[b]Day 1, 1400 hours
National Guard Armory and Training Center
Monroeville, Pennsylvania (east of Pittsburgh)[/b]

The power outage had been caused by an electromagnetic pulse. Sergeant William Peterson was certain of that. He had no proof, but it only made sense. The power grid, cell and satellite phones, automobiles: they'd all quit working in an instant. There was a question in [i]Willie's[/i] mind, though. EMPs were only supposed to work on solid state electronics, not electrical devices in general. Yet anything and everything that ran off electricity had ceased working. There wasn't supposed to be a weapon that could do that.

Willie was at the National Guard Armory and Training Center -- nicknamed Natgat -- when the Pulse occurred. Most of the Guardsmen under him reported to Natgat a weekend a month and a month during the summer. Willie, though, was on active duty. He reported to the center Mondays through Fridays from 7am to 5pm. 

He wasn't sure what to do without communications. Surprising him, though, Guardsmen began arriving, one after another. They came in from all over the county, on foot, on bicycles, on horses. Willie wasted no time, putting them to work organizing arms and other supplies. The men -- and eventually two women as well -- questioned what they were supposed to do.

"Our jobs," Willie told them, clarifying, "[i]Operation Preservation[/i] is still a go."

"But we don't have any equipment," one soldier reminded Willie. "No Humvees, no APCs, no radios. None of it works."

Willie pulled his sidearm -- a Beretta Model FS92 -- and lifted both it and his M4 rifle, telling his subordinates, "[i]These[/i] still work." They'd already taken them to the indoor range and fired off rounds to ensure that the Company had at least those to work with. "We put [i]Preservation[/i] into operation without the heavy equipment. It's not like we're going into a warzone against a heavily armed enemy. It's Steeler fans and the Amish, for fuck's sake."

[i]Operation Preservation[/i] had been designed to deal with extreme examples of civil unrest, with or without the additional threat of foreign military involvement. It included securing five features in the Greater Monroeville area: 
[list]
[*]The National Guard Center, obviously, which included an armory with over 2,000 firearms and 1 million rounds of ammunition.
[*]A local food distribution center, the largest in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania.
[*]A petroleum distillation facility that produced all grades of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc. 
[*]The Monroeville water facility and waste treatment plant.
[*]A central electrical power distribution hub.
[*]A similar plant that supplied natural gas across the region.
[*]And key freeway and highway interchanges and major intersections.
[/list]

"We're not going to be able to control and protect it all," Willie told his Guardsmen at 1900 hours, when their numbers had reached just 25, including him. "Natgat, obviously. The food warehouse. The oil plant. The rest we'll skip for now."

"Why do we need to protect the petro plant?" he was asked. "Cars and trucks don't work."

"I'm not trying to protect the oil and gas for use," Willie said, adding with humor, "This isn't [i]Mad Max, the Road Warrior[/i]. I just don't want some loonies blowing the place up because they like pretty explosions." 

He gave out assignments, told the Guardsmen to double and triple check their gear, then told them, "Okay, let's get this done."

He had split the 24 others into even 3 teams of 8. One team under a Corporal would remain here at Natgat to protect the armory. A second team, also under a Corporal, would head for the oil plant. The third team Willie could lead himself to the food warehouse.