The others stuffed into the crowded bus shifted toward the doors at the clear order, but they were panicked, shoving and yelling. Brady hefted himself up onto the vinyl seat and dove out the open window as more gunshots and screams exploded from the stuck traffic behind the bus.
People were pouring from their vehicles now, running for the nearby homes and businesses of Wytheville as the MRAPs (3) full of heavily armed soldiers followed, firing M16s at the citizens who refused to turn themselves over. Back-dropped by thick, black smoke and an angry, red sky, they remorselessly shot fleeing males, and anyone else who happened to get too close to their intended targets, only a few bothering with the bullhorns or their aim.
Recognizing bloodlust, the Sergeant rolled through the slush, moving under the bus, and he stayed there as the chaos got closer, arms and ankles locked tight around the greyhound's icy frame. The War had cancelled his leave, but he had to get home and he was going - a decision these Draft enforcers would shoot him for. Gun in hand, Brady stayed still as the trucks rolled by, and the citizens he was sworn to protect, were gunned down.
A second later, the air shifted, thickened, and he instinctively shut his eyes and buried his head against his arm as the sky lit up and the sun fell on him.
4
The electro-magnetic pulse shot out brutally. The devastating wave traveled the same path as the radiation and pressure blasts, and then went farther. Moving through the air and over the land, it traveled like electricity - surging through train tracks, electric lines, and low band communication equipment. The power surge short-circuited everything it touched - sparking fires, making pacemakers stop, causing engines to stall… and planes to fall from the smoke-filled skies.
Samantha - Wyoming
"Please, can't you just tell us where we're going?"
Samantha's pretty blue eyes and calm demeanor allowed the grim-faced young soldier to answer her, when he hadn't any of the others crammed into the chopper around them, but the deadly rifle in his hands didn't lower as the loud blades struggled to cut through the thick haze.
"We've been diverted to NORAD. The Essex Compound is now under evacuation."
The chopper suddenly lurched sideways, and Samantha stifled her scream, but not a low groan, as it was hit by an invisible wave of force and lurched again. The other Seattle civilians aboard the struggling aircraft echoed her noise of near panic.
Taken together, they'd been "removed" from the Environmental Protection Agency by big soldiers with clipboards, government passes, and guns. After seeing a coworker shot in the back when he tried to run, none of them had rocked the boat despite obviously being kidnapped by their own government.