Post-apocalyptic story about some sort of energy field that turns people into some kind of soup or goo

Question

I'm looking for a post-apocalyptic story about some sort of energy field or bubble that appears over the United States one day and turns people into some kind of soup or goo. It killed pretty much everyone inside.

One of the main characters was an army officer; I think he was stationed at…Guantanamo Bay? The edge of the field was nearby on the island of Cuba.

The rest of the story was about trying to figure out the cause of the disaster. One day a few years later, the bubble just disappears as quickly as it came and people start rushing back in to secure all the left-behind belongings. That part might have been in the second or third book though.

It was a paper book I saw about 5-6 years ago. I know it’s pretty slim but has anyone ever heard of this book?

Answer 1

This might be Without Warning (2008) by John Birmingham. It is the first book in a trilogy which would match with your thought that some events you remember might happen later.

Quoting part of a user review of the book on Goodreads:

A strange inexplicable energy wave abruptly covers most of North America and all mammalian life disappears or is melted into a pile of goo. [...] Only the Seattle area, Alaska, & Hawaii are left of the U.S. states. Also most of Canada's populated areas, most of Mexico, and most of Cuba. There are a lot of narratives to follow, a bit too many for my liking: an undercover assassin woman working for the U.S. & embedded in France, a general at Guantanamo Bay, the city engineer in Seattle, a couple of hot babe pirates, and a former ranger journalist in Qatar.

The blurb of the second book After America talks about fighting over the scraps left behind:

Now, three years later, a skeleton U.S. government headquartered in Seattle directs the reconstruction of an entire nation—and the battle for New York City has begun.

Pirates and foreign militias are swarming the East Coast, taking everything they can.

_{Found using the search site:goodreads.com/book energy field guantanamo}