Officer Of The Watch: Blackout Volume 1 (2 page)

The only sound in the room was Tom noisily losing his breakfast. 

Ch. 3

Star Light, Star Bright

Eric lay back on his sleeping bag, watching the sky overhead.  A few meteors still flashed through the waning darkness, but it wasn’t nearly as spectacular as it had been a few hours earlier.  Just past midnight, the Perseids had peaked with nearly a hundred meteors an hour streaking through the starlit sky overhead.  There had been so many bright meteors flashing overhead that it had been hard to decide where to look.  As the night wore on, the flood of falling stars had slowly thinned out.  Now, with the edges of the horizon off to the East beginning to glow that unique shade of grayish-purple that the night sky gets just before dawn, the meteors overhead were getting dimmer and more difficult to pick out.

Christina shifted position and mumbled something in her sleep, and Eric smiled.  She had her head on his chest, one arm draped loosely over his stomach.  Her sleeping bag covered both of them and had helped keep off some of the dew.  Eric leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.  Christina smiled and blinked up at him a few times, half-heartedly trying to wake up.

“If you wake up now,” Eric whispered in her ear, “we can watch the sunrise before we have to hike back down to the camp.”

Christina smiled and nodded, then stretched her arms and legs as far as they would go.  Eric smiled to himself, reminded of how her fat-bellied tabby cat back home would do the same maneuver every morning.  Christina shifted her position and scooted into a sitting position with her back pressed against Eric’s chest.  He wrapped his arms around her and they watched the last few meteorites flashing through the sky.

Eric’s phone began buzzing, and he pulled it out to shut off the alarm.  Just then, there was a bright flash of light from the south side of Crowder’s mountain that momentarily cast the entire plain below them in what looked nearly as bright as daylight.  A heart beat later there was another flash off to the north east.  The light was bright enough that Eric and Christina both brought hands up to shield their eyes momentarily.

Eric cursed as the cell phone in his hand suddenly became nearly hot enough to blister his fingers.  The phone made a sizzling sound similar to frying bacon as he dropped it to the grass, and a thin plume of grayish blue smoke rose from it.  Eric cursed again and stuck his fingertips in his mouth, hoping they wouldn’t blister.

“Was that lightening?” Christina asked with a voice sharp and on edge.  Her eyes were wide open now, and she was a bit breathless as she looked around, waiting for the thunder they both knew should have hit by now.

“I don’t think so, Tina,” Eric replied, shaking his head.  He picked up his phone, which was still warm and examined the shattered touch screen.  He tried to power it up, but nothing happened.  Puzzled, he said, “Whatever it was, it completely fried my phone.”

“I never heard of light—look!” Tina suddenly exclaimed, pointing down the mountain.

Eric turned and watched as one by one whole sections of the power grid went completely dark below them.  As each new sector blacked out, there were flashes and sparks from transformers blowing.  The two watched as the power outages rolled from horizon to horizon.  Even the towering Charlotte skyline in the distance went completely black.  Along the tracks of transmission lines that ran through the forested countryside, there were pockets of flickering light and smoke to mark where high-voltage switching stations had once stood.  The huge transformers used to handle those massive current and voltage loads began exploding in flashes of fire and sparks.

Eric caught a glimpse of bright yellow light to the northwest and pointed it out to Christina.  “Look,” he said, “I think that’s the Coalogix power plant.  Something doesn’t look right, though.  I’ve never—”Eric cut off midsentence as a huge, bright fireball rose from the power plant. 

Several seconds later, the deep and resonating thump of the explosion’s pressure wave hit them.  Even this far away, the shockwave was strong enough to rattle Eric’s chest and it made Christina’s eyes water.  As Eric watched, the plant underwent two more small explosions, and then a final blast that dwarfed the others lit up the entire western horizon briefly.  The pressure wave from the last detonation was strong enough to make their ears ring and pop.

“Eric, what’s happening?” Christina asked, tears streaming down her face as she clung to him, trembling.

Before Eric could answer, there was another bright flash off to the East, and a fireball rose from the woods a few miles away.  The now familiar boom of a distant explosion rolled over them at just about the same instant that another explosion lit up the sky a few miles to the north.  More explosions were happening all around them at seemingly random intervals and in random directions.

“Are they bombs?” Christina asked, bordering on hysteria. 

Eric shook his head and pulled Christina close, burying her face in his shoulder.  He watched numbly as the pre-dawn light silhouetted a huge shape as it plummeted towards the ground.  A few seconds later, a new fireball rose into the sky.

“No,” he whispered softly, “they’re airplanes.”

Ch. 4

The Morning Brief

Captain Joe Tillman stood at one end of the seven foot long conference table.  At the other end of the room was a one hundred and twenty inch panel screen divided into six sections.  In each section was the image of a high ranking official or a top military officer.  Behind Joe, the entire wall served as large projector screen which currently showed the recorded satellite feed of New York Harbor as the missile streaked up from the harbor and the nuclear weapon that detonated at  ground level. 

Once the video played twice, Joe clicked the projector and the image shifted to a slide with bullet points outlining the known information.  Unfortunately, there were more questions than facts.

"We know that four weapons were detonated at exactly 200km altitude," Joe continued.  "We know the high-altitude EMP bursts have caused significant damage to electronics and to the power grid.  Our systems were protected because we use all optical transmission lines with hardened electronics on the repeater stations.  We're not sure at this time what the long term impact will be, and we can reasonably expect failures on the diesel backup generators from faults introduced in the wire windings.  As it stands, we have limited power available at critical points, but communications have been slow and intermittent with domestic and international bases."

"What kind of exposure are we looking at overseas?"  Admiral Fitzsimmons, the Chief of Naval Operations asked as the blood drained from his face.

"As I said, Admiral, our communications overseas have been intermittent at best," Joe replied.  "No current reports of attacks as of yet.  All staff members have been placed on the highest alert readiness status.  Per our established disaster protocol, there should be active combat air patrols over all foreign bases at this point."

"Who hit us, and how did they get in without our knowledge?"  Defense Secretary Davisson asked.

"I'm sorry, Mr.  Secretary, but we just don't know yet," Joe admitted.  "There are several front runners, but we'll need spectral analysis of the radioactive material to determine where the bombs were manufactured, and the only place we know that is available is GZ1."

"You mean New York," Secretary Davisson interrupted, his voice hard and cold.

"Yes, Mr.  Secretary," Joe continued without breaking stride, "and as of yet, we don't have the means to coordinate that kind of search and recovery effort."

General Alexander, Army Chief of Staff, cleared his throat and asked, "Is this thing over yet, or are we expecting another hit?"

Joe shook his head.  "General, I don't know how to answer that.  We haven't been able to re-establish communications with half of our bases here in the U.S.  NORAD's comm. link is flashing in and out, and we have intermittent radar coverage at best.  Most of the info we're getting is from our secure satellite links.  From those images, it looks like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami were all three hit with ground level nukes.  There are clear indications of widespread fires over most of the area our geo-synch satellites cover.  Beyond that, we just don't know.  We're gathering data currently and as soon as we have more information we'll deliver it.  That process is slow given the current state of the power grid and the lack of any reliable communications."

Secretary Davisson sighed heavily. "So basically, what you're telling us is that we don't know how bad it really is, we don't know who hit us, and we don't even know if it's really over yet? What do you suggest we tell the President, Captain?"

"Pray," Joe said when nothing else would come to him.

"Thank you, Captain Tillman," Secretary Davisson said in a strained voice.  "Keep at things on your end, and we'll continue working at it from ours.  I want another brief in 2 hours, and keep us updated as new information becomes available.  Our first priority has to be establishing communications outside the secure optic network.  Get on it, Captain.  Dismissed."

One by one, the panels on the screen went dark.

Ch. 5

Morning After

Eric rolled Christina’s sleeping bag up and tied it as tightly as he could then set it off to the side.  As gently as he could, he moved Christina off his sleeping bag and onto a nearby boulder.  Christina moved woodenly, staring off into space without really acknowledging his presence.  Tears streamed silently down her cheeks.  Eric rolled up the remaining sleeping bag and then tied both of them to the frame of his hiking pack.  After doing a quick sweep of the area to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind, Eric shouldered his pack and grabbed their hiking sticks.

Eric knelt in front of Christina and handed her stick to her, patting her knee, and said, “Tina, the sun is coming up and we need to go.  We’ve got to get down off the mountain and get back to camp, okay?”

A brief look of confusion passed across Christina’s face, and then her eyes seemed to focus on Eric for the first time as she blinked. 

“But what about the people?” Christina asked in a whisper.

“What people, Tina?” Eric asked, confused.

“The people,” Christina repeated with heat in her voice.  “The people on the planes! The planes crashed, but they had people on them.  What about the people?”

Eric took a deep, slow breath through his nose and had to swallow past a hard lump his throat to answer.  “I don’t know, Tina.  But we can’t worry about that right now.  We have to focus on getting down off this mountain, okay? I’ll help you the whole way, but we have to go.  One step at a time, and we’ll get it done.  Once we’re back in camp, then we can worry about other stuff.”

Christina nodded slowly, and Eric helped her to her feet.  Carefully, the two made their way down the winding trail and off Crowder’s Mountain.  The ‘mountain’ was barely worth the name at hardly more than 1600 feet elevation.  Still, compared to the surrounding flood plains, it was a towering giant.  The trail wasn’t difficult, but it was deep in shadows for the most part, and there were stones and roots exposed enough to trip over if you weren’t cautious.  Christina stumbled several times, but Eric managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

It was a little more than a mile down Pinnacle Trail from the peak to where the side trail that led to their campground split off from the main path.  After nearly an hour of hiking, the sun was well up, and Eric and Christina were both soaked with sweat.  As they approached the sign marking the camp trail, a uniformed park ranger stepped out of the brush with his gun drawn.

“DOWN!” The ranger yelled, pointing with his free hand at the ground, “DOWN! On your knees, hands where I can see them!”

Eric froze and Christina screamed collapsed in a sobbing heap.  The ranger blinked, not quite sure what to do.  Thankfully, a second ranger came running up the trail from the direction of the park office.  She looked a bit older and had several stripes of rank on her uniform.

“Jesus, Mike,” the woman said.  “Put your damned gun away! Can’t you see these people are terrified?”

Mike hesitated for a moment, then holstered his pistol as the woman walked the rest of the way to them.

“Look, Claire,” Mike said, “they were on the trails after hours, and we don’t know who they are.”

“Did you ask?” Claire demanded with her fists on her hips.  Mike didn’t say anything, and Claire shook her head.  “I didn’t think so.  You folks camping up here?”

Eric nodded and pointed towards the campgrounds.  “Our stuff is back in the camp area.  We just went up last night to watch the meteors.”

Claire nodded and knelt in front of the still sobbing Christine.  She took Christine’s hands in her own and squeezed them reassuringly.  “It’s okay, honey,” the matronly ranger said in a soothing voice.  “Mike’s just scared and nervous.  I guess we all are.  You are safe, okay? No need to cry now, honey.  What’s your name?”

Christina tried to answer, but she was crying too hard to get words out, so Eric said, “I’m Eric, and that’s Christina, my fiancée.”

Claire put her arms around Christina and held her as the younger woman shook and cried.  Mike mumbled something under his breath, then turned and walked back down the trail towards the park office.  Eric wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he stood and waited in the uncomfortable silence.  After a few long minutes, Christina finally cried herself out and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.  Sobs still shook her shoulders, but she had settled down enough for Claire to help her to her feet.

“Eric, you take Christina here back to camp,” Claire said, patting Christina on the back reassuringly.  “Get her some good cool water from the pump, and you two get some rest.”

Claire started to turn away, but Eric reached out, caught her sleeve, and stopped her. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.  “We saw… Well, we saw a lot of things.  Have you heard anything at all? Any news?”

Claire patted Eric’s hand as she gently unclenched his fingers.  “We’re trying to find out as much as we can.  As soon as we hear something, we’ll let you know.  For right now, though, we’re asking everyone to stay close to their campsite so we know where everyone is for safety reasons.  Y’all just concentrate on getting something to eat, staying hydrated, and getting some rest.  We’ll take care of everything else, okay?”