The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid Read Online Free

know, this could have been an even stronger second surge.”
    Artie’s Blackberry was still in the pocket of his foul-weather jacket that was now bunched in a corner of the cockpit. He was reaching for it as Larry pondered the cause of the strange shutdowns. He took it out of the Ziploc and pressed the power button. It normally took a couple of seconds before it would light up when it had been turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.
    “What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.
    “I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”
    “I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”
    “In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”
    “I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”
    “It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”
    “What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”
    “I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”
    “Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”
    “Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”
    “I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”
    Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear Ibis to the north-northwest along the rhumb line that Larry plotted on the chart. He said they were making good progress and should arrive as predicted shortly after daylight the next morning. The afternoon wore slowly on under the tropical sun as the two brothers separately pondered reaching land again and finding out the source of the strange electrical pulse.
    They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was