I woke up to the usual sound of my alarm going off on my phone. Annoyed with the sound after a few moments, I fumble around my desk next to my bed to turn the damned thing off. After a few moments, I turn it off and glance at my phone, 7:40. Another boring Friday, 8ams are ass, and your stupid self-thought it would be a good idea to take them this semester, although being done at 11 is nice. After contemplating skipping class for the hundredth time, I hop out of bed.
I hop out of bed and listen to the noises of my roommate's sleep, it kinda sucks he snores, but I got pretty lucky. We have very compatible personalities, so we get along well. Well, on the positive side, I get to move out of the student dorms this summer and have my own apartment, so that will be cool. I glance out the window and see the sun starting to peek out across the horizon. This is generally my cue to get moving and get ready for class. However, this morning I took a moment to enjoy the view, living this high up certainly had its perks, I thought.
After another few boring hours of class, I was finally free for the weekend, nothing planned but enjoying the freedom nonetheless. My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket, 'You have time to hang out and play some video games?'. Hell yeah, always time for that, it was a message from my friend, Jim. He was a part of a tight group of friends I spent most of my time goofing around and studying with. I sent him a reply 'Hell yeah, when?'. As I waited for a reply I figured I'd go grab a bite to eat, so I went to the Student Union to grab a burger.
As I was waiting in line I saw something odd on one of the screens, 'Breaking News! Unconfirmed sources claim of unknown activity all along the coasts of Texas, California, and New York!' Well, I live in Texas, should be interesting, most likely another oil spill or the like, I thought, disturbed. It was suddenly my turn to order so I decided to look into it later to see if it was worth reading about, could be entertaining.
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Almost as soon as I finished my meal I got a reply from Jim, 'Me and some of the guys are already hanging out in your room, we haven't really started doing anything yet though'. Huh, that's fair, my room seemed to be the hangout room since we mostly left our door unlocked. Open secret on the floor really, it made hosting people a thousand times easier if the could enter and leave our tiny dorm as they please. I replied 'Cool, I'll be right over'. I'm not really sure what we will play or, do really, but I'm sure whatever it is, we will have fun with it. Having a group of friends to do stuff with really made life more enjoyable.
As I was walking back to my dorm, I got an emergency alert on my phone, I wasn't alarmed, most of these were usually just Amber alerts for missing children. As I looked at my phone, my eyes widened in surprise 'EMERGENCY ALERT: TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY, MULTIPLE ATTACKS HAVE BEEN MADE ON MAJOR CITIES'. In the few moments it took to process this alert, the Tornado/Air raid sirens began to wail. I stood dumbfounded for a moment before jogging back to my dorm, I couldn't really spring due to an ongoing knee injury, it wasn't too bad as long as I didn't put too much pressure on it, jogging and walking were fine, just needed to be careful was all. Avoiding the other panicking people was a pain, but most people showed at least a semblance of sanity and were polite enough to not shove each other around.
However, after only about a minute after the sirens started wailing, I heard a distinct, pop. After that, all the sirens faded, including all the lights in buildings and the emergency lights that were posted around campus. Odd. I checked my phone to see if something odd had happened again, except when I tried to activate it, nothing happened. I looked around in confusion again, as did most the people who were previously panicking. We were standing there like a flock of lost sheep if I am going to be quite honest. Out of the silence, someone near me shouted in fear, "EMP!". Oh for fucks sakes.
The Fall had begun.