The Demon Machine — L. Chambers-Wright

Blue Ridge Nuclear Energy is the largest and safest nuclear energy facility on earth, until the impossible occurs. A mushroom cloud arises from a reactor. Freak electrical events plague nearly every home. There are no answers, no evidence, and as soon as it seems the worst is over, new horrors begin. First responders abandon their posts. Teachers desert their classrooms. The citizens of Thompson are stricken with a strange affliction. Enraged hordes of the ailing gather in the streets, and those who should be dead are not.

Four strangers from vastly differing lives must survive this new world of madness and destruction. Each must conquer their demons within, to fight the evil that surrounds them. Their struggles come down to a battle of shadow and light, but hope ebbs as they discover just how powerful the enemy is. The explosion wasn't a display of power, it was merely a distraction for an even greater adversary.