Unprepared Read online

  “Dude. It’s over. But there’s plenty more fish in the wahhteer!” the comedian said in a Boston accent, almost shouting the word water in falsetto. Bill Burr then moved onto reading an advertisement. He’d only just begun singing an improvised ditty about one of his podcast sponsors, a underwear manufacturer, when the familiar vibration of the car engine stopped.

  “Whoah-whoah-whoah. What… What the hell…” David said, as the vehicle lost momentum.

  “What’s happening?” asked Kelly, flatly.

  “I don’t know. The engine’s dead.”

  “Was it the gas?” she asked.

  “It can’t be. The car wouldn’t just die if the gas was bad.”

  The Toyota coasted. Forty miles per hour. thirty-eight miles per hour. Thirty-five miles per hour.

  “Fuck... FUCK!” David said. He’d had enough. What had started out as a routine hurricane evacuation had quickly become a pain in the ass. He sighed a heavy, angry sigh.

  “I’d better pull over.”

  He flipped the blinker stalk, pulling over to the right but the blinker didn’t blink. The car continued to coast.

  Twenty miles per hour. Fifteen. Ten. David put the car out of its misery, turning the wheel slightly onto the edge of the road, applying the brake.

  “It must be an electrical fault,” he said as the car came to a stop.

  “That’s weird,” he said, looking in the side mirror. “No one’s passing us. They're all stopping too.”

  Indeed, the seven or so vehicles that were stuck behind them had pulled over as well, all at different distances. David pulled the parking brake up, pressed the hazard light button in the middle of the dash and undid his seat belt. Kelly did the same. He popped the hood release lever at the bottom corner of the dashboard and opened the car door. Kelly opened her own door, holding her mobile phone in her hand.

  As the two got out of the car, they turned, looking back at the seven cars behind them. The convoy, created by David’s hypermiling was spaced out. The Volkswagen Passat wagon that had been tailgating them had stopped right behind their Toyota, with the vehicle’s occupants undoing their seat belts and clearly arguing about something. The passenger in the Volkswagen was a woman, mid thirties. She was gesticulating to the driver who sat there like an idiot. It was obvious he was tired of her shit.

  Some vehicles in the convoy had also pulled over on the side of the road but a couple of cars had stopped right in the middle of the road. One of them a big Chevrolet Silverado. It was a strange spectacle. Kelly turned to David, the roof of the car separating them.

  “What is going on?” Kelly asked.

  His expression blank, he said nothing, not being sure himself. They both turned, facing the vehicles behind them.

  The doors began opening on the convoy of seven vehicles stopped behind them, spaced out awkwardly over 200 yards or so. The occupants of the vehicles climbed out of their cars. With the sudden lack of road noise and car sounds, Kelly felt like she was having a mild out of body experience, akin to giving a presentation in front of a group of people and you find yourself suddenly hyper-aware of your surroundings and the sound of your voice.

  People were milling around their cars. One motorist a couple of cars back had lifted the hood on his late model Toyota Camry and was peering at the engine bay, full of plastics and metal, possibly hoping for something obvious to fix, like a big red On/Off switch on top of the motor that had tripped. Of course, modern cars weren't so simple; everything runs through computers now. David was planning to do the same, but the large, bizarre scene playing out behind them distracted them. They stood motionless for a few seconds, watching people exiting their vehicles and wandering around like lost puppies. The driver of the Volkswagen, which had stopped directly behind them, got out and walked over. He was in his late 30s; about the same age as David and Kelly, thin, but already balding. His passenger, a dark haired woman of a similar age also got out, clearly pregnant. She obviously hadn’t finished whatever she started in the car, because before the man was within ten feet of David, she continued her discussion.

  “Nathaniel, we need to talk about this. Come back here, please,” she said, clearly not happy.

  The balding man turned back to the woman in the car, looking a combination of annoyed and exhausted.

  “Victoria... Please. Not now,” he said flatly.

  The woman scrunched her face up and sat back in the car, closing the passenger door. She picked up her cell phone, turning it over and squeezed it, a pouting expression on her somewhat unattractive face.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Kelly joked to the man.

  It was possibly not the appropriate thing to say to a squabbling couple, but Kelly didn’t have much of a filter. That was one of the things David loved about her.

  “Our car just died,” said the thin, balding man. “I don’t know why. I had it serviced last week.”

  “Ours is dead too,” David said.

  “I reckon it’s an electrical fault. It’s weird,” he added.

  Just at that moment, David noticed that his hazard lights were not flashing. He must have forgotten to press the button. He opened the driver’s door and reached in to press it.

  “That’s weird. I did already press it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Kelly.

  “The hazard lights. They should be working. They’re not part of the car’s computer,” he answered.

  “No one’s hazard lights are working,” she said, scanning the cars on this section of road.

  The pregnant passenger in the Volkswagen stopped behind them then got out of the car and called to the balding man. He was standing at the front of their car, rubbing his head, confused by the situation.

  “Nathaniel, I want to go home,” she said in earshot to David and Kelly.

  “Oh, please, Victoria. Stop whining. We’re not going anywhere. The car isn’t working,” he said, aware that the sound of a nagging voice wasn’t going to help the situation in any way.

  “Well, can’t you fix it? I’m tired. I wanna go home. And my phone’s stopped working. It’s brand new. And I’m getting hungry. Why is the car not-”

  “Shut up! Just... please,” he snapped.

  The pregnant woman slumped back into her seat, folded her arms and began sulking. Kelly turned to David and said quietly.

  “They’re not gonna last when that baby comes.”

  “I’ll bet they won’t even last the journey home. Free show, though.” he joked.

  Only a few minutes had passed since the impromptu convoy had collectively stopped. As David lifted the hood on their Toyota, another motorist approached him.

  “You got the same problem?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” David replied. “It’s electrical, that’s for sure. But why it’s affected all of us, I don’t know. Maybe we passed through some sort of…” He was going to say the word ‘forcefield’ but stopped himself, aware that it sounded ridiculous. This was not a science fiction movie.

  “Passed through what?” the motorist asked.

  “I’m not sure, to be honest,” David answered.

  Kelly approached her husband and the stranger.

  “Dave. Is your phone working?”

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “That's odd. I think it turned itself off.”

  David held the Power button down on the side. Normally the phone would give a little vibration once it had began to power on, but it was unresponsive.

  “Nah, my phone’s not turning on.”

  David and Kelly stood by the side of the road and pressed at their phones repeatedly. David looked up to see five or six others down the road doing the same.

  He felt a sudden chill wash down his spine.

  “Kel…”

  His breathing increased. He could feel a hit of adrenaline flushing his chest. He felt a tingling as the hair on his arms stood on end.

  “Kelly. Come here.”

  Her expression changed from that of confusion at
the scenario in front of them, to worry, evident from the serious tone of his voice. David took her hand and led her out of earshot of the other motorists, toward the front of the car’s open hood. He looked genuinely frightened.

  “What?” she said, getting scared herself.

  “Look at them,” he said, pointing to the dozen or so motorists all tapping at their phones, cars and watches, the air suspiciously absent of sound.

  “David, you’re scaring me,” Kelly said quietly.

  David was breathing shallow breaths. His eyes were wide open and stared at Kelly intently. He took her hand and led her further away. Once they had walked a few more yards away from their car and the other motorists, he stopped again and turned to Kelly.

  “I think... I think I know what's going on,” he said hurriedly, gesturing to the convoy with his head.

  “The phones. The cars. Nothing electronic works.”

  Kelly cocked her head to the side, not sure what he was getting at.

  “Kel. It’s an EMP attack. It’s gotta be.”

  Kelly didn’t say anything, nor did her expression change. She did nothing for a couple of seconds. Then she turned her head to the convoy, silently observing the dozen or so people milling about their cars. It dawned on her that he was right.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, her mouth slipping open ever-so-slightly as a hundred thoughts fought for space in her mind. Her eyes darted aimlessly as her brain processed dozens of scenarios. She quickly pulled her sleeve on her sweater back and tapped at her smart watch. It was dead. She tried turning it on. No response.

  “Check your watch,” she said.

  David looked at his own watch. It was an old style quartz watch. He hadn’t yet jumped aboard the smart watch train. Sure, he'd thought of getting one, and sometimes played with them in electronics shops, but was always put off by the idea of having to recharge a watch two or three times a week.

  “I think it’s dead, too,” he said, lifting his wrist up to his ear.

  Normally it would be impossible to hear the quiet ticking of the second hand during the day, especially outside. It was something you could only do in bed, when the world was asleep. But the silence of this afternoon was so pronounced that you could hear a pin drop. And yet, there was no ticking sound. He stared at his analog watch. It was frozen at 2:20 PM. They both looked up at each other, making eye contact.

  David wanted to say something, but what? He took a breath and began to speak, but stopped before a word could leave his mouth.

  “Shit,” Kelly whispered, shaking her head. Were they the only ones who knew? Other than the chatter of motorists milling about, completely unaware of the seriousness of the situation, the silence of that moment was almost deafening. But that silence was immediately interrupted.

  A sound that could only be described as a plane crashing occurred on a concealed hillside about a mile away from them. Someone in the convoy screamed in fright. An enormous ball of flame and a plume of dark gray smoke rose above the source of the sound, which echoed into the distance.

  “The fuck was that!?” David asked, now in a state of heightened alert.

  “I don’t know,” Kelly answered.

  He joined the dots.

  “It was a fucking plane. A passenger plane. Like, a fucking passenger jet!”

  “My God,” Kelly said. “Should… We go there? Should we try to help?”

  “But what could we do?” he answered.

  “Shit, if it really was an airliner, it would have hit the ground at five hundred miles an hour! There'll be nothing left!”

  “We should go anyway. Maybe there’s a survivor. It might be worth photographing. The pictures would be worth something to a newspaper,” Kelly said, her passion for photography becoming evident, before it hit her: her phone was dead, which means no one was going to be photographing anything. Her old Nikon F2 film camera would probably still work, but it was back at home.

  “Anyway, whatever happens, we do need to get the fuck out of here.” She pointed quickly towards the convoy of cars and people, all frozen in confusion, looking in the direction of the explosion.

  “They clearly don’t know what’s going. They don’t know what’s happening. They haven't figured it out yet. They're not preppers. If they knew...” she trailed off.

  They were both breathing shallow breaths. David was sweating.

  “OK. If this is an EMP attack, it’s bad. But we don’t know how bad. Maybe it’s just this area? Maybe just this part of the state is affected,” said Kelly, trying to be optimistic.

  “Maybe. Or maybe the whole country is wiped out,” continued David. “It must have been North Korea. Remember the news this morning?”

  “Or it could have been Russia. Or China,” Kelly responded.

  “Shit. We're not ready for this,” David said, worried. “I mean, seriously, we’re not prepared for this kind of shit.”

  The atmosphere in the convoy was quickly becoming a mixture of fear and confusion. Kelly and David quickly returned to their car, pretending to be equally confused, but they knew they needed to get away from this group before anyone else figured out what was going on. Someone - some country – must have attacked the USA. At that moment the damage wasn't yet known. Who knows how those people behind them would handle it if they knew that their friends and families could be dead, or about to enter a world of starvation.

  “What on Earth is going on?” the balding man asked Kelly as they returned to their Toyota and lifted the trunk hatch.

  “Not sure. We’re going to go and get help,” Kelly said, lying.

  In reality, she and David were simply going to get the fuck out of there. There were too many unpredictable people in that convoy and, as the realization of the situation's seriousness became evident, those motorists were more and more likely to do something stupid. It’s Virginia, after all. Half the people in the stalled convoy behind them probably had guns in their cars.

  A couple of guys from one of the cars near the end of the convoy walked up and approached David. They explained that they were going to see what that explosion was behind the hill, and if anyone needed help.

  “We reckon it was a plane that crashed. Do you guys have a first aid kit we can take?” asked the older of the two men.

  “Unfortunately not,” lied David. Trying to act as calmly as possible, he wished them well and told them to be careful. He added that they were going to get help at Bedford, the next town, about four miles away.

  While the two men, carrying whatever first aid items they could scrounge up, started walking across the hilly field, Kelly and David filled up their backpack with essentials: a portable gas cooker, their metal water bottle, eight cans of food, some chlorine tablets for purifying water, a shortwave radio, a map of Virginia, a compass, rope, their pistol and their first aid kit. They stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the view of the people in the convoy behind them as they placed the last item in the backpack, before zipping it up.

  “We’re going to Bedford to get help. It’s about four miles from here,” Kelly said to the miserable looking driver of the Volkswagen Passat behind them, who stood, leaning against his car. His pregnant passenger was clutching her cell phone in the passenger seat, audibly complaining. Again.

  “They’re not going to survive,” Kelly whispered to David.

  “You mean their marriage or their lives?” David asked, even though this wasn’t really the time for comedy.

  “Probably both,” joked Kelly.

  Chapter three

  Going home

  An electromagnetic pulse, known as an EMP is a very quick burst of electromagnetic energy. Like the hundreds of tiny earthquakes that happen around the world each day, EMPs happen often on our planet, but typically go unnoticed; coming in the form of naturally occurring phenomena such as lightning, or sometimes in as coronal mass ejections from the Sun. Normally, other than a lightning strike setting a tree on fire, such electrical pulses are harmless. But sometimes that is not the case. />
  In 1859, for example, a coronal mass ejection originating from the Sun hit our planet. Once the ejection collided with our planet’s magnetosphere, it created a substantial geomagnetic storm, the largest in recorded history, affecting what limited electronic technology we had at the time.

  The world’s early telegraph systems were overloaded with electricity and put out of service. Some telegraph operators were shocked by their machines and the pylons themselves sparked in the streets. Fortunately, this event happened when humankind was not yet reliant on technology and circuit boards in order to survive. If such an impulse happened today, it would be catastrophic, causing cities or entire countries to grind to a halt.

  Another, potentially more dangerous form of EMP can be caused by a nuclear explosion.

  During the cold war, the Soviet Union carried out test attacks using bombs which generated nuclear electromagnetic pulses. They learned that detonating a nuclear missile 30 miles above the United States would be enough to send the country into chaos, knocking out important electrical equipment, nationwide.

  Depending on the intensity of the explosion and its altitude, such blasts could, in theory, be powerful enough to do more than just destroy electricity grids, but even render cars and wristwatches permanently useless. Anything with a microchip or enough wiring could be overwhelmed by an instant, silent blast of pure energy.

  Such a situation is real, and it's entirely possible. So what would happen to society if such an event occurred today? How would we react and, given our slave-like reliance on technology, how would we survive?

  ◆

  Once they had walked a safe distance away from the cluster of cars which had ground to a halt behind their own, David reached around and slid off the backpack, placing it on the roadside. Undoing the zip on top of the bag, he reached in and pulled out their portable shortwave radio. He flicked the On switch on the side.

  It did nothing.

  “It’s dead?” Kelly asked.

  “Yeah”

  Of course it was dead. Almost everything electronic, except perhaps for utterly basic devices without microchips, such as an old-style flashlight, had been turned into junk.