The Pulse

Prologue

The day the Earth stood still started like any other. Well, the Earth didn’t literally stand still, but everything on it did, so it amounted to the same thing. There were no catastrophic nuclear explosions, no deadly meteors hurtling through space, no outbreaks of a deadly virus. No warning. No chance for preparation. Just normal, every-day life, then the Pulse, and then the aftermath.

The Pulse was exactly what it sounds like, except no one then and no one now could figure out where it originated from. To me, it was a white bar of light, maybe ten feet wide and endlessly long, that came rushing up the main street of my two-stoplight little town in Pennsylvania. It pushed the air in front of it, not in a way that blew my long, curly black hair back or made the leaves on the trees dance, but you could feel it.

There was a hum, kind of like when you’re all alone at three in the morning, and everything is so silent that your eardrums seem to go numb and you hear this funny little buzzing. Nothing stood before the Pulse. That light just passed right through buildings, cars, people, like they weren’t even there.

As I watched it coming toward me, one hand at my shoulder, gripping the strap of my book-bag, my body went numb. My brain was sending out all these messages, run and hide and scream, but the nerves and muscles weren’t responding, so I just stood there.

The Pulse hit me. There was no pain, just this blinding white light and then it was past me. My body began to function again, and I turned to watch the Pulse’s progress as it continued on its way. All the way up the street, people who had come out of their houses were frozen just like I had been. Mr. Barker, who was eighty if he was a day, was submerged in the white, and suddenly he just dropped to the sidewalk like a sack of stones. Just like that, the Pulse was out of sight.

We’d figure out later, much later, that the Pulse was the reason everything electrical or mechanical had stopped working. Cars, trains, planes. Cell phones, land-lines, wrist watches. And even worse, pace-makers, like Mr. Barker’s, respirators, even incubators. Something in the Pulse just shut them down. No power, no water, no heat, and the world was thrown into chaos.

There were no methods of communication, not even radio waves. It was like they’d been sucked from the air. The government had no means of mobilizing, no way to inform anyone of anything. For better or worse, we were all equal for that short period of time. Across the globe, we were united in our reaction. We gathered in our communities and tried to survive without all of the conveniences.

As for me, after the Pulse passed out of sight, I ran to Mr. Barker and dropped my bag as I knelt next to him. In my limited knowledge of first-aid, most of which I’d gotten from watching hospital shows, he was dead. There was no pulse, his chest wasn’t moving. I didn’t know what to do for him, and no one else seemed to care. Up and down the street, people were yelling, screaming, crying, trying to start cars and get out. Where they were trying to go, I had no idea.

I just sat there with Mr. Barker, a sweet old man, who had always had a smile for me when I passed him on my way to the bus stop. I started to cry, and since that wasn’t going to get me anywhere, I tried to straighten his body out and lay him on his back. I finally managed it, and then I crossed him arms over his chest and, hesitantly, slid his eyelids closed. Then I stood and stared. Hysteria was all around me.

Not knowing what else to do, I picked up my bag and turned back up Main St. towards home. I didn’t figure there would be school that day, and even if there were, I sure as hell wasn’t going. As I walked, people called out to me. “What happened?” “Why aren’t the phones working?” “Do you know what happened to the TV?” “What the hell was that light?” As if I could tell them. I was just a seventeen year old girl who’d been on her way to school, for god’s sake. So I just shook my head wordlessly and kept trudging for home.