EMP

by Jonathan Hollerman

  “What do you say we have ourselves a little meeting of the minds? Let’s head out onto the deck.” The men grabbed their coats and went outside and sat around the large patio table as Damian pulled a large bottle of twenty-year-old DeMaurange single malt scotch out of the first bag.

  “Now you’re talking!” Randy said as he pulled up a chair.

  Damian pulled a couple packs of Backwoods cigars out of the second bag. “I’ve been saving these for a celebration,” he said as he tore the wrapper off and started passing cigars out. “Figured now’s a good as time as any.”

  “Thank you, Damian,” Sean said sincerely as he accepted a cigar, “for everything....” Damian waved off his thanks and grabbed a chair. They sat in silence at first, passing a lighter and glasses, till everyone was alight and had a glass in hand, including Darren who had joined them. Sean raised his glass in the air, “To my baby sister’s health and speedy recovery and the hopes that Darren’s services will never be needed again.”

  “Here, here!” everyone responded with Darren being the quickest to respond. They clinked glasses all around and took the first sip of many to come that night.

  “I can tell you one thing for certain,” Andrew chimed in as everyone turned to hear what he would add. “Brody’s going to be pissed.” Everyone laughed out loud at that.

  Caleb cut in to the laughter after a moment. “I say we draw straws in a little while and one of us go out and relieve him for a bit so he can partake.” Everyone nodded. “But not yet,” he added with a smile as he closed his eyes in satisfaction and took a long pull on the cigar.

  MR. ANDREWS GENTLY tapped his pipe against his palm to release the excess ash. He took out the tip of a deer’s antler that he used as a tamper and gently tapped on the tobacco. He took a couple deep draws till a sweet billowy plume of smoke emerged, slowly spreading its fragrance throughout the opulent room. He picked up the book off the side table next to him and went back to reading. It was only a few paragraphs later that he closed the book once more in frustration and set it back on the side table.

  “I’m bored,” he said to himself as he took another deep draw on the pipe. It had been over three weeks now and he was running out of things to occupy his time. Mr. Andrews had recently retired as CEO of a large defense contractor that developed advanced weapons for the various branches of the armed forces. Their specialty wasn’t in guns, grenades, or vehicles. His company had specialized in cutting edge technological weapons: the expensive type. Their last project was the development of a weapon that could send a concentrated shockwave of a magnetic nature to wipe out electronics. It wasn’t a super EMP of the type that must have hit the US. His pride and joy was a missile programmed to fly over head and could wipe out every electronic device in individual buildings and hit multiple locations.

  It wasn’t his favorite because it was the new type of politically correct weapon in high demand that would minimize collateral damage to our enemies. He didn’t care about that. He was of the opinion to just fry them all, including the flea infested deserts they wallowed in. It was his favorite because the military brass went bonkers over it. They ordered twenty-five thousand units at two million a pop. Talk about a golden parachute. But that was two years ago now. Shortly after retiring, he had purchased five hundred acres and his own little mountain top five miles outside of Tionesta, Pennsylvania. He built a 5,000-square-foot log castle at the peak, overlooking the Allegheny National Forest and the river below. For the first year, he immersed himself in every aspect of construction: from the house to the barns, outbuildings, a vast tunnel network connecting the multiple buildings, windmills, natural gas generators, and solar power units hooked up to a battery bank. The next six months he had gone on an extended shopping spree. Guns, food, survival supplies, and everything he could find to help him when it all came crashing down. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Working in the industry, Mr. Andrews knew full well how fragile and dependent our country’s infrastructure had become. It was just a matter of time. But time was up, ruining the intermediate plans he had been orchestrating.

  The last six months leading up to the attack, he had been just having fun and enjoying his retirement at only fifty years old. He threw lavish parties in town for the local politicians and played poker with them while intentionally losing. He bought expensive cars and drove them around town, periodically stopping into one of the local bars and paying for the entire night’s drinking for its patrons. He donated money to the small town’s various religious organizations and paid for the renovation of the high school’s gymnasium. He was the new local celebrity. His plan was to win the hearts and minds of the townsfolk and run for mayor the following year. The current mayor got on his nerves. He was a mid-sixties man, fat and balding who was too square to be fun. A man of faith and a staunch conservative politically, he would never attend any of his “entertaining” parties. Mr. Andrews had decided to take the man’s job not because of any higher calling, but more out of boredom and he had always liked the feeling of being in charge.

  That was in the open. His favorite activity, however, was his weekend endeavors. The local town girls weren’t very interesting to him. They were all old-fashioned farmers and hicks, doe-eyed and looking for love. He was forced to pay expensive limousines to haul high end escorts all the way from Pittsburgh and back. He paid very well and he made sure they earned every ounce of their pay. He had dropped hints to some of his favorite girls that they were always welcome to come and stay on a more permanent basis, but his “unique” tastes must have turned them off for the long-term arrangements he offered. He held out hope that maybe a few of them would risk the long dangerous journey once they grew desperate enough.

  That was behind him now, and with the power out and not wanting to risk going into town, he had become officially bored. Two days after the power went out, Charlie, Mike, and Travis had all shown up. They were locals that Mr. Andrews had recruited while rubbing elbows in town. Charlie was a good handyman and fix-it kind of guy. At the same time he had a small drinking problem, probably stemming from his tour in Iraq. With the absence of liquor, that problem would be solved. Mike, a former college lineman and current bouncer at the local hub, was a big six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound African-American man who looked like he could rip your arms off without effort. He stood out like a sore thumb in the predominately white farming town, but Mr. Andrews had seen him crack skulls on occasion while clearing out bar fights. Once they met in private, in contrast to his imposing size, Mike had turned out to be pretty soft-spoken and friendly. The last was Travis, a Gulf War vet who also happened to be a founding member of the local motorcycle gang. He was a man who knew how to get things and where to “find” things in a pinch. He was also unscrupulous and not burdened with conscience which made him Mr. Andrews’s favorite to lead the other two. Travis was in his fifties and looked like your typical biker with a long grey pony tail and lots of tattoos.

  This was Mr. Andrews’s security team. He had scoped them out for months before approaching them. They were all single and none of them had immediate family ties in town. They were given instructions to come over to his place in the event of any major events or tragedies if they wanted to make some money in security. They were also given instructions that if they told anyone or showed up with anyone, they would not be employed. When they arrived, Mr. Andrews had clued them in to what was going on and laid out his rules for the roost. They accepted their duties gladly in trade for room and board and the promise of one hundred thousand dollars each when things returned to normal. If they were seriously injured or risked their life to save his, then they would be paid one million dollars. He already had contracts drawn up and they each signed without even reading through the fine print.

  Mr. Andrews knew full well that surviving on your own wasn’t an option. At some point, a large enough group would come and he would be overrun. They would come, not because they had any clue what he actually had hidden away below ground, but because
he was rich. They had endured one security test already when an early-sixties pickup truck full of rednecks had knocked on his front door asking for food. When Mr. Andrews had refused to open the door, they tried to ram it with an improvised battering ram. What they didn’t know was the door had been custom made to his exact specifications. On the surface it looked like any other ornate wood door, but it had been designed with a solid steel core and lots of bracing and heavy duty slide locks on the inside. To combat the added weight, it had special ball bearing hinges that would allow the heavy door to open effortlessly. He watched them from a side window for a few minutes, amused with their huffing and puffing.

  When one of the men retrieved an ax from the bed of the truck, Mr. Andrews figured it was time to end the charade. He wasn’t afraid of them making it through the door; he just didn’t want his beautiful wood door to get all hacked up. He stepped away from the window and nodded to his three soldiers in their new Multicam uniforms who stepped forward and opened the front windows in unison, releasing a barrage of bullets. Mr. Andrews had purchased twenty Bushmaster AR-15s as his standardized weapon. He had a myriad of other specialized guns but they were for specific purposes. At the first sound of gunfire, two of the men took off at a sprint. One tried to stand his ground and fire back with his deer rifle, but never even got a shot off. His futility delayed the security team long enough for the other two men to get in the truck which immediately sped off down the long drive. They put quite a few holes in the tailgate and blew out the back window, but the two men were able to escape. That had been four days ago.

  Mr. Andrews had told himself that he wouldn’t enter town for any reason for the first month, but he was just too curious and too bored to wait any longer. He reached in his pocket and pulled out one of the walkie talkies that he had stored in the faraday cage in the basement. His men were bunked in the loft with a good 360 degree view of the farm. “Travis, come back.”

  There were a few moments of silence then, “Yeah, boss?”

  “Let the boys know to get suited up first thing tomorrow morning: no uniforms, just everyday clothes. We’re heading into town to see how well the mayor is handling things.”

  Chapter 19

  The morning after Sean and Maria’s arrival, the members of the retreat gathered in a meeting which ended up lasting most of the day. Darren and Kathy agreed to stay on and were voted in unanimously, as was Allison. Sean and Maria were brought up to speed on the retreat and the latest preparations that had been conducted, as well as security issues that still needed to be addressed. Using the AR500 ISPC steel targets as ballistic cover in the bed of the pickup had been a huge life saver in their firefight on the way back to the retreat. Originally they had planned to fill the sandbags they had stored in the barn with dirt and stack them under strategic windows for ballistic cover. But now they decided to remove the rest of the steel plates from the shooting range and use them instead, saving the dirty sandbags for outdoor use.

  There were spider holes to be dug and an extra watchtower to build. They had eight hundred yards of six-foot-high chicken fence to be erected around their planting area to keep deer and other animals out of the future garden. They also wanted to install fencing around the shed in the back yard to keep some chickens and goats if they were able to trade for some. A hunting schedule was put in place to try and take down and can as much deer meat as possible in the coming weeks. With scarce food, their rural neighbors would also be hunting and before long the deer population would be depleted. The Allegheny River was about a one-mile walk through the state forest. Once deer hunting became less prosperous, they would focus on fishing to add protein to their diet. They also made plans to build a smoke house in case they ran low on canning supplies.

  Randy, Caleb, Andrew, Brody, and Sean had spent many years together hanging out and became very close. Their busy schedules and tight finances, which plagued all married men, prevented them from getting together more than every month or two, but they made each weekend count. Sometimes they would go backpacking and test their newest gear, and other times they would camp at Andrew’s farm and spend the entire weekend shooting, running drills and learning to work together as a squad with Brody’s direction. Each get-together always delved into “what if” scenarios and debating different standpoints, while sitting around a fire, smoking cigars and drinking scotch. Damian was the newest member of their group and had helped light a fire to turn their plans into action. Damian had been introduced to Sean by his pastor, who was also interested in prepping, and they had hit it off right away. Damian’s parents owned a large international shipping company which allowed him to travel all over the world. Some of his travels had been to war torn areas of the globe and he wanted to set up a place to go if things went badly. Just like many Americans, he saw the writing on the wall and knew that hard times were ahead.

  Sean spent the entire summer travelling all over the state to help Damian find the perfect property. It was important to be at least a hundred miles away from any large cities and at least ten miles from any small towns. It also had to be well removed from any major roads. Once they found the perfect property, Damian pulled the trigger and shortly thereafter they had over three hundred acres of property, sixty acres of field, and a small log cabin to hang out at. Sean drew up some architectural plans for a bona fide retreat and after a couple months of back and forth with the architect, they were ready to break ground.

  It was very important that the building look like an actual house and not a bunker to prevent people around town from talking about it and gossiping. That would only invite more opportunists and looters when things went south. Damian also wanted to retire there someday so he wanted it to look, feel, and function on grid like a regular house with all the normal amenities most Americans had grown accustomed to. This presented some serious design challenges to make it also perform - in a grid down scenario. The problem with conventional construction is that most houses aren’t very secure and don’t provide any ballistic protection. Also, most conventional houses aren’t built to allow them to function easily off-grid. They have multiple rooms, hallways, and dividing walls which use duct work and electric blowers to heat the numerous spaces. Designing a retreat for twenty people took months of planning to figure out the logistics of how to make it function efficiently in a grid down scenario.

  Sean eventually went back to centuries old open-concept architecture before electricity was discovered. The house was built with timber frame construction, a wide open floor plan and two by six exterior walls to allow lots of insulation. They used a metal roof and Hardiplank siding to aid in fire resistance from the outside. The basement was constructed using poured concrete walls ten feet high and would house the sleeping quarters since it would be the most temperature consistent location for sleeping. A wood stove was placed in the center of the large basement, which had framed and insulated exterior walls to prevent the concrete walls from absorbing the stove’s heat in the winter. Instead of building rooms for each family, they constructed heavy curtain dividers around the perimeter of the basement, allowing each family their own private space with bunk beds and a large wardrobe or two. It only allowed for basic privacy but still permitted heat to flow over and under the curtains. Two full bathrooms and a half bath were added to the basement since it would eventually house up to twenty people. The ceiling of the basement was left open to the wide plank tongue and groove floor boards above so that in the winter the heat from the wood stove in the basement would also heat the first floor’s floorboards and provide some radiant heat for the first floor.

  The first floor was also wide open construction, resembling a great hall from medieval days with its exposed rough timbers and low cathedral ceilings. Upon entering the house, the right half was an expansive great room with a large stone fireplace, and the left was an open kitchen and dining area. There was room for a huge twelve-foot-long table and combined with the eight-foot granite island off the kitchen, there was plenty of seating for their large
group to eat. The L-shaped kitchen protruded into the center of the room from the far wall, ending in an old-fashioned wood cook stove perfectly placed in the center of the first floor. It put out a massive amount of heat in the winter due to its large surface area.

  Off the kitchen leading into the master bedroom were wide french doors providing a large enough opening to allow heat to circulate into the master bedroom. The master bedroom was eighteen feet square and was actually the first floor of the tower that attached to the main house structure. Directly above the master was a second bedroom with a third bedroom above that. The outside of the tower was covered in cultured stone adding to medieval feel to the home. The top bedroom had been constructed with double hung windows all the way around providing amazing views of the property. During construction, they had added 3/8” AR500 steel plating behind the drywall surrounding the entire room three feet up from the floor to the base of the windows. After the grid came down, it was no longer a bedroom, but served as a thirty-foot-high bulletproof watchtower.

  The hardest part of the planning was the mechanics of the retreat facility. It needed to operate like a normal home, yet off-grid as well, with redundancies. Sean looked at wind and solar power, but he was uncomfortable with how well it would survive following an EMP attack or solar flare. Neither system would be super-efficient because northern Pennsylvania was a very overcast area and did not have reliable wind like out west along the coast. Besides, nothing telegraphs an off-grid retreat like massive banks of solar panels or multiple windmill generators. They would also be very vulnerable to an attack or looters looking to cut off your power source and wait you out. They elected instead to go with a propane generator. They buried two 1000-gallon propane tanks underground and disguised the location of the gauges with bushes and landscaping. Generators are notorious for being noisy, so to combat this the generator was housed in an underground concrete room next to the retreat and was soundproofed. Intake air vents ran down to the room and the exhaust ran through two specially designed mufflers and up through the fireplace chimney. When it was operating, the only way you could tell was standing next to the intake vents which produced a slight humming.