After the EMP- The Darkness Trilogy

by Harley Tate

  “No way. We’re way, way too far south.”

  “Not if the geomagnetic storm is here, we’re not.”

  Brianna scrunched up her face, freckles disappearing in the creases. “It can’t be here. We still have power. The car still works, so does my phone. An EMP could kill all that.”

  “Not a solar one. CMEs only cause E3 electromagnetic pulses. They don’t knock out small electronics.”

  “Then what do they knock out?”

  Tucker glanced up at the darkening sky before speaking. “The power grid.”

  “Oh, great. That’s even better than a nuclear bomb. Our cars will work but no one will be able to pump gas or heat their homes or make any food. Awesome.”

  Peyton spoke up. “Everyone pack your bags. If we have to ditch the car at some point, we should be ready.”

  Madison opened her mouth to protest, but shut it just as quickly. She couldn’t argue with Peyton’s logic. He handed her the brand-new hiking pack she’d picked out and she twisted around to retrieve the rest of her gear.

  Starting with the heaviest items first, Madison packed her bag. Water and food. Spare clothes and first aid supplies. Crank flashlight and a multi-tool. Hiking boots and a winter coat.

  She cinched her sleeping bag down across the top and set the whole thing on the floorboard. If they had to bail, she’d be ready.

  After everyone finished, Tucker broke the silence. “I still think we should go.”

  Brianna shook her head. “I’m not leaving the Jeep unless we absolutely have to.” She reached out and took his hand. “It’s our ticket out of here, Tuck. If we leave it, how will we get to the cabin?”

  A lock of hair fell across his eye and he pushed it back. “We’ll walk.”

  “You really think we’ll make it all that way on foot?”

  Madison could hear the fear in Brianna’s voice. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her boyfriend, or believe him when he said they should walk. Brianna’s father had taught her all about survival. She knew never to leave the safety of a vehicle if you didn’t have to. Tucker hadn’t grown up like Madison’s roommate. He didn’t share the same concerns.

  “Brianna’s right. We shouldn’t leave the Jeep unless we don’t have a choice. It’s safer in here than it is out there. We don’t have any weapons. We’ll be carrying a ton of gear. It’ll look like—”

  Peyton spoke up. “We’re easy targets.”

  Brianna shook her head. “Worse. We’ll look like prey.”

  “Seriously?” Tucker rolled his eyes. “The four of us will be together. That’ll scare anybody off.”

  Brianna disagreed. “No, it won’t. As soon as people see what we have, they’ll try to steal it. That’s what people do.”

  “Tucker might be right, Brianna.” Madison scooted forward in her seat. “We shouldn’t think the worst of people already. None of us would ever attack someone just because they had something we needed.”

  Brianna twisted in the driver’s seat to look Madison in the eye. “What if you were hungry? Thirsty? What if you realized this was the beginning of the end? I don’t think any one of us knows what we’d do in that situation.”

  Madison scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You seriously think that I’d turn into some criminal just because the power went out?”

  “Not at first. But other people won’t hesitate. You think too much of your fellow man, Madison.”

  She’d heard similar sentiments before. When Madison tried to recruit other agricultural students to establish a homeless garden, only a handful of students offered to help. The rest begged off saying they were too busy or didn’t think it would do any good.

  A few told her that those people weren’t worth helping. It would be throwing all that hard work away since the people they helped were drug addicts and ex-cons. It didn’t make any sense to Madison. So they were down on their luck. So a few might have criminal pasts. It didn’t mean they were beyond help.

  Everyone needed assistance now and then.

  Madison turned to look out the window. A series of telephone poles with wires strung between them stood just beyond the edge of the causeway. She squinted to get a closer look.

  Are those sparks?

  “Uh… guys…”

  Brianna wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy spouting off reasons Madison was the resident Pollyanna to listen.

  The sparks grew, showers of orange and yellow falling into the basin below. “You really should look…”

  Tucker talked over her, offering his own reasons for humanity to fall into the gutter when Madison shouted. “Guys! Over there!”

  She pointed out the window where the power lines were now hissing and sputtering with current.

  “Shit.” Tucker’s one curse said it all.

  Brianna turned to her boyfriend. “What is it?”

  He pointed at the sparks. All four of them watched as the sparks ran along the lines and hit a small transformer attached to one of the telephone poles. It exploded, sending a burst of smoke into the air and a shower of sparks down all around it.

  Another transformer about ten poles away followed. Then another. And another.

  All the way down the causeway, the electrical lines popped and hissed, transformers overloading and catching fire one after the next.

  “That,” Tucker said, pointing at the devastation, “is what happens with an E3 EMP. It’s here.”

  “Oh my God.” Madison brought her hand up to her lips as she looked out into the night. The lights that had begun to glow in front of them, signaling the end of the causeway and the start of city, blinked out in a wave. Whole sections of West Sacramento went dark before her eyes.

  She turned around to look out the back window, but she couldn’t see anything but the headlights of the cars behind them. The buildings she knew were only a mile away stood dark.

  The lights were out. The grid was gone.

  “Do you really think…” She trailed off, unsure of what to even ask.

  Peyton pulled out his cell phone. “No service. The cell towers must be down.”

  Madison swiped her phone on. Zero bars. She dialed 911, the one number that was supposed to work no matter what. Not even a dial tone. Nothing.

  She swallowed down the rising wave of panic in her throat. The magnitude of it began to hit her. No power meant no emergency services, and 911 wouldn’t know where to send anyone without GPS. Without the phones, they wouldn’t receive any calls.

  Cars would work, but for how long? What about hospitals? Prisons? If they were dark, what would happen to all the people clinging to life and the criminals that society had deemed too dangerous to be on the streets?

  Tucker and Brianna were right. Peyton, too. She’d completely underestimated this thing. They weren’t prepared at all.

  How would she ever make it to her mom? She didn’t even know where her dad was right then. Had he flown to Hong Kong? Did his flight get canceled? He could be flying over the North Pole right now, sitting on the tarmac at the airport, or be oblivious to all of this halfway around the world.

  How would he make it home?

  She glanced up at the front seat where Brianna and Tucker stared out the windows, eyes wide. How would Brianna find her parents? Were they up at the cabin or stuck on the road just like them?

  No one was ready. No one could handle something like this. Madison looked around her at all the cars on the causeway. A man next to them had gotten out of his Prius and stood next to it, staring at the closest burning telephone pole.

  What would any of these people do now?

  She reached for Peyton’s hand and squeezed. At least they had each other. Together they would survive. They would make it to her house and regroup, no matter how long it took. They had to.

  Chapter Ten

  MADISON

  Yolo Causeway

  7:30 p.m.

  “You’re sure?”

  Brianna nodded. “I don’t see any other way. No one is moving. People are out of the
ir cars, milling around. It’s going to get ugly soon. We need to leave.”

  She rubbed her hand across the leopard-print cover to her steering wheel. “It’s a damn shame. I love this car.”

  “We can come back for it.” Madison knew it wasn’t true, but she offered it anyway. “When everything calms down, we can come get it.”

  “No. We can’t.” Brianna glanced up, her eyes glassy with tears. “Don’t you get it? Nothing’s ever going to calm down. Nothing’s ever going to be the same again.”

  Madison couldn’t believe her friend who’d planned for something like this her whole life was the one freaking out. Brianna’s family had prepped for everything from a natural disaster to an all-out nuclear war. If anyone could handle a geomagnetic storm, it was Brianna.

  With a smile Madison hoped looked convincing, she reached out and patted her roommate’s hand. “Don’t say that. We’ll be okay. We’re together. That has to count for something.”

  “Hey, guys?” Tucker’s voice edged with alarm. “I hate to interrupt this Hallmark moment and all, but I think we’ve got a problem.” He leaned forward in his seat, peering into the dusk.

  “What is it?”

  The semi one lane over rumbled to life, vibrating the backseat.

  “I think the trucker is sick of waiting.”

  “But he’s trapped.” Madison squinted, pressing her hands to the glass of the door window. As far as she could see, cars stacked up like dominos, every lane worse than the next. The tractor trailer sat sandwiched between the guardrail on one side and cars in front, back, and on the other side. “He can’t go anywhere.”

  The blare of the truck’s horn made Madison jump. She banged her knee on Tucker’s seat back and winced. “What is he doing?”

  “Making room.”

  What? It didn’t make sense. He might have a bigger vehicle, but they were stuck on a bridge over the Yolo Bypass floodplain. Cars couldn’t move off to the shoulder to make room; they would fall off straight off the side.

  The horn blared again. Madison swallowed, the back of her throat tightening as she stared out the window.

  A figure rushed past Madison’s window, running between the cars. More blur than man, Madison only caught a glimpse of his beard and red baseball cap before he disappeared in front of the truck. She hissed out a question. “What’s he doing?”

  “Causing a scene, I think.”

  Brianna cracked her window and tense shouts filtered into the back seat.

  “—can’t just—”

  “—don’t care if—”

  Madison strained to listen, concentrating on the fleeting bits of argument she could make out over the steady roar of the massive engine.

  “—out of the way, then—”

  “—nna kill somebo—”

  The truck lurched, bouncing forward as the driver shifted gears and eased off the brake. The whole causeway trembled.

  Madison’s chest constricted, lungs tight with held breath. “He can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, he’s serious all right.” Brianna grabbed her keys and shoved them in the ignition. “Everybody buckle up. This might be our chance.”

  “What? No!” Madison reached out, clawing into the back of Tucker’s seat. The fabric dented beneath her fingernails as she dug for purchase. The trucker was just showing off. He had to be.

  Madison ground her teeth back and forth, forcing the rising panic in her chest down.

  A man shouted, arms waving as he ran toward the cars in front of them. He was warning them. Madison reached for the door handle and yanked. The door wouldn’t open.

  “Let me out!”

  “So you can get yourself killed? No way.”

  Madison jiggled the handle. Nothing. “Unlock the door, Brianna. Someone needs to warn those people.”

  “It isn’t going to be you.” Her roommate turned around in the front seat, brown eyes narrowed straight on Madison. “Sit down.”

  “No!” Madison scrabbled at the door lock, digging her nails into the crevice it disappeared into, trying to unlock the car.

  Brianna turned back to the front and started the engine. “If you get out of this car, I’m leaving you behind.”

  “What are you talking about? We’re stuck on the bridge!” Madison yanked the door handle again before banging into the molded plastic with her shoulder. It had to give. She had to warn those people.

  The truck driver laid on the horn. Madison jerked up, staring out the window in disbelief. He was going to do it. He was actually going to mow those cars in front of him down. “We have to help them.”

  Peyton’s hand wrapped around her wrist and he pulled her away from the door. “We can’t, Madison.”

  “Yes, we can. We can yell, shout… anything.”

  “And then what? Get run over by all the cars behind us?”

  “They wouldn’t do that.”

  Peyton’s lips thinned into a line. “If you really think that, then you haven’t been around desperate people.” He let go of her wrist. “You need to think about yourself first. Or your family, Madison. Not these strangers.”

  The truck driver hit the horn again, but this time he didn’t let up. It kept on sounding, a tortured wail of last warning as he hit the gas. At first, the cab moved like a giant, slow and ungainly, with stops and starts.

  But the harder the driver punched the gas, the more the lumbering beast accelerated. A handful of people Madison hadn’t even seen jumped back from the cab of the truck, shouting and shaking their fists.

  She watched, eyes wide in horror, as the truck hit the first car in front of it. A little white hatchback of a thing, it never stood a chance.

  Metal crunched and groaned and tore, the sickening sounds of anger and impatience cutting through the silence of the near-dark.

  Madison’s hand flew to her mouth as Brianna shifted the Jeep into drive.

  “Everybody hold on. This is gonna get nasty.” Brianna gripped the steering wheel, primed and ready.

  All Madison could do was watch. The hammering of her heart eclipsed the sounds of destruction and the shouts of other motorists. It even drowned out the rush of her breath sawing in and out of her lungs like she’d run a marathon.

  The truck moved again, lurching forward as it shoved the little white economy car out the way. Brianna seized the opportunity, leaping into the gap left between the back end of the trailer and the car behind it.

  Taking advantage of a madman’s decision wasn’t how this should go. She should be out there, helping the people displaced by the truck, warning others to get to safety. Instead, Madison sat in the backseat like a fugitive on the run, hunched down for protection as Brianna tore through the gap left in the trailer’s wake.

  Every car length, the truck picked up speed, smashing into the next vehicle with more force, hitting the next with more acceleration. They flew behind it, safe in the space right up against the trailer’s bumper, avoiding the smashed cars shoved into the concrete railing on one side and into each other on the other.

  They followed the wake of destruction, riding it out like a water skier behind a jet boat. Only instead of the ocean and sunshine, wrecked cars and screaming people greeted them with every wave.

  Madison closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch. She couldn’t bear witness to the heartless actions of the truck driver another second.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Brianna whooped from the front seat. “We did it!”

  A hand landed on Madison’s back, rubbing up and down until she sat up and opened her eyes. They were off the causeway. Off the highway entirely, cruising down a quiet side street in the dark, their headlights the only illumination as far as Madison could see.

  Madison blinked and looked around, the tightness in her chest finally receding. “We made it?”

  Brianna glanced up at her in the rear view. “Still think we should have stayed behind?”

  She exhaled. Yes. No. Madison didn’t know anymore. If they had stayed on the causeway helpin
g other motorists, would they have made it off the bridge without incident? What if someone found out what they had in the back of the Jeep? She glanced down at the stuffed backpack on the floor in front of her.

  Brianna had a point, but surely humanity still meant something. People didn’t turn into animals the second disaster struck.

  At least not everyone.

  She glanced out at the darkness, unease creeping into the gaping wound the events of the bridge had opened in her mind. “I don’t think we should be driving in the dark.”

  “Why not? We want to get to your mom’s, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, but haven’t you noticed? We’re the only lights out here. What if someone sees us or tries to stop us? I don’t even know where we are.”

  “It’s not totally dark.” Brianna glanced up out the windshield at the arcing colors in the sky. “People won’t notice us.”

  Peyton spoke up. “Madison has a point. We should conserve our fuel. Park somewhere, get some sleep. Drive when it’s light out.”

  Tucker pointed out the window. “Looks like a park up ahead. We could pull off, maybe drive into those trees. No one would see us out there if we kill the lights.”

  Brianna shut them off and the road descended into darkness.

  She idled for a moment on the asphalt, waiting until her eyes adjusted to the night. “All right. We’ll park. Get some sleep. But we’re taking shifts. Someone has to keep watch.”

  She drove slowly, peering into the darkness as she maneuvered around a stand of bushes and over the curb. With a few careful turns, Brianna hid the Jeep from the road behind a thicket of bushes and trees. No one could see them, even with the added light from the sky.

  Peyton snorted as Brianna turned off the engine.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It reminds me of a B-horror movie setup. Teenagers going into the dark woods to escape the monster of the week.”

  Tucker lowered his seat. “Guess there won’t be any more of those for a while, will there?”

  Brianna shook her head. “Nope. Hell, they might never come back.”

  Madison frowned. None of this seemed real. She glanced around at her friends as they made themselves comfortable in their seats. No way could she sleep. Not after the incident on the bridge. She exhaled. “You all get some sleep. I’ll take first watch.”