The Pulse: An EMP Prepper Survival Tale (10 page)

"Janice, we need to do what we've been
planning for all this time. We have to take advantage of the
bug-out house. We're not going to stay there forever, but it's
going to be safer in the long run. Think about it. The longer we
wait, the more dangerous it's going to get out there. The more
dangerous it gets, the more unlikely our chances are to ever make
it to Milledgeville." Mark paused. “Listen," he said, leaning in
closer. "I talked to James. Milledgeville's almost two hundred
miles away, and they're going through the exact same thing we are.
We have no idea the scope of this."

Janice nodded but still couldn't feel the
same urgency Mark did about leaving. "If we waited a couple of
days, we could then leave late at night if we had to. It would be
safer out. Fewer people, fewer everything."

"We can't sit here and wait for them to come
for us. You saw how many people chased after my car in your parking
lot. That was, what, a few hours after the attack? How do you think
those same people are going to react after three days with no
power?"

Janice said nothing as Mark placed his hands
on her arms and looked into her eyes. "I don't want to do anything
that you don't want to do. Just consider it. Think about what I'm
saying. I'm only concerned about our safety. You're my wife, and I
can't do any of this without you."

Janice felt her eyes water but tried to not
to get more emotional. Everything she had dreaded was happening at
a frightening speed. She looked into Mark's eyes and tried to
arrive to an answer.

Chapter Nine

Pandemonium in Atlanta

Monday, September 21, 2025 8:45 A.M. Atlanta, GA

Interstate 75 was a nightmare, typical of
Monday morning rush-hour traffic. Terrance had left his house a
little later than planned and was on his way to Dearborn, Michigan,
in his eighteen wheeler semi. As of now, the forty-foot trailer
hitched to his glossy red cab was empty. Thirty pallets of copper
wire awaited him in South Carolina then on to the Wolverine state.
By his own estimate, he was an hour behind schedule, which, in the
trucking business, was not a good thing. He knew I-75 would be a
pain, it always was. Once he found himself in the thick of it, he
tried to think of alternative routes, but few existed. He called
other drivers on CB radio, asking them how far the gridlock
extended. The news wasn’t good, and Terrance soon found there was
no way around it. Traffic was going to be crawling no matter which
route he took. He only had himself to blame for any delays. If only
he’d gotten out of bed earlier and hit the road.

He thought back to that morning. The cool
bedroom, the soft pillow tucked under his head. It was still dark
outside, and then the alarm clock buzzed. "Ten years," Terrance
muttered under his breath as he finally sat up in bed that morning.
"Ten more years and I'm done." He had a lot of years on the road.
Could he do ten more?

Terrance felt the absence of his family every
time he left home. He believed, over the years, that he would get
used to it. Having a steady job, after all, wasn't something to
take for granted. Even with Christina working, they were making
just enough to get by.

His boys were in high school now, and all
Terrance and Christina asked and hoped for was that they graduated.
If they could make it that far, their parents would feel they had
done their jobs. Terrance stared ahead, squinting against the
rising sun. The light was blinding, even with his sunglasses on.
Traffic clogged the road as far as he could see. "Dammit," he said,
downshifting to a crawl. Terrance hated to be late, especially when
it involved his haul, but had little control of the situation. He
held the CB microphone in his hand and spoke, hoping someone was
listening.

"Any way around this cluster in the Big
A?"

A static-filled voice replied over the radio.
"Clears up in about six miles," the man said.

"10-4,"Terrance said back, "You see the 85
exit up there, Big Boss?"

"That's a go," the man responded.

"Good thing. Got to get to the Carolinas
before noon."

"What's your 99?" the man asked.

"Dearborn, Michigan."

"Good luck with that, buddy," the man
said.

"Thank ya'much," Terrance said as he hung the
microphone up.

He had left the house later planned. Just a
few more moments with the wife and kids had cost him dearly, but
his next three weeks on the road would be lonely. In the end, he
thought it was worth it. Terrance decided to crank up the radio and
listen to some old-school R&B, which only made him think of
Christina. He tipped the bill of his hat down to deflect the sun's
blinding beams and took a sip from his large, steaming coffee cup.
He’d picked it up at the 7-Eleven where he had fueled up before
starting the journey.

The coffee tasted good, and it looked to be a
nice, ordinary day, when suddenly, everything changed. Suddenly a
bright flash streaked across the sky like some kind of
all-encompassing lightning bolt. Following the flash, Terrance
noticed silence on the radio. His switched to his CB radio, and
heard nothing, not even static. His engine sputtered out, and a
thin, wavy line of smoke rose from under the hood. Terrance stomped
on the gas pedal, but the truck didn't respond. He shifted to
neutral and coasted a few feet before applying his brakes to avoid
hitting the station wagon in front of him. He shifted into park
with a quick jerk of the stick and then applied the parking
brake.

"Shit," Terrance said, removing his hat and
wiping a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. His truck had died,
and he wasn't even out of Atlanta yet. Of all the unpredictable
bullshit in the world, he hadn't expected it. Maybe it was a blown
gasket. Maybe the battery had failed. Something, somehow, had
triggered a shutdown. In all his time driving, Terrance had never
experienced a complete and random shutdown in the middle of the
Interstate. He gripped the wheel with one hand and turned the key
repeatedly in the other. He heard mechanical clicking noises from
the steering column and little else. Then he heard nothing. The
truck was deader than a twelve-hour roadkill.

He shifted from neutral to park to reverse
and tried to start the truck in each gear. He was afraid for a
moment that he was holding up traffic behind him and pushed the
hazard light button on his dashboards. The lights didn't work
anymore than the radio or anything else inside or outside the truck
worked.

Terrance glanced into his side mirror, and
then looked ahead. Traffic had stopped in both directions. And
overhead traffic sign which had flashed “Heavy Congestion Ahead” a
moment before was completely blank. Every car was frozen in time.
Terrance rolled down his window manually and looked outside. A
motorcyclist passed slowly in between lanes, gripping his
handlebars to maintain balance as he doggedly pushed the bike
forward with his legs. Terrance watched as the cyclist inched down
the interstate. Drivers in cars around his truck appeared riddled
with confusion.

Hundreds of engines had shut down in unison.
Drivers were left at the mercy of their once reliable vehicles,
stopped dead. It was only morning, and already hot. The weather
forecast predicted peaks in the high nineties throughout most of
the day. Terrance saw no coincidence in any of it, and believed
something major had just happened.

To get a clearer picture, he decided to get
out of the truck. No matter what he did, or how many times he
turned the key, the truck wouldn't restart. Terrance climbed down
the steps onto the pavement of the interstate, and slowly walked in
between cars on the five-lane highway to see if was any better up
ahead. Other drivers and passengers had the same idea. Hoods
opened, children cried, frustrated drivers cursed under their
breath, and all the while, Terrance observed everything, trying to
get an idea of what was happening.

"Just stay in the car, Linda, I'll handle
this," a nearby man said. He sounded confident but looked totally
dumbfounded as he examined the engine of his white four-door Buick
Regal. His wife ducked back inside and sat anxiously watching from
the passenger's seat.

"Son of a bitch!" another man shouted as he
fiddled with the connectors of his car battery.

"What the hell is going on?" A woman asked a
girl who was standing next to her. They stared at their smart
phones in disbelief.

"My phone's out," a man said.

"Mine too," another responded.

Terrance hustled some distance down the road
before he stopped and turned around. He reached into his pocket to
pull out his older model flip phone. He was a man who still used
road maps. Even his modest flip phone was completely dead, like the
other more recent models of the people around him. He held down the
power button, waiting for the screen to flash on, but nothing
happened. He opened it from the back, took out the battery, then
placed it back in. No results.

"Ma'am, is your cell phone working?" Terrance
asked a sharply-dressed woman who was leaning against the side of
her Volvo and wearing an exhausted expression. Her eyes looked away
from her phone and up to him for only a second.

"I've got nothing," she said.

"No bars?" Terrance asked.

She back looked at him with a hint of
annoyance. "No, I mean I can't even get the phone to come on, which
is totally crazy, because I just charged this thing this
morning."

"Thank you," Terrance said, walking back to
his truck. The simultaneous loss of vehicles and cell phones were
linked in some way he hadn't quite figured out yet. He had a
handheld two-way radio in his truck. It was the same one that he
had asked each member of his family to carry in case of
emergencies. If the radio still worked, it would be the first time
he had ever used it to contact them. The first time in which it had
been necessary.

“Can't be true,” Terrance thought, shaking
his head. “There's got to be another explanation.”

He suspected an EMP strike. It seemed
plausible. The morning's events had hit him as unexpectedly and
hard, just like everyone else around him. He climbed back into his
truck and searched the glove compartment for his handheld radio,
wrapped in layers of plastic and aluminum foil. The added
precaution was to ensure that the radio would function after such
an attack. He’d read about it on a prepper forum. To protect a
piece of electronics, they said, the item must be wrapped in a
non-conductive material. Again, Terrance had no way to know for
sure if the theory would work, but it had seemed worth the try. He
had placed the radio in a Ziploc bag and wrapped it in aluminum
foil. He then placed the wrapped radio in another Ziploc bag and,
again, wrapped it in aluminum foil. For the final step, he placed
the radio in a small brown paper bag and sealed it.

Terrance unwrapped the radio in anticipation,
and once exposed, he quickly switched it on by the turning the
volume knob. A red light came on, and static sounded through the
speaker. He felt a flash of happiness and relief and was genuinely
surprised to find that the radio had power. It was powered by four
AA lithium batteries. He hoped that his wife and children had taken
the same precaution and kept their handheld radios wrapped as
well.

The semi sat in the middle
of the highway, motionless, already an artifact in a sea of other
disabled vehicles that showed no indication of moving anytime soon
or possibly ever again. Terrance gathered the rest of his
belongings
—a
backpack with snacks, bottled water, some clothes, soaps and
other such supplies, some cash, and lastly, his snub nose .38
revolver. He closed the glossy red door of his prized semi-truck
and patted it gently. "Goodbye, Deborah," he said, while running
his hand across her side. They had spent the last ten years
together and had seen most of the better part of the entire
majestic USA. With his backpack slung over the shoulders of his
plaid shirt, Terrance walked down the highway, heading in the
direction from which he had just come. His only option was to get
back home and get his family together. He just hoped they had their
radios on them.

The extent of what was happening, how it
happened, and what was in store was not known by Terrance. He could
only speculate. As he moved at a brisk pace, every other commuter
on the road seemed engulfed in confusion. Some stood by their
vehicles staring into their hoods in desperate anticipation of
answers. Others paced, muttering under their breaths. Some, like
Terrance, abandoned their vehicles all together. Others sat in
their cars waiting for help that would never come. He came across a
station wagon, at least ten years old, and found an elderly woman
at the wheel, nearly passed out from the heat. Terrance lightly
knocked on the side of her car to get the woman's attention. Her
eyelids opened, and she glanced at him from behind the thick lens
of her vintage-framed glasses.

"Excuse me, ma'am, are you okay?" Terrance
asked.

"I..." she began.”I don't know. My car... it
just stopped. I don't know what to do."

Terrance opened the long, squeaky door with
care, so as not to alarm the woman. "Your car isn't going to start
again," he said. "You need to find yourself some shade and hydrate.
Here," he said, and swung his bag around and pulled out one of his
bottled waters and handed it to her.

The woman took the bottle and smiled. "Thank
you," she said.

"What's your name, ma'am?" Terrance
asked.

The woman thought for a minute, almost
confused for a second. She took a drink from the bottle then
answered. "My name is Maya," she said.

"Hi, I'm Terrance," he said, taking Maya's
arm. "Let's get you into some shade."

Maya was apprehensive about leaving. "But my
car. We can't just leave my car there. It's not safe."