Day 1: September 12, 2024

Annie King was halfway between her apartment and the lobby level when the elevator suddenly shuddered, went dark, and came to a quick stop. She expected the emergency lighting to come on, and when it didn't, she began calling out for help but to no avail. She found the emergency phone in the dark, but it was as dead as the elevator.

She continued hollering out every time she heard people walking or talking in the hallways of the floors between which she was stuck. Finally, she heard Frank, the doorman, call out from several floors below, "Hello...? Is there anyone in the elevator?"

"Yes! Yes! Oh my god, yes, I'm in here!" she called in panic. They talked back and forth for several minutes, with Annie identifying herself and her status of being alone and Frank telling her that the entire building was without power and that he'd tried to call the fire department but even his cell phone was dead. The conversation ended with him telling her he was again going for help and with her screaming, "Get me the fuck out of here!"

A long, long time passed, during which Annie again heard people in the halls, and again her calls for help went unanswered. She began to tire and laid her head down on her rolled up coat as she waited for Frank or whoever was to come to her rescue. At some point she fell asleep, waking sometime later in yet another panic as she suddenly recalled where she was. Again, she hollered for help, and again she got no response.

Annie remembered the butane lighter in her purse that she'd taken off the juvenile delinquent grandson of one of her neighbor's when she caught him singeing the leaves of a potted palm in the hallway. She fired it up to look around, finding nothing more than what she expected, of course. Looking up, she began contemplating the hatch in the elevator's ceiling. Going out that way was a bad, bad idea, but Annie was beginning to suspect that she'd been left for dead, if not literally then at least figuratively.

She'd been an athlete almost since she'd learned to walk, first in gymnastics and dancing, then in volleyball, basketball, and track & field. Today, as a 24-year-old who went to the gym almost every day, she was still in great shape and despite being only 5'8", Annie could nearly dunk a basketball. She fired up the lighter again, studied her target, put the flame-maker aside, and leapt upwards with an outstretched hand.

It took several times, but eventually Annie knocked the ceiling panel open. With another leap, she latched ahold of the panel supports and pulled herself up atop the elevator's ceiling. Using the lighter, she found a steel ladder running up the shaft. She climbed to the next floor above and somehow managed to force the door open. She climbed out onto what would turn out to be the 22nd floor, just a bit higher than halfway to her 42nd floor condo. Here, too, Annie found no overhead lights or emergency lighting; even the fire exit signs were dark.

She descended the emergency stair well all the way to the lobby, finding it devoid of security or residents. It was dark outside, which surprised Annie as she had left her apartment at just a bit past noon. All of this was freaking her out, of course, but what was happening out on the streets really made her anxious. The town was black with the exception of the glow from flames, some from burning cars, others from burning store fronts. The streets were filled with rioters, pillagers, and fleeing innocents.

Annie wasn't about to go outside, so she turned back for her apartment. The elevators obviously weren't working, and the stairs weren't looking good either; for security reasons, the lobby door to the stair well could only be accessed with the doorman's key. The doorman was absent, but after forcing open one drawer after another at the front desk with a heavy piece of metal art she found nearby, Annie found the key for which she'd been looking.

It took her 20 minutes to ascend to her 42nd floor apartment, something she was only able to do because of her physical fitness and heightened adrenaline level. She passed more than two dozen descending residents, all of them carrying bags as they tried to get out of the building and, presumably, the city. Annie only knew a few of them by face and even fewer of them by name.

Once inside her apartment, Annie stood on the balcony for the longest time, just staring out on the city as the anarchy increased.

Kimberly Jones
32 years old
Organic Farmer
Western Pennsylvania

Sitting back in the John Deere's seat with her feet up before her, Kimmie devoured the last of a tuna sandwich as she waited for a farmhand to arrive with the fuel truck. She kicked her feet up, swallowed down some lukewarm coffee, and looked up into the clear blue sky. She loved this time of the year, with the harvest underway and, where it was already done, the reworking of the fields with plows, disks, and -- for some wintering over crops -- planting.

She caught sight of an airplane heading her way from the east, most assuredly heading for The PIT. Jet's coming into Pittsburgh International's runway 28C flew almost directly over the Jones farm. Having already dropped to less than 2,000 feet by the time they were overhead, they often caused great interest in Kimmie -- who had never in her life been on an airplane -- particularly when the skies were foggy and the monster aircraft seemed like ghosts in the mist.

The airplane coming her direction now drew extra attention, though, because it seemed like it was much lower than it should have been considering its distance from the airport. Kimmie sat up taller when she seriously began to get concerned; the descent of the plane was continuing, not leveling off as she saw dozens if not hundreds a time most days when she was outside from dawn to dusk.

Then, some twenty miles beyond the farm in the same direction as the approaching plane, a large fireball began to rise slowly into the air. Seconds later, another fireball began to rise in the same general direction but even farther away. Kimmie's first thought was 9-11! Holy fuck! Here we go again!

If she'd had time to think about that in more detail, she would have remembered that there wasn't anything to the east of her at that distance that any terrorist would want to destroy with a flying bomb. The reason she didn't have time to think about it in more detail was that Kimmie suddenly realized that the airplane nearing her was going to hit her.

She leapt off the tractor, rolling in the soft, plowed dirt, sprang to her feet, and started running south. She didn't get far before the plane's arrival, not that it really mattered as the jet flew over her and crashed a good 100 yards to the west. It, like the other crashed planes, exploded in a gigantic fireball, the explosion of which sent a shock wave over Kimmie and the sound of which hurt her ears.

She just stood there for the longest time, staring at the rising ball of red flames and black smoke as she wondered what the fuck was happening. A boom in the distance caught her attention, and she looked to the east again to find three more rising fireballs. Checking every direction, she found another seven or eight rising clouds of black, though, she wouldn't be certain that they were all from airliner crashes.

Kimmie hurried through the freshly turned ground toward the crash site, but once she reached it, she knew there was nothing she could do for the survivors -- because there were no survivors. She headed straight for the house, unsure of what was happening but certain that something incredible had.

Linda Laughlin (and her siblings):
16 years old
High School Junior, Inwood neighborhood of North Manhattan

Day 1, after dark:

Everything was going crazy outside the Laughlin house in Manhattan's northern neighborhood of Inwood. Linda had never seen so many people on the streets at one time except maybe on holidays like July 4th or New Year's Eve. Some of them were carrying or dragging bags as they rushed to get out of the city for one reason or the other. Others were breaking into houses to loot them.

Linda's siblings were all huddled together in the home's basement where she'd sent them for their safety. Their parents had left their eldest child in charge while they tended to the family's ill maternal grandmother in Newark. This wasn't anything new to the nearly 17-year-old; Linda often babysat for her 14-year-old brother Robert, 12-year-old sister Sara, and 8-year-old brother Carl. But this was the first time Linda had been in charge when there'd been an emergency situation.

Making matters worse, nothing was working the way it should: electricity, natural gas, landline, cell, computers (even on battery) were all duds. They gathered up every candle they could find, blankets, water, and food and went to the basement to hide. Linda made sure the house was looked up tight, then split the following hours between keeping her siblings calm and entertained and checking the street out front and yard out back for lootings and vandals.

All they could do was wait for their parents to get home.

Day 1, 1400 hours
National Guard Armory and Training Center
Monroeville, Pennsylvania (east of Pittsburgh)

The power outage had been caused by an electromagnetic pulse. Sergeant William Peterson was certain of that. He had no proof, but it only made sense. The power grid, cell and satellite phones, automobiles: they'd all quit working in an instant. There was a question in Willie's mind, though. EMPs were only supposed to work on solid state electronics, not electrical devices in general. Yet anything and everything that ran off electricity had ceased working. There wasn't supposed to be a weapon that could do that.

Willie was at the National Guard Armory and Training Center -- nicknamed Natgat -- when the Pulse occurred. Most of the Guardsmen under him reported to Natgat a weekend a month and a month during the summer. Willie, though, was on active duty. He reported to the center Mondays through Fridays from 7am to 5pm.

He wasn't sure what to do without communications. Surprising him, though, Guardsmen began arriving, one after another. They came in from all over the county, on foot, on bicycles, on horses. Willie wasted no time, putting them to work organizing arms and other supplies. The men -- and eventually two women as well -- questioned what they were supposed to do.

"Our jobs," Willie told them, clarifying, "Operation Preservation is still a go."

"But we don't have any equipment," one soldier reminded Willie. "No Humvees, no APCs, no radios. None of it works."

Willie pulled his sidearm -- a Beretta Model FS92 -- and lifted both it and his M4 rifle, telling his subordinates, "These still work." They'd already taken them to the indoor range and fired off rounds to ensure that the Company had at least those to work with. "We put Preservation into operation without the heavy equipment. It's not like we're going into a warzone against a heavily armed enemy. It's Steeler fans and the Amish, for fuck's sake."

Operation Preservation had been designed to deal with extreme examples of civil unrest, with or without the additional threat of foreign military involvement. It included securing five features in the Greater Monroeville area:

• The National Guard Center, obviously, which included an armory with over 2,000 firearms and 1 million rounds of ammunition.
• A local food distribution center, the largest in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania.
• A petroleum distillation facility that produced all grades of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.
• The Monroeville water facility and waste treatment plant.
• A central electrical power distribution hub.
• A similar plant that supplied natural gas across the region.
• And key freeway and highway interchanges and major intersections.

"We're not going to be able to control and protect it all," Willie told his Guardsmen at 1900 hours, when their numbers had reached just 25, including him. "Natgat, obviously. The food warehouse. The oil plant. The rest we'll skip for now."

"Why do we need to protect the petro plant?" he was asked. "Cars and trucks don't work."

"I'm not trying to protect the oil and gas for use," Willie said, adding with humor, "This isn't Mad Max, the Road Warrior. I just don't want some loonies blowing the place up because they like pretty explosions."

He gave out assignments, told the Guardsmen to double and triple check their gear, then told them, "Okay, let's get this done."

He had split the 24 others into even 3 teams of 8. One team under a Corporal would remain here at Natgat to protect the armory. A second team, also under a Corporal, would head for the oil plant. The third team Willie could lead himself to the food warehouse.

Day 1, 2100 hours
International Product Distribution, LLC
Monroeville, Pennsylvania (east of Pittsburgh)

Sergeant William Peterson and his team had begun their mission on foot, double timing it. Along the way, though, they began acquiring bicycles through various means. Stealing might have been a more appropriate word. But it wasn't as if they'd ripped a rider off the two wheeled vehicles. They'd simply nabbed the bikes when found unguarded.

Riding a bicycle with a full pack, arms, and armor wasn't the easiest thing to do. It certainly wasn't something for which they'd been trained. And yet, somehow -- with just two spills for which laughter and recovery came -- they'd managed to reach IPC after less than an hour. Dismounting and checking their surroundings, they continued the last quarter mile on foot.

Monroeville was a quiet suburb of Pittsburgh with a population of less than 30,000. On any other Thursday night at 9pm, the city was relatively quiet. Tonight, though, there was activity in just about every direction. The people wanted to know what was happening to their world. Most of them by now knew what Willie had realized hours earlier: an attack or strange phenomenon was about to change their lives.

As they reached the entry gate to IPC, Willie ordered a perimeter guard set. Moving to the gate himself, he found it very well secured. As he and two others attempted to lift the leading end of the rolling gate out of its track, gunfire suddenly erupted from beyond it. Without even thinking, he threw himself to the ground as he hollered out, "Cover! Cover!"

A moment later, half of his Guardsmen were firing their automatic weapons in the general direction of the enemy fire. He commanded, "Cease fire! Cease fire! Jesus fucking Christ, cease fire!"

As the guns went silent one by one, he chastised, "What the fuck are you doing? Who ya shooting at?" Around him he could see sheepish expressions illuminated by the bright moonlight. He ordered quietly, "Reload ... and fucking relax."

Scanning the parking and working area beyond the gate, Willie hollered out, "My name is Sergeant William Peterson! I'm from the Pennsylvania National Guard, from the Training Center just on the other side of town."

He paused a moment and was about to continue when a voice from the dark called out, "Willie Pete...? Is that you?"

It took Willie a moment to realize who it was. He chuckled, answering back, "Crabgrass?"

"Yeah!" the unseen man confirmed. "What the fuck? What's going on?"

To his men, Willie said softly, "Relax, guys. He's one of our own." Sitting up to look toward the distribution center, he explained, "I'm here to secure IPC ... to prevent it from being looted. You okay with that?"

"You gonna shoot at me again if I say I'm not?"

"Probably," Willie said, hoping the humor was obvious in the single word. He stood tall, saying, "Come let us in, Crabgrass. I'll catch you up on what's going on. I mean, as much as I can."

Ten minutes later, with pairs of Guardsmen on the corners of the distribution center's roof, Willie told Craig Grassman all that he knew about the current situation. It wasn't much more than Craig already knew, unfortunately. "What I can tell you is that if this continues any longer, people are going to come here, looking for food. We were tasked with ensuring the peaceful distribution of your warehouse's contents."

"Company's not gonna be happy with you just giving away their shit," the former National Guardsman told the current one. "They aren't as patriotic as you and I."

Willie thought about his friend's comment on patriotism. Patriotism wasn't what had kept Willie in the Guard all these years. He'd served his time in Iraq and Syria. He'd even done a quick stint in Gaza when the army helped with the distribution of food and water there. He'd seen all he wanted to see in warzones and other areas of strife.

No, Willie had remained in the Guard simply for the paycheck. As a Sergeant with 18 years in, he made more money for less work and far better security than he would out in the private sector. He'd contemplated becoming a Private Contractor when invited to do so by a friend. And he'd been close to signing up. Then, that same friend was blown into a billion little pieces by a suicide bomber in northeast Syria. Suddenly, Pittsburgh seemed like a pretty nice place to live and work.

A pounding sound caught Willie's attention. He gestured Craig to be silent and listened closely to the Morse Code being pounded onto the roof. When silence returned, Willie told Craig simply, "Reinforcements."

Returning to the gate, he laughed at the sight. One of the two Guardsmen who had arrived at Natgat that afternoon on horseback was once again in the saddle. Behind him were two more soldiers in a golf cart overloaded with gear, arms, and ammo. The horse was noticeably unhappy with the extra load trailing behind it by rope.

"Eleven more arrived," the newly arrived soldier reported, quickly listing names. Speaking about the Corporal in charge at the Training Center, he said, "Connors split them up between the three sites. You get us."

In the distance, a bright light revealed itself to be a rising fireball. A moment later, an explosive boom washed over them. They couldn't know for certain yet, but Willie was pretty sure it was a gas station or maybe an above ground fuel tank. Shit's seriously hitting the fan, he thought to himself.

He and the rider talked over commands and communications before the latter again rode off into the night. Willie and the two newly arrived soldiers used pallet jacks to move crates from the building to the parking lot. They set up a machine gun nest of sorts to watch not just the gate but a good portion of the two fences to their left and right flanks. With the other 8 men on the roof, he felt certain that they were ready for whatever might come their way tonight.

Day 1: September 12, 2024

Capital Building
Washington, DC

Speaker of the House Caroline Timms, from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was pulling out of one of the many parking garages near the Capitol building when the Pulse occurred. Normally, she would have been traveling in a heavy, medium armor SUV with a driver and a pair of Secret Service agents. But today she was heading home inconspicuously to speed the long weekend with her family.

The unexplained electrical incident caused her 2025 model Prius to coast to a stop in the middle of an intersection, where it was slammed in the front passenger side by one larger vehicle as a second even larger one hit her simultaneously in the rear driver's side. The collisions caused her tiny Toyota to spin full around once before rolling slowly backwards down a slight but increasingly steeper incline until it came to a stop in the median's ditch.

She remembered voices of people coming to her aid but no faces. Time passed as she was carefully removed from the crushed car and laid out on the ground. Caroline was only half aware of what was happening around her, her mind foggy from the trauma. What she did realize was a lack of emergency vehicle sirens. People took turns tending to her, but without her glasses, all she could tell was that they were in turn male or female or both.

"What's wrong with me?" she finally asked one of them. "I don't feel any pain. Am I paralyzed?"

One of the men helping her turned out was a medical student. He tested the reflexes in her limbs, finding her sense of touch fine. He told her, "I don't think you're hurt, ma'am. I think you're just in shock."

He turned out to be right. After a while, Caroline was able to get up and walk, though, there wasn't really anywhere to go. All of the cars surrounding her were dead. Hell, the entire city was dead. She asked a man in uniform, a DC police officer, "Were we attacked?"

"No one knows, ma'am," he told her honestly. "Do you need a hospital?"

She considered the offer, realizing that if she said yes, there was no way to get her there. She told him, "No, no, I'm fine. I'll, um ... I'll walk. I live just a couple of blocks away."

Caroline headed that way only a few steps before looking the other direction, toward the Capitol building. Maybe that was where she should be?

Day 1: September 12, 2024
The Capital Building
Washington D.C.

Kendall Thomas had spent almost two hours searching the building and the grounds just beyond it for his primary. Speaker Timms had always hated having Secret Service protection. He understood that, of course. After all, who wanted a handful of men and/or women following you around all day, every day. Well, maybe rock stars with their entourages or high school hotties with their BFFs. But a junior Congresswoman who'd shot to stardom by becoming Speaker of the House faster than any other Member of the House in history...?

Capitol Police, D.C. Police, and remnants of a locally stationed National Guard unit were guarding the Capitol. There wasn't a great deal of mayhem on the grounds. That surprised Kendall. He'd been on the grounds during the January 6th insurrection. As soon as the lights went out today, he expected the same again. But D.C.'s troubles today were out in the city. That was bad news for the people of D.C., obviously. But Kendall's concerns were for his charge, and finding and protecting her was the only thing on his mind.

Amazingly, after completing a circle around the building and preparing to head back inside, he looked up to find Caroline ambling his direction. She was injured, that was obvious. He hurried to her, thinking maybe she'd been attacked. He took her into his arms, asking what had happened and if she was injured. After just a few steps, the tall, strong Agent swept the smallish woman up into his arms.

"Let's get you to your office, Speaker," he told her as he made his way toward the building. Others helped the pair through doors, but Kendall managed to get Caroline all the way to her office without stopping. He was exhausted and sweating by the time he put her on a couch and fell into one of the adjacent armchairs. "I'm going to go find you a doctor. But, for a moment, I ... I just need a moment."

Day 4: September 15, 2024

Annie King had never spent such an extended time either inside her apartment or on her lonesome, let along both. It had been 72 hours since the world went dark, and she hadn't left her apartment. People had knocked on her door more than a dozen times, in the beginning simply to check on her welfare. She'd told those she knew that she was fine; the others, some of whom had tried the knob, she'd ignored.

Life inside was becoming unbearable. She was about to run out of bottled water. There was no water at the tap, of course. The toilets ceased working as soon as the pressure from the rooftop tank had ceased. Annie had anticipated this, of course, and as gross as it was had been pooping into a variety of sealable containers and setting them out on the balcony.

For the past three days, Annie had prioritized her diet to consume as much of the fresh and perishable food as possible before it went bad. She'd always shopped on or had food delivered on nearly a daily basis, so there wasn't really much to go bad quickly anyway. That was the good news. The bad news was that now, three days later, her cupboards were nearly empty.

She looked to the master key in her hand. She'd gotten it from the doorman's desk that first day to gain access to the stairwell and return to her apartment. She hadn't taken it for any other purpose, certainly not for gaining access to the homes of her neighbors. But she was running out of options. She was out of water and nearly out of food.

From the level of silence recently, Annie believed that most if not all of her neighbors on the 42nd floor had left their homes and their city. It was getting late in the afternoon, meaning only a few more hours of natural light. If she was going to do this today, she had to do it now.

Moving slowly and quietly, she entered the hallway and made her way to 4212, the home of the Fords. She'd been sociable with Frank and Carol, meaning she doubted they would kill her on the spot as an intruder or looter. Still, she knocked softly, then louder, then spoke their names before using the master key. It work, allowing Annie to turn the lock and pushed the door slowly open.

There was no chain, meaning she doubted that they were home. Still, she called their names again, then louder as she entered and closed the door behind her. She took a long while simply to listen for signs of the Fords. Nothing. Again, nothing. From the signs of things, they'd packed in a hurry to get outta Dodge.

Annie began poking about for things of interest or of use. The Fords had been can and box eaters, so Annie was delighted to find their cupboards filled with processed foods. She reeled back at the smell of the spoiled meat in the fridge and freezer, closing both quickly and reminding herself not to go there again.

Over the next hour or more, she hauled anything and everything edible from the Fords back to her place. Then, she went on the search for something very different: Frank Ford's gun. The very macho Frank had shown the pistol to Annie once, showing off. It had been big and scary to her, and when offered a chance to hold it, she'd passed. But now, with the situation as it was, Annie would have loved to have the weapon, just in case. But the search was to no avail. Annie found the gun case laying open on Frank's desk, empty as could be.

She closed and locked her condo door behind her, then popped open a can of chili with beans and ate the whole thing while staring out on the city from her balcony. There were still fires burning in every direction, the result she assumed from the pillaging and rioting. What was going to become of her beloved city? What was to become of her less-beloved species? Down there on the streets, people were presumably killing one another over the most basic of things, food and water amongst them.

It was the end of life as Annie had known it.

Kimberly Jones -- Organic Farmer, east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(continues from here.)

The past 3 days had been the scariest of Kimmie's life: the Pulse had destroyed anything and everything that worked off electricity, meaning no truck, no cell, no lights, no furnace. It was getting cold at night, and the only thing keeping Kimmie warm was the wood stove in the kitchen and fireplace in the living room, both of which she'd kept burning since.

The airliner crash at the property line had been a total disaster with no survivors. People had come from every direction in response to the fireball, authorities and civilians both. Kimmie wasn't sure what she'd expected: an investigation or simply the removal of the bodies? Neither happened, though. Yellow tape was put up around the site, everyone left before nightfall, and no one had returned. Had this been the same at the two-dozen other plane crashes Kimmie had seen within a minute or so in every direction of her farm?

Twelve hands had been on the farm when this all began: three year-round residential hands; three seasonal workers from nearby Monroeville; and six from WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farmers, two from Washington DC and four from France. The residential hands had initially remained, while the seasonals had left for their own homes. The WWOOF members from DC had also left, while their French counterparts -- with no way to travel -- had remained behind.

Ignoring the whole end of the world part, things had initially been pretty calm on the farm. The mayhem seeming to be taking place in all directions stayed at a distance. Then, the second night, armed men showed up, trying to force their way into the house. Kimmie was no stranger to guns and wasn't about to let thugs take what was hers.

She blew one of them away with a shotgun blast to his chest, causing the other four or five of them to scatter into the darkness. Out at the cabins, one of Kimmie's men -- a former Army Sergeant with experience in Northeast Syria -- had also opened fire using the Beretta pistol he'd kept hidden away. He put bullet holes through three more men before the shooting ended.

The next morning, when they got a chance to survey the damage, they would find two dead bodies on the property and -- at the end of a blood trail -- one out by the perimeter fence line. They would count more than 100 bullet holes in the exteriors of the home and cabins, with most of the windows blown out as well.

There was an exodus from the farm that morning. One of the three residential hands packed his stuff and hurried away. The Frenchies -- despite having no way of getting back to their home country -- also packed and left. They said they would head north, toward Quebec, where one of them had relatives who would take them in until they could find a way back to Paris. Kimmie doubted very much that they would make it to Quebec, let alone France, but she wished them well.

With just three of them left -- Kimmie, her ex-Army man Cliff Reed, and her food preservation guru, Stella Abrams -- they went to work boarding up the buildings and planning security measures for future attacks. They put up signs warning in English and Spanish, Trespassers will be shot first and questioned later. Trip wires were run all about the property, hooked up to noise makers that, hopefully, would alert them to anyone coming close to the buildings.

They hadn't experienced any more attacks after that. They'd seen strangers coming up the gravel road toward the farm on three occasions, but a shot into the sky had caused them to quickly turn and hurry away. After that, they left one person watching the property's sole entry road while the other two worked. Kimmie and Cliff split the work harvesting by hand, while Stella concentrated on preserving what they delivered to her.

Yesterday morning brought them some good news for a change. Initially, as they saw more than a dozen people heading up the drive, it looked like there was going to be more trouble. They were carrying a white flag, and after Kimmie allowed them to get closer, she began recognizing faces. Two of them were the seasonal workers who'd left after the shooting, and two others were their family members, people who'd visited the farm on occasion.

Kimmie went to the gate, met them, and learned they were looking for a safe place to stay. She welcomed them in with the understanding that one and all -- even the children -- had to earn their keep through work. There was no argument, only appreciation. Since then, then adults had split their time between harvesting, planting, and protecting the property and its residents, while the children split their time between tending to the stock animals, various easier chores, and continuing their education, seeing how the school year had just begun.