Regarding the ending, a lot of the weaknesses in these short stories is that I’m still writing them more like blog posts than proper short stories, which is to say in one or two sessions, and rather quickly at that. If you’re going to be doing this properly, you generally take longer to write it, and revise it many more times. The last sentence wouldn’t have survived a proper editing intact.

And yes, I know that this is only the first part of a multi-part series that I may or may not get around to writing. This is just the EMP hitting – the question is, what happens afterwards?

And even though it risks spoiling possible future installments, here are the answers to the questions. I’ll put a spoiler warning here just in case.
1) I was thinking along the lines of an astronomical event that wiped out anything electrical on the entire half of the Earth facing the source. As to what could cause an EMP wave to propagate through space without any other associated EM radiation, who knows – maybe a partially shielded supernova? Maybe I should have just added a bright light in the sky to cover my ass.
2) To be honest, the whole Kathy thing was kind of written as a throw-away introduction to what I wanted to get to. What happens with Kathy is irrelevant – society as we know it is ending here!
3) I have no idea what the physiological effects of a massive EMP burst would be, so seeing blood red was my best guess.

It didn’t really leave me with any serious questions. Here’s what I want to know, in the order they came to me:
1) What caused the EMP? Was it a hostile overhead nuclear detonation or something connected to the Physics building?
2) Will he score with Kathy?
3) Why is the world red? Is that a metaphor? Is it a clue to the cause of the EMP?

But as you know, I’m no critic, so take that all with a grain of salt.