Neighborhood Watch: After the EMP

by EE Isherwood

  It only took a few seconds to go through the house and get into my garage. Without the power, I had to unlatch the garage door opener hook, so I could lift the door manually. When I did, my two new friends came over to the driveway.

  “Wow, sweet ride,” Luke commented. “I love the orange.”

  “It’s pretty,” Carmen said under her breath.

  “I just got it.” I pulled the keys from my pocket. “I’m going to test a hunch…”

  I opened the driver’s door, then plopped in the sporty bucket seat. I pushed the button to start her back up, but nothing happened.

  “Shit,” I blurted.

  Carmen came around to the passenger side. “Why won’t it start?”

  “Let me check one more thing.”

  I jumped out and ran over to my GMC pickup truck. The thing was the most reliable piece of machinery I had ever owned. It was a ’95 but had hummed along for the last twenty-something years like a rock. When I put the key in, it wouldn’t turn over, either.

  Now both Luke and Carmen stood at the far window of my truck, looking at me as if I was about to reveal something big.

  “I think we got hit with an EMP,” I said.

  “A what?” Carmen asked.

  “An electromagnetic pulse. There are different kinds, and different sizes and intensities, but basically, it’s an electron blast in the upper atmosphere, usually from a nuke. Anything with a computer chip gets fried, including power stations, smart phones, and even cars and trucks.”

  Luke’s face was suitably serious, but Carmen seemed less impressed. “If you’re so sure this is an EMP, what are we supposed to do next? How long do we have to wait before everything comes back on?”

  “It might never come back on,” I said, turning the key again.

  “Say what?” she asked.

  “I read a lot of books on stuff like this. End of the world scenarios. Usually, with an EMP, it knocks out the transportation network first. Trucks stop delivering food. Factories stop making stuff. The whole modern world grinds to a halt. Then, riots start. Cities descend into anarchy. Some estimates are that up to ninety-five percent of all people in America would die because of lack of food, clean water, and general warfare.”

  I looked up at their faces, realizing I was being too literal. With my best smile, I added, “But I’m sure this isn’t going to be anything like those stupid books. It could just be a little hiccup and the power will come back tomorrow. I saw lots of planes in the air earlier. Maybe this was a local training accident.”

  While their expressions did seem to relax, a new sound blared from the distance, further ruining the moment. It was a civil defense siren, but it wasn’t the constant signal of tornado sirens I was used to back in the Midwest. This one warbled in ups and downs, more like a police car. I admit I’d never heard the haunting tones before, outside of the movies. It usually meant something bad was about to happen. I also had no idea how it was functional if this was an EMP, but it might have its motors underground, or even hand cranked. Whatever. Doesn’t matter now.

  “I’m supposed to go to my mom’s today, so I have to call her.” Carmen gave us a curt nod, then hurried out of my garage.

  Luke remained, seemingly frozen by the menacing noise.

  I had to keep him from panicking. “Hey, bud, let’s go back outside. Fresh air always helps me think.”

  There was no doubt in my mind. Power out. Phones out. Cars out. Florida had been hit by an EMP, and possibly the whole country had been affected. What I did in the next few minutes could mean life or death for me and ninety-five percent of those around me.

  It was time to test what I’d learned reading all those books.

  CHAPTER 2

  The warning sirens wailed over our subdivision, which brought out a few more of my neighbors. The attractive soccer mom next door stood by her brick-pillar mailbox at the end of the driveway, looking up in the sky. A gray-haired lady in the fourth house down the street stood at the curb, too. Both had to be wondering what the hell was going on.

  Standing outside my garage with Luke, I reflected on my books. I couldn’t remember how many stories I’d read where the people were oblivious to the most basic clues about a disaster. There was no way in hell I’d let myself become one of those idiots. Logic said I was dealing with an EMP strike so I had to act like it. With that goal in mind, I waved my next-door neighbor over.

  Once she saw me, she hurried into the street and came up my driveway, waving nervously. She had to speak in a loud voice to be heard over the din. “Hi! What’s the deal with those sirens?”

  “Not entirely sure,” I lied so that I didn’t start a panic. “All the power is out on our street, though, and the vehicles aren’t working, either. Is your phone dead, by chance?”

  She pulled a pink-cased phone from her back pocket. While she glanced at it, I noted she was dressed as if about to go to a business meeting. She wore low black heels, gray slacks, a thick black belt, and a cream-colored dress shirt. Her straight blonde hair was layered in a fancy way as it bracketed her face; the longest locks flowed to an even cut at her shoulder blades as if she’d recently been to the salon. Her makeup, expensive watch, and tasteful stud earrings completed her look.

  The woman tilted her phone toward me. “It’s dead, but I know it was charged this morning. My daughter goes to daycare on Monday and Tuesday, so I need to have this with me in case they call.”

  I could tell she was worried sick. Having a kid would probably make the sirens and confusion feel a lot worse, so I held out my hand to be comforting.

  “I’m Frank Douglas. This is Luke, our neighbor from the two-story over there.” I pointed to Luke’s home, which was almost as large as the frat house on the other side of the street, but without any of the palm trees or sports cars. His place did have four of those pink flamingo yard decorations, making it more stereotypical Florida and less Hollywood party pad.

  “I’m Penelope O’Rourke, but you can call me Penny. Nice to meet you Frank… and Luke.” She gave us both quick handshakes, “So, we have sirens, a power outage, and those damned planes flying overhead. Do I need to get my daughter?”

  “Hold that thought,” I replied.

  I was going to be asked the same questions over and over, so I figured it would be better to answer everyone on the cul-de-sac’s questions at once. The woman far down the street was kind of looking in our direction, so I waved my arms to get her attention and then motioned for her to walk to us.

  “Guys, let’s go to the park benches to talk,” I suggested.

  I led them to the middle of the circle, which acted as neutral ground for all our homes. I briefly considered running over and inviting Carmen, but there was no way she didn’t know we were outside. Whatever she was doing, I’d respect her privacy.

  We arrived at about the same time as our neighbor coming from the other side. The gray-haired woman was a little on the heavy side and older than me, probably around sixty. Her short hair seemed unflattering for her body type, and her frown did nothing to brighten her arrival. In fact, the lady stood outside the meeting area, as if afraid to get too close.

  “Hi. I’m Frank. This is Luke. She’s Penny.” I made it clear I was talking to the woman. “You can come over and join us.”

  “My name’s Evelyn.” The newcomer stepped a little way into the grass, but left a large gap between us. “I’m waiting for my husband to get back.” She checked over her shoulder as if the guy might show up at any second.

  “Glad you were able to get out,” I said over the siren wails. “I take it your power isn’t working?”

  “Nothing is,” She shrugged. “I tried calling Ben to get his help with the lights, but my landline doesn’t have a dial tone right now. I really need him to call me so I can tell him to get back home.”

  Evelyn’s attire was closer to a homeless person than an upper-middle-class Florida neighborhood like ours. Her oversized white blouse was dotted with faded flowers and it sagged below her hi
ps. Clown heads poked off the ends of her purple fuzzy slippers, but they were dirty and matted, as if she seldom took them off. Her black stretch pants had a long rip in the fabric of one leg. Taken together, she didn’t look like the kind of person who left the house much.

  “Thanks for coming up here, Evelyn. The three of us were about to talk through what all of this means, and it’s good you’re here.” I couldn’t get too graphic, like I’d done back in my garage. I had to be more thoughtful about what I said. At the same time, if we were in an EMP, I couldn’t be too easy going about it, either. “My best guess is it looks like maybe there’s been some kind of accident. Perhaps a military plane got shot down, or an EMP went off. EMP means an electromagnetic pulse is shot across the sky, knocking out power, cars, and things with computer chips, like our phones.”

  “Oh my,” Evelyn said, covering her mouth.

  “Try not to worry,” I counseled. “We really don’t know what it was, but there are some very simple steps we can take in a disaster like this one.” I stopped for a moment because the sirens seemed to get louder, as if the wind blew the constant screams directly onto our street. That noise gave me an idea of what the first step for them needed to be.

  “Like what?” Penny pressed when I didn’t continue right away.

  “Yeah, Frank,” Luke added. “I’ll do whatever I can to prepare.”

  “Well, I’m sure you all have a few things stored away in case of a hurricane, right? Why don’t we all go back home really quick, take a mental inventory of what you have, then we’ll meet back here in ten or fifteen minutes.”

  The sirens continued to annoy me. Sending my neighbors away for a few minutes was the perfect excuse to get away from those horns. It was important to get them thinking about what was inside their homes in terms of survival, but it would also help save our voices from all the shouting. We could talk like regular people when the sirens stopped.

  “What are we looking for?” Penny asked. “My husband keeps a bunch of stuff for emergencies, but I’m not sure where it all is or even what it is. We’ve only lived here for a few months. I’ve never looked at it.”

  “Just look for the basics. How much water do you have? How many days of food do you think your family has? Maybe see if you have flashlights handy. Stuff like that. Let’s pretend a hurricane is coming in an hour and we can’t flee to Atlanta. Would you be ready for it?”

  Delaying our in-person meeting for a few minutes would also give the others a chance to come out of their houses. I think the guy who lived to the right of my place was a retired police officer. He’d probably have a ring-bound manual with the town’s emergency management steps associated with an EMP.

  “We good?” I asked, and the three of them nodded in sync.

  I clapped to give us a sense of breaking from a football huddle, then I headed for my garage. I was anxious to do my own check of the resources I’d brought with me on that first trip from Chicago. I’d only been able to pull a small U-Haul trailer behind me, and I’d dumped most of that load in my third bay. However, I’d seen so many boxes the last few months I couldn’t readily recall the details of each one.

  Food and water were the priorities. I left the garage for now and headed for the kitchen. The cupboard was sparse, but I’d bought a couple 24-packs of canned chili, which formed the centerpiece of my bachelor menu. There were loose cans of spaghetti, ravioli, and soup, too. Basically, I’d stocked up on a few weeks of canned goods that didn’t require any baking or cooking, since most of my pots and cookware were on the moving truck.

  As for drinking, I’d purchased ten gallon-cartons of spring water, since I wasn’t used to the sulfur and rotten swamp taste of the municipal water in Florida. Those sat on the floor of the closet, toward the back. A full one chilled in the fridge, though without power it would soon be warm again. I also had a full case of beer in the fridge, minus the bottle I’d taken to the patio to toast the first ten minutes of my retirement.

  The last thing I checked was in a hallway utility closet near the entrance to the garage. When I opened the door and turned on the light, I saw the little sink, the empty space where my meat freezer was destined to go, and a trio of school lockers bolted against the back wall. They were three pieces of gear I definitely didn’t trust to the movers.

  “Better to have and not need,” I said with pride as I approached.

  I opened the locker on the left, revealing one-third of my gun collection. Boxes of ammunition were neatly stacked in the lower half. I liked to have plenty for each caliber of weapon in my inventory. If I had to guess, I probably had ten thousand rounds stuffed in there, but two thousand of that was 22-caliber, which would all fit inside a kid’s lunchbox. However, I’d opened the cabinet for what was on the top shelf: an assortment of semi-automatic pistols and revolvers, many sitting in vertical slots to keep them upright.

  I picked up the Springfield XD-S sitting alone toward the front. The small black semi-automatic pistol was inside its stealthy holster already, so I slid them both into my waistband at the four o’clock position, ensuring my loose Hawaiian shirt draped over it. I picked up a spare 9-round mag, already loaded, and dropped it in my front pocket. I was never able to get a concealed carry license back in the legal nightmare state of Illinois, but it never stopped me from having a weapon locked in my truck. Here in Florida, where the laws were more friendly to gun owners, I had planned to get licensed to carry, but I hadn’t been able to squeeze it in yet. However, these were special circumstances; law or no law, I needed to be armed at all times.

  Returning to the front door, backed by almost twenty rounds of 9-millimeter ammo, the feeling of relief was amplified by what I’d found in the kitchen. Sure, I didn’t yet have the year’s supply of food and water I’d intended to buy, and I didn’t yet have enough ammo to outfit an Army division like I wanted, but I did have the foresight to gather the basics. Water. Food. Protection.

  “Thank God I prepared the bare minimum.”

  In my first quick garage meeting with Luke and Carmen, they had listened to me like I knew what I was talking about, lessons I’d picked up reading so many books about EMPs and world disasters. Using that same knowledge while out on the circle, I’d been quick to point out the need to check supplies of food and water to Luke, Penny, and Evelyn. None of them would listen to me again if I went outside and told them I needed to borrow their food and water, since I’d neglected to prepare those things myself, so I was relieved I’d avoided such a fate.

  The sirens finally spun down, signaling it was time to get back to my neighbors.

  Before returning to the circle, I noted the piles of boxes in the third bay of my garage. There wasn’t time to get into them. Later, I could rip them apart and itemize everything. I knew some camping gear was in there, as were a few fishing poles and a tackle box, plus I had at least one basic first-aid kit. My toolbox, filled with a small selection of most-used hand tools, sat on the otherwise empty workbench. Again, it wasn’t a lot, but it wasn’t nothing, either. That’s what mattered in an emergency.

  Briefly, I wished I still had my dad’s ’78 Ford pickup. I’d driven that until I bought my ’95. If it hadn’t already been scrapped in a junkyard, it would’ve probably survived the EMP blast since it had no computer chips to burn out. Older vehicles would become highly sought after if this became a long-term event.

  I hoped this wasn’t a long-term event.

  I hurried out of my garage and went down the long driveway. Penny was already in the meeting place, and Luke and Evelyn were making their way over.

  I acknowledged Penny as I got there.

  “It’s a good thing I love canned chili. It’s what I’m going to be eating for the next few weeks.”

  “You think it’s going to be that long?” Her buoyant blue eyes turned into dark wells.

  “Well, to be fair, I would have been eating that whether we had an EMP or not. I’m not much of a cook.” I grinned, hoping to disarm her anxiety.

  Fortun
ately, Luke walked up a moment later.

  “What did you find?” I hastily asked him.

  “I have two hungry teens, so no matter what we buy, those kids clean out our pantry almost every week. My wife has a huge shopping list hanging on the refrigerator, and I was supposed to go to the store this past weekend, but I got tied-up with other things. Okay, I was at my daughter’s track meet...” He seemed to notice Penny and I waiting for his final answer. “That’s a long-winded way of saying at this moment we don’t have much in the way of extra food, I’m afraid.”

  Evelyn arrived, winded, hearing the tail-end of Luke’s report.

  “Us, either. Ben says he likes to catch his meals instead of spending hard-earned money on food. He’s out on his boat right now, fishing for our dinner.” She huffed. “I’ll never understand that man. We have more than enough saved up to be able to afford to eat out every night if we wanted, yet he prefers to disappear on his boat all day.”

  Luke and I shared a quick glance. I didn’t know what was on his mind, but I could take a wag as to why Evelyn’s husband wouldn’t be around much. After thirty years in the trucking industry, whose business model was to take drivers away from their spouses for weeks at a time, I had a sixth sense for rocky marriages.

  I didn’t want to be rude to the poor woman, so I spoke about what I’d found instead.

  “I have a few weeks of food. A bit less on water, but we live next to a freshwater canal, so that shouldn’t be a problem.” I didn’t mention the guns, for now, since the very mention of them could send Evelyn running. For all I knew, it might also offend Luke or Penny. I needed to get to know them all a bit better before bringing up the subject of firearms.

  Finally, I returned to Penny, hoping she’d have better news.

  “What about you, ma’am?” I asked.

  “We’re fine on food and water.” She spoke in a monotone, as if saying the words but thinking about something else. “My husband works up in Tampa. He provided me and my daughter with everything we could ever need. We’ll be fine for a long while, I think. Were you really joking about this going on for weeks?”