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“He didn’t give up without a fight, did he?” asked Max.

Officer Sanchez nodded with a distraught look on his face. “I get there and the owner is demanding some sort of signed paperwork that he can submit to the military to get his money back.”

“Same story?”

“Exactly the same. ‘State of emergency’ and all that bullshit.”

Max looked confused. “What am I missing? I know things are going to shit, but what’s the emergency?”

“Well, I suppose coming from Texas you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“Iranians detonated a nuke over the east coast. The Pulse wiped out all the electronics. Rumor is the power is out all over the eastern United States”

Max stopped dead in his tracks. His home state of Texas was truly going to be a wasteland. Recovery would never come. “Son of a bitch! Pulse? You mean an electromagnetic pulse? I didn’t know detonating a nuke high up in the sky would cause something like that.”

“That’s exactly what it did. Before they got uncivilized, the military folks told us all about it. They call it ‘The Pulse.’

“I thought Texas was in bad shape. We’re going to lose this country very quickly. Well, at least the National Guard was taking the supplies to people who need them.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“Oh come on! You can’t be serious!”

“Wish I was joking, I promise you.”

“What the hell were they doing with them?”

“They didn’t even try to lie about it. Smart thing would have been to feed us a bunch of bullshit about taking the supplies to help victims of The Pulse. Nope. They’re taking supplies to Howard Beck’s house in Colorado.”

Max was confused. “Howard Beck, the billionaire computer guy? Thought he was some sort of hermit.”

“Thought the same thing myself.”

“Okay, we keep getting off topic. Still don’t know why you have your town barricaded.”

“Yeah, right. So they practically emptied the tanks at the gas station. Owner kept demanding documentation so he doesn’t lose his business trying to pay for the gas they took. He tried to pull the driver out of the tanker to stop him from leaving. Some soldiers got out of their Humvee and beat the living shit out of him. I couldn’t do anything but watch. I tried to stop it, but one of the soldiers drew down on me. Said if I touched my sidearm he’d kill me.”

“Holy shit,” Max declared.

“I drove him to the hospital only to find more bullshit. They had one of their empty five-ton trucks backed up to the lobby door loading it with medical supplies. Just about cleaned out the pharmacy. The hospital administrator was pleading with me to stop them. Said they weren’t leaving enough medicine behind to treat the patients in the hospital.”

“That’s insane! They were putting the lives of sick people at risk? What’d you do?”

“I put my foot down. I called for every officer on duty to report to the hospital. Once they got there, I demanded to speak to the captain. They kept loading up our medicine and recited the ‘we have orders’ line. We outnumbered them two to one, so we drew down on them and put ‘em in handcuffs. Held up a radio so they could call their captain over. Didn’t take him long to get there.”

“Wow!”

“I didn’t care, throw me in jail. I wasn’t gonna let those grunts give a bunch of sick people a slow death. Captain got there, and we have their three soldiers in cuffs right in front of us. Nice little hostage situation. Finally got their full attention so I could do some talking.”

“I bet they were all ears.”

“Damn right they were. Captain said we were all gonna be tried as traitors and executed. I told ‘em they were gonna unload the medicine and leave town. Well, that didn’t sit well with the captain. He started screaming. I started screaming. Standoff lasted about five minutes until about a hundred of our good citizens showed up armed and turned the tables on the National Guard.”

“How many men did the Guard have?”

“Maybe fifty. We put ‘em back on I-25 headed north and told them not to come back.”

“That explains the roadblock.”

“We’re lucky our town only has two exits on I-25, one at the southern edge of town the other at the northern edge. Wish we woulda searched their convoy before they left town. About ten minutes after they’d left, we found out they had kidnapped three doctors and a nurse right out of the hospital. No one in the hospital really noticed. They told the doctors they had wounded soldiers outside, and they were going to check on them. They never came back inside.”

“Kidnapped? Are you positive?”

“Yes. An x-ray tech was in the parking lot and saw them get in a Humvee. She said they didn’t seem to be in distress or going against their will. Grunts probably still had them convinced everything was on the up and up.”

“Any possibility they went willingly? A chance to see the inside of Beck Estates? Sounds like something anyone would want to do.”

“I thought of that. The nurse and two of the doctors have spouses and children here in town. None of them contacted their families to tell them they were leaving.”

“Outrageous.”

“We’ve turned away anyone that exits from the interstate. Most see the barricade and turn around on their own. You were the first one to stop. I saw your vehicle was from Texas and didn’t want to risk it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing we can do, really. We don’t have a large police force and we need everyone here to keep the town safe. They took damn near all of our gas. Three other gas stations in town and they’re damn near empty. They were expecting tankers before The Pulse that definitely aren’t showing up now.”

Max didn’t reply but had an idea. “How do I get to the hospital? I need to talk to my friends.”

“It’s down this road a few miles on the right.”

“Thanks. Will you be here?’

“Yes, sir, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ll be back soon.” Max got back in his SUV. One of the men got down off the roof of his car and pulled forward, opening up a hole in the barricade. Max gave him a polite wave and drove down the road a few miles to the hospital. It wasn’t really much of a hospital; it was a one-story building that looked pretty old. Once he was in the parking lot, he understood why they needed Dr. Stone so badly. Three doctors and a nurse was probably half of their staff. He walked in the front lobby and found Elizabeth sitting in the waiting area.

“Hey there, handsome man,” she said warmly.

“Hey yourself,” Max winked at her, “where’s Diana?”

“Hard at work. You hear about what happened here?”

“Yeah, I thought the National Guard was supposed to be protecting us, not robbing and kidnapping people.”

The little toddler walked over to Elizabeth and handed her a magazine. Elizabeth beamed. “Thank you so much, little man!” He giggled and handed Max a magazine.

“Maxwell, what do you say?”

“To a little boy who doesn’t talk?”

“Don’t make me smack you!”

“Great example you are, showing him that hitting is okay.”

“Say thank you!”

“Thank you, little boy. Go and play.” The little one giggled and started piling magazines from the table into the chair next to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth waited until the little boy wasn’t paying attention and kicked Max’s foot. “You’re terrible!” She loved flirting with him and gave him her cutest grin. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“I can’t just sit on my hands and do nothing while these people need our help.”

“You want to stay here and run for chief of police?”

“Cute. I think the position is filled. If you think this little man will stay with Diana, I’d like to take you with me to Colorado.”

“Mountain climbing or skiing? I’d be happy with either one.”

“Not what I had in mind. I’d like to visit Beck Estates and ask the Guard why they think it’s okay to steal anything they want and kidnap innocent people.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

At an altitude of ten thousand feet, Howard Beck's escape pod lost all power and began its decent back to the earth below.  The electromagnetic pulse caused by the nuclear detonation high in the atmosphere had destroyed every electronic circuit from the eastern coast of the United States to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains down to the northern half of the Gulf States.  In an instant, every aircraft in the sky fell back to earth; Howard's escape pod was no exception.

Howard had absolutely no idea how to fly the craft any better than he could drive a car.  He knew that if Hal malfunctioned or went offline, the craft would no longer have a pilot.  Howard designed several failsafes in the event that Hal ceased to function. Howard designed the craft to fly on automatic pilot in the unlikely event Hal was unable to fly the escape pod.  While it was cruising on auto, Howard could make repairs to Hal and put him back in the pilot's seat.  If the craft was severely damaged from a lightning strike or an errant flock of birds, the seat that Howard was strapped into would eject, and he would parachute safely to the ground.  The final failsafe was the one that Howard was currently waiting on.  If the canopy above him was damaged and he could not safely eject, a pair of ten-foot wings would unfold and turn the craft into a glider.  Then, when the glider was a thousand feet from the ground, large parachutes would deploy from the roof, slowing the craft and allowing it to land safely.  All of this was done by hydraulics and set off by a gyroscope.  Howard had no idea that he had just been struck by an EMP and would later discover that the final failsafe saved his life, due to the simple fact that it did not involve electronics to operate.  The gyroscope measured the orientation and momentum of the craft.  Once it detected that the craft was behaving erratically, the final failsafe would kick in and do its job.  What Howard didn’t anticipate was the fact that in order for the gyroscope to launch the final failsafe, the craft had to be in a free fall for a thousand feet.  He had designed the craft years ago and in the extreme stress of his current predicament, did not recall this crucial information. 

As the craft began to plummet vertically, Howard's arms began to hover in the weightlessness.  He immediately gripped the arm rests of his chair and looked out the cockpit window.  All he could see was blackness.  Howard fought the urge to scream and closed his eyes.

"Please, Hal, please save me.  Please save me, I don't want to die. Please, please, please, please.  Do something, Hal, please do something.  Eject me!  Hurry up!  Eject me!  Why aren't you ejecting me?  WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING?"

Howard replaced his terror with rage.  Rage is a much more comfortable emotion than terror.  Rage demands control; terror whimpers for it.  In the span of less than a second, his brilliant mind reviewed the failsafe systems he had designed, and Howard realized that all of the electrical systems must have gone offline at precisely the same instant.  He wasn't struck by lightning and the craft didn't malfunction. The odds of all the systems malfunctioning at the same time were astronomical.  What did Hal say just before this happened?  He had disturbing news that he didn't think I could handle.  The disturbing news and his craft going dark could not be a coincidence; the two had to be related.  Howard then realized with certainty that a nuclear device had been detonated high in the atmosphere, and the resulting electromagnetic pulse had disabled his craft.

Howard relaxed when he realized it was only a matter of time before the craft would deploy her wings and become a glider.  Once the craft fell to the thousand foot mark, the hydraulics pushed out the wings and locked them into place.  Slowly, the craft leveled out for a more gradual and controlled descent.  Howard's mind raced, simultaneously processing a dozen trains of thought at the same time.  He calculated that they were in the air for less than three minutes and still climbing to cruising altitude when they were struck, putting the point of impact roughly ten miles from Beck Castle.  The craft would then spend another few minutes slowly gliding back to the ground, adding another mile or so to the distance.  Once on the ground, Howard figured he would be ten to twelve miles from Beck Castle.  He was no spring chicken and never exercised, so he would be lucky to make three miles an hour on foot. Thus, it was going to take him close to four hours to make the long trek back to the Castle. Another of the many thoughts racing through his head was the status of Beck Castle.  Howard knew the massive underground facility was shielded from an EMP.  What concerned him was whether or not Hal would come to rescue him.  Hal knew the monumental importance of keeping the facility safe at all costs.  The Artificial Intelligence was capable of rational, independent thought.  If Hal made the decision to leave Howard to his own devices to keep the Castle undetected and safe, then Howard would be on his own.  If the EMP was the first phase in a full scale invasion and the enemy was at their shores, then nothing would be launched from the Castle for fear of detection.  If Hal launched a drone into a sky absent of aircraft, the Castle would become an inviting target.  Howard decided that the best course of action was to operate under this assumption. 

Howard's brilliant mind, a mind that rivaled that of Albert Einstein, began to execute tactical scenarios of what the enemy might be doing at that very moment.  He also analyzed what an EMP would have done to the Eastern United States.  The death toll would be staggering.  Howard quickly realized what the average man wouldn’t comprehend for years:  the American way of life was extinguished by a flash of light in the sky.

A few minutes later, the parachutes deployed from the roof and gently brought the craft to the ground.  Howard took the large bolt key and flashlight out of the small compartment in front of him and opened a small panel on the door.  He pushed the lever forward and the cockpit door slowly opened.  Howard stepped out into the surrounding blackness and looked up into the night sky, cursing the cloud cover above him.  The moon was desperately trying to pierce the cloud in front of it. The edges of the cloud were illuminated, giving him a glimmer of light to work with.  He scanned the rest of the night sky and saw a few stars, but not enough to get his bearing and figure out the direction he was facing.  He had little choice but to wait for the clouds to move out of the way and bring the stars out of hiding.  Desperation was setting in when Howard remembered his saving grace - the emergency pack in the rear of the craft.

Removing the pack from its compartment, Howard inventoried its contents - two one-liter bottles of water, three MREs, a cigarette lighter, a container of waterproof matches, an emergency Mylar blanket, two flares, two chem-lights, a tube tent, a multi-tool, a six inch folding knife, a first aid kit, a roll of duct tape, fifty feet of parachute cord, a poncho, a ten-by-ten tarp, and best of all, a compass.

Howard grabbed the compass, flashlight, and a chem-light and slung the backpack over his shoulders. 

Howard was happy that he hadn't set off from the tail of the craft thinking it was pointed in its original eastward direction. With the aid of his compass, Howard headed west, watching the constellations to alter his course and bring him directly to Beck Castle.

Thinking back, Howard realized that this was the first time he had been separated from Hal since he came online.  Howard was surprised at how much he depended on his digital friend.   He had only just been separated from Hal and was already missing his company. 

Howard walked longer and farther than he had in decades.  He couldn't remember walking this far since he was a teenager walking around his college campus.  Every thirty minutes he stopped to rest and scanned the night sky for direction.  Two hours into his trek, he fought the urge to set up the tube tent and call it a night.  He had never been so exhausted in his life.  He was drenched in sweat, and his muscles and joints ached.  His estimate of making it to the bunker in three or four hours was a pipe dream.  At this rate, he would be lucky to make it in six.  He stopped and drank half of one of the water bottles.  The constellations gave him another minor course correction, and he set off towards Beck Castle.

Two hours later, Howard's feet were swollen and blistered.  He stopped and removed his shoes and socks. Using the first aid kit, he bandaged up his feet as best he could.  Realizing he needed more padding on his feet, he took off his shirt and tore it into strips to wrap around his feet.  Dress shoes might look nice, but they served little purpose in long distance walking.

Howard slowed to a snail’s pace but didn’t stop.  He knew he was in the vicinity of the Castle but had no way of knowing exactly where it was in the dark.  He scanned the horizon, looking for Meredith's garden.  He just needed a frame of reference, something to stand out against the surrounding terrain.  It was hopeless.  The clouds above had completely blocked out the moon.  Howard could barely see ten yards in front of him.  He could very easily walk right past the garden and wander further off course.  He checked his watch to discover that the sun would not be up for at least three more hours.  Howard's mind raced through dozens of options, quickly determining that all were hopeless.  He would have to set up the tent and wait for the sun to up.  Howard took the tube tent from the package and unfolded it on the ground.  As he sat down and began to remove his shoes, he saw something. He turned his head and watched for it again.

A blinking light.

  A very faint, red light blinked three times in quick succession.  Howard thought he was imagining it and continued to stare into the darkness.  One-Two-Three.  Pause.  One-Two-Three. Pause.  One-Two-Three.  Pause.

  It was Hal!

  Howard was overjoyed.  The thought of waiting for the sun to come up was pure torture.  Howard was not a patient man and hated the outdoors.  He quickly repacked the tent and tied his shoes.  In his excitement he found a new strength and began to walk towards the light.  One-Two-Three.  Howard had no idea how far away the light was; it could have been a hundred yards or even a quarter of a mile.  One-Two-Three.  He didn't care.  His journey had an ending point.

  Howard had walked for about ten minutes when he saw Meredith's garden in front of him.  The always efficient Hal had aimed one of the soft garden lights in Howard’s direction after snapping a red lens over the bulb. The three quick blinks had guided Howard to the Castle.  One-Two-Three.

Howard crouched at his wife's headstone and smiled. "Hello my dear. You brought me home.  After all these years you continue to light my path.  I love you, my beautiful bride.  Thank you."  Howard stood up and placed his hand on the headstone, tapping it affectionately.  Even in the dark he knew his way to the entrance of the Castle.  The bay doors to the garage remained closed, so Howard had to feel his way around to the pedestrian entrance. 

He stepped into the elevator and when the doors closed, Hal spoke to him.  It was music to his ears.  "I am glad you made it here safely, sir.  I detect that you are quite fatigued and slightly dehydrated. Do you require medical attention?"

"No, my friend. I'm fine, thank you.  I've never been happier to hear your voice."

"The feeling is mutual, sir, I assure you."

"Tell me what happened, Old Man."

"CNN aired a broadcast of an Iranian submarine in the waters off the eastern seaboard of the United States.  The submarine was broadcasting a message on a repeating loop – ‘The Star of Allah illuminates the wicked.’  A warhead was launched from the submarine and before I could re-task a satellite to determine its trajectory, it was detonated in the atmosphere.  The resulting electromagnetic pulse disabled the escape pod, as you well know."

"All too well, I'm afraid.  Do we still have our satellite?  Can we tell what's going on?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid the EMP disabled communication with the satellite.  I am confident that my systems onboard the satellite will be able to make the necessary repairs.  I estimate that we will regain communication with the satellite in approximately four hours."

"Do we know anything at all about what's going on out there?"

"No, sir, the EMP has disabled all lines of communication.  We don't have the means to establish any sort of connection with the affected area."

"So we're in the dark?"

"Yes, sir, I am afraid that is the case.  Until I can repair our satellite we will not be able to gather intelligence."

"Well, then, answer me this.  Are you able to communicate with any of our offices to the east?"

"No, sir."

"What about on the other side of the Rockies?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's a bit of good news.  Hal, I desperately need a shower and some rest.  I'm going to get some sleep.  I want to know the instant you regain your link with the satellite."

"Yes, sir."

Howard went to his quarters and took the longest shower of his life.  He detested being covered in sweat and dirt.  Squeaky clean once again, he put on his bathrobe and climbed into bed.  In less than a minute, he was out like a light and slept like a baby until Hal woke him up three hours later.

"Sir?  Are you awake?"

"Yes, Hal.  Are we back online?"

"We are indeed, sir.  I was able to establish a link with the satellite."

"Excellent.  I'm on my way to the command center."

"Very good, sir."

Howard rushed down the hall to the command center and slid into his chair.  The giant three hundred and sixty degree spherical monitor sprang to life and Howard was looking at a real time image of the North American continent.