Edge of Collapse Series (Book 2): Edge of Madness

by Stone, Kyla

  A young black guy Noah had never seen before stood abruptly and cleared his throat. The guy looked barely twenty. Tall and skinny, he wore tight preppy jeans with a slim-fitting striped sweater.

  “This is Mike Duncan’s nephew, Jamal Duncan,” Rosamond said. “He’s studying electrical engineering at U of M. Luckily for us, he’s visiting for Christmas. Since our communication systems are . . . lacking at the moment, Jamal has been kind enough to shed some valuable light on our situation. Jamal?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Jamal shifted awkwardly, his eyes darting around the room. “The United States has most likely been hit by an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb.”

  Several people gasped. Julian sat up straighter. Chief Briggs stiffened.

  Even though he suspected what was coming, Noah’s heart still sank into the pit of his stomach. He gripped the arms of his chair to steady himself.

  “Are you saying we’ve just been nuked?” Darryl Wiggins asked incredulously. He was a stiff, sour-faced man in his fifties, Wiggins was the rotary club president and the manager of Community Trust Bank.

  A slick small-town politician, he was always trying to endear himself to Rosamond and garner himself more influence. If he could come out ahead on someone else’s dime, even better.

  “Yes,” Jamal said. “However—”

  “Are we going to die of radiation, then?” Wiggins cut in. “What about fallout? Have we already been poisoned?”

  “It’s not how you think,” Jamal said. “Because the nuke is detonated in the atmosphere, there’s no danger of fallout or radiation. That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?” Dave Farris asked.

  “It’s an EMP. Maybe a Super-EMP. An electromagnetic pulse is created during a nuclear detonation high above our atmosphere. If the pulse is strong enough—and this one appears to be—it fries most electronics, whether they’re plugged in or not. Everything’s made with computers these days. Everything in our cars. Our phones. Even our refrigerators are connected to the internet of things.”

  “What does a Super-EMP do?” Rosamond asked.

  “It does way more damage than a regular nuclear weapon. It doesn’t take that much physics knowledge to create a high-altitude EMP that would generate dramatically more gamma radiation than ‘normal’ nukes, which could more efficiently turn that gamma radiation into an electromagnetic pulse. It’d be a sophisticated design, but it wouldn’t be that difficult for any nuclear weapons state to build one that would produce more than 25,000 bolts per square meter. I mean, with a two-stage thermonuclear weapon utilizing a shielded primary fission stage and—”

  “Jamal, get to the point.” Mike Duncan prodded his nephew not-so-gently. “How far reaching are we talking about here?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Okay.” Jamal cleared his throat. “A single Super-EMP hit could localize the damage to several states. Or it could be a coordinated attack of multiple EMPs spread out to do the most damage.”

  “What do you mean by the most damage?” Mike Duncan asked.

  “Most of the continental United States could be dark right now.”

  For a long moment, no one said anything. They stared at each other, stunned, in shock, trying to take it all in.

  Darryl Wiggins looked like he might pass out.

  “How do you know it’s not a solar flare?” Noah asked, trying to remember what Quinn had called it. “Or a coronal mass thing?”

  “A coronal mass ejection,” Jamal corrected. “A CME happens when plasma, which is a super-heated and ionized gas, is expelled from the surface of the Sun. It produces a magnetic shockwave that extends billions of miles into space. If Earth is in the path of that shockwave, our electrical systems become overloaded. It mainly affects the power grid by destroying transformers and long power lines. In this case, because most vehicles, computers, and phones aren’t functional, we can surmise that this is a nuclear EMP event.”

  “That’s rather farfetched,” Briggs growled. “A whole lotta imagination and fear-mongering.”

  “Then how else do you explain all this?” Reynoso said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “The United States of America is under attack!” Wiggin’s voice rose in alarm. “He just said—”

  “Let’s just say this is a reasonable possibility, given what we know,” Rosamond said evenly. She turned to Jamal. “How long until the grid is operational again?”

  Jamal dropped his gaze to the table. “Years.”

  “I’m sorry,” Reynoso said, leaning forward. “Did you just say ‘years?’”

  “Yes.” Jamal raked a hand through his wiry hair. “Each transformer is custom-made and takes something like twenty months to design, develop, and deliver. They’re made in factories that require electricity. So if the whole country is out . . . we’ll have to commission them one by one overseas—only our cargo ships are manufactured with electronic systems. How many were within range? What percentage of our aircraft are permanently grounded? How many lost control of their systems and crash-landed? You see where I’m going with this.”

  Several council members exchanged glances.

  “Plane crashes?” Mike Duncan asked, alarmed.

  “It gets worse. Without power, the gas stations shut down. No way to get the gas out. No easy way, anyway. No refineries working without power. Or very few. Not enough for all of us, not by a long shot. No gas; the delivery trucks don’t work. They can’t get through the snow now, anyway. So the stores don’t get food. The hospitals don’t get supplies. The water treatment plants don’t get their chemicals.”

  The pharmacies don’t get their medications. The realization struck Noah like a physical blow. His breath fled his lungs. He almost doubled over.

  He hadn’t even thought about the precarious supply chain. How critical each element was, each link in the sequence. How he would no longer be able to just stroll into Vinson Pharmacy and pick up his son’s life-saving pills in a crinkly white bag.

  What was he going to do? For a minute, the room buzzed with white noise. Everything went tinny and distant. He didn’t hear a thing.

  He’d have to find a way to get Milo’s pills. To keep his son warm and safe and fed. There wasn’t any other option. He’d find a way.

  “Everything operates on just-in-time delivery these days,” Mike said. “If the trucks stop, within twenty-four hours, hospitals and medical facilities will run out of basic supplies. Within three days, gas stations will be completely out of fuel. Store and restaurant shelves will be bare. ATMs and banks will run out of cash—though without power, we can’t access our money anyway. Within four weeks, the nation’s clean water supply will be completely exhausted.”

  “This is a catastrophe,” Annette said quietly, her face stricken. “Far more serious even than dealing with a lack of heat and electricity.”

  Jamal cleared his throat. “The federal EMP commission predicted up to 90 percent of the population would die off within a year.”

  The room fell into a stunned silence. Noah’s chest tightened. A moment ago, the room had been too cold. Now it was too hot, too small.

  “In a nutshell,” Jamal said, “we’re screwed.”

  21

  Noah

  Day Two

  “Who the hell did this to us?” Julian snarled through clenched teeth. Gone was his congenial grin. A vein pulsed in the center of his forehead. His hands were balled into fists on the table.

  Jamal sat back down, looking abject and miserable. Rosamond remained seated with her hands folded in front of her, her suit spotless, not a hair out of place, a neutral expression on her face. A tiny muscle twitching at the corner of her mouth was her only tell.

  “Probably Russia,” Mike said.

  Annette nodded. “My odds are on China.”

  “Don’t forget about Iran,” Reynoso said. “They’re a powder keg waiting to blow up.”

  Noah shook his head. He felt sick. “Yeah, but anyone who attacks us has to know we’re going to respon
d with a scorched-earth policy. It’ll hurt them way worse than they’ve hurt us.”

  “Maybe their leader is certifiably insane, like North Korea. Or maybe they’re smart enough to lay the blame at another country’s feet.” Reynoso gave a tense shrug. “Who knows?”

  The conference room filled with murmurs of concern that quickly escalated to alarm, even barely restrained panic. If they gave in to their fear, things would go downhill fast.

  They needed to regain control of the room, or they’d all lose it.

  “Right this minute, it doesn’t matter who did this to us,” Noah said. “We need to figure out how to survive right here in Fall Creek. Seems like that’s the biggest problem we’re facing right now.”

  “He’s right,” Annette said. “We can figure out whether it’s China or North Korea later when our houses are warm, and our kids have food in their bellies.”

  Somber nods around the room.

  “Thank you, Noah and Annette.” Rosamond dipped her chin at them. “We can waste our precious energy on panic and worry, or we can act to protect ourselves and shore up our resources. I, for one, prefer action.”

  “Where the hell is FEMA?” Wiggins whined. He had a nasally, high-pitched voice that grated on Noah’s nerves. “The army and the National Guard? Other countries? They’ll send aid. They have to. That’s their job.”

  “FEMA can’t handle a national crisis,” Dave Farris said quietly. “The emergency response chain is only as strong as its weakest link. All you gotta do is visit the DMV to understand how incredibly inefficient the government is. Do we really want to put all our trust in that?”

  Wiggins shook his head, disbelieving. “We pay taxes! The government has plans and procedures. They have stockpiles!”

  “Not for Fall Creek, they don’t,” Julian scoffed. “Whatever they have is going to Detroit, Kalamazoo, or Grand Rapids first.”

  “Even when FEMA does come, it might take weeks for that help to filter to the small towns,” Dave said. “The way I see it, we’re going to have to take care of our own for a while.”

  “And we’re already seeing a desperate need,” Rosamond said. She turned from Briggs and settled her gaze on Reynoso. “Officer Reynoso, if you could be so kind as to give us an updated report of the last twenty-four hours.”

  Reynoso cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Someone broke into the McClintock’s home last night and stole half their pantry. No one was hurt. Eighty-six-year-old Grover Massengill passed away sometime during the night. No one checked on him. He had a fireplace and firewood, but he never got out of bed.”

  Horrified murmurs filled the room.

  “We have four deaths tallied so far,” Reynoso said gravely. “All elderly citizens living alone. One, an apparent stroke, and three from hypothermia. They either didn’t have a fireplace or were unable to get a fire started.”

  “Six deaths,” Noah corrected. “I found Mrs. Norah Gomez dead in her bed this morning. And one of the men who died at Bittersweet last night was Dương Văn Dũng, a long-time resident of Fall Creek.”

  Noah thought of Quinn with a pang. He needed to make sure to check on her later. “We need to retrieve his body. I promised his granddaughter.”

  “We will, I assure you,” Rosamond said. “We have a lot on our plate, and it will only get worse. Right now, the living are the priority. Food, heat, and shelter.”

  “And medical,” Noah added. “Is Dr. Prentice in town?”

  “He’s in California visiting his daughter,” Rosamond said. “We’re without a doctor.”

  Noah’s gut tightened. He fiddled nervously with his wedding ring. He needed to talk to Robert Vinson as soon as possible and get more of Milo’s medication.

  “Shen Lee is around,” Annette said. “He’s a pediatric nurse. I’m sure he’ll be willing to help with any medical needs.”

  “Excellent.” Rosamond leaned forward. “We need to be thinking about communications, food collection and distribution, transportation, sanitation. We need to figure out the number of people we’re talking about, and how many are children, elderly, and special needs. We need to think about nutrition, healthcare, sanitation, and mobility. We need to switch to conservation mode and ration our supplies. We can’t blow through our limited resources too quickly.”

  “And gas,” said Mike. He was a short, heavy black man with a full beard and wire-framed glasses. He owned the only gas station in town. “Generators, snowmobiles, trucks. They’ll all stop real quick if we don’t get fuel out of the tanks. I’ve got the pumps working on a portable generator but that’ll run out eventually. I’ll try to figure out how to hook up a manual pump system to the underground tanks.”

  “Maybe we can start siphoning gas from all the stalled vehicles to increase our supplies,” Noah suggested.

  Chief Briggs glared at him like he’d grown three heads. “Are you serious?”

  “Great ideas, Mike and Noah.” Rosamond studiously ignored the chief. “Let’s put a five-gallon limit on everyone but critical personnel, as well. Also, we have a few older generators that we can set up at the high school. That’ll be our emergency shelter for those without a means of heating their homes. We’ll need to gather food and water to make sure we have enough for everyone until FEMA or the National Guard arrive.” She paused. “If they arrive.”

  “How are you planning on getting all these supplies?” Chief Briggs asked, glowering. “We sure aren’t taking them from our citizens.”

  Rosamond steepled her fingers over the table. “Of course not. We’re asking for our community to pitch in and help each other out. Everything is voluntary.”

  “I’m willing to open the Inn, if it comes to that,” Dave said.

  “Atticus Bishop runs that huge food pantry at Crossway Church,” Julian said. “I’m sure they’d be happy to help.”

  Rosamond turned to Noah. “You’re friends with him, aren’t you? Why don’t you stop by and see what they can do?”

  “Of course,” Noah said. “Anything I can do to help.”

  “Absolutely,” Annette echoed. “Just tell us what we need to do.”

  “We can help with communication.” Reynoso passed Noah an older model decommissioned radio. “We found seven of these in the basement this morning. They were tucked away in a metal locker. I took the liberty of fiddling around with them, switched out some parts with our new radios, and got them to work. We’ll need to rummage around for batteries, but for now, this is how we communicate.”

  “We need to establish outside communication as well.” Noah turned to Dave Farris. “Don’t you have a ham radio set up? We may need it if we can’t get information through official channels.”

  “I think a few circuits got fried,” Dave said. “But Tina Gundy, James’s daughter, said she’d take a look. She’s just like her father—another mechanical genius, and pretty brilliant with anything electronic, too.”

  The Gundy family owned the mechanic shop in town. James had been in Detroit at a conference when the EMP hit and hadn’t returned yet. His twenty-three-year-old daughter, Tina, a cute bubbly blonde who was also incredibly smart, was home on Christmas break from Michigan State.

  “I can help,” Jamal offered.

  “Excellent,” Rosamond said. “Dave, Jamal, and Tina are in charge of getting the radio up and running and providing the council with updates.”

  “I’ll get some folks together,” Mike offered. “We’ll get some volunteers set up with a couple of snowmobiles and have them notify the residents of information updates. We can figure out a grid or quadrant system for communication.”

  “Give that to the teenagers,” Annette said. “It’ll give them something to do. I’ll help you with names and addresses. And I’ll start organizing the gym and get the high school open as an emergency shelter by tonight.”

  “I will, of course, pitch in in whatever way is needed,” Wiggins said grandly. “You know you can depend on me, Rosamond.”

  Noah and Julian exchanged a look
. Noah resisted rolling his eyes. Everyone knew Wiggins wouldn’t actually do a thing unless it benefited himself most.

  Rosamond smiled, but the corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly. “As long as everyone understands that it’s all-hands-on-deck. We’ll all need to pull together to get through this.”

  22

  Noah

  Day Two

  “What about Winter Haven?” Annette asked.

  “What about it?” Rosamond asked evenly.

  “Do they have power?”

  “We have a resource available to us that we must take extreme care to protect,” Rosamond said carefully.

  “So that’s a yes,” Mike said.

  Winter Haven was the brainchild of a rich multimillionaire developer from Chicago who’d discovered Fall Creek in the early 2000s. He’d fallen in love with the gently rolling hills, the picturesque river, the welcoming small-town feel.

  The developer had purchased fifty acres of a former Boy Scout camp on the opposite side of Fall Creek and built a self-sufficient community of upscale log cabins with their own water, sanitation, and solar power arrays. Even in winter, the solar setup provided enough off-grid electricity to fill most people’s needs.

  Rosamond Sinclair owned one of the homes in Winter Haven. No wonder she looked so refreshed. Noah tried not to feel a prick of envy. He didn’t care about himself, only Milo.

  “The Winter Haven community does have power,” Rosamond said. “The solar panels and battery banks are still working. I’ll admit we all thought Arthur Bradford was a bit paranoid when he insisted on hardening the computerized systems and keeping the controls in some kind of protective contraption—”

  “A Faraday cage,” Jamal piped up. “A Faraday shield is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields, usually made with a continuous or mesh covering of conductive material.”