The Western Eclipse Series

THEY DIDN’T NEED TO WIN A WAR OF BULLETS. THEY JUST NEEDED TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS. On a Tuesday evening, every circuit from the Pacific to the Atlantic dies at once. No warning. No coming back. Fire Captain Jacob Rome is twenty-five miles from home. He walks. Past stalled cars, past the first fires, past the first bodies. This is the shape of a country realizing, in real time, that no one is coming. His wife Olivia is already moving. A NICU nurse, two kids, a cold house, a propane tank that won't last the winter. She doesn't panic. She prepares. What they build is called The Pocket. A stretch of Oregon foothill. A handful of frightened neighbors turned garrison. Office workers and schoolteachers learning to butcher, to dig, to stand watch with a rifle across their knees. But The Pocket can't hold forever. Winter is close. A splinter becomes sepsis. A neighbor becomes a threat. And somewhere beyond the dark, the people who threw the switch are planning their next move. The EMP wasn't the end of America. It was the opening move.