First the wind rose. Then the attacks came - the terrifying electrical storms, the massive electromagnetic pulse that stopped phones, cars, and computers, the vast, rippling waves of energy that zapped everything in sight. Now, days later, Ray Ferrier and his 10-year-old daughter Rachel are caught in a crowd of people stumbling down a war-ravaged New England street, picking their way around overturned vehicles and fires that belch acrid black smoke. Faces are smeared with mud, blood, and the ashes of vaporized friends. Everything in sight - walls, fire escapes, even the Revolutionary War statue in a little park nearby - is covered with a strange, leafless plant that looks like a crimson spiderweb. Soldiers from the crack 10th Mountain Division wave the refugees forward, but a wrecked Humvee in their midst punctures any illusion of control. What happened here was the work of weapons no humans possess.
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