Looking back on it now, I'm not sure if it was fortunate or not. Either way, the aliens didn't make us wait long to find out what was next.
As soon as we got home, my dad and Cam went frantically to work on an old generator my dad had sitting in the garage in case of emergencies. I'd definitely say getting our power knocked out by aliens fit into that category. They had been at it for about an hour with me standing watch when it hit.
Not the craziness, the breaking down of social order. Naw, that had been going on ever since the Hubble spotted the Mothership by Mars. People losing their minds, killing themselves, robbing banks, whatever. Even now I could hear the yelling and shouting out in the street as people, now deprived of running water, lights, and air conditioning were truly and irrevocably losing their shit. That'd be the reason Dad had me standing watch, nervous as it made me. He didn't want anybody rushing the house and catching us by surprise.
You half expect sirens to come wailing up the street as the police move in to restore order out of the chaos the neighborhood had become. But all you hear, besides the shouting and crying, is the wind, it's dry whisper reminding us that we weren't in charge of the world anymore.
Speaking of the police, I had seen cops here and there on our way back to the house, struggling to sort out larger issues, but they were riding bicycles of all things. I realized then with such a limited mode of transport, they were probably focusing on taking care of big issues and trusting that we citizens would keep it together enough to deal with the little stuff. Out of all the organizations hit the hardest by the EMP, it was them and emergency services like the paramedics that got smashed, both in terms of them being able to get around, and the sheer volume of what they had to now deal with.
So, against a background of unrest and shouting and without the cops to help, I watched my father sweating and swearing as he tried to get the generator to start for the hundredth time.
That was when I felt it. A tremor underfoot, nothing big. Just enough to tell me something else had happened out in the world.
At first I thought it was me. I glanced down at my hands with a frown. They would shake now if I thought too much about how the world was falling apart since the aliens arrived. More so, now that they had taken a shot at us.
"Did you guys feel that?" I asked when I saw my hands were steady. I looked around to see hanging things in the garage swinging slightly.
"We're too busy trying to get electricity back, doofus," Cam growled from where he was sprawled on the other side of the generator, hand priming the starter.
My dad, however, paused. He looked at me, then at the swaying tools.
"Earthquake," he announced with a thoughtful frown. "A big one, too, if we're feeling it way out here on the Prairies."
My own frown deepened.
"How do you know?"
My dad returned to working on the generator, talking as he did.
"There's been some big ones in the past, down in California, out on the west coast, that we've felt here before," he explained as he pulled the generator's distributor cap off to clean the leads once more. "Even a couple big ones that sent tsunamis at Japan that we could feel."
"Tsunamis?" I repeated, glancing at the window even though the nearest ocean was thousands of kilometers away.
"Yeah," my dad said, now trying to reattach the cap. "If we're feeling that, somebody's getting wet."
As it turned out, that was a pretty massive understatement. It took us a while to find out, but when we did, it was yet another body blow to a reeling civilization. And a shock to yours truly, who was already having trouble dealing with the collapse of my reality.
How did we find out, you say? With the power grid gone and smart phones dead in the water? Well, being an engineer and all, it didn't take my dad long after getting home to cobble together a ham radio set from parts gathering dust up in the attic. Stored in a metal box within a box that was grounded, something my Dad called a 'Faraday cage' that he had built one day when he was bored, the parts were protected from the EMP when it hit. Once it was assembled and hooked up to an old car battery, it became our window to a world filled with chaos.
It was the ham radio that told us the EMP which hit Lethbridge, had hit the entire world too, effectively killing the world's power grid and sending Humanity into the cold dark. A few other ham radios, including some that worked for government sources, were beacons of information in that dark. But they were so few, and the messages they did manage to relay were grim.
Millions had died in what now was so obviously an attack; victims of vehicles suddenly losing power, or systems failing. Hell, there were planes falling out of the damn sky! As a first strike, it bloodied our noses but didn't really hurt us. I mean, a couple million people seems like a lot, but not when compared to eight billion.
What the EMP did do, however, was crush our ability to respond. There had been talk before the attack of sending up a shuttle to see if we could make contact, or firing missiles at it if they proved to be hostile. After the attack we couldn't do any of that. All we could hurl at that glowing ball of malevolence was harsh looks and salty language.
Now the radio told us yet more bad news.
The aliens had struck again. This time, it was some sort of shock ram dropped from orbit. One of the ham radio guys, an old-school conspiracy theorist who had been watching the Mothership through a homemade telescope rig, saw it when it first dropped off the ship. A massive, gravity-assisted projectile twice the size of the CN Tower in Toronto, and probably several times heavier was his guess.
While I didn't see the thing drop, I was smart enough to figure out how the ram used momentum, mass and the pull of gravity to accelerate it to several times the speed of sound. It must've then hammered into a critical fault line with the force of several nukes going off, triggering an enormous earthquake.
It was bad. I mean, not an extinction event like an asteroid hitting us or anything. But bad enough. That earthquake sent compression ripples through the tectonic plates, the massive chunks of rock the continents float on. Those, in turn, created equally massive tsunamis that smashed into every coastline across the globe.
Nothing survived them. The coastal cities like Washington, Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York, Rio de Janeiro were simply washed away. Even cities on waterways connected to the oceans were gone, like Montreal, and Ottawa. Secondary quakes then caused more rifts in the plates to form, along with the widening of existing faults. That in turn resulted in more damage as a good chunk of North America's west coast sunk into the boiling Pacific.
It took about a day for the second wave of attack to finish. In it's wake, the face of our entire planet was changed.
More than half of the surviving ham radio operators disappeared during that attack. Hearing all the dead air as he tried the various channels during a break from working on the generator, Dad got pretty grim. Both Cam and I were standing there as he slowly got up from his rig, which he had set up in the dining room, after hearing about the attack with the shock ram.
"Dad?" I asked, seeing the look on his face. He looked at me for a long moment and I could almost see the thoughts spinning behind his eyes. Then:
"Grab your bike, Liam. We're going to go get your mom."
I nodded and headed for the garage without question. I only heard that tone of voice when my dad was dead serious. As I did, I heard my dad giving Cam some last instructions.
"Keep working on the generator, Cam. If you can get it working, charge everything that can be charged with the AC transformer. But keep your head on a swivel. People are going crazy already. Once they find out, however they find out, that we've just lost half of the planet's population in one shot, things will go south in a hurry! Here's the key to the gun cabinet, ..."
Then I was through too many doors to hear the rest. But if he was letting Cam pull out one of the rifles that my dad had inherited from my grandpa, a devout hunter/gatherer from back in the day, then I knew things had moved to the next level.
Thankfully the EMP had caught the city shortly after the start of business, so most people had been at their jobs. Only a relative few cars were caught on the side streets like ours. Weaving our way through groups of people heatedly talking about what was happening, we made our way to 13th Street, which would take us across town and to the hospital in a straight shot.
From there we peddled hard, swerving when we had to avoid a car in the road, or up on the sidewalk when several cars clustered together in a crash, blocking the way. We managed to make fairly good time, passing more and more people that were moving about, trying to do what they could. Some were pushing wheelbarrows to the nearest store for supplies, others were trying to get their vehicles going. And, as we got closer and closer to the hospital, we were seeing groups of people carrying wounded with them, trying to get them to a doctor.
When I saw the first guy with a wheelbarrow push his way into the store on the corner of 13th and 6th Avenue South, I glanced at my dad, a question on my face. 'What about our supplies?' I silently wondered. 'What about food and water?' With most traffic gone, the delivery trucks bringing the food to restock the stores weren't running and what was currently on the shelves would quickly disappear. I was thinking we didn't want to be left out when it came to grabbing what we could, while we could.
Yet, when I caught my dad's eye, he shook his head and rode on. I felt a ripple of uncertainty at that. Should I trust that my dad had a plan? Even for this??
I let a sigh whistle through my nostrils and kept peddling as well. I didn't have much choice. At least, not yet. My dad was obviously working on something in his head. I had to trust that it was something that would keep us all safe and in one piece. Because there wasn't anything out in the world that could do that. Not anymore.
As expected, the hospital was congested. With a parking lot filled with dead cars, the ER was filled with dying people, each suffering from various levels of trauma as they waited their turn to see the overburdened doctors.
When my dad saw the crush, he quickly waved me over to the side where we parked the bikes against a tree, locked them in place then ran to where a handful of security guards were trying to keep control of the crowd.
"My name is Gary Kelso," my dad said as he jogged up. "My wife Sara works here. I need to see her right away."
"If you hadn't noticed, we've got a bit of a problem here, buddy," the nearest guard growled without taking his eyes off the crowd. "If your wife is working, she's too busy to see you."
"No, you don't understand," my dad said with a grimace. "It's imperative that I see her immediately."
This time the guard favored Dad with a tight look. Then he was staring back at the anxiously shifting crowd, many cradling or supporting seriously injured comrades.
"If you're not dying, bud, you're not getting in. Simple as that," he bluntly informed my dad, turning his back on us.
My dad's grimace became an annoyed frown. But before he could step closer and confront the guy, I grabbed him by the arm.
"Is Mom still up on 3rd?" I asked in a low voice as I pulled him back. Dad looked at me, his frown dissolving into confusion.
"As of this morning, yes. Why?" he asked.
But I was already running around the corner of the main building when he shouted his question. I didn't bother to answer either as I headed for the fire escape I knew was on the other side. The fewer that knew what I was about to do, the fewer there were that could try and stop me.
I would ask myself later why I did it, why I risked my life to get in touch with my mom, who was doing her best to save lives. The answer was pretty simple: I had to do something. The world was coming apart at the seams, I didn't know what was going to happen next, and the tension, all of that was creating inside me, was about to explode, ripping me into a million pieces.
I didn't want that to happen. So I decided to do something. Yeah, looking back on it, it was pretty stupid. But at least it was something.
Timing my running steps as I came around the corner, I mentally measured how far it was to the lowest rung on the fire escape ladder going up the building's side. It would take a pretty good jump to reach that rung.
I had no doubt that I could make it. I had played varsity basketball for two years now, and had a good enough vertical that at 6'2", I could dunk a basketball. On top of that, I kept fit in the offseason by rock climbing and doing parkour. While Lethbridge wasn't the perfect place for the free-wheeling sport, and I wasn't a badass like some guys I had seen, I found enough places in the last few years to make it a challenge for me to move as quickly and without assistance through them at top speed.
That challenge kept me flexible, agile, and aware as it forced me to constantly scan my environment for the best path through. Like I was doing now, eyeing the wall, the ground in front of it, and the ladder to see if I could spot the best approach.
There; if I took a run up the wall, twisted and jumped back towards the ladder, I should be able to catch the bottom rung with my hand. Bracing myself, I hurled myself forward.
One, two, three steps up the wall then I was twisting my upper body around as I pushed off hard with my feet. It wasn't a perfect launch like I'd seen the pros do it, but it was enough to throw me through the air, hand outstretched. A couple pounding heart beats and a suddenly dry mouth later, my fingers were slapping against the rung. Instinctively I closed them and found myself hanging by one hand off the bottom.
Gritting my teeth, I flung up my other arm and grabbed hold before laboriously hauling myself to the next rung and the next. While I did, I noticed that I had garnered an audience. Maybe five or six people, including my dad, had followed me around the building's corner and now watched me starting to climb.
"Go, kid!" someone in that small group yelled. Spurred on by that, I finally got my feet onto the bottom rung with a couple more good pulls. From there it was easy: clambering up to the first escape balcony then going up the stairs until I reached the third floor.
Jogging to the emergency exit, I hesitated before taking hold of the handle. Usually these things were electronically locked. But, with the grid down, it was a question of whether or not the hospital had a manual system as a backup keeping the door closed.
I took a quick steadying breath. Then, in one motion, I grabbed the handle and pulled. I grinned when it opened without hesitation. No manual backup. At least I had that going for me. Then I was stepping inside.
A little less chaotic than the ER downstairs, the third floor was still pretty busy as nurses and a handful of doctors were moving around in the light of battery-powered lamps as they tended to people on stretchers in the hallway to maximize the light. They were so busy that they ignored me as I slipped through the crush, my eyes peeled for my mom's face.
There! My mom was working with two other nurses as they were switching out some kind of IV bag for a fresh one on a weak-looking woman writhing in pain beneath a thin sheet.
"Mom!" I said as I stepped close, earning myself a startled look.
"Liam?? What are you doing here? Where's Cam and your dad?" she asked in an anxious yet tired-sounding stream of words before returning to her efforts to get the IV needle back into the woman's arm, as her writhing had pulled it free despite it being taped into place.
"Dad's downstairs and Cam's at home, keeping watch on the house," I said. "Mom, Dad wants you to come home with us."
"What?" she hissed, throwing me another look as the other two nurses also threw startled looks at me. "We're trying to keep these people alive in here, Liam. I can't leave."
"Something bad has happened, Mom," I pressed. "Something real bad. We need to get out of here and get safe at the house." I looked around and saw that several faces were now turned my way, including a few of the people in the stretchers.
"No, Liam." I watched my mom's face tighten with resolution. I had seen that look before, when she dug in her heels in arguments with my dad.
"I'm not going to abandon these people, no matter what your father, ..."
The loud 'thump' from the room just to our left interrupted her before she could finish. Startled by the sound, I gave her a wide eyed look before, heart in my throat, I turned and stepped to the door. A single push was enough to open the door.
A quick look told me just about everything I needed to know about the simple chamber, practically empty with it's only furniture a couple stripped down hospital beds and their night tables. All the equipment had been moved out, and the curtains thrown back to let in as much light as possible.
Seeing that light made me wonder why the doctors and patients weren't in there, or any of the other rooms where the natural light would help them see. That's when I spotted the ragged smear of blood on the room's large window overlooking the grounds.
Gritting my teeth against the surge of panic seeing the blood sent through me, I eased into the room and leaned towards the window, trying to get a glimpse of what had made the smear. 'Knowing my luck, it's a zombie,' I thought darkly as I looked first at one end of the window then the other. 'Because it isn't bad enough to die in an alien invasion. It'd have to be the zombie apocalypse, too.'
Then I spotted it, the broken and twisted form of a bird on the window's outer ledge, a European starling to be exact. It looked like it's neck was broken, likely from its collision with the window. Despite it's death by broken neck, blood oozed from the dead animal's mouth and eyes.
That in itself was enough to creep me out. I'd seen birds with broken necks before, and there was almost no bleeding at all. Yet this starling was copiously bleeding like it was ruptured on the inside and now everything was coming out.
I looked again at the smear on the window, mind whirling. There was no way a bird could hit a window hard enough to destroy itself on the inside then bleed out like this.
Or could it?
I used to think that aliens couldn't possibly be interested enough in Earth to come over and take a shot at us, either, and look how well that went. Then I was twitching as my mom unexpectedly spoke right beside me, startling me.
"Liam! Did you find out what made that, ...? Oh." She frowned as she spotted first the bloody smear then the bird bleeding out on the outer sill. "That isn't right," she muttered, sounding confused and not a little disturbed.
Then both of us jumped when a second bird smacked into the window. This one was an English sparrow, hitting hard enough to make the window hum before dropping limply onto the sill, its neck also broken. It too left a bloody smudge on the glass, that kind of spatter pattern you get when you throw a paint brush filled with paint at something.
Seeing that made me realize something. And that realization sent a chill down my spine.
The bird was bleeding before it hit the window. Blinded by the blood coming out of its eyes and with that blood then filling its feathers and making it hard to fly, it couldn't help but crash into the building. I found myself silently thankful that it wasn't a crow or a pigeon, or it might've just broken the glass. But what the hell would make it bleed like that?
Then my mom was grabbing me by the arm.
"Help me get my stuff," she said in a low, fear-roughed voice. "We're getting out of here!"