Breakdown: An EMP Survival Thriller (The EMP Terror Series Book 1)

by J. R. Tate

  Preparing himself for the agony he was about to face, he sat up, freeing himself from whatever he was leaning back on. He had never felt such discomfort and he had to take a moment to catch his breath. The metallic taste came back, replacing the acidic liquid he had just thrown up. Sweat poured from his brow and he wiped it away just as it began to sting his eyes.

  His vision still wasn’t one hundred percent but he was able to get a good look around him. A torn up instrument panel lay before him. An airplane yoke was still intact, between his legs. Was he in a plane crash? Looking up, the top part of the cockpit was completely gone and he was surrounded by a large blanket of trees overhead. What remained of the cockpit - the crushed up instrument panel, pilot chairs, and yoke were torn to shreds. And then it dawned on Jake - how was his co-pilot?

  Painfully angling his body to face to his right, he reached out, touching the man’s arm and he didn’t respond. Was he dead? Jake placed his middle and index finger on his wrist to check for a pulse. It took him a moment to find it but when he did, he yelled out. It was weak but there was one, which meant there was a chance to save the man’s life.

  His memory did fail him again - who had he been flying with? The blood covering his co-pilot’s face didn’t help aid in him being able to tell who it was. Lifting his leg away from the floorboard of the cockpit, he moved where he could face the injured person even better. More searing pain beamed through Jake and he clenched his jaw, let out a groan, and pushed forward.

  “Colin?” Jake whispered it at first, getting a closer look at not only his co-pilot but his friend as well. “Colin?” He raised his voice this time. “Holy shit! Colin, wake up!” He jolted Colin with his loud voice and his eyelids fluttered. “Colin, can you hear me?”

  Colin muttered something but didn’t open his eyes. It was a positive result but Jake would feel a lot better if Colin would wake up and prove he was alert.

  “Open your eyes, Colin! Come on! Can you open your eyes?”

  Colin’s eyes fluttered open for a moment but he was unable to focus on Jake. They shut again and he moaned and Jake shook him again. The threat of exacerbating an injury was present but the important thing was making sure he was alive.

  “Open your eyes and look at me, Colin!”

  Colin responded again, this time holding them open longer, focusing on Jake. He couldn’t pinpoint it, but it seemed like Colin recognized him and fought against going back to sleep. “Jake?” It was a low whisper but he definitely said his name.

  “Yes, it’s me. It’s Jake. Can you stay awake for me?”

  It was taking the little energy Jake had left to make sure Colin was okay. His head throbbed and the flavor of blood in his mouth came back. He had no idea where he was injured but it was safe to assume that he was better off than Colin.

  “We need to get you help, Colin.”

  “You too.” Colin forced a smile, his words coming out in short pants.

  It didn’t occur to Jake until that second that they were hauling a full flight, which meant there were almost two hundred souls on board. Were there any survivors? The fact that they had made it through was nothing short of a miracle.

  His eyes scanned the instrument panel. Spotting the radio, he went ahead and queued it just to try. They were lucky enough to make it through the crash. Maybe luck was on their side and the radio was working.

  “This is Captain Shepherd, transmitting from flight two twenty-eight out of Love Field. Can anyone hear me? Does anyone copy?” He released the button on the radio and nothing happened. Not even static like it usually did after a transmittal across the airwaves. “Anyone copy?” He slammed the microphone down and cursed. “Shit! The radio is smashed up just like the rest of the plane.”

  “Don’t get too worked up.” Colin paused between breaths, closing his eyes as he spoke. He had a small glimmer of a smile on his face but he was pale and in pain. “You don’t look so good, Jake.”

  “I can say the same thing about you, Colin.”

  Jake took a second to look around the area again. They were in the middle of a heavily wooded area. The cabin behind them was torn up but some of it was still intact - trees had done their part in completely splitting the wings in half. Once he was able to get up and walk around, he’d get a better look around. The most important thing was searching for survivors. With the damage around them, Jake had to assume there would be some casualties. He was scared to estimate how many they’d have on their hands.

  “So, what do we do now?” Colin asked, leaning back on what remained of his chair.

  “You need to rest. And I need to move to the cabin and find out who is still alive.”

  Attempting to stand, Jake crashed right back down into his seat. It was like a huge man was sitting on his shoulders. Rescue efforts were going to be a lot harder than anticipated but he had to try. Regardless of his level of injury, sitting around was just going to kill them slowly, and that was not an option. He needed a count for when the rescue crew located them. Giving them a good idea of the task before them would hopefully allow for things to move faster. If people were in as bad of shape as he and Colin, every second mattered.

  ***

  The generators kicked on not long after the electricity went off. Alice was still in a total state of shock after what she had witnessed on the news. Did Jake’s flight really crash? They didn’t have much information but apparently, they had enough to report the flight number and the plane’s destination, all of it pretty much confirming it was probably Jake’s aircraft. There were no reports on survivors or casualties so no news was good news. She wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear. She wanted answers. And when she tried to dial out on her cell phone again, her phone had gone completely dead. She couldn’t even get it to turn on to make just one more phone call!

  “Alice, what do we do? The generators are up but we’ve got limited access to machinery. Some things are running thanks to the back up power but it isn’t much.”

  Alice’s flight or fight response kicked in and she tried to push the distraction of the news story out of her mind. After all, they hadn’t even mentioned what airline it was. Lots of airlines flew out of Dallas and went to Seattle. While it was the flight number he was on, other carriers used the same numbers, though it wasn’t likely. It was still keeping some shred of hope that it wasn’t him. She needed to get information. She needed to call the airline and find out if it was Jake’s plane. There was a special number she could call for families for occasions just like this.

  Going to a land-line phone, she tried to dial out but it wouldn’t work either. Not even a damn dial tone! Damn it! What was keeping her from finding out information on her husband? She needed to leave! She couldn’t be here and focus on her work with the possibility of his plane crashing lingering over her head.

  “I need to go,” Alice whispered.

  Rose looked up, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t go out there. They’re saying it’s a nightmare. Street lights out, traffic jams, the whole thing.”

  “But it’s Jake, Rose. I need to make sure…”

  Dr. Wallace cut her sentence off. “We need all staff at the nurse’s station, immediately! We are in a state of emergency and I need everyone ready to go!”

  Alice hurried toward the nurse’s station, clipboard in hand with the safety procedures on it. They had been through thousands of drills for occasions like this, but despite their training, her staff seemed panicked, everyone standing at the nurse’s station waiting for orders. Clutching the plastic clipboard, Alice glanced down, her nerves not allowing her to even read anything. To hell with protocol - the people who wrote them out had never been down in the trenches, dealing with real life.

  “Everyone go make your rounds. We only have a few patients in the ER but make sure all equipment is working. The generators are on but we still need to make sure.”

  “What caused the outage?” The ward clerk’s eyes were as wide as saucers, her voice stammering as she looked around, unsure of w
hat to do.

  “We don’t know but we need to prepare the ER for an influx of patients. It could be this power grid. It could spread wider than that. We don’t know any details but right now our priority is taking care of our current patients and preparing for more that might come in.” Dr. Wallace clenched his jaw as he spoke - a dead giveaway that this was bothering him. It went further than a simple power outage. Something was going on. Alice tried to remain as calm as possible and to her chagrin, her staff did as they were told, dispersing down the hallways to perform their tasks at hand.

  “Alice, they’re saying it is at least citywide.” Rose sped past her, glancing over her shoulder as she ducked behind a patient’s curtain.

  “Citywide?” Alice spoke out loud though no one was in earshot. “How in the hell…” she cut herself off and went to a TV. It turned on but nothing was transmitting over the airwaves. It was all dead air, a snowy picture all that could be seen on every channel she tried. She was hoping to at least catch more news about the plane crash but there was nothing. Nothing at all, and she felt like she was in a blurry haze of a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from.

  “We need all hands on deck, Alice - I think there was a wreck nearby when the traffic lights went out. There are some medics out at the ambulance bay with some people on gurneys.”

  Alice clicked the TV off and jogged to the ambulance entrance. She was expecting to see several ambulances lined up, their red and blue lights flashing, but that wasn’t the case. Two medics were standing at the door with two gurneys, a patient on each one. Why were they on foot? Alice didn’t have time to ask questions as they opened the doors to allow them entrance.

  The medic began spouting off stats and Alice led them to the closest vacant room to where they were. One patient was a five-year-old child with a chest wound that was bleeding profusely. He was awake and alert but it seemed like his body was going into shock. The other patient appeared to be a man in his early thirties but he wasn’t as lucky as the boy.

  “Patient is unconscious with a weak and thready pulse. Approximately thirty-three years of age with an apparent head wound and an injury to his side.”

  The medic handed off the patient to the emergency room staff. Dr. Wallace began with the unconscious patient, motioning to Rose to cut his clothes off. The injury to his side was worse than they had anticipated - the gash ran from under his arm to his belly button, deep enough that they could see tissue. Blood poured from it and if they didn’t put a stop to it soon, he’d bleed to death.

  What in the hell had happened? Alice couldn’t piece any of it together - the power outage that they were guessing was citywide, and most of all, why in the hell did the medics show up on foot with two stretchers? The child was in the way and frantic as he watched Dr. Wallace and Rose work on the adult, so she, with the help of the medics, wheeled him down the hallway to the next room.

  Forcing a smile, Alice snapped on a pair of gloves and cleaned out the wound. It wasn’t deep but they would need to do a scan to make sure he didn’t have any internal injuries that might not be apparent to the naked eye.

  “Can I ask y’all something?” She glanced at the medics and back to the child.

  “Sure.”

  “Where is your ambulance and why on earth did you come here on foot?”

  Both medics glanced at each other, neither men wanting to appear scared but their faces were a dead giveaway that they had witnessed something they had never experienced before. Alice documented the child’s stats on a piece of paper and realized in all of the commotion that she hadn’t gotten his information.

  “Can you tell me your name, sweetie?” She poised the pen, ready to write, watching the medics as she also waited for their answer. What in the heck had they seen to make them clam up so bad?

  “My name is Davey.”

  “Davey? That’s a good name. Was that your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to have a nice girl come and sit with you for a second while I go take care of something out there, okay? I will be right back and if you need anything, let her know.” Alice exited the exam room and motioned for the ward clerk. “Sit with him for a second. I can’t treat him until I get parent’s consent and his father is in the next room, unconscious and he probably won’t make it. We need to see if we can find his mother or a next of kin who can give the okay.”

  The medics followed her out into the hallway, both wide-eyed and still unwilling to talk.

  “What gives, guys? What is going on?” She snapped her gloves off and threw them in a nearby trashcan, resting her hands on her hips as she waited.

  “We responded to a wreck before the power went out. On our way here the ambulance just died. Just completely died and we had to coast to a stop. Traffic lights are out and all of the traffic on the freeway died along with it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Alice took note of the medic’s name on his lapel - Gary, and his partner’s name was Bryan. “What do you mean, it just died?”

  “Just what he said,” Bryan replied. “Everything just shut off. People were going sixty miles per hour on the freeway and their cars just went crazy. There are a lot of accidents - lots of people running into each other from losing control. We were close enough to the hospital to run these two over. Now we gotta get back out there. There are tons of people stranded and hurt and there’s no way to get them here in a timely manner. I’ve never seen such chaos.”

  Alice still couldn’t comprehend what Bryan and Gary were telling her. It was almost like they were up to a really bad joke that wasn’t going over well. She didn’t have time to question them - now was not the time to try and discredit them.

  “It sounds like we’ve got our work cut out for us today. Sorry to keep you waiting. Bring them in and we’ll take who we can. As long as our generators stay up and running, we can do as much as we can.”

  It was going to be a long day. And she hadn’t even had a chance to think about the plane crash. Just as she was about to lose her cool and panic about Jake, three more patients arrived at the entrance to the ER. There was no time to even process a second of what was transpiring - a blessing and a curse - and all Alice wanted to do was go home and make sure all of her family was okay. She needed to make arrangements with someone to get Dylan from school. He was supposed to ride with a friend but she’d feel better if she could get him herself. Would the phones be working by then?

  With the patients piling up, there wouldn’t be any chance of taking a breath, much less pausing to think about the chaotic world outside the hospital walls. At that moment, her duty was to take care of the injured, though the panic and worry of her entire family’s safety would nag her until she heard from all of them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was taking too long for Jake to grasp his bearings. Any time he tried to move, the world spun and the vertigo was so strong that he couldn’t stand up. He tried not to panic but when he got a better look at Colin, he noticed that his co-pilot’s leg was pinned against the instrument panel and side of the airplane. Blood soaked his pants and down his leg. Despite the dizziness, Jake forced himself to push through the discomfort - there were hundreds of other people that would likely need help and he couldn’t let his small injury keep him from helping.

  “Can you move your leg?” he asked Colin, his breath out of control, partly from an adrenaline rush, and partly because of the pain he was feeling.

  Colin gritted his teeth and tried to shift his leg free but it wouldn’t budge. Groaning out in pain, he shook his head and closed his eyes. “No. It’s jammed in there pretty good.”

  “Shit.” Jake mashed the heel of his hand in his eye, rubbing it. Sweat stung his eyelids and he leaned forward, attempting to help Colin. “C’mon, on the count of three let’s try again… one… two… three!” On three, he pulled but as Colin had already stated, the leg was stuck. More blood came from underneath the panel, saturating his pants. “We should probably hold off on moving it anymore. I do
n’t want you to lose any more blood.”

  Jake didn’t say it out loud, but he feared that Colin’s injury could be life-threatening - what if the impact had nicked the artery in his leg? Would he already have bled out? Jake wasn’t a medical person like his wife. She would know the answer without even hesitating.

  Thinking about Alice prompted Jake to dig in his pocket for his cell phone. He had turned it off in flight so the battery should be full enough to make calls. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? He could call 911, though he had no idea where they had crashed since the flight monitoring system had crashed but air traffic control would be able to give a good estimate based off of where they went off the radar.

  Too much time had already passed and Jake was pissed that it wasn’t the first thing he tried to do. His brain was foggy and his head ached - his inability to focus could easily be blamed on a head injury but none of that mattered. He needed to get Colin free and he also needed to check on everyone in the cabin. Becky hadn’t come to the cockpit to check on them, nor had any of the other flight attendants. Jake surmised that he wouldn’t like what he’d find out but he had to check - and hopefully, help was already on the way.

  Jake pushed the power button on his cell phone and nothing happened. Sometimes it took it a second to power on but it wouldn’t respond. Attempting to turn it on again, it still wouldn’t work. Maybe the impact from the crash completely rattled it but it was literally unscathed. He tried one more time, unwilling to completely give up but he got the same response.

  “Colin, where is your cell phone?”

  “In my pocket.” Colin motioned with his head to his right pocket. He tried to move to get it but he groaned out in pain, jarring his pinned leg.

  “Sit still. I can get it if you want.” Jake leaned over him, digging into his pocket. Pulling the phone out, he tried to turn it on and got the same result as he did with his. “Son of a bitch, your phone isn’t working either!” He clutched his phone in his hand, and if he squeezed any tighter the device might have been crushed. He didn’t need to do that. Maybe they’d eventually be usable and he’d lose a good resource due to his temper.