EMP (The Districts Book 1) (2 page)

Sutherland sat at the table, thinking about the darkest day in American history. He missed his wife and his daughter. It was his job to protect them and he couldn’t do that from a bunker hundreds of miles away.

He sighed and stood up from the table. Sutherland knew he needed to get out of the bunker and find his family. He left the room and found his way back to the entrance of the building that he was lead through earlier in the day. There was an armed guard on either side of the door. Sutherland stopped, expecting them to stand down when they realized who he was… but they didn’t budge.

“Sir, this entrance has been closed until further notice.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“
No
personnel are allowed to exit the building.”

Sutherland couldn’t believe it. He glared at the men and turned around. He needed to find Rodgers. She would have to let him out.

As far as he could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to the design of the bunker. He walked in circles, or at least it felt that way, for the better part of an hour before Sutherland finally spotted one of Rodgers’ henchmen.

“Hey!”

The man turned and looked at Sutherland, but didn’t say anything, as he hid behind his black sunglasses.

“Where’s Rodgers?”

The agent paused, as if he didn’t care to speak to Sutherland.

“She is currently unavailable, Sir.”

Sutherland wanted to punch a wall. He needed to get out of the bunker and Rodgers was busy.

“Get her. Now.”

The agent scurried off and turned down the next hallway. His demeanor reminded Sutherland of a rat. As Sutherland waited he became more anxious about the safety of his family.

When Rodgers finally appeared, she stopped in front of Sutherland and rested her hands on her hips. He tried to avoid her irritated gaze. Rodgers looked as if he were inconveniencing her greatly.

“What do you need? I’m quite busy right now.”

Sutherland took a deep breath to calm himself.

“I need to leave. I have to find my family.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought that even for a brief moment there was actually some evidence of emotion on Rodger’s face.

“Where were they?”

“I was talking to my wife when the phone cut out. She was at home.”

“I can’t let you leave, but I can send out a recon team to retrieve them.”

A calm feeling washed over his body. He wanted his wife and daughter to be safe. It was the only thing on his mind.

Rodgers turned and walked away. Sutherland thought about thanking her, yet there was a part of him that still didn’t trust her. He would have rather gone to get his own family. He told himself, in that moment, that if his family didn’t make it back to him in one piece, he would never forgive Rodgers.

Sutherland stood in the hallway. The staff of the bunker walked around him without acknowledging his existence.

He decided to wander the bunker. Sutherland had no idea what time of day or night it was, but he had a feeling that until he knew his family was safe he wouldn’t be able to rest.

With no particular destination in mind, Sutherland walked down the closest hallway. After a left turn down another hall, he saw a door that marked the end of the hall and on it was a graphic design that resembled a corn stalk. There was a single guard at the door who stepped aside and opened the door as Sutherland approached.

Sutherland walked through. The door closed behind him and he froze. He had been under the assumption that the bunker had been designed for long term sustenance of the staff based on what Rodgers had told him so far, but he had no idea this is how it would be carried out.

The room was massive. Sutherland had a hard time seeing the other end through the stalks of corn, fruit trees, wheat plants and assortment of vegetable gardens. Sutherland looked up at the ceiling. It was lined with grow lights that simulated the natural sunlight required for the sheer number of plants to grow.

Sutherland tried to think about the quantity of food such a large farm would be able to produce. He knew it had to be enough for hundreds, if not thousands of people. Sutherland assumed the bunker was large, but he didn’t think it was
that
big or filled with hungry staff to feed.

What surprised him the most about the underground farm was the fact that the plants were already grown and producing. He knew it was a little strange, considering the state of the economy, that the government had been spending who knows how much on an underground bunker farm. He knew it was quite possible that the bunker had been developed and maintained at its current level for years without citizens of the United States being aware of it.

Nick yawned and took a sip from his coffee mug. He cringed as the hot liquid touched his lips and yet it felt so nice on such a crisp morning outside of Boulder, Colorado. The sun was just coming over the horizon and there was already traffic.
Apparently, everyone else had the same idea as me
, he thought. With gas prices nearing eleven dollars a gallon, Nick had what he thought was a brilliant idea... he just happened to have the same brilliant idea as hundreds of other people. He thought that if he left before sunrise, he could avoid the typical morning commute traffic between Boulder and Denver, but it turned out to be just as bad as rush hour.

He glanced down at the gas gauge in his car and shook his head. He only had an eighth of a tank left. When the traffic finally started to move, Nick took the next exit and pulled into a gas station. He washed his windshield as the car was filling. He looked up when the pump shut off. Nick wrinkled his forehead as he looked at the gas pump. The digital display was blank. He tightened the gas cap on his car and went into the gas station to see why the pump had stopped. There were already two people in line at the counter when he walked up.

“I’m sorry,” said the young man behind the counter. “I don’t know what to tell you, the power went out. I can’t sell you lottery tickets if the power is out.”

Nick looked around the gas station. The morning sun coming through the windows had illuminated the interior enough that he didn’t notice the lack of interior lighting until he looked at the ceiling.
I don’t have time for this, I need to get to work
, he thought. Nick walked out of the gas station and got back in his car. He watched the gas gauge climb when he started his car. Its gauge stopped just shy of a half a tank. He put his car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot.

The stop light on the highway overpass was out and traffic had already started to back up. Nick waited his turn and pulled back onto the congested highway. He turned on the radio in his car in hope of a traffic report. He wanted to get a general idea of when he would arrive at work so that he could call his boss. Only static, no matter what station he put on, came through the speakers of his car. He pulled his cell out and pressed the circular button at the base of it, but the screen didn’t light up. Nick held down the power button and the phone still didn’t come on. He tossed the non-functional phone on the passenger seat and sighed.
I guess it’s going to be one of those days
, he thought.

Power outages had become a regular part of life over the last year, but Nick couldn’t fathom why that would affect his phone.

Nick looked into the sky to the east—there was something gray in the sky and it was growing larger. His attention was forced back to the road as his car slammed into the car in front of him. It was a low speed collision, but Nick still checked his mirror and pulled onto the right shoulder. He looked over his shoulder at the car he had hit, but there was no one in it. He looked at the other cars. They were all empty. Everyone had gotten out of their cars and people were standing in the middle of the highway. Nick turned his car off and climbed out. He walked over to the closest group of people and looked into the sky.

The gray object that he had been looking at when he crashed was getting closer and he was finally able to see what it was. Nick shook his head in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that he was watching a large airplane falling from the sky in a flat spin. As the plane got closer to the ground it disappeared over the next hill, closer to Denver. Nick jumped back in his car and took off, driving on the shoulder.

Nick was sure of one thing in that moment—he needed to get to work and find out what was happening. It was the first time in years Nick was glad to be an employee of the United States. Under normal circumstances, his job as a software engineer for the Denver FBI office didn’t give him any more insight than the average civilian. Nick had a sick feeling that whatever was happening was far from a normal and he might be able to find out what happened.

When his car crested the next hill, Nick looked toward where the plane had disappeared. All that was left of the giant airliner was a heaping mass of mangled metal engulfed in flames and smoke. People on the other side of the highway, who were closer to the crash, had stopped their cars and many were rushing to the plane. Nick knew there was no point in him stopping… there was no way anyone had survived. He pressed down on the accelerator and blew passed the stopped traffic, still driving on the shoulder.

Nick had to merge back into traffic as he got closer to the city and the shoulder narrowed. The traffic was even worse and many of the off ramps were completely backed up as cars tried desperately to exit. He glanced up at the stoplight of one of the exits and didn’t see the red, yellow or green lights.

The traffic was heavier once Nick exited the highway and was nearing downtown. He was surprised to not see any Denver PD out directing traffic considering the circumstances. The traffic inched forward every few minutes.

When he pulled into the private FBI parking lot, there were pieces of the wooden parking lot barrier strewn about. There was no sign of the parking attendant in the booth when Nick stopped. He parked his car in his assigned spot and headed for the entrance. He stood in front of the elevator, forgetting that the power was out. The door to the stairs swung open and a man that Nick didn’t recognize ran through the open door and toward one of the black, unmarked cars in the lot. Nick watched as the man climbed in and spun the tires as he accelerated out of the parking lot.

Nick entered the dark stairwell and climbed the three floors to his department. He wasn’t prepared for the level of chaos that awaited him. When he opened the door, his co-workers were running in every direction, in the dark, with arm-loads of papers. As they hurried, papers would flutter off the stacks and come to rest on the floor. The forgotten papers covered the floor to the point Nick wasn’t able to see the gray industrial carpet any longer. Nick spotted his boss, Jim, by the window. He stood there, staring at the world as it spiraled into chaos. Nick walked over and cleared his throat.

“Jim?”             

His boss turned around and looked at Nick, his face devoid of emotion. It was as if the middle aged man had accepted what was happening and he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

“What can I do for you, Nick?”

“What the fuck is going on? The power is out everywhere and I just saw a plane fall out of the sky.”

Jim turned back to the window and watched the traffic outside of their building. He knew exactly what was happening. The office was already in a state of panic and none of them had any idea how bad it was.

“I have to leave, Nick, sorry.” Jim turned and gave Nick a pat on the back as he walked by and headed for the door.

Nick turned and went after Jim. If there were anyone in his department that knew what was happening, he knew that it would be Jim. Nick caught up to him in the stairwell.

“Jim... wait. What happened? You must have heard something....”

Jim stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“There was an attack.”

Those four words changed everything for Nick. He thought about the power outage and the plane falling from the sky and realized that it wasn’t a normal attack. This was something much bigger. He knew in that moment that his life would change forever. There were very few times in history when an attack took place on American soil, but when it did it had a profound impact on life itself.

“Who?”

“I have no idea. I went upstairs right after the power went out asked my boss if he had any idea what was happening. He was in a state of shock, holding a picture of his family. When he finally snapped out of it, he said that D.C. had sent a message. There was a long-range missile in the atmosphere above the United States and there was an attempt to intercept it.”

Nick was at a loss for words. Successful attacks against the United States were few and far between and they typically were small scale.

“After that, everything went dark. That missile looks to have detonated someone over Kansas or Nebraska,” Jim said.

“Why would the power go out?”

Jim started down the stairs again.

“I have to go, Nick. My daughter needs me. I’m all she has.”

Nick stood in the stairwell as the sound of Jim on the stairs faded away and the opening and closing of the door two floors below him marked the man’s exit.

Nick’s mind raced as he thought about who could have orchestrated such an attack. Relations with the EU had degraded over the last two years, which resulted in the canceling of all trade agreements with European countries. Things had become tense over the last few years with Russia and Nick knew that was a possibility. China had been unhappy with the United States as of late, but Nick doubted they would attack one of their largest trade partners. He knew that the most realistic explanation was that the attack had originated in the Middle East. That worried Nick the most. If that was the origin of the attack, there was a good chance there would be more and the United States wouldn’t have the chance to retaliate.

Realizing there was no reason for him to be at work, Nick headed back to his car. With his work in disarray and without power, there was nothing that he could do. He decided to head home and wait for the power to be restored.