Silent Interruption Read online

  Carl winced. This young woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Yet he had to tell the truth, even if it was a day late and a dollar short. “I’m saying to get food and water and then run like hell into the woods, because pretty soon every urban area is going to be on fire. And do it now.” Then he glanced at the rest of the stage crew, all of them standing up in front of a table of laptops and wires that now were utterly useless.

  “That goes for all of you! Do it before everyone else realizes what just happened and starts tearing through every store and home.” Carl Mathers curled up his fingers. “Because it’s going to be ugly.”

  Carl’s words were enough to send Janet and all of the crew running off the stage. He sighed. He wished he was wrong, but everything he had seen fit the doomsday scenario he had been fearing. Whether it was caused by a solar storm brushing against the atmosphere, or a nuclear detonation high up in the sky, Carl’s worst fears had been confirmed.

  Chapter Five

  Preston pounded the dashboard of his car and shouted an obscenity. It was about the only thing left he could do to his stalled vehicle. He had tried everything he could think of to rouse the automobile to life. Unfortunately, he was no mechanic, and knew little about maintaining a car other than how to change a tire. Ordinarily, he’d use an app on his phone to summon help, but with every smart phone out there, including his, reduced to junk, he might as well build a fire and send smoke signals.

  He started hyperventilating. Every option seemed ripped from his grasp. He could not call for help. He could not drive to his hotel. He could not call a taxi to take him anywhere. He possessed no way to summon any kind of assistance. He was totally unprepared to handle such a situation.

  But surely the authorities were on top of this disaster. They always were. Police cars would swarm down the road any moment now, and police helicopters would soar overhead with loudspeaker announcements detailing what had happened and what they should do. Perhaps even the National Guard would arrive.

  It then occurred to Preston that he hadn’t heard a single police, fire engine or ambulance siren in the past twenty minutes. He looked out his back window. The streets remained silent. The only sounds Preston heard were the throngs of people wandering about the streets, many filing out of nearby stores and strip malls.

  “Screw this. Just…just screw this! There’s got to be answers.” Preston pushed open his door, got out, and then relocked his car. There’s no way in hell nobody knew anything about what was going on.

  As he approached the boulevard separating the parking lot of Michelle’s and Glendale Park, Preston discovered a new throng of young people near the park. They were shouting at some of the people Preston recognized from the Rally for Rights.

  Those must be the nuts who showed up to protest the rally, Preston thought. He had seen counter protestors on more than one occasion. He even had jeered at them from on stage, despite Janet politely telling him that wasn’t a good idea. Preston didn’t care. He relished the opportunity to stick it to knuckle draggers like them.

  Preston looked both ways before crossing the street, which seemed ridiculous since no cars had passed by in the last twenty minutes. Still, Preston wasn’t going to do anything stupid just because the world around him seemingly had fallen to pieces. This was temporary. Things would right themselves in due course.

  Once he got to the sidewalk on the other side, he cautiously approached the park. Some of the protestors turned their heads when he reached the park property. Preston straightened up and tried to form a smile, to show friendliness. After all, aggression only was caused when you displayed an aggressive posture. No need to trigger these people, many of whom were as confused as he was.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry. I hate to bother you, and I’m sure other people already have asked, but do any of you know what’s going on?”

  One of the men sneered. “If I did, I’d be on my way home now, if my stupid car actually would start.”

  “You want to know what’s going on?” A lanky man with sunken cheeks and matted brown hair approached them. “They finally did it. The terrorists. They used a nuke and destroyed all our electronics. And it’s all thanks to pinkos like you.” He aimed a glare at Preston.

  “Wait, a nuke?” Preston laughed. “Okay, this is getting out of hand. A nuclear explosion would have vaporized all of us by now. And even if it was close by, we’d have seen the mushroom cloud. We’d have heard the bang. The ground would have shook. We’d have seen something.”

  “Oh really?” The man stormed closer, enough for Preston to back away, but he had to stop before stumbling into the crowd behind him.

  “You know how nukes work? Throw one of them high enough in the atmosphere and it sends out a big electromagnetic pulse that goes for miles and miles.” He spread his arms out. “The power grid’s fried to hell. It’s never coming back. You got to rebuild it. But the pulse has nailed trucks, cars, planes, so repair crews aren’t coming.”

  Preston chortled. “Oh please. That’s been debunked by reputable scientists time and time again. You’re repeating right-wing garbage that’s used to trick Washington into inflating the military budget. Get serious. We ought to be using our tax dollars to help the poor, not to prop up missile defense.”

  The man pointed to the telephone pole. It housed a power transformer near the top. “Well, if we had real missile defense, the power still would be on. Now it’s a piece of shit. The power’s not coming back on, not for years, probably never!”

  A chill ran down Preston’s spine. Ordinarily, he’d laugh off this lunatic, but the events surrounding him were bereft of a sound explanation. An EMP attack would make sense, if Preston bought into it.

  However, if the man’s explanation only chilled Preston, it agitated the people behind him. “That’s not true!” yelled a young woman, perhaps as young as Preston.

  “Okay, you tell me what’s going on,” the man said. “What do you think? That it’s aliens?” He then pointed at the group. “We warned you! We warned you, and you didn’t listen!”

  “Screw off, asshole!” A man with a dark beard jumped out of the crowd. “It’s a false flag! The government’s launched an attack on American soil so we’ll sign over our liberties to a dictatorship!”

  A young woman wagged her finger. “You cut the budget for missile defense! You left us vulnerable to our enemies!”

  “We don’t have enemies! We have victims! America’s getting what it deserves for raping developing countries!” shouted a portly man behind Preston.

  The rabble grew on both sides. This was getting ugly, very ugly. In their anger and confusion, people were throwing any kind of invective they could dream up against each other. Worse, with no police in evidence, this could devolve into a violent spectacle.

  Preston’s instincts were proved right when one of the Rally for Rights crowd punched one of the counter protestors in the jaw.

  “Shit.” Preston backed out onto the street as quickly as he could. Individuals from both crowds started throwing punches. Two men wrestled each other to the ground.

  Then, to Preston’s horror, one of the counter protestors charged up to him and started screaming profanities at him.

  “Hey!” Preston backed farther into the street, but the irate protestor dogged him. “Look, this is not a productive way to handle this!”

  But the protestor didn’t give a damn about any notion of civility Preston was pleading for. The young man took the opportunity to vent all of his anger at Preston for his rhetoric, his speeches, and his denouncements of “right wingers,” adding that his chickens had come home to roost.

  The crazed look in the man’s eyes told Preston all he needed to know. Preston had to flee from this man and this whole mob, or he might not survive this day.

  Michael took another glance at Tara. Reclining in the other seat, her eyes remained shut, with a big smile still plastered on her face. Her face had remained radiant ever since Michael had left the parking lot by the str
ip mall. Her jacket was largely unzipped, and her green shirt was unbuttoned at the top, revealing her blue undershirt. Although Tara was a small woman and not particularly voluptuous, Michael felt she was perfect for him and wouldn’t trade her for any woman on this planet.

  She probably wouldn’t protest if I decided to go with my hotel plan, Michael thought as he indulged in another view of Tara’s beauty.

  As he returned his full attention to the road, he wondered if perhaps it was time finally to go the distance and pop the question. The pair had been involved for eight months, but it had felt like eight years. The two were hardly alike in all aspects. Michael had been born and raised in the suburbs, while Tara had been raised out in the mountains. Michael was quiet and amiable, while Tara Rowe was fiery, at times provocative. But from the day they met through Facebook, those differences meant almost nothing, while their similarities bonded them strongly. They seemed a perfect match. So, at what point do boyfriend and girlfriend become man and wife, for all practical purposes?

  He couldn’t contemplate that question any further, for all of a sudden, his car just completely shut down. The air conditioner, the radio, and all the lights abruptly cut out, and the engine shut off.

  “Hey. Hey!” He hit the brakes, although was unable to bring the vehicle to a sudden halt.

  Tara opened her eyes. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  “Damn car just stopped. I tried to put on the brakes but the car—”

  All of a sudden, another vehicle rammed them from behind. Tara screamed, while her seatbelt strap held her in place. Michael likewise was restrained by his belt, saving him from being slammed into the steering wheel.

  Michael let out a loud profanity. He and Tara then turned around, discovering another car had crashed into their rear bumper. Furious, Michael yanked off his belt, opened his door, and ran outside to give the other driver a piece of his mind.

  His anger cooled when he suddenly discovered there had to be at least six other cars behind him that all had struck one after the other.

  Tara joined him. “Mike.”

  Michael shook his head. The other lane likewise was filled with vehicles that suddenly either had crashed into each other or had stopped somewhere off the road. “My God. It’s like everyone just shut down at the same time.”

  Motorists started emerging from their wrecked or stalled vehicles. Some just looked at their vehicles in confusion. Others started talking to one another. Whatever anger they may felt at getting rear-ended dissipated when it became clear that all of them had suffered the same loss of power.

  Michael raced back to his vehicle and popped the hood. “Did the battery go out?” Michael looked at his battery. The wires seemed intact. Nothing was damaged. “Tara, I’ve got a box in the trunk. It can check the battery’s charge.”

  “On it.” Tara raced to the back of Michael’s car.

  But as Tara fished through the hunting gear in Michael’s trunk, a soft noise, almost like a faint sheering, cut through the air. She and Michael looked up at the cloudy sky. The sound grew louder.

  Then, a jet plane emerged from the cloud. It was dipping lower and lower, quickly casting a shadow right across the road where Michael and Tara had stopped.

  “Holy shit!” Michael cried out. The plane was plummeting out of the sky and speeding right over their heads.

  Tara rushed to Michael’s side. “Michael!” she cried.

  Michael embraced her. The plane was so low that it seemed ready to crush them, but in reality, the aircraft still was high enough to zip over the pair without incident. But the plane was continuing to descend quickly, and there was no airport in sight. Whatever was happening, this plane was not descending of the pilot’s accord.

  Michael and Tara, along with every nearby motorist, turned and watched the plane descend toward what appeared to be an inevitable crash. The aircraft was not falling straight down on its nose. Instead, it just was sailing downward on a slight incline, without even the landing gear extended. It had no hope of catching the ground with its wheels.

  And then the plane hit.

  Tara buried her face in Michael’s jacket. The aircraft impacted the Earth several miles away, hitting a highway and then barreling into a small office building. The plane quickly was consumed by a large ball of fire pouring from the plane’s engines. The flames, mercifully, made it impossible to make out the extent of the crash any longer.

  Small sobs and cries of disbelief surrounded them. Michael clutched Tara closer. “Damn,” he said.

  “Those people…” Tara said.

  “I know.” Michael shook his head. That plane likely carried about a hundred people. First cars were shutting down, and now airplanes? He looked up at the heavens and asked, “What the hell is going on here?”

  Carl looked over the edge of the stage. The crowd mostly was staggered toward the edge of the field, either close to the parking lot or the curbside of Westlake Boulevard. The crowd also was growing much noisier. Carl was acquainted with how mobs acted and sounded, and right now this mass was threatening to break out into something violent.

  Maybe they already know what’s happened, Carl thought. Surely someone has brought it up and it’s been shared from person to person. But if they do know, then they also realize how hopeless their situation is. If they haven’t prepped for a disaster like this, they’ll succumb to despair, panic, and rage.

  The fact that a group of counter protestors was egging on the Rally for Rights crowd only was bringing on the inevitable clash that much more quickly. Carl had no hope of defusing this situation. Hell, nothing short of martial law could restore order, and given the massive breakdown of communication, mobilizing the army seemed a remote possibility at best.

  If the military is still in contact anywhere in the world, they’re probably watching for additional missiles in the atmosphere or an approaching invasion of the homeland. We can’t count on them right now.

  At least he had prepared for this eventuality. But first he would have to get to his car. He dashed for the back end of the stage and leaped onto the grass below. Using the stage as cover, he sprinted toward the back end of the park. A line of trees arced outward toward the edge of the park’s back parking lot. He would follow these trees, using them to obscure his approach.

  However, he soon reached a large gap between trees. At standing height, he easily would be seen. On the other hand, the plants came up to about waist level. They still could hide him if he crawled through them on his belly.

  So, Carl did so. A few minutes later, he had crossed the gap and was back on his feet. He quickly brushed grass and dirt off his polo shirt as he slipped past the next tree.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this in the United States, he thought. To think that he would be performing combat maneuvers in one of his own country’s cities.

  Soon he spotted a green street sign through a small tree gap. Westlake Boulevard was within easy reach. A few steps later, he grasped the tree branches on the right side of the gap and looked through them.

  He instantly discovered his situation was more perilous than he had imagined.

  Many of the counter protestors had gathered on this side of Westlake Boulevard. They already had engaged in fistfights with the Rally for Rights crowd. Chillingly, two bodies lay on the asphalt. Blood trickled down the side of a man’s head. Carl could not tell if they were alive or dead.

  “This is only the beginning,” Carl said. “It’s the beginning of the end.” From here on out, things would get much, much worse before they would improve, if they would improve at all.

  Just then, Carl spotted a familiar figure dashing down the sidewalk. When the runner spotted Carl in between the trees, he shouted Carl’s name.

  “Preston!” Carl jumped into the open. Preston was being pursued by a man in a torn gray T-shirt, and he looked like he had murder on his mind.

  Chapter Six

  “Preston, run in front of me!” Carl shouted as he dashed to intercept Preston’s pursuer. Th
e man in the gray shirt made no effort to slow down or shout at Carl. The former Marine acted swiftly and efficiently, while Preston’s pursuer ran in a flailing manner, showing he wasn’t moving on anything but blind rage.

  Carl leaped to the side to avoid getting directly in the man’s path. As Preston’s pursuer crossed close to Carl, the former soldier kicked the man in the legs, sending him plunging down onto the sidewalk. The man cried out on impact, but Carl wasn’t stopping to assess the situation. He grabbed the man’s arms and pinned them behind his back.

  “Hey! Let me go!” the man shouted.

  “What’s your problem with Preston?” Carl shouted.

  Preston backed up against the trees. “This man’s insane! He just kept shouting at me and then he tried to punch my lights out!”

  Carl grabbed the man by the hair and hoisted his head up. “What the hell’s wrong with you? We’ve got a major disaster on our hands and you want to start laying into your fellow Americans?”

  Blood trickled from his nose. “It’s all his fault,” he said in a low croak. “Commie bastards got to pay. They all do.”

  Carl fumed. He had no time to deal with out of control morons like this. He released the man’s hair, then turned him over on his back. “Get out of here. Go!”

  The man stumbled to his feet, flashed Carl a sneer, and then scampered off.

  Behind Carl, Preston let out a cry, as if he had been holding it all in up until now. “Thank God!” he yelled. “Thank God! I mean, what the hell is going on here? All the electricity is gone and now everyone’s acting like it’s Lord of the Flies.”

  Carl turned around and marched up to Preston. “Well, this is just the opening act. Believe me, you’re going to wish you had it this good before long.”