911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  The line went dead.

  Everything went dead.

  “No! No, no!” he shouted, turning towards the screen. “Hello? Ava, hello!”

  He was sitting in the dark. Not the low illumination ambience he was used to, but dark. Every light in the room was out, all screens dead, overheads down, his headset utterly silent. He felt frustrated rage building up in him.

  “Goddamn,” he swore.

  He began breathing faster as he thought about that crying girl out there, alone. Unbidden, tears of impotence burned the backs of his eyes. He scowled, almost snarled, and pushed everything back. Why hasn’t the auxiliary power kicked on? he suddenly wondered.

  “Why hasn’t the auxiliary power kicked on?” he bellowed.

  He heard the two other 911 operators who were sitting beside him and still on shift also cursing. No one answered his question. In front of him, set off to the side since it was never used, the back-up ham radios kicked on. They were old redundancy systems, designed for use during cell tower incapacitation by inclement weather. With them suddenly being used... well, if he’d needed more proof that the shit had surely hit the fan, this by God was it.

  “Able Seven,” a patrolman Parker knew as Mark Denham said into his radio. “Be advised, Dispatch, we have complete power outages in my vicinity. Stoplights went out—I need Fire and Rescue to Harp and Neilson Avenues. Multiple MVAs; multiple vehicles versus pedestrian!”

  Parker knew Denham. He was a twelve-year veteran, calm and collected under pressure. He sounded more than excited, more than under pressure. He sounded shook up. One of the other operators took the call and began trying to roll Fire and Rescue.

  “We’ve got a, wait… Jesus Christ!” another officer broke in. “We’ve got a plane down on Baker and Freemont! It slid into a row of houses! Everything’s burning!” The line clicked off, and for a moment there was silence. Then the officer clicked over again, his voice hard and flat. “Dispatch,” he said. “We need everyone. I’ve got six large residences fully engulfed. There are people trapped; I can hear them screaming from here.”

  Like a dam breaking, more calls began coming in. Just like that, in a handful of seconds, the system overloaded and Parker realized that the city was done. Traffic lights being out were one thing, but a plane down? That meant only one thing: an EMP detonation. It was no longer about his little local 911 sub-station in a middle-sized suburb north of Louisville; this situation was going to be managed at State level now, or not at all. At least until FEMA rolled in.

  There were not enough available officers to handle this kind of volume. The ones off duty were most likely busy scrambling to protect their families. When the officers came in, if they came in (because if this was Katrina level bad, they might not, he realized), it’d be to find themselves under a unified emergency command system.

  And one girl, lost and crying on the phone with no GPS lock, was not going to get help. In the big picture, she wasn’t even going to matter. He’d failed her. Just like he’d failed Sara. That rage—that old red rage that burned hot, the one he’d tried to kill with Ativan and Zoloft and Pendleton drunk neat—stirred up in him, and he was galvanized.

  “Think, goddamnit, think,” he told himself.

  His eyes rapidly adjusted to the dark; probably because his pupils were already blown up big from the opiates, he thought with a touch of self-recrimination. He had no way to find her. Ava, he told himself. Her name is Ava, she’s not a problem, she’s a girl, and she needs me.

  What did he know? What had he learned during that call?

  She was a Hoosier, born and bred by that accent. He knew her area code, though that was a pretty open-ended clue. But what he really knew, the thing that shook him in his belly, was that he knew the Stapleton Mall area very well. Sara had been involved there, and emergency or not, this was the closest thing to a clue about her disappearing he’d had in a long while.

  They’d kidnapped girls, Ava had said. Maybe murdered one. When a teenage girl went missing, there was a pretty short list of possibilities. When they disappeared in the vicinity of known kidnappers, the list got shorter.

  He knew what he had to do.

  And with that simple certainty of purpose, he felt something inside him shift. Something that had lain dormant since Sara had disappeared, something withered from the pills, a thing beaten silent by the accidental shooting of that boy and the end of his law enforcement career, and by his wife leaving—by every shitty thing that’d stacked up in his life.

  All of that fell away for a moment and a part of who he was at his core, a part marginalized and smothered, stirred. It twisted and merged with something else that he’d suppressed; a thing called hope. Hope for answers about Sara.

  There was something else.

  Something secret, something he hadn’t shared with anyone except one person, and only in passing, during the mandatory psychologist interview he’d undergone after the shooting. He was ready for something like this, ready for things to fall apart. The doctor, an ex-cop with knowing eyes and a firm manner, had gently chastised him for it at the time.

  Told him prepping for the end, for doomsday, and the whole survivalist shtick, in fact, was his way of compensating for how much his own life was spiraling out of control. The guns, the meds, the gear, all of it a big security blanket to sooth his battered psyche.

  “Jim,” the doctor had said, voice grave and more than a bit scholarly. “There is no end of the world; this is a manifestation of your grief. The world is not going to end.”

  “Who’s compensating now, Doctor?” Parker whispered softly, and then he made for the door.

  He came up short as Shift Supervisor Klein stepped into his path, a scowl on her overly made up face.

  “Where in the hell are you going, Parker?” she demanded. “Everything falls apart and you want to take off? I don’t think so.”

  He resisted the strong urge to walk through her and out the door.

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “There’s been an EMP detonation. Communications are going to have to be brought online from outside the area. We won’t be up and running for, hell, possibly days.”

  “You are a municipal employee,” she shot back. He could almost literally see her warming up to the ass-chewing she was about to unleash. “We are in a state of emergency and I haven’t released you.”

  “No state of emergency has been initiated,” he said, forcing himself to remain calm.

  Truth was, he was starting to crave his Ativan. He usually popped one as soon as he clocked out, for the drive home. It was quitting time and his body wanted its fix.

  He inhaled and continued. “It’s quitting time and my relief is here. Unless we get word otherwise in the next few moments, I have something to take care of.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any family,” she said.

  The bitch had almost smiled when she gave him that shot. He felt his heartrate speed up at the dig. He willed himself to remain calm. As they said: Serenity now, he thought.

  “Right before everything happened,” he chose his words carefully, “I got a 911 call. A girl; she was legitimately in trouble. She needs help and I don’t think we can get anyone to her with all that’s happening.”

  “I fail to understand what that has to do with you,” Klein replied. Parker noticed a heavy dusting of dandruff on her shoulders.

  “I’m it,” Parker said. “I’m all she has.” He was surprised at the intensity of his commitment. Of his voice. Somewhere in the course of this, without him even noticing, he’d become fully invested in the wellbeing of the girl. “The world has gone to shit, there is no help for her, and I’m not needed here.”

  Klein looked at him, thinly veiled contempt in her eyes. Scratch that, Parker thought. It wasn’t particularly veiled, thinly or in any other way. She started talking, aiming her words in spikes of distain.

  “In the case of a city-wide emergency, I decide who is needed. That’s always been your problem, Parker,” she went
on. “You always seem to forget who runs the show on swing shift in this center.” She drew herself up, waddle quivering with indignation. “Besides,” she half snarled. “You’re no hero. I know about the boy you shot. You’re no longer a cop, and that girl, whatever trouble she’s in, is better off without you.” Her face fairly gleamed from the red spots rising on her cheeks.

  Parker felt the old rage rising up in him. The rage that was now such a constant companion, ever since Sara’s disappearance. His right hand balled up into a fist. His heart sped up again in his chest and he narrowed his eyes.

  He inhaled and willed the adrenaline out of his body.

  Don’t respond to Klein; she’s nothing. Nobody, he thought. I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing the only thing I can do. Another young girl was not going to be lost on his watch. It wasn’t going to happen; he wasn’t going to let it.

  “Goodbye,” he said firmly.

  “I’ll have your job!” Klein practically screeched as he began walking to the door. He felt the eyes of his colleagues on him as he left. “I’ll have your job for this!”

  “Take it,” he muttered, and swung open the door.

  Without looking back, he crossed the threshold in front of him.

  2

  He stepped out into chaos.

  The 911 sub-station was housed downtown, a couple of streets over from the city’s main business district. There were several multi-story municipal government buildings around it, preventing him from gathering a complete picture of the little city. He saw fire on the tops of buildings down the block, though, and smelled acrid smoke.

  Then someone fired a gun. The shot rang out off in the distance—a heavy caliber hunting rifle, most likely a 7mm from the sound. He turned quickly in the parking lot and looked at the vehicles parked there. He saw his own Ford Bronco, ten years out of style and badly in need of a paint job. Still, he kept it running tight.

  He just didn’t know if it would run now.

  He knew what the literature and subject matter experts thought. That the one thing with a broad level of agreement among those studying the matter was that obtaining fuel after any kind of electromagnetic disaster would be a matter of extreme difficulty. Any particular vehicle might or might not run, but even then, it would be only until it ran out of fuel; then it would idle, useless, until the fuel production and distribution system could be rebooted.

  Any statement concerning the effect of a nuclear EMP on vehicles, Parker realized, depended on details such as where your vehicle was facing in respect to the nuclear detonation. It also depended upon the height of the detonation, the gamma ray output of the detonation, the distance and azimuth to the detonation, and the local strength of the Earth’s magnetic field between your location and the detonation point. Predictions of effects were thus reduced practically to voodoo.

  It also depended on whether your car was parked outdoors, in a concrete garage, or even in a metal garage. Obviously, a metal garage was best, he knew, but concrete was slightly conductive and would provide a little bit of protection compared to the outdoors. A major problem with any ordinary garage (even an underground parking garage), however, remained that any electrical wiring inside of the garage would simply act as an EMP antenna and then re-radiate the EMP inside of the structure.

  All the cars in the lot could be fried. It depended on a lot of variables—far too many for him to be able to predict things with anything close to certitude. He looked around, collecting his thoughts and sharpening his focus.

  The night was darker than he’d ever recalled seeing it in his life. The complete absence of illumination startled him. Buildings stood in dark hills and mountains against a sky canopy of the deepest blue. Streets ran in shadowed canyons and vehicles of all sizes were dead and inert, sitting immobile as boulders.

  Screams and shouts from the street echoed weirdly and the flickering uncertain lights of fires punctuated the unnatural darkness in the distance. Cars on fire, buildings on fire, dark smoke rising in volcanic pulses above the rooftops and filling the sky.

  He paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust and trying to discern the exact nature of the yelling and various cries. He didn’t hear anymore gunshots, but he figured it was only a matter of time. His time as a patrol officer had left him deeply ingrained with weary cynicism about his fellow citizens.

  Meanwhile, his bug-out bag was in his rig. It was his secondary one, the one designed to optimize a return to his house, where his more extensive kit was prepped. His bag, a black nylon and canvas tactical medical bag, was festooned with convenient and useful zippers and pockets. Inside, he kept a well-equipped first aid kit. It wasn’t the kind of first aid kit you picked up at Walmart. His was custom built with items you couldn’t find anywhere but online or at specialty conventions that catered to survivalists and preppers.

  He was proud of what he had put together. It had taken some time and money, but he knew that, in a true apocalyptic situation, hospitals, doctors, ambulances, and emergency rooms were not an option. A man had to look out for himself, and that included stitching up wounds and even doing some basic surgical procedures.

  He had several suture kits that already had surgical thread threaded through a needle. He had two each in small, medium, and large gauge needles. He had also managed to get his hands on an EpiPen, which hadn’t been easy and was probably more valuable than anything in the kit. Plus, there were a few Israeli pressure bandages, QuikClot gauze pads, non-stick gauze pads in a variety of sizes, along with Vet Wrap. It was better than any ACE bandage or gauze and cheaper because he’d bought it in bulk. He also had a few Tegaderm dressing kits for wounds that were prone to exposure even with a standard bandage.

  There were some occlusive dressings in case he came across someone with a sucking chest wound from a puncture or bullet wound, as well. His paramedic friend had taught him a few basics about emergency first aid, and though he hoped to God he never had to put an empty pen in someone’s throat to help them breathe, if he did, he carried a few scalpels in his bag, too. One never expected to need to cut shrapnel or a bullet out of oneself or somebody else, but if he had to do it, he wanted to do it with sterile surgical equipment.

  His bug-out bag also contained the standard fare, including water purification tablets, a modest stash of cash money, and a mobile cell phone charger that he kept charged at all times. It would quickly charge his phone at least three times before it would need recharging itself. Not that it was going to do any good if this was a true EMP. And if he had to “rough it” because he was stranded or in a situation like this where it could take some time to get back home, he carried some basic necessities. He always had a few bottles of water, jerky, and some power bars. There was also a good folding knife in there along with a Gerber multi-purpose tool, a sewing kit, wet wipes, and roadside flares. The LED headlamp he had recently added to the bag was certainly going to come in handy in this particular situation. He wanted to keep his hands free to carry his gun.

  He thought about the contents of the bag and how it would be needed right now. The sunscreen, ChapStick, and bug spray he kept in there weren’t needed now, but he would carry them along in case he couldn’t make it back to the far more equipped survival kit he kept at home. He always carried a lighter in his pocket, too, even though he didn’t smoke. One never knew when a fire would be needed. It was always better to have the gear and not need it rather than the other way around. He also had a magnesium stick and waterproof matches in his bag in the event that he needed to start a fire. Back-ups for his back-up. The bag he carried in his Bronco weighed less than twelve pounds—he knew because he’d weighed it. The idea was to grab it and go without lugging along a weight the size of a small human. He needed to be light on his feet and couldn’t afford to pack around a bunch of gear that wasn’t likely to do much good in an urban survival scenario. His bag also held the Glock .40 cal. belt holster, and two extra fully loaded, extended round magazines. He had debated the extra weight, but it hadn’t tak
en him long to realize his safety was at the top of the list of the Law of 3s in the survival world. According to survivalist standards, a person could live three minutes without oxygen, which translated to one having three minutes to find a safe place to breathe freely. The rule of thumb was also three hours without shelter in severe weather. The mild fall temperatures meant he needn’t worry about that one, at least. He could live three days without water and three weeks without food. He wasn’t up for pushing it, however, and had stockpiled food and water so he wouldn’t have to test the theory. He looked at the bottle of water and flashlight. They wouldn’t do any good if he was dead.

  He was prepared.

  The feeling was a good one, calming and reassuring. If the world fell to chaos, he had means of at least correcting his personal universe. He had the tools not only for survival, but security. This was important—fundamental, even. Safety was always the priority when shit hit the fan. It wasn’t about finding water or building a shelter; it was about protecting your own ass.

  Although he didn’t want to admit it consciously, he actually felt more upbeat and optimistic than he had in a good long time. All that energy, time, and money he had put into prepping for a major disaster was about to pay off. He could feel it.

  Pulling out his keys, Parker crossed the parking lot to where his old Ford Bronco sat parked next to a chain link fence. He opened the door and slid in. As he well understood, it wasn’t one hundred percent guaranteed that the EMP had fried his system, so he tested it once to make sure he couldn’t start his vehicle. As he’d expected, it refused to turn over, and so he pulled his bug-out bag over to himself.

  Working quickly, he put on his holster, checked his weapon, and then snapped a Maglite on a D-ring carabineer to a loop on his pack where it would be within easy reach. He slid the headlamp into place on his head, adjusting the middle strap that would keep it from falling down his forehead and into his eyes. He’d tried the other kind and tossed the damn thing when it kept falling down. The lamp with the extra strap that went over his head was far more useful, and kept the light where he wanted it. The thing was incredibly bright, which meant if he met a bad guy face to face, the other guy was going to be momentarily blinded, giving him the advantage to shoot first or run like hell. With the lamp on and turned on, it created a wide swath of light around and in front of him. Pulling the shoulder straps down tight, he locked the Bronco and set off at a brisk walk to cover the three or so miles to his house.