked the AM frequency and got the same result.

  How could this have happened without any warning? Scattered throughout the airport where he had been waiting for Cy, there were dozens of TVs tuned into news stations of every variety. Not a single mention of anything: no emergency warning signal, no emergency broadcast interruptions. How could it get this far without anyone knowing they were coming? He knew the U.S. government had a system in place to deal with this sort of thing. Didn’t they?

  His normal morning routine consisted of listening to the news on the TV in the waiting room of his garage. And lately, with tensions rising between the U.S. and North Korea, the networks seemed to run a constant news feed with updates from supposed experts on the situation. Among the many panels of experts that seemed to saturate the news, he recalled a segment about the ballistic missile defense system (BMDS). He couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but he remembered his description of the—quote—“failsafe defense system.” The man was adamant that the BDMS was impenetrable and that the United States was safe from any North Korean attempt to launch an attack.

  According to everything Vince had heard and read in the papers, the North Koreans weren’t supposed to have the capability to launch ICBMs, at least not one with a sizable payload. They lacked the technology to put an ICBM on target at that distance, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. In spite of supposed sanctions against them, there seemed to be a story or two every week about the North Korean regime and its unwillingness to comply with the United Nations’ request to cease and desist its nuclear program.

  Of course, this didn’t come as a surprise to Vince. In his opinion, the UN was a weak-handed organization that had little bite to back up its bark. Not to mention the impossibility of dealing with the dictator of a regime that starved and tortured its own people.

  Among the many things Vince felt right now, the anger stung the most. The politicians and leaders of the world let this happen. Blinded by power and money, they squandered the common man’s future. Now they were all doomed to a meager existence of survival of the fittest.

  He looked over at his son, who was in a daze and staring out the window. No doubt in disbelief. Vince could barely bring himself to accept it. He couldn’t even begin to imagine this turn of events from Cy’s perspective. A young man in his twenties was supposed to have his whole life in front of him. But that all had changed in the blink of an eye.

  Vince was grateful for one thing, though: Cy was here with him, not stuck in Washington on his own—or, worse yet, thousands of feet in the air on a doomed flight like so many others.

  Chapter Seven

  Vince was lost in his thoughts, so much so that he barely paid attention to the burning cars scattered along the roadside.

  “Look.” Cy pointed to three people and a dog walking along the side of the road about a half a mile up ahead. It was an older couple and a girl with a yellow lab.

  “They want us to stop,” Cy said.

  The man was waving his arms in the air, signaling them to pull over. Vince slowed down and leaned over the wheel to get a better look.

  “I don’t know… Wait a minute. Is that…? I know them. It’s the Morgans.” It was Fred and Hannah Morgan. They were distant relatives on Vince’s mother’s side of the family. They lived over in Quincy, Indiana, just a few miles from Cloverdale.

  “Who?” Cy asked.

  “Their daughter Reese is around your age, maybe a little younger. She’s a distant cousin.”

  “I never heard you mention them before,” Cy said.

  “My mother’s sister had a daughter, Hannah. We don’t really keep in touch, but they bring their vehicles into the shop for repairs.” Vince pulled alongside the weary-looking travelers as Cy rolled his window down.

  Hannah recognized Vince right away. “Major, is that you?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Fred said through labored breathing as he wiped sweat from his brow. “We were headed back from picking up our daughter at the airport when all this happened. Our car broke down a few miles back and started smoking and eventually caught on fire. Luckily we were all outside the vehicle when it burst into flames.”

  “Well come on and get in,” Vince said, motioning with his hand. “We’ll give you a ride.”

  They didn’t waste any time and climbed onto the rear bench seat.

  Cy reached back to move his bag off the seat as they got in. “Just throw that in the back.”

  “This is my son, Cy. We’re coming from the airport ourselves,” Vince said as they got into the wagon one by one. The big yellow Labrador Retriever hopped into the car after Reese and stuck his head over the front seat to greet Vince and Cy. Panting heavily, the dog gave the two a good sniff before Reese pulled him back by his collar.

  “Sorry about that. Buster is a little hyper,” Reese said, coaxing him into the back cargo area of the wagon.

  “Good to see you, Cy,” Fred said. “You probably don’t remember us. You were just a kid when you and your mom moved away. This is my wife, Hannah, and our daughter, Reese. We’ve heard lots about you.” Fred offered his hand as he got in and closed the door. Cy shook his hand and nodded at Hannah and Reese.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Fred looked at Vince. “Any idea what in the world is going on?”

  “World War Three from the looks of it.” Vince put the wagon in gear once everyone was in and settled. He accelerated quickly, leaving a cloud of dust behind them.

  Hannah held her head in her hands. “I can’t believe it. We barely made it out of the airport.”

  “We just made it out ourselves. The planes are dropping like flies,” Cy said.

  Vince sighed. “You kids are both very lucky that you had early flights.”

  “Yeah, we saw a few come down as we were getting out of there.” Reese rubbed at her face, trying to hide her tears. They all looked like they had been through hell this morning, which made Vince appreciate his and Cy’s luck and the old wagon even more.

  “I guess these are EMPs, the way everything stopped working,” Fred stammered. “We had the radio on before they hit. We heard the beginning of an emergency broadcast but then everything shorted out and the car died. Smoke started coming out of the vents a few seconds later, and before I could even bring the car to a complete stop, there were flames coming out from the edges of the hood. Thank goodness we got out when we did. It went up so fast. There were other cars around us that weren’t as fortunate. There were some pretty bad accidents. A lot of people lost control of their cars. It all h
appened so fast.”

  “The electromagnetic pulse from the nukes has shut everything down and caused an overload. Anything electronic or controlled by a computer is toast.” Vince slowed down as he navigated around a large truck and trailer that had jackknifed and blocked off most of the westbound lanes. The cab and the trailer were engulfed in flames, and even though he gave the burning wreck a wide berth as they passed, he could feel the heat from the fire. The charred remains of the driver, hunched over and hanging onto the wheel, was still visible. Vince tried not to look at the grotesque scene but couldn’t help himself. The smell of burnt rubber and fuel filled his nostrils and stung the back of his throat with every breath.

  No one said anything as they passed; they only stared at what was becoming an all too familiar sight.

  Hannah broke the silence. “What do you think it looks like back home?”

  “I’m not sure, but from the looks of things, it’s probably not good,” Vince replied as he picked up speed again, eager to put the wreckage behind them.

  What would they find in Cloverdale? Everyone in the car was probably thinking the same thing. If the pulse had caused this much damage to random vehicles and their electrical systems, what else had it done? What about houses and businesses connected to the electrical grid? Had they been hit by a surge of electricity as well? The results could be potentially catastrophic. Cloverdale hadn’t been hit directly, but being only forty miles or so from Indianapolis, it wouldn’t escape the blast or the effects of the electromagnetic pulse unscathed.

  As Vince scanned the horizon and counted the tall black columns of smoke rising into the sky, he knew that no place would be immune. He didn’t know what to expect when they got home, but it wouldn’t be good.

  Chapter Eight

  The interstate was a maze of wrecks and burning vehicles. Vince thought about how fortunate they were that it had happened on a Sunday and at such an early hour. Had it been a weekday during the morning commute, they probably wouldn’t have been able to make their way back at all. As it was, the road was a challenge to navigate and the going was slow. Vince was getting impatient.