All At Stake - A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller (Lights Out in Vegas Book 1)

by Sean Patten

  The man waved his hand dismissively through the air.

  “Please,” he said. “In my book you’re a young man until the doctor starts asking if he can poke at your prostate when you go in for a check-up.”

  I chuckled again.

  “Besides,” he went on, “when you’re a damn fossil like me, every man’s a young man in comparison.”

  “I suppose you’re right about that,” I said.

  “So,” he said. “What brings you to ol’ Lost Wages. Wedding? Bachelor party?”

  “Not even close,” I said. “It’s—”

  My lips pursed together to say the first push of the first letter of the word. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say it.

  Funeral.

  I cleared my throat, giving my mind enough time to whip up an excuse.

  “My brother,” I said. “Meeting with my brother.”

  It wasn’t a total lie—Steve was part of the reason I was coming into town.

  “Ah,” the man said. “Even better. Two young men out on the town—” His eyes shot to my right hand, and I could sense that he was looking for a ring—one that wasn’t there. “—And single. God, what I wouldn’t give to be in your shoes right now.”

  I shifted awkwardly in my seat, not sure what to say to that. I figured he might change his tune if he knew the whole truth.

  An awkward silence filled the air. God, I hated small talk. Didn’t even matter that this guy was about as affable as they came.

  I glanced away from the man, over at the seats on the other side of us. Seated in the middle was a tubby kid, probably around ten. His legs were propped up on the seat in front of him, a laptop open against his legs and nearly pressed against his face. He had a controller in his hands and headphones over his ears. His pasty face reflected the colorful display of the game he was playing, his expression vacant.

  “Damn,” said the man. “I can remember back when you didn’t have a thing to do on a flight other than read or think. Nowadays kids can bring a whole damn entertainment center with them.”

  He shook his head.

  “You ever wonder what a kid like that would do if he had to go a day without his electronic fix?” he asked.

  “Maybe do something that might get him to work off that double chin,” I offered.

  The man let out a dry bark of a laugh.

  “No kidding,” he said. “Maybe if this thing hits they’ll have to figure out some normal way to have fun.”

  This thing. I felt my stomach suck up into me at the mention of it.

  “Oh, come now,” the man said, evidently reading my expression. “Don’t tell me you’re one of the worriers, too?”

  I shifted my weight again in my seat.

  “Worse things to worry about, I suppose,” I grumbled.

  He pursed his lips before reaching under the seat and withdrawing a folded-up newspaper. He snapped it open to the front page, down to a small article in the bottom right.

  “‘Scientists warn of effects from solar blast’,” he said, reading the headline. “I swear, if it’s not one damn thing it’s another.”

  For once, my interest in the subject was enough to get me to push past my typical reticence to do the small-talk thing.

  “You think it’s nothing?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it’s nothing,” he said. “I know it’s nothing. Damn solar flare or whatever.”

  I noticed a few of the passengers around us glancing back at the man as he spoke the words. The brief, worried expressions on their faces made it clear the subject had been on their minds, too.

  I could hardly blame them—it’d been all over the news.

  “Coronal Mass Ejection,” I said.

  “Huh?” said the man.

  “Different than a solar flare,” I said. “With a CME, magnetized plasma gets hurled into space on the solar wind. A solar flare is more localized—a CME can be larger than the sun itself.”

  He regarded me skeptically for a long moment, as if I’d just gone off with my pet theory of who shot Kennedy.

  “You sound like you know your stuff,” he said.

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  “I’ve been looking into it,” I said, offering up what might well have been the understatement of the year.

  “Well, if it happens I’m not too worried about it.”

  “Not ‘if’,” I said. “It’s already happening— the first flare occurred 12 hours ago, and they think an even bigger one is in the works.”

  “But they’re not sure anything’s even going to hit us,” he said. “So I don’t know what the big deal is.”

  “The big deal is that if a CME hits us then we might suffer a globe-wide breakdown of electronics and satellite communications. It’d put us back in the dark ages.”

  Another dismissive hand wave.

  “I know you’re not an English professor,” the man said, “but I’m sure you’re familiar with The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Like I said, if it’s not one damn thing or another. And I’ve been around long enough to hear it all—global warming, global cooling, Ebola, Bird Flu, asteroids they were certain were on their way right into us. You hear enough of this doomsday crap and you just start to tune it out after a while.”

  It was strange. His words were certain, but I could sense by his tone and body language that there was more than a little fear behind what he was saying. It was almost as though he was trying to convince himself right along with me.

  “Sure,” I said. “Might be right about that.”

  “I know I’m right about that.”

  Before either of us had a chance to say anything else, the pilot came back on the PA system.

  “All crew please be seated for landing.”

  I glanced out the window and laid eyes on the behemoth of lights that was Las Vegas.

  “There,” the professor said. “That’s the only thing that should be on your mind. Get down there, get some booze in you, waste a little money at the tables. And maybe if you’re lucky, wake up in bed with a girl whose name you can’t remember.”

  He flicked the paper with the back of his hand.

  “And not this crap.”

  I could sense he was getting agitated, so I let the subject drop.

  The plane sank lower and lower in the sky, my stomach tensing with each passing second. I hated flying, and landing was, by far, the part I hated the most.

  I always worried in the back of my mind that this is the time that something would go wrong, that the landing gear wouldn’t engage or the engine might explode or the pilot would simply misjudge the distance to the ground and smash us right into the runway.

  I should’ve known better—I had an idea of how these damn planes worked, after all. But knowing this only made me keenly aware of how many things, how many moving parts—to say nothing of the human factor—had to work in perfect concert to simply land a plane. Taking off was one thing, remaining airborne was another. As for landing—if something were to go wrong, this was the time it’d happen.

  We touched down. The plane rose and fell as we landed, the rush of air on both sides of the craft like some kind of unearthly scream. I gripped the armrests hard as I’d done before, my blood running cold.

  But instead of exploding in a superheated blossom, the plane rapidly slowed down. After a brief taxi period on the runway, it pulled slowly to our gate.

  And that was that. Another safe landing, one of thousands every day.

  A few minutes later, the lights in the cabin came on with another soft chime and the passengers began the process of grabbing their bags and making their way off the plane.

  “You’re in Vegas, kid,” said the man with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “Less doom and gloom, more…well, you know what you can get up to in this town.”

  With a wink, he grabbed his bag and made his way off the plane.

  I wasn’t about to deal with the packed crowd, so I did my usual routine of waiting until everyone was off the plane before I grabbe
d my bag and started towards the exit.

  And right when I stepped over the threshold of the plane onto the jetway, a warm rush of air flowed in and surrounded me. The warmth and the smell stirred memories in me, ones that I didn’t want floating around in my mind.

  I had too much else to worry about, and I couldn’t be more eager to get it all over with.

  Chapter 2

  18:00

  O’Donnelly-Reeder airport was like something out of a sci-fi show. The terminals were tall with rounded ceilings, making the place less like an airport and more like an interstellar space station. I half expected to see the airplanes take off and continue up, up into the coal-black sky until they disappeared among the twinkling stars on their way out to low orbit.

  And the place was a zoo. It was crowded with travelers who looked to be from every part of the globe imaginable. The noises around me were a wild swirl of conversation, announcements over the PA, and endless chattering from the various TVs placed up on the walls here and there.

  Part of me knew that the man on the plane was right, that I ought to put all the doomsday stuff out of my head and try to focus on the trip. But when I caught sight of the words “Coronal Mass Ejection” on one of the nearby TVs, I couldn’t help myself. I weaved through the crowd until I was right in front of it, close enough to hear it through the noise around me.

  “…latest reports from NASA indicate uncertainty on whether or not the solar event will have any effect on Earth.”

  “Solar event”—that’s what they’d been calling it. It always amazed me how the media managed to come up with the most tepid ways of describing disasters. Maybe if they referred to it as what it actually was—the potential end of civilization as we knew it—it’d get a few more people actually planning for it.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the crowds of travelers, all of them going about their business like we weren’t possibly staring down the barrel of the worst cataclysm humanity has ever faced. I shook my head and turned my attention back to the TV, where some bespectacled scientist-type was speaking.

  “It’s uncertain what sort of effects we could be facing if the solar event were to hit Earth. It could range from mild brownouts to serious power outages. And we won’t be able to detect the severity until it’s right down on top of us.”

  “Serious power outages”—another euphemism.

  Before I could get any more worked up, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I took out my cheap, years-old flip phone and was greeted with a text from the man I was here to see, my brother Steve.

  “Hey bro,” it read. “You here or what?”

  My thumbs fumbled over the keys as I typed up a response. I’d never really gotten the hand of texting—my fingers always seemed to work the letters with the grace of an elephant trying to play the piano. I was more than happy to take this as a sign that cell phones just weren’t for me. And considering the new ones could track every step you took, I was fine with that.

  “Off the plane now,” I wrote. “Where are you?”

  The response came seconds later.

  “Airport bar right near the entrance to your terminal. Meet you there for a drink.”

  I fired back a quick affirmative before shoving the phone back into my pocket and starting off in the direction of the exit.

  Before too long I was there, stepping out of the terminal. I scanned my surroundings for the bar and spotted it not too far off. It was a neon-drenched little spot, a gleaming white U-shaped bar packed with travelers. Like the rest of the airport, it looked like something out of another time, far in the future.

  I looked over the drinkers, trying to spot Steve. My stomach tensed as I did. It’d been easy to pretend up until now that I wasn’t here in Las Vegas for the reason I was, but I knew that once I saw Steve, there’d be no denying it.

  My eyes moved from person to person at the bar, but I didn’t see him.

  Then a hand clapped down hard on my shoulder, shocking me nearly out of my boots. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

  “Is that my baby brother?”

  I spun around on my heels and was face-to-face with Steve.

  As always, he was all smiles. His bright white teeth were a set in a perfect curve of a smile. It was always strange looking at the guy. With his coiffed dark hair and chiseled features, he was like an alternative-universe version of me, one where I’d gone into some kind of modeling career instead of engineering.

  And, as per usual, he was dressed in effortlessly stylish clothes. His white button-up shirt was crisp and pressed, his jeans dark and obviously tailored. He wore a gold watch that looked to cost what I made in a year, and his black dress boots had been polished to a mirrored shine.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  Steve dropped his hands down to my upper arms and looked me up and down with his emerald-green eyes.

  “Now, what the hell’s that look all about?” I asked.

  “Just…can’t believe it’s you,” he said, something like awe in his voice.

  “Aw, come off it,” I said, shaking off his hands. “You’re acting like I came back from a tour of duty or some shit.”

  Before I could say anything else, he pulled me into a tight hug. I dropped my bag and reluctantly returned it.

  He squeezed me hard, his cologne flooding my senses and forcing a heavy cough out of me.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Steve let me go and stepped back, a concerned expression on his face.

  “You okay there?” he asked.

  I blinked hard a few times, trying to get the sting of the scent out of them.

  “Any of the girls you date ever tell you to ease up on that stuff?” I asked.

  Steve let out his usual barking laugh.

  “Damn, baby brother. You sure know how to kill a moment.”

  “Is that what we were having?” I asked.

  I felt awkward, and I know he did too. The difference between the two of us was that while the awkwardness was undoubtedly written all over my face, Steve was burying his under a thick layer of gregariousness.

  He glanced down at my bag and scooped it up.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ve been in this airport for as long as I can stand.”

  He started off towards the exit and I hurried to his side.

  “I can carry my own damn bag, you know,” I said, a trace of irritation to my voice.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, continuing on.

  I hated this crap, always had done. Steve, whether he was consciously aware of it or not, was always looking for ways to make sure that I was well aware I was the little brother.

  Moments later we were outside at the pickup area, a long line of cars packed on the roads, dozens of people to our left and right.

  “Shit,” hissed Steve. “Should’ve called a cab in advance. Hold on.”

  He dropped my bag and ran towards the nearest cab where he gave the window a quick rap, continuing until the driver lowered it.

  “Hey!” the driver said, clearly irritated. “Light off means I have a fare!”

  “Yeah, you do,” said Steve, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a wallet I that appeared to be made of some exotic animal skin. “Us!”

  He opened up the wallet and pulled out a hundred, holding it out for the driver to see.

  The driver regarded the bill for a long moment, rolling his eyes when he finally spoke.

  “Fine!” he said. “Get in!”

  “Steve,” I said. “We can wait for another cab. One that we don’t have to take from someone else.”

  My brother either didn’t hear me or ignored me. Steve pulled open the back door of the car and gestured for me to get in.

  “Come on!” he said brightly.

  “Goddamn it,” I huffed as I grabbed my bag and made my way into the back of the cab. Whenever Steve got a plan into his head, there really was no talking him out of it.

  I shoved my bag down by my feet—Steve always sprawled out on his si
de.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

  “The Medley!” said Steve, clearly happy to say the name. “And the faster, the better!”

  The cabbie grunted in response as he pulled out of the line of waiting cars. I glanced around the back of the cab, noting that between me and Steven and the bag, it was cramped as hell back there.

  Steve said nothing for a time, instead watching me with a grin on his face.

  “You want to tell me what that look’s all about?” I asked.

  “I told you,” he said. “Just happy to see you.”

  “You look like a used car salesman who just watched a sucker waltz onto the lot.”

  “Yeouch,” he said. “Someone cranky from the flight?”

  I checked myself. Maybe he was right.

  “Something like that,” I said. “Just hate flying.”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “And I appreciate you coming by plane, bro, I really do. And hey—the price was right, huh?”

  That was his way of reminding me that he’d ponied up for my ticket. He wasn’t trying to rub it in my face, more like making sure I knew, again, that he was doing his part for the funeral arrangements.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” I said. “And thanks. But I’m sure I could’ve made it by car.”

  “Are you kidding?” he asked. “All the way from freaking Albuquerque tonight? That’d be a twelve-hour drive!”

  “Eight,” I said, quickly correcting him. “And I probably could’ve done it faster than that.”

  “No way,” said Steve. “Not going to have you hauling ass up here, getting in in the middle of the night, then be exhausted tomorrow for the funeral.”

  His voice caught on the word “funeral.” We’d only been around each other for a few minutes, but I could tell that the subject of why we were both here was going to be danced around.

  And that was fine with me. Dad was gone, and the funeral was tomorrow. No sense in getting weepy or sappy about it.

  “And it’s good for you,” Steve said.

  “What’s good for me?”

  “You know. Flying. Good to get you out of your comfort zone.”

  “I don’t need to get out of my comfort zone,” I said. “Flying’s dangerous as hell, especially with what’s going on.”