EMP Post-Apocalyptic Survival | Book 2 | EMP Days of Terror Read online

  Days of Terror

  James Hunt

  Copyright 2020 All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without prior written permission, except for brief excerpts in reviews or analysis.

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  Contents

  1. 36 Hours Ago

  2. Present Day

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  1

  36 Hours Ago

  One hour into her Calculus homework, Sarah Hewitt-Riker’s laptop shut down.

  “Ugh, you were just charged,” Sarah uttered, quickly tapping the power button. “No-no-no-no! Shit.” She grunted in frustration for not having saved her progress.

  When the computer refused to reboot, Sarah slammed the laptop shut. She paced the carpeted floor of her small bedroom before checking the light switch, confirming power was out for the whole house. She then reached for her mobile, but it too was off, the smartphone now as useful as a brick of plastic.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” Sarah stared at the black screen of her phone. It was possible the laptop had run out of battery and she just hadn’t been paying attention, but her phone had been plugged into the charger. It should still be working.

  And then her father’s voice crept into Sarah’s head, and she remembered the terrifying three-letter word he had explained to her and the consequences of such an event.

  Sarah immediately wandered through the darkened two-bedroom house where she lived with her aunt as she attended classes at Charlotte University. The space was small, and Aunt Rachel was abnormally messy, but Sarah didn’t mind picking up and keeping the space tidy.

  She navigated the darkness without banging her knee into anything, having traversed the space more than once in pitch black and also slightly inebriated. She didn’t drink often, but she had been to a few keggers with friends.

  Sarah snatched her car keys out of the small porcelain bowl on the entryway table and opened the front door and stepped outside to nothing but a clear night sky with a million stars and the moon above shining down on a city that had gone completely dark. She hurried toward her car. She couldn’t stop her fingers from shaking as she unlocked the driver side door and shoved the keys into the ignition. She hesitated a moment before turning the ignition, and then her heart skipped a beat when she heard nothing but a click.

  Sarah held the steering wheel as she leaned backward, shutting her eyes when the back of her head touched the head rest.

  The car door was still open and Sarah heard the quiet of the night. No buzz of electrical lines. No sound of cars. Complete and utter silence.

  But it didn’t remain quiet for long.

  Sarah jolted from the explosion echoing from somewhere in the distance, awakening the sleepy suburban community on Charlotte’s outskirts. She looked to the east where the explosion had come from in the city, and she barely managed to identify the plume of smoke rising from the city against the dark sky.

  The noise was enough to prompt everyone else out of their homes, and soon the street was filled with people, everyone holding their worthless phones. People whispered to one another until the whispers joined into a collective, nervous hum.

  “Sarah?” Aunt Rachel stepped from the front door, hugging herself. She was still dressed in her work clothes, though she had traded her heels for a pair of slippers. “What are you doing out here?”

  Sarah remained in the car for a moment, going over the scenarios in her head. No phone. No power. Car won’t start. She knew what this meant. They needed to leave. Now.

  Sarah quickly exited the vehicle, leaving the keys in the ignition as she shut the door behind her. The car was useless to them now. “We need to go.”

  Rachel stepped aside as Sarah entered and hurried back to her room, where Rachel followed.

  “Go?” Rachel asked. “Where?”

  “To the meeting spot between here and Asheville,” Sarah answered, reaching into the back of her closet to grab the go-bag her stepfather had packed for her when she moved here. She hadn’t touched it since she arrived, but she figured most of the supplies were still good.

  Rachel frowned harder. “You can’t be serious. It’s just a power outage.”

  “Did you not hear that explosion? This is not just a power outage,” Sarah dropped the backpack on the bed and then started changing into her hiking gear. “Check your phone if you don’t believe me.”

  Rachel lingered in the doorway for a moment then walked to her room. She was gone for a few minutes before returning, dead phone in hand. “I just charged this.”

  Sarah finished changing and donned her pack. “You need to change into your hiking gear.”

  Rachel waved her arms and shook her head. “Whoa, let’s just slow down. What do you mean this isn’t just a power outage?”

  “It’s called an EMP,” Sarah answered, but Rachel only bunched her face up in further confusion. “Anything powered by a micro-processing chip no longer works. And these days, that’s nearly everything. Cars, phones, utilities.”

  Rachel struggled to wrap her head around the concept. “How is that even possible? I mean are you sure?” She flicked the light switch, which did nothing, and then checked her phone again. “This can’t be happening.”

  “Rachel,” Sarah said, suddenly sounding older than her nineteen years. “The only reason something like this would have happened was if the country was attacked. I don’t know by who or why, but someone set off a device that just sent us back into the ages of horse-drawn carriages and candlelight. The longer we stay here, the riskier it’s going to get for us. So I need you to change into something that you’ll be able to hike in. Now.”

  Sarah held her aunt’s gaze. The pair had always had a relationship that was more like sisters than aunt and niece. And despite Rachel being twenty years older than her, Sarah always felt more like the responsible adult.

  “Okay,” Rachel said, and she slunk back to her room.

  Ready to go, Sarah walked to the front window of the house. The crowd in the street was growing thicker. She didn’t want to be around a large group of people when they all realized the power wasn’t going to come back on.

  Sarah thought she remembered the route to the halfway marker, but she removed her pack and opened it to look inside for the map.

  Ben had packed everything neatly inside, and they had enough rations to last them for seventy-two hours, but hopefully they wouldn’t be needed. She found the map and then opened it, finding the bright red line that connected Charlotte to the halfway point where they were to meet Ben.

  Sarah committed the path to memory, which was easy since it was practically a straight shot, and then returned the map to the backpack, waiting for her aunt. She knew this would be difficult for Rachel. While Rachel knew about her parents’ prepper lifestyle, she had never partaken in the effort to prepare for anything save for a night out at the bar.

  The woman wasn’t an outdoors person and was a bit lazy. She was the com
plete opposite of Sarah’s mother. Sarah, on the other hand, might as well have been a carbon copy of her mother.

  People always mentioned how the pair looked alike. They shared the same mousy brown hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. But she inherited her father’s dimples, which had been the only evidence the man had existed for a very long time.

  But time always had the tendency to change things.

  “Okay,” Rachel said, emerging from her room in what Sarah assumed was the best hiking gear she owned. Even though Rachel was her aunt, there wasn’t a lot of physical resemblance between the two of them. Rachel had fiery red hair, brown eyes, and pale skin. She had inherited the Irish genes that belonged to Sarah’s grandfather. “Now what?”

  “We leave,” Sarah answered.

  Sarah was the first out the door, Rachel nervously following.

  “Try and keep close,” Sarah said, navigating her way down the street. “I don’t want us to get separated. If we do, it’ll be near impossible to find each other in something like this.”

  “Jesus,” Rachel kept her head on a swivel, glancing around at the growing crowd. “There’s so many people.”

  Sarah kept her eyes peeled, but the sheer number of faces in the crowd only blended together in the darkness.

  The crowd was fairly docile at the moment, but Sarah knew that could change at the drop of a hat. People had grown dependent on certain aspects of the modern world. And now every single one of those luxuries was gone.

  It wouldn’t take long for panic to set in once people realized no more water was going to come out of their taps. Or they couldn’t call 911 for help. And when the masses panicked, disaster was sure to follow.

  Sarah made her way through the neighborhood, heading toward the interstate where vehicles were completely stranded on the road.

  “Oh my god,” Rachel said, struggling to keep up.

  Sarah noted the hint of hysteria in her aunt’s tone. “We need to keep moving. This way.” Sarah only wanted to use the interstate as a guide. She would keep to the woods along the road, concealing both herself and her aunt in darkness.

  But Sarah’s plan was derailed when she heard a cry for help.

  The pitch in the woman’s voice was hysterical, and Sarah didn’t hesitate to react as she bolted from the woods and onto the interstate.

  “Please! Someone help!” The screams were coming from inside a circle of bystanders who had surrounded the woman but made no move to help her.

  Sarah pushed her way through, elbowing everyone aside, and saw the source of the woman’s cries. A young boy lay motionless on the asphalt, the woman hovering on top of him, crying and pawing at the child like a mother lioness.

  Sarah immediately dropped to her knees and removed her backpack. “What happened?”

  “He just stopped breathing, and he collapsed!” The woman screamed through her sobs. “I wasn’t looking at him only for a second, and I turned around and he was on the ground!”

  Sarah checked for a pulse and found one, but noted that the boy’s lips were turning blue. “Is he allergic to anything?”

  The mother shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  Sarah positioned the boy’s head and neck to perform mouth to mouth, but when she tried to open his airway, she noticed something lodged in his throat. “He’s choking.” Sarah quickly picked the boy up and positioned him in the Heimlich maneuver. She squeezed three times, and on the fourth, a round piece of candy shot out of his mouth, and the boy drew in a deep breath.

  Sarah gently set the boy down on the pavement, where he was swarmed by his mother. The small crowd that circled them erupted in applause.

  “Thank you,” the mother said, holding her son. “Thank you so much.”

  Sarah blushed from the attention and smiled, only able to mutter a very quiet, ‘you’re welcome’ as she picked up her bag just as Rachel joined the circle of spectators.

  “C’mon,” Sarah said. “Let’s go.”

  “You saved that kid’s life,” Rachel said, her tone a mixture of admiration and pride. “Look at you.”

  Sarah blushed again, the heat radiating from her cheeks and neck, and she cleared her throat. “Anyone would have done it.”

  Rachel glanced at the people standing around. “Obviously not.”

  Not wanting to stick around, Sarah only made it one step into the crowd when gunfire erupted nearby.

  The faint pop pulled everyone’s attention to the city, and for a moment, everyone was still and quiet, including Sarah and Rachel. But the second round of gunshots, closer, triggered everyone into a frenzy.

  The large crowd Sarah had wanted to avoid quickly proved her point when the panic-stricken mob worked into a frenzy, immediately separating Sarah and Rachel like a riptide current.

  Sarah was pulled left, and Rachel right.

  “Sarah!” Rachel screamed, but her voice was swallowed up by the noise of the stampede and gunshots. It was all Sarah could do to watch her aunt’s face vanish into the crowd as she was pulled in the opposite direction, helpless to fight against the hundreds of bodies rushing to escape an unknown enemy.

  2

  Present Day

  The sun was still concealed by the mountains, but the sky had already lightened from black to a purplish blue.

  Ben Riker stared out the window of the mess hall at the beautiful mountain landscape. The gorgeous backdrop of nature contrasted harshly with the blood-stained Kevlar on his chest and the rifle in his hands. But he took the moment to admire the scene to remind himself of what he was fighting for, because there would be more battles in the coming days. It was as certain as the sunrise.

  It had been a restless night, Ben tormented by the images of violence he’d witnessed since the EMP had been detonated. He suspected they would continue to haunt him in the coming days, weeks, and months.

  People were scrambling after what the EMP had done to their world. No power. No communication. No transportation. All of the tools and technology that had stabilized modern society gone in the blink of an eye.

  Ben wasn’t sure how far-reaching the EMP effects had been, but they had hit his community in Asheville hard. Ben had barely managed to keep his family alive, and yesterday wasn’t without its casualties.

  Ben had already lost two friends to this madness. The first he had abandoned in Asheville during the fires. The second had been shot by the group of terrorists who had been responsible for the detonation of the EMP.

  The blood on the Kevlar was too fresh for Ben to push those thoughts out of his head, so he decided to keep them on hand, using them as fuel for the fight ahead. Because this next journey he was about to embark on was one where failure wasn’t an option.

  The culmination of all the preparation and tactical training he had done on weekends for the past five years would aid him well in whatever fight he found himself. He had sacrificed much already, and he knew more would be needed. But so long as he brought his daughter home, the rest didn’t matter.

  Ben finished loading the final magazine, and he rechecked his go-bag, making sure he had the appropriate amount of food, water, and medical supplies needed for the journey. It was a long trip to the halfway house between here and Charlotte where he was supposed to meet Sarah and Rachel.

  Ben had taught Sarah everything he could to make sure she could survive. She had never been interested in the training, but she retained the knowledge. He only hoped she put it to good use.

  The halfway house where they were to meet was nothing more than a small log cabin Ben had built after Sarah had made the decision to attend school in Charlotte. Because of the distance between Asheville and Charlotte, Ben knew it would be difficult to travel the entire length between the two cities in the event of a true catastrophe, so he bought a cheap piece of land, built the cabin tucked away in a secluded, wooded area, and kept it stocked with supplies.

  The cabin was far away from crowded areas, so even though Ben couldn’t meet Sarah and Rachel within the twenty-four hour time fr
ame, he knew they would be out of harm’s way from the general population. But he still couldn’t help but worry.

  Between the chaos of the fires that burned Asheville to the ground, along with their home and hundreds of acres around the city, rescuing his sons, and fighting a group of unknown terrorists, Ben had seen the devastation the EMP had already done. He had wanted to get to the cabin sooner, but he had run out of time and energy. Now, he prayed he wasn’t too late.

  Prepared with his pack and weapons, Ben stepped out of the mess hall and outside on the grass. The fire training facility where he had brought his family had been across the river from the city, which protected it from the fires. And he wasn’t the only person to have thought to bring his family here. Other firefighters from his station in Asheville had brought their families here to escape the danger as well.

  Ben was glad all of them survived. It was important to have people around you that you could trust during times of crisis. His fellow colleagues in the fire department were a second family to Ben. They were his brothers in arms, and he trusted them with his life, and the lives of his family.

  The facility was five acres of fenced land, complete with a dining hall, sleeping portables with bunks, and a watch tower that was used for training new fire recruits. Ben had lost track of how many times he worked his way up that tower dressed in his fire gear, carrying a hose, doubling the weight his legs had to carry. And while he had always stayed in good shape and was a good size at six feet and two hundred pounds, it was still the hardest training of his life.

  The program was akin to boot camp in the military, and it was a grueling three-month course. Physical drills, followed by classroom time and real-life fire training scenarios, happened every day and were repeated until the recruit learned them, failed, or dropped out.