The Pulse: An EMP Prepper Survival Tale (5 page)

Mark glanced at her hand and noticed a ring
on her finger, just like him. He was glad to know she was married.
They had something in common after all.

"Mine was pretty much the same. Though a
little more hectic. I've got a meeting later with some executives
from Nissan, and I spent all of Sunday working on my
presentation."

"That's crazy," Mark said, not sure what else
to say. He was no expert on the matter. "Nothing like a morning
meeting to mess up your Sunday," he added. He suddenly cringed,
aware of the comparison he had just made. Evelyn got right to the
point.

"The reason I asked you here today, Mark, is
to go over a few quick things. I felt it better to talk in a
relaxed environment, face to face."

He suddenly grew more nervous. Evelyn moved
in a bit. "I'd just like to say that we're very pleased with your
work performance so far. The office likes you, the customers like
you, and I've heard nothing but good things. To make six sales in a
matter of two weeks is extremely impressive as well."

Mark was confused but maintained eye contact
as she continued.

"The point is, we're happy with your work so
far, and I just wanted to let you know that. You've put in a lot of
hours and show quite a bit of dedication for someone who's only
been with us for two weeks." Evelyn paused. "Basically what I'm
saying is to keep up the good work."

"Well, thank you, Evelyn, thank you very
much," Mark said. He could breathe again, and felt that his
worrying had been for nothing.

"If there's any questions about the job or
about anything else, just let me know," Evelyn said.

Mark clasped his hands, thinking. "Um.
Nothing at the moment, I just want to thank you for the feedback.
I'm very happy to hear it."

She suddenly grew more serious. "Now I'm
going to give you some careful advice. I've worked for Nissan for
twenty years and have realized nothing happens overnight. Don't let
the past two weeks go to your head. You've been great, but I've
seen a lot of great ones crash and burn. Consistency is the
key."

Mark nodded in agreement. "Thanks for the
advice," he said.

"No problem,” she said, looking at her watch.
"Shit, it's 9:10. I'm sorry, Mark. I should have had us meet
earlier so we could talk more. I've got to get to that
meeting."

"That's all right," he said, taking another
sip of his latte. "I've enjoyed our talk."

"Me too, let's do this again sometime in a
couple of weeks and see where you're at." She grabbed her files,
rose from the stool, and stuffed them in her large, red leather
purse. "Sorry to leave so soon; see you in the office. And by all
means, stay and enjoy your coffee."

"No problem, thank you."

Evelyn smiled and nodded while attempting to
maneuver around the other tables. The lights in the coffee shop
then went dim, startling her. Mark perked up and looked around as
the lights came back on. Before he knew it, they flashed off again.
The entire store went dark. Daylight streamed through the curtains.
A brief moment of silence fell over the busy Barnie's crowd; then
everyone resumed their conversations. Mark waited and waited, but
the power didn't come back. Strange as it was, he thought it even
odder that every vehicle outside the coffee store was at a dead
stop.

Evelyn turned around to address Mark, with a
look of slight annoyance. "Perfect timing. At least we got our
coffee," she said. Mark got down from his stool and followed her.
They passed the busy counter. Three lines had formed, and a group
of people who had paid for their orders were waiting off to the
side. They made their way past several customers who just wanted
their coffee. The two female cashiers were offering apologies left
and right.

"I'm sorry everyone, our system is down.
Until we get the power back on, we can't fill no orders," Tanisha,
the cashier on the right, announced.

"But what about those of us who already
paid?" a skinny, bald man called out, waving his receipt in the
air. "You gonna give us refunds, or what?"

"Yeah!" a woman added.

"I want my money back," a man said.

Other disgruntled murmurs followed. The store
manager came from out back and asked for calm, but nobody wanted to
hear it.

Mark and Evelyn made it outside and were met
with the sight of complete gridlock on the main road. The Nissan
dealership was only a few miles up the street.

"What in the hell is going on here?" Evelyn
asked as she took off her reading glasses and replaced them with a
pair of Armani sunglasses from her designer purse.

Mark looked around. Not a single car was
moving. It was eerily quiet for a busy Monday morning. A few hawks
circled overhead, cawing as if issuing a warning the people below.
Evelyn hurried to her car, and Mark followed. Her high heels
clicked on the pavement with each step as she rushed ahead and dug
into the purse to retrieve her keys. Two cars sat in the middle of
Barnie's parking lot exit motionless. The drivers stubbornly
remained at the wheel, turning their ignition keys over and over.
Flustered, Evelyn entered her Nissan and closed the door. Mark
remained in the middle of the parking lot absorbing the stillness
of everything. Customers shuffled out of Barnie's in a daze,
squinting at the sun. The two stubborn drivers got out of their
vehicles and walked around them in utter confusion.

From the driver's seat, Evelyn opened her car
door. "Just wonderful, my car won't start," she called.

Mark turned to her. It was no routine power
outage around him. There was something more. Something had disabled
every vehicle in the parking lot and, from the looks of it, every
vehicle on the road.

"What happened when you turned the key?" Mark
asked.

Evelyn didn't answer; she was too busy
digging around in her purse. She pulled a slim iPhone out and
swiped its screen with her manicured red fingernails. Nothing
happened. The screen was blank, there was no power.

She noticed him looking at her. "I'm calling
a cab; I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm already late for
the meeting." She stared at her phone’s powerless screen as if
offended. She held down the power switch and got nothing. "Can't
this thing hold a charge for more than five minutes!" she said with
growing desperation. "Argh!" she added. "What a morning."

Mark approached her car, trying to stay
clear-headed. The Barnie's crowd assembled back to their vehicles
and was met with the same fate. None of their engines would
start.

"Why don't you pop the hood?" Mark suggested.
She nodded back, leaned down and pulled the hood release. "It's
probably the battery," she replied. "Maybe I left my headlights
on."

Mark walked over to the
front of car, and stood over the engine, not knowing where to
start. He tried to put the pieces together. The entire scenario he
was witnessing seemed familiar. He'd read books about it, science
fiction dystopia books detailing a massive strike against every
electrical
circuit—from
a network server down to a clock radio. Such destruction was
initiated by a magnetic pulse with voltage so enormous it caused a
blowout in all things electronic. If something ran on an electronic
chip of any kind, which most things
—then
it was toast. Too many signals
alerted him to something much more significant.

"What do you see?" Evelyn called from the
driver's seat. She gripped the wheel shaking it. Her chances of
making it to the meeting in time seemed unlikely with each passing
minute." To Mark, nothing in the engine looked out of the ordinary.
The car battery was connected at both ends. Everything was intact.
Nothing was burnt, fried, or exploded. Mark held his hand over the
engine and felt slight warmth but again, nothing unusual.

"Everything looks normal," Mark answered.
"Try it again."

Evelyn turned the key again. There was no
click or spark. "Nothing," she said. "Dammit!"

Mark left her hood open and squeezed back
through the cars. "I don't know what to tell you, Evelyn. I'll try
my car."

"Please do," she said looking up in
desperation. "I'm already late for my meeting."

His blue Cavalier was waiting for him, but
provided no answers. He turned the key as Evelyn stood nearby
tapping her heel on the ground nervously. The Cavalier was dead.
Instead of the dashboard lights coming on or the A/C kicking in,
his car was no better than any of the other useless hunks of metal
now littering on the highway. He didn't want to admit it, but he
could only make one reasonable assumption: an EMP had been launched
against the city.

"Nothing?" Evelyn asked in surprise as Mark
climbed out of his car. "What's going on? Did someone mess with our
engines? Gangs maybe? What kind of sick joke is this?" She was
frantic and rambling to herself, and Mark tried to approach her
with calm.

"Evelyn, this was no accident. And I don't
think it's simple vandalism either. This could be a coordinated
attack. It would explain the power going out at Barnie's. Your
phone not working. Our cars not starting."

"What are you talking about?" she asked in
disbelief while fishing for her phone again.

"I'm talking about an Electronic Magnetic
Pulse. An EMP. If someone launched one as a nuclear strike, it
would disable everything that uses circuits or computer chips. Our
power grids, communications, and mobility would be no more. This is
some serious shit."

Evelyn stared at him through her sunglasses
with serious doubt. "How could such a thing happen? It's not
possible." She pulled out her cell phone and swiped the screen.
"I'm calling a tow truck. I don't want to leave my car here with
hoodlums running all over the place."

Mark looked around and saw mass confusion in
the parking lot. Agitated people stood beside their cars, trying to
get their phones to work.

"Calling a tow truck might be a problem. If
the cell towers are out, you're not going to get anything out of
that phone." Mark pulled his phone from his pocket to verify.
Normally the screen displayed the date, time, and weather. It was
as if his phone had shut off. There was nothing but a blank
screen.

"This is ridiculous," Evelyn said. She held
the power button on the phone with her thumb, and became lost in a
cycle of frustration and helplessness.

"You might have better luck walking to work
at this point," Mark said, gaining her attention.

"I don't know," she said. "In these
heels?"

Mark wasn't sure what to
tell her. She was his boss, after all. In the event of an EMP, he
knew that he had to get home to Janice. That was first. A long-term
scenario of an EMP was predicted as "catastrophic" by the very
commission who authored the study he had read a few years back. It
would take weeks, perhaps months, but sooner or later things would
reach a breaking point. People would grow desperate as necessities
dwindled. Mark didn't want to think of how bad things would get
after that. Survival for him and Janice was about taking action
while things were still normal.
Before
they fell apart. He approached
Evelyn and put his hands on her shoulders, startling
her.

"Evelyn, I can promise you this. If you need
help, stick with me, and I can get you home to your family. The
power is not coming back on. You have to believe me."

She gave him a look of understanding then
backed away, out of his reach. "So you're saying you're not coming
into work today?"

"There's not going to be any power there
either. All the cars on the lot, every last one of them, will be in
the same shape as yours or mine.

"I appreciate your concern, Mark, I really
do. I'll be fine though. Nothing right now is more important than
getting to that meeting. Maybe I'll just walk, like you
suggested."

There was no time left to convince her of
anything. Mark gave her a genuine smile of hope. "Best of luck to
you, Evelyn. Thanks again for the coffee."

As he walked away, she went
back to her car, and studied it in a state of denial. Mark went
through the parking lot and onto the sidewalk that ran along the
main road. His house was about five miles away, and he figured he
could make it on foot. He would get the bug-out car and pick up
Janice from work
, but
there was no guarantee that the bug-out car would even work.
They had stored it over the years in the backyard shed for the
express purpose of an EMP scenario, but he couldn't remember the
last time he had started it.

Time was of the essence. A turn of good
fortune arrived when he saw a bicycle store in the line of shops
ahead. He walked quickly down the sidewalk, maneuvering around
dazed people who blocked his path. Every person's face was buried
in their non-functioning phones. They desperately pleaded with them
to work. It was sad to see so many people so reliant on indifferent
pieces of plastic that offered them no answers. Mark attempted to
stay focused and not get diverted from his task, even though he
wanted to explain to everyone what he believed to be happening.

The bike store, like every other store, was
dark inside and completely without power. The sales clerk, a tall
skinny man with short wavy hair and a polo shirt, stood against the
counter messing with his cell phone. The entrance door was propped
open, and the man took little notice of Mark when he walked in. The
small store was full of bikes lined up against the wall and hanging
from the ceiling. Mark checked his wallet and, much to his relief,
counted one hundred and twenty dollars in twenties.

"How ya’ doing?" Mark politely asked the
man.

The sales clerk looked up surprised. "Oh, hi.
Sorry, I didn't see you come in. This shit with the power is
crazy."