Out of LA

by Dennis Elder

  Survivor Wars: Out of LA (Volume I)

  By Dennis Elder

  2018

  “At the Sun’s core the temperature is approximately twenty seven million degrees Fahrenheit. The energy there is equivalent to 100 billion atomic bombs detonating every second of every minute. Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom…”

  Thanks to:

  Scott & Holly for inspiration

  Keli for illustrations

  Cindy for proofing

  And friends for perusing

  Prologue: 1859 The Rocky Mountains

  Jake woke to increasing light on the tent fly. As usual, his body was stiff in the morning from miner work, but it was all he knew. Per his morning ritual, after he awoke, he’d roll over in his uncomfortable cot, lay on his back and begin stretching out his aching limbs. First his fingers and arms, then his shoulders and finally his lower legs and ankles. His ankles were the worst. Last few years seemed like they ached all the time. As he began working them in small circular motions the old tendons popped and cracked and his range of motion slowly improved.

  “Dam. Can’t be mornin’ already. “

  Pete, his Rocky Mountain mining partner of 15 years startled awake at Jake’s early morning curse. But he was use to it. Jake complained more than their pack mule, Jessie.

  “It never feels like mornin’ to you,” mumbled Pete.

  “Well this morning feels particular inconvenient,” retorted Jake as he swung his feet out over the side of his bunk and sat up. He kept the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His breath was showin frosty as he coughed and licked his lips.

  “Come on lazy butt, your turn to make the coffee,” Jake emphasized. But Pete didn’t move. His feet were cold and starting the breakfast fire was not presently appealing. And the tent stove had gone out… again!

  “Did you let the tent stove go out, again?” barked Pete as he stirred in his ragged and rarely washed long underwear.

  Jake looked over at the cold little camp stove. “Nope. Appears to have gone out on its own,” Jake replied sarcastically.

  “Well it was your turn to keep the tent stove going, and since you decided not keep up your end of the bargain, you can get the breakfast fire goin,” growled Pete as he curled up into a tight little ball in open protest.

  Jake didn’t argue. He knew he’d let the tent stove go out, again. It was the third night in a row he’d forgotten. So, he reached for his gear and began getting dressed. Shirt, pants, suspenders and boots - same thing, same order, every morning. He threw his blanket back on his cot as he stood and slapped an old hat on his head. With his back bent and throbbing, he opened the tent flap and stumbled across the rocky ground toward the campfire area. As he bent down to gather some kindling he noticed the sky for the first time.

  “What in the sam hill…” Jake thought as he looked at the Rocky Mountain skyline. He’d seen some colorful sunrises before, but this was different. He stood up a little straighter and wondered in amazement at the dancing lights in the sky. It was red, blood red, and yet extremely bright. But the Sun wasn’t in the sky.

  “Bright enough out here to read a peach can label,” thought Jake to himself. But something about it looked fake.

  After a moment Jake called out to his partner. “Pete!” he exclaimed.

  Jake continued to look as the strange sky. After a few seconds he called again, this time a little louder, “Pete, I’m thinkin’ you should see this.”

  Pete heard Jake’s first comment, but he was more interested in sleep than responding to Jake’s screeching. He could wake him proper when breakfast was ready!

  But when Jake called to him the second time there was something in his voice that wasn’t quite right, something alarming. So, Pete sat up.

  “Maybe claim jumpers is prowling around again,” Pete wondered.

  He waited a moment longer and then shouted back, “What’s goin’ on? We got visitors again?”

  But by now Jake was lost in his own thoughts. He gazed deeply at the strange sky. He never really heard Pete.

  Jake’s continued lack of response was too much for Pete. He sensed something was wrong. So, he dressed and quickly pulled on his boots. Then he grabbed his Henry rifle. With a blanket still wrapped around his shoulders the old miner popped open the tent flap in a low crouch and stood ready to fire.

  He came out looking left and right. Then in a loud whisper said, “What’s cooking partner, somebody snoopin’ around again?”

  Halfway through his last words Pete noticed the sky too. It made him slowly stand upright. Then he came forward and stopped two feet from Jake’s side. Both men stood there transfixed at the glowing sky. Jake spoke first.

  “What in tarnation is that?” But Pete didn’t replay right away. He turned his head sideways with a quizzical look.

  “It looks a little like a borealis,” Pete offered.

  “A borealis?” Jake asked.

  “Yup. Sept it ain’t the right color,” said Pete.

  “What’s a borealis?” quipped Jake.

  “Lights in the sky. Full name is Aurora Borealis or some such. Use to see ‘um in Alaska up in the Klondike when I was a kid. But they was different, greener and more like a curtain,” said Pete.

  “Weird lookin’. Like the sky’s on fire.” said Jake.

  Pete suddenly had a thought. And asked Jake, “you still got that ole’ watch your ma gave you?”

  “Yup. Why?” Jake said absent-mindedly.

  “What time is it?” asked Pete.

  Slowly Jake reached into his right pants pocket and pulled out his watch. It was scratched up bad and the crystal was cracked. But you could still wind it and it kept fair time. That is if you remembered to reset it when the sun came up. But Jake never took his eyes off the horizon, even as the watch came out of his pocket.

  Pete sensed the watch was in Jake’s hand and asked again, “What time it be?”

  Jake looked down hesitantly and after a quick squinting glance responded slowly, “says 1:15.”

  “In the morning?” questioned Pete.

  Jake responded sarcastically, “No 1:15 in the afternoon.”

  Pete pulled his shoulders back and wrapped the old blanket a little tighter around him before he spoke. “Well if it’s 1:15 in the morning there’s two things for sure….”

  “Yea,” replied Jake. “What’s that?”

  Silence hung in the air for a moment before Pete continued. “For one, that sky ain’t right.”

  “And the second thing?” Jake replied without looking at Pete.

  Pete took a deep breath and finally said, “If it’s really 1:15 in the morning… then I’m going back to bed.”

  Three thousand miles to the east in Washington D.C., a young man named, Fredrick Royce was working hard on his backlog of telegraph messages. He was new to the job, but good at it. Western Union had started their telegraph business just eight years earlier and most operating telegraphs were used to dispatch trains. So, most telegraph lines had been built alongside railroad tracks. By 1859 its popularity had created a strong demand for general population message sending. So much so Fredrick was hired on to work nights to send backlogged messages that piled up during the day.

  James kept his writing paper right next to the telegraph key and his ear even closer so he could clearly hear the incoming dots and dashes. But tonight, he was having problems, both sending and receiving. At first just a few messages were affected, but soon nothing seemed to make any sense. He’d seen this kind of problem before when big thunder and lightning storms swept into the area, but nothing before had caused this much trouble. Then he smelled a slight burning in the air. When he turned in his chair and looked at the circuit board, he suddenly stood up. The circuit board mounted on the wall behind him was throwing out sparks. He
’d never seen anything like it, and reactively shouted for the railroad stationmaster.

  “Mr. Walters!”

  Walters was an older man and his hearing was failing. Fredrick moved slightly closer to the adjoining office door and shouted again, “Mr. Walters. Please!”

  Walters had been the railroad stationmaster for over 20 years. He’d seen just about everything during the night shift and little rattled him anymore. Slowly he put down tomorrow’s train schedule and turned toward the Fredrick’s office.

  “Mr. Walters, please come here,” Fredrick shouted again. The sparks were growing larger and started making popping noises. Fredrick moved a little further back away from the smoke and sparks.

  “Keep your pants on Mr. Royce. I’m coming, I’m coming,” responded Walters as he sauntered slowly toward Fredrick’s office. “Now what seems to be the….”

  Walters never finished his sentence. He came to an abrupt stand still in the office doorway, his eyes suddenly fixed on the circuit board.

  “What the devil!” offered Mr. Walters as he struck his arms out to steady himself on the door jams.

  Neither man moved as the smoke and sparks seems to slowly intensify. Then to Fredrick’s right, a ten-inch blue flame erupted from the telegraph key sitting on Fredrick’s office desk. Mr. Walters saw it first and with wide eyes raised his arm and pointed without speaking. Fredrick turned to follow Walter’s motion and both men gazed in astonishment at the flame.

  Suddenly Mr. Walters shouted, “Fire… Fire!” He turned his head slightly over his shoulder to call for help and said, “Someone get a water bucket in here, we have a Fire!”

  “No,” shouted back Fredrick. “During my telegraph training they said to keep water away from the machine, especially the batteries.”

  “Then what do we do?” whimpered Mr. Walters.

  The blue flame was steady now and the key was beginning to spark a bit. The circuit board sparks and smoke were constant too, but no fire had appeared there.

  Calmly, and without taking his eyes of the burning telegraph key Fredrick reached down for a pair of rubber gloves lying near his feet and put them on.

  “We need to disconnect the batteries,” responded Fredrick. “That will cut the electrical current and should eliminate the fire.”

  “Then do it boy, before we all go up in flames,” said Mr. Walters.

  Fredrick moved toward the batteries that were on the floor behind his desk. As he bent down toward the floor his head came close to the bare copper ground wire running from the circuit board down through the office floorboards. Unfortunately, Fredrick did not know the ground wire was overloaded and several hundred amps of charged electricity were coursing though it into the hard ground below.

  Suddenly an arch of orange light leaped between the copper ground wire and Fredrick’s head. The sudden release of electricity knocked Fredrick completely off his feet and across the room into the opposing wall. There he lay unconscious, sprawled on the office floor.

  Mr. Walters immediately panicked. His twenty of years of relative night shift peace was shattered. With horror in his bulging eyes, Walters backed out of the office and started screaming.

  “Fire in the telegraph office, Fire in the telegraph office, Help, Help!”

  Little did Mr. Walters, or the unconscious Fredrick realize, but similar episodes were erupting all over northern America. Countless telegraph offices experienced papers catching fire, smoking and burning circuit boards, even the tops of telephone poles caught fire when burning telegraph wires stretched between poles spread the fires to their wooden supports. Many operators noted that after they successfully disconnected their batteries from the telegraph system they were still able to send and receive messages – in some cases more efficiently than when the batteries were connected. The phenomenon continued until after sunup.

  On that same day, corroborating newspaper accounts from San Francisco to New Orleans to Washington DC all wrote of brightly lit night skies so suddenly brilliant, people could clearly read newspapers while standing outside.

  About four hours earlier an amateur astrologer living in England named Richard Carrington rolled back the crude metal dome shutters that housed his personal brass telescope and fixed its lens on the sun. Just as he had done every day for the last seven months, he observed and recorded the Sun’s activities. Today he began to sketch a cluster of abnormally large dark sunspots. Suddenly he witnessed two intensely bright fireballs erupt from those spots. Carrington recorded that these bright lights lasted about five minutes and then disappeared. Little did he know then that in a few hours the results of those bright fireballs would reach the earth’s surface. The raw energy from those sunspots would become the cause of Mr. Walters and Mr. Royce’s unfortunate electrical encounter in the telegraph office.

  Thousands of other Americans across the country witnessed the brightly lit night skies. Many felt it signified the end of the world.

  And while it didn’t turn out to be the end of the world, it was indeed a significant solar event. The sun had projected what is known as a CME or Coronal Mass Ejection – presenting a sudden increase in the Sun’s radiation. The normal radiation and light from a CME travels from the Sun to the Earth in three to four days. The 1859 CME got here in just under 18 hours.

  Years later, and with new technology, geological ice core samples would be able to more accurately measure the sun’s historical radiation output year by year, over a long period of time. We now know that the CME that came to be known as the “Carrington Event,” would be the most powerful ever recorded over the last 500 years.

  Scientists have long warned that if we ever experience another Carrington level CME today, our world would minimally experience the destruction of all commercial satellites, a complete collapse of the electronic grid and frankly any electrical, magnetic, or computer device would overload and most likely catch fire. In short, the entire planet would be instantly driven back to somewhere between 1820 and the Stone Age.

  Chapter 1: TODAY

  Mark Harris pulled down a little tighter on his seatbelt strap. The plane he was on dipped suddenly as it turned west on approach to the LA airport. Mark looked out the window and gazed down at the smoggy cloud blanket lying below. At their present altitude the skies above the plane were beautiful and sunny.

  The woman next to him leaned into Mark’s space, looked out of the window and remarked disgustingly, “So that’s what smog looks like.”

  “Welcome to LA,” responded Mark as they continued their descent.

  The woman next to him was Susan Jenkins, but her co-workers called her Susie. She was one of ten employees in a small tech company started by Mark. Susie was the company IT guru and all-round techno geek. She had two masters from MIT and was Mark’s most recent hire.

  Mark tried to stretch a little because of their long flight from Kansas City.

  “These new airline seats are killing me. Two less inches feels like two less feet,” grumbled Mark. He was six feet four inches tall, 245 pounds and did not fit well in small spaces.

  Susie smiled and said, “Maybe you need to cut back on those double Cheeseburgers.”

  “Maybe they need to quit redesigning new airline seats around short stacks like you,” Mark responded.

  Susie was a short stack. She weighed in at 105 and was five foot five on good day. But she was tough as a framing hammer and ran in eight marathons a year. Plus, for an over educated civilian, she was a pretty good kick boxer.

  So far, Mark had eight other full-time employees on the company payroll, plus himself. Except for Susie, every one of them was Ex-military and handpicked from the Ranger Company he commanded back in Afghanistan.

  “Go with what you know, and who you know,” was his motto.

  Ever since they got out of Special Forces, each had been working hard to build up their little tech company. And now things were beginning to pay off. Frank Jones, sitting just in front of Mark, was the company Operation’s Manager. Frank was a lieut
enant in the Army and the most effective leader Mark ever worked with. He was the first one Mark recruited.

  Jake Oliver was another member of the company. He should have made Captain during his time in the military. But he always spoke his mind, even when the Generals were in the area. Made Lieutenant a couple of times but liked it better after they busted him back down to Sergeant. Jake was a hard worker, fiercely loyal and brutally honest. Mark needed someone like Jake around because Jake would always tell the truth no matter the consequence. During their time in Afghanistan Jake was a master sharpshooter. Won the “in country” sniper competition three years running.

  The other guys were all equally valuable and loyal to Mark and their startup company. Randy Phillips knew weapons – rifles, pistols, grenades, rocket launchers… whatever. His expertise was invaluable when building their newest product, the SmartScope. Tyrone Johnson was a master mechanic during his time in the service. If it had an engine, he could fix it. Tyrone’s only problem was he was too big. Flight attendants took one look at him and guided him to an exit aisle seat. When they couldn’t find an aisle seat, they’d stick him in First class. Tyrone loved the food in First class.