Final Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Surviving Book 1) Read online

  Final Chaos

  A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller - Surviving book 1

  Ryan Westfield

  Copyright © 2018 by Ryan Westfield

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters and events are products of the author’s imagination.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About Ryan Westfield

  1

  Jim

  Jim sat at the workstation in his dusty little computer repair shop in Rochester, NY.

  It was a cloudy day in early spring. The air still had a bite to it, but after the intense lake-effect snow of the winter, it was a welcome change.

  Rather than computers, Jim’s workstation was piled high with cell phones. Half of them had broken screens and the other half he’d already fixed.

  When Jim had opened his shop four years ago, he’d made a decent living. But then the computers had gradually stopped coming in. Laptops these days weren’t made to be repaired. The internal components were often soldered together, making the only solution to simply buy another one. This had hit Jim’s business hard.

  Now, he was barely hanging on to the shop by repairing cell phone screens.

  And he hated doing it.

  Growing frustrated with one of the phone screens, Jim groaned and shoved the whole mess away from him.

  The bells on the front door jangled as the glass door swung open.

  Jim looked up.

  It was his friend Rob, barely holding onto a tray of coffees and a large paper bag of bagels.

  “Ready for some coffee?” said his friend Rob.

  “You got four? Are you crazy?”

  “I need the boost this morning. I’ve got an interview at that mattress store over on Monroe.”

  “Plushtown Mattresses?”

  Rob nodded. “They’re looking for managers.” He settled down into a beat-up armchair as he handed Jim one of the coffees. He took the lid off another, and began gulping it down. At the same time, he began digging into the bag of bagels.

  Jim took a small sip of his coffee. Black, just the way he liked it. “You’re really going to drink three large cups? Remember what happened last time?”

  “Yeah, I talked my head off and sounded like a lunatic. But this time, I’ve got a plan.” Rob took another large gulp.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’m not going to talk my head off,” said Rob, dead serious.

  Jim raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He’d learned over the years not to try too hard to steer his friend on the right path. Rob had a long history of botching interviews, getting fired, getting laid off, and getting evicted from his apartment.

  He was a good guy, but he just couldn’t always keep it together. He was big. At least six-four, and about two-eighty. He kept his weight up by devouring plain bagels at all hours of the day.

  “You still working on those cell phones?” said Rob, his mouth full of bagel.

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “I don’t know why you never take my advice and start repairing other things. You know, high end watches and stuff like that. There’s good money…”

  “No one around here has a high-end watch,” said Jim, cutting him off. “And besides, I’m good with my hands, but you have to train for years to be a watchmaker.”

  “But…”

  Rob had a tendency to go on and on, and Jim wasn’t in the mood for it this morning. He’d known Rob since they were both kids, and he couldn’t very well throw him out of his store.

  “I’m going to get some air,” muttered Jim, standing up and moving through the store.

  “How’s the wife, anyway?” called out Rob as he flicked on the TV.

  Jim didn’t answer. He heard the sound of the news announcers, groaned again, and pushed open the back door that led to the back alley.

  Jim let the metal door slam heavily behind him.

  A couple shops shared the same back alley, where two overfilled dumpsters sat.

  Jim glanced up at the sky, as if to check to see if it was still grey, and reached for his phone.

  No messages. No texts.

  He and his wife Aly were going through a rough patch. They’d had an argument about two weeks ago. It’d somehow started with the sponges in their apartment, and eventually it had grown to encompass everything.

  The last thing Jim remembered her screaming at him was, “And you don’t even like computers! It’s time to let the shop go!” Then she’d gone to her mother’s house in Pittsford and he’d barely heard from her since.

  It was true, he didn’t like computers. Or repairing phones. He was good with his hands and knew how to do the work.

  He didn’t even look like he belonged in a computer shop. He kept himself in shape, and had rugged good looks. He got asked out a lot by the female customers, even though he wore a ring prominently. Of course, he turned them all down.

  Who knew. Maybe it was time to sell the shop. Not that he’d get much money for it.

  But it was his dream. His dream of working for himself. Being his own boss. Being in control of his own destiny. All that stuff.

  Jim put his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath of the cool air.

  The door behind him opened.

  “The power’s out,” said Rob, still holding his bag of bagels.

  Jim groaned and reached for the small LED flashlight he always carried. “I guess you don’t know how to flip a breaker switch?”

  “It’s not that,” said Rob. He sounded strangely worried. “They were talking on the news about something to do with the sun…”

  Jim ignored him as he pushed past him to get into the shop, now completely dark except for some dim light that came in through the front windows.

  Jim found the breakers, but none of the switches were flipped.

  That was weird. It couldn’t have been the light bulbs. Maybe a transformer had blown somewhere nearby.

  He went out through the front door and walked out into the middle of the street.

  All down the block, there were no lights on that he could see.

  The world sounded silent.

  Strangely, the sounds of nearby traffic had died down. And that background hum of distant appliances had fallen to nothing.

  The owner of the antique store next door, a woman in her early fifties, was standing in her doorway with curlers still in her hair. She gave him a wave and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say she didn’t know what was going on either.

  Out of the computer shop
, Rob came running. He still held a coffee and his bag of bagels, one bagel clutched between his teeth.

  The door hit him on the way out, knocking his paper coffee cup. Coffee spilled all over his shirt, and he tossed the cup aside.

  “Looks like the whole block’s out,” said Jim. “And you’re going to need another shirt for your interview.”

  “Jim, listen. I was trying to tell you. On the TV, they were saying that there’d been something… something from the sun… and that it might knock out all the electronics... I knew I’d be screwed for the interview. First the power’s out, and now I’ve ruined my shirt.”

  “You mean a solar flare? Was that the term they used?” said Jim.

  “Might have been. Listen, what do you think I should do about this job? Should I go?” Rob fished in his pocket for his cell phone. “Shit,” he muttered. “It’s out of battery.”

  “It’s not out of battery,” said Jim. “It’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Here, look at mine.”

  Jim handed his own cell phone to Rob. It too, of course, was dead.

  And it wouldn’t turn back on.

  Jim knew know what this all meant.

  A solar flare had caused an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse, that had knocked out all electronics.

  The whole system would come crashing down. The power grid would be down. And the communication networks.

  Whether the EMP had affected upstate New York, the whole country, or the whole world, was yet to be seen.

  Why hadn’t they gotten advance warning? Well, it didn’t matter now. The damage was done.

  “Your phone doesn’t work either,” Rob was saying.

  Jim ignored him.

  He knew what this EMP meant. It meant the breakdown of society.

  How far it would fall was yet to be seen.

  People would panic. Some would pretend it wasn’t happening. Others would take advantage, using the opportunity to do what they’d always wanted to do.

  Jim didn’t think it would take long.

  Now, there was only one thing on his mind. And that was getting to his wife.

  He and Aly may have been separated, they may have had their troubles, but she was still his wife.

  And he was going to make sure she was safe.

  No matter what.

  “Where you going, Jim? You think I could use a payphone?”

  Ignoring Rob, Jim dashed back into his shop.

  Leaning next to his workbench was a backpack that he took with him everywhere.

  It had some normal everyday things, like a book or two, and a pair of headphones for when Rob was talking too much.

  But it also contained what he’d called his emergency kit. For food, there were a half-dozen energy bars, the kind cyclists used, along with a large water bottle. There was also a high quality multi-tool, a fire starter kit, a cheap fixed-blade knife, a compass, and a couple maps of the surrounding area. It also had some spare rounds for his revolver, already loaded into a quick-loader decide.

  It was a normal backpack. Black and unadorned. It didn’t look the least bit “tactical.” He wouldn’t look out of place wearing it. He knew that in a situation like this, the last message he wanted to send out to the public was, “I’m prepared and I have a lot of gear to steal.” He didn’t want a target on his back.

  Jim shouldered the bag and patted his waistband where his .38 revolver sat in its holster.

  “Jim, where the hell are you going?”

  “Aly,” said Jim, walking swiftly down the street to where his car was parked. Hopefully it would still run.

  He didn’t have time to explain the situation to Rob.

  “Aly? She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. Come on, Jim, you’ve got to help me with this interview.”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore,” said Jim. “Don’t worry about the interview. Come with me and I’ll explain.”

  Rob apparently knew Jim well enough to take what he said seriously. Jim wasn’t the type to mess around. He meant what he said. An expression of worry formed on his face as he jogged alongside Jim, trying to keep up with him.

  2

  Aly

  Aly sat in a small holding cell of the Pittsford police station. Pittsford was one of the wealthier suburbs of Rochester. The police department was small and the building itself was small.

  She’d never been arrested for anything in her life. She’d never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. Once, when she was younger, she’d been pulled over for running a stop sign, but she’d managed to talk her way out of it.

  She’d always been the good girl. She’d always gotten top grades in school without so much as a single detention.

  She was almost too filled with shame to think about what had happened last night.

  Sure, she’d been known to lose her temper from time to time. Especially during arguments with Jim, her husband. But she’d never lost it like this. Not publicly. Not with a police officer present.

  The metal bench in her cell was cold and uncomfortable. She’d only lasted an hour on it. The rest of the night, she’d spent with her back against the cold cinder block wall, hunched forward with her arms wrapped around her knees.

  There was one other person locked up along with her. He was a man in his fifties, with a shaved head and tattoos on his face. He was the next cell over, with one empty cell separating them. He hadn’t stopped staring at her all night, so she’d taken to simply facing the other way.

  It was morning now, not that there was any way to know other than her watch. The fluorescent lighting and air conditioning created a stale atmosphere. No natural light came in.

  When they’d taken her fingerprints and booked her, they’d explained what would happen in the morning. But she’d been so angry that now, once she’d calmed down, it was nothing more than a hazy memory.

  Despite her anger, she’d been too ashamed to call anyone with her one phone call, so she’d passed it up. She didn’t want anyone to know that she’d been locked up. It wasn’t like her, and she would have never heard the end of it.

  Aly glanced at her watch. It was a little after 8 AM. Surely something would have to happen soon. Didn’t they need to give her breakfast?

  But no one had told her anything.

  She’d seen two cops walking by and she’d hadn’t had the nerve to ask them anything. The older man in the other cell had yelled out some obscenities at them and they’d simply ignored him.

  As far as Aly could tell, the three cells were adjacent to a hallway that ran between the front end of the station, where the secretary sat, and the back.

  Pittsford was a small, peaceful suburb. Aly doubted that these cells saw much action at all.

  The Pittsford cops had shiny, new cruisers, whereas the Rochester city cops drove older models cars, sometimes with noticeable dents.

  “Why won’t they let me be free?” screamed the man in the other cell. “Why won’t they let Samuel free? The world is where Samuel belongs!” He was screaming at the top of the lungs, and the sound made Aly’s heart jump.

  Aly said nothing, and no one came running, of course, to see what was the matter. The man fell silent again.

  Aly’s mind turned to the night before. She’d been driving back to her mother’s house, after visiting the Eastview mall. It wasn’t that she’d needed to buy anything. She’d just needed to get out of the house.

  Maybe she’d run the light. Maybe she hadn’t.

  The cop sure thought that she had.

  And that was when the argument had started.

  He’d asked if she’d been drinking, and of course she hadn’t been. And just to prove something, she’d refused to take a breathalyzer test.

  Someone had come along, some “concerned citizen,” who just couldn’t seem to mind his own business. He’d given her some unsolicited advice, something about knowing her place as a woman.

  And she’d just gone off on him, an intense verbal tirade that had never seemed to end
.

  That was the short version of how she’d ended up here.

  She checked her watch again. Only a couple minutes had gone by.

  Shouldn’t something be happening by now?

  “They won’t let Johnson out of the cage!” screamed her cell neighbor.

  He must have been off his rocker, thought Aly. One minute his name was Samuel and the next it was Johnson.

  Or maybe he was talking about two people altogether separate from himself.

  Who knew.

  She knew she didn’t want to find out.

  Suddenly, the lights went out.

  And the station fell silent.

  The air conditioner had stopped running. She could hear the fans running down.

  The cell and the station were immersed in total darkness.

  Aly couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  Some other sounds were missing, but she couldn’t put her finger on what they were. They were the background sounds of machinery that no one typically noticed.

  It seemed deadly silent.

  “The time has come!” shouted the crazy guy. “Darkness will bring Damian to the light! And no other shall come forth from the light but Damian himself!”

  Aly’s heart was pounding in her chest.

  Her skin felt clammy all of a sudden.

  Why was she feeling anxious?

  Surely it was just a power outage. It was something that happened from time to time, even in police stations.

  But wouldn’t they have had a backup generator? Why wasn’t it already running?

  Well, it would take a few moments, probably. Backup generates didn’t come on instantly. At least as far as she knew.

  “Nothing but progress!” screamed the man.