Final Dawn: Season 1 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (3 page)

7:20 PM, March 28, 2038

Nancy Sims

Nancy spent the better part of an hour in shock as she sifted through her car, alternating between crying and smiling grimly as she found pieces of her life scattered in and around the remains of the crash. A water bottle was a source for some cheerfulness and hope while a shattered photo frame sent her into tears for several minutes. Eventually she managed to scrape together a few intact granola bars and several unbroken water bottles.

With one last look at the car, she began to head east along the road toward Kansas City, or what was left of it. As much as she wanted to just sit with the car and wait to be rescued, she had a feeling that help wouldn’t be coming any time soon.

As the sun beat down overhead, she pondered what could have happened. Not having any formal "hard science" education, Nancy relied on what she read in supermarket tabloids and picked up during late night internet sessions, where a search on Pomeranian poodles would end three hours later with an in-depth video explanation of the inner workings of a thorium reactor. While Nancy was, at heart, an accountant, she nonetheless tried to expand her horizons as often as she was able. This self-learning streak didn’t come naturally to her, but ever since her husband died, she tried her best to continue practicing what he had taught her about never ceasing to learn. This informal extended education did little to help her decipher what had happened beyond the speculations that another world war had started or that the apocalypse was at hand. The cloud formations on the horizon certainly weren't natural, and neither were the initial explosions that she saw right before her wreck. Whatever it was that caused the destruction, the smart thing was to keep moving east towards the city in hopes of finding other people who might be able to help her.

2:35 AM, March 27, 2038

Leonard McComb

While the labyrinth below the city was impossible to navigate under normal conditions, it was nothing compared to now. The entire topology of the caverns, pipes, sewage systems and thousands of hallways and chambers had dramatically changed. Even for a seasoned veteran like Leonard, the journey out of the city was taking much longer than he would have liked. Three hours into his trek, Leonard swung open a door, looked around and groaned as he realized that he was back where he started — for the second time.
Screw it. I'm not getting out this way,
he thought. Leonard plopped down on a chair-sized chunk of concrete that had fallen from the ceiling and looked around, contemplating his next move. Clearly he wasn't going to be able to get out the way he had come in. Even assuming there was still a way out, it would be next to impossible to find it before he ran out of food and water. Looking down the expanse of a nearby sewer pipe, an idea flashed into his mind that both excited and repulsed him at the same time.
You've got to be kidding me,
he thought.
Still, what’s worse, dying of dehydration or drowning in raw sewage?

Leonard sighed and gazed woefully at the empty whisky bottle, still lying on the floor from when he had discarded it earlier.
Fine time I picked to try to cut back on the drinking.
He sighed again, stood up, walked to the cracked opening of the massive sewage pipe and gingerly climbed in. While this particular section of pipe hadn't been used in years, he was more concerned with where it led than with what it used to transport. Three miles of this particular pipe would, if memory served, give way to an underground causeway where all the local sewage lines linked together and dumped out into the Hudson. There was supposed to be a sewage treatment plant somewhere before the river, but budget cuts had led to more of an "open gate" policy instead of a "treatment" one. Not having been to that particular plant in years, he wasn’t sure if that policy still stood, but given the budget constraints the department was under, he wouldn’t doubt it. Still, Leonard knew of no other way to get out of the tunnels without going back the way he came, and that could take weeks to do, if it was possible at all. The advantage that this particular path gave him was that it went deeper underground than any other nearby pipeline large enough for him to travel through. Leonard hoped that deeper meant less damage, but there was only one way to find out. With any luck, a few hours of travel would put him on the edge of the river, just in time to see the sunrise.

4:15 PM, March 28, 2038

Rachel Walsh

A faint sniffling sound was the first thing that Rachel heard as she regained her senses. It was soon followed by the feeling of a warm damp spot moving over her nose and mouth. Opening her eyes, she saw the familiar face of her family's lab staring back at her, happily licking away the dirt and grime around Rachel’s face. With a groan, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around at what remained of her basement. Whatever had caused its destruction had completely leveled the house, obliterating the upper levels and ripping huge holes in the concrete and rebar structure that surrounded the basement. Fortunately for her, though, most of the debris had been sucked up and out of the basement instead of crashing down on top of her. Light from a full moon filtered down through the swirling dust overhead as thick clouds floated past, causing the stars to appear as a vague glow instead of their normal bright points.

Sam licked at her face again and Rachel cracked a slight smile, returning the favor with several pats on his back. "Didn't we teach you to stay out of the basement?" Speaking these words sparked her memory and she froze, remembering what had transpired in the seconds before she blacked out. Struggling to her feet, Rachel fought off a wave of nausea and a pounding headache, moving towards what was left of the stairway leading up into the main section of the house. Like the rest of the basement, only parts of the stairway remained, the rest having been sucked out with the blast. Rachel pushed aside the remains of the door and worked her way upwards, climbing the mound of concrete and wood that used to be the stairs. A hole roughly the size of a door was at the top of the pile, and she pulled herself up through it, blinking as a sharp wind bit into her tearstained face, speechless at the devastation that surrounded her.

Her once beautiful two-story house and idyllic neighborhood were no more, having been replaced with a scene out of Mad Max or one of the video games that Jeremy liked to play on the weekends. Rubble, burned trees, scorched earth, shingles, wooden boards and every other type of building material imaginable was laid out as far as she could see. A cold wind shocked her bare shoulders, carrying smoke and dust along the ruins. After her initial shock at the sight wore off, she remembered again why she had come out.

"Jeremy? Julie??" Rachel called softly at first, and then her voice rose to a fevered pitch, screaming the names of her husband and daughter as she made her way across the broken remains of the foundation of her house, stumbling across the wreckage in search of her family. The rational part of Rachel's mind knew what the truth was, but her heart couldn't accept the evidence that surrounded her. Regret for over a thousand nights away from her home and her family flooded over her as she fell to her knees and sobbed. In the blink of an eye her family had been wiped from the earth and she felt, for the first time, the pain of a loss that had started years ago and was only now made painfully obvious. Rachel curled into a ball in the space where her kitchen once stood and sobbed uncontrollably as Sam gently pawed at her feet, whimpering along with her.

10:19 AM, March 29, 2038

Marcus Warden

Bursting out of a stand of trees, Marcus raced down the last hill towards the gravel parking lot where he had left his car. He had made good time, better than he first thought, arriving at the parking lot in the mid-morning. Unsurprisingly, the parking lot was still filled with the same six cars that had been there when he had arrived. There was no doubt that anyone else in the national forest would have had the same difficulties, or worse, getting back to their vehicles as he had encountered. Marcus grabbed his keys from his pocket and pushed the unlock button as he jogged towards the car. Instead of the familiar chirp and the soft click of the locks disengaging, there was no response from the SUV. Marcus frowned, considering what the issue could be.
I couldn't have left the lights on... I double checked that. Maybe the battery in the key fob is dying. That must be it.

The car unlocked manually as he expected and he climbed in, tossing his backpack into the passenger seat. The familiar flashing security light on the dash was dark, along with the clock that normally shone a pale blue on the front dash. "Not good," he muttered to himself, jamming the key into the ignition. He turned it over several times, but no sound came from the engine. He started pressing buttons on the dash, flipping switches and trying every device in the car. The radio, lights, sunroof, windows, and power locks were all completely nonfunctional. Even the horn was silent as Marcus slammed his fist into the steering wheel, gnashing his teeth in frustration. "Dammit!" he screamed, as he threw open the door and stepped out.

Running his fingers through his hair, Marcus began to pace and pulled his cellphone out of his pocket. While he was in the valley, it wasn’t working, but it was worth trying again, just in case. After the screen didn't respond to being touched, Marcus tapped the power button on the top of the phone, then pulled the battery out and replaced it again. Nothing worked, and the phone remained as silent as the car.
Was it really this bad,
he wondered,
or is it just the phones? But what about the car. Surely whatever killed the car couldn't have killed the phone, too.

Marcus continued pacing, rubbing his head, trying to think of an answer. As he passed by the rear window for the third time, it hit him, dredged up from an introductory physics lecture at Yale when he was still in that phase of not knowing what he wanted to major in.
An EMP! That must be it! If those clouds were really from nuclear bombs, then they could have caused an EMP that knocked out the computers in the car and in the phone, too.
While Marcus couldn’t remember the specifics of an electromagnetic pulse, the effects of one were the topic of enough television shows and movies that he was familiar with the fictionalized version. From what he remembered, detonating a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere instead of on the ground would cause a huge surge called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. This pulse would disable or fry any electrical devices in its range depending on the power of the bomb that was used. If the real thing was half as devastating as ones portrayed in movies, it would certainly explain what was going on with the electronics. He darted from car to car in the parking area, looking through the windows to confirm his theory. Without exception, there wasn't a single light, clock or other electronic device with any perceivable power.

While this realization didn't help him get any closer to fixing the problems with his broken phone or his SUV, it did give him some strange measure of relief to know why they weren't working. Marcus stopped pacing and looked at the horizon. While the mushroom clouds had long since vanished, a misshapen collection of dust and soot hovered in the air in the direction of the original blasts, east toward Virginia and north toward DC. It was just under 200 miles from the outskirts of the national forest to Richmond and without a working vehicle it could take four or more days of hard walking to get there, assuming there weren’t any problems along the way. While it was impossible to know for sure if all vehicles were affected by what he assumed to be an EMP, Marcus reasoned that there could still be some type of car or truck working somewhere, as long as it was beyond the EMP blast radius. For now, though, he decided that it was better to get moving and look for working vehicles along the way instead of wasting his time searching for one right now.

Marcus sighed, shouldered his backpack and glanced down at his compass dangling from his hip. There was a long road ahead, and he might as well get started now. With a final look back at his SUV, he began walking down the gravel road and out of the park.

1:08 AM, March 29, 2038

Nancy Sims

Nancy was not the fittest of women. While she wasn't obese, she was never able to force herself to commit to a steady workout regimen and her years of working a desk job had pushed her once agile frame over the edge and into solid "overweight" territory. This, combined with her office shoes and the never-ending view of acres upon acres of corn, made the late-night walk she was on both painful and tedious. She had stopped a few times along the road, taking sips of water as she sat, watching the fires burning far off in the distance. Around one in the morning she noticed, in the distance, a small dirt road that branched off from the highway. It was the first type of intersection that she had encountered since she started walking. She squinted, her gaze following where she assumed it went. Off in the distance in the middle of a cornfield stood a white house, barely visible in the light of the moon. At the mere sight of the house, Nancy picked up her pace, half-jogging towards the dirt road. While it was more challenging to navigate the dirt road in the dark than the highway had been, she eventually made it to the front porch of the house.

No lights were on inside or out, and she saw no signs of movement. She stepped up onto the porch, the floorboards squeaking gently under her feet, betraying years of faithful service. The moon was high in the sky, though it barely lit the front door thanks to the dark clouds that drifted overhead. As Nancy looked closer, she could see details of the door, its white paint flaking from age, the screen worn and full of small holes. She looked through the layers of screen and glass into the darkened interior of the house, seeing nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that indicated that anyone was home.

"Hello?" she called, "Anyone home?"

A few seconds passed and she opened the screen door, jumping as it creaked loudly in protest. She knocked on the glass several times, each louder than the last, and continued to call out. Nancy sighed and let the screen close, then walked off the porch, circling the house and peering into every window she could reach. After the second time of wandering around the house, she made her way out to a large barn several hundred feet from the house.

She slid open the barn door, calling out as she went. "Hello? I could use some help, please!" While there was still no answer, Nancy did hear a slight rustling in the barn, followed by a quiet sound, almost like a moan. She stiffened and ducked back outside, her back pressed against the side of the barn.

"Please, I just need some help. My car went off the road... do you have a phone?" Again, there was no answer, but the sound came louder this time, and a shape appeared through the doorway of the barn. Nancy's hand flew to her mouth, stifling a scream.
Moooooo
came the sound again, louder and clearer. Nancy's scream turned into a high-pitched chuckle at the sight of the dairy cow trotting out through the barn door. Laughing nervously, she gave the animal a wide berth, walking back towards the house. The cow followed slowly behind her, stopping every few steps to hungrily tear off a mouthful of grass.

Nancy knocked on the back door of the house, receiving no response yet again. She sighed, began to reach for the handle, and then thought better of it.
Suppose they're heavy sleepers, and they find me in their house in the morning
, she thought. Nancy went back to the barn, sliding the door fully open to illuminate as much of the interior as possible. It was a stereotypical farm barn, with several hay-filled stalls housing cows (minus the one escapee) and a wide ladder leading up to a loft that was filled with even more hay, both baled and loose. A sink sat to one side of the interior of the barn, with a small toilet and partial structure built around it for semi-private use. After relieving herself, she scrubbed her hands and face in the sink and filled her water bottles to the brim, draining one twice over before slowing down to only taking sips. She had been walking for several hours and didn't realize how thirsty she had become. As she looked around, wiping the water from her face and hands, a sudden drowsiness came over her. Nancy pulled off her shoes, tucking them under her arm, and slowly climbed the ladder up to the loft. Settling down into the hay, she hoped that the owners of the farm wouldn't mind her taking advantage of their unintended hospitality.
They'll surely be up tomorrow, then I'll explain what happened and get a tow truck to take the car to Kansas City. I can get a rental car and still make it to Miami on time.
As she fell asleep she began to dream of her new job again, pushing the memory of the explosions and destruction far from her mind.