“You know what they say about doomsayers,” Mira fired back. “Even if they turn out to be right, they’re still assholes.”
“You’re starting to sound like my grandfather.”
“Who must be a truly fascinating wacko, from what you’ve told me.”
“You’re only insane until the majority comes to see your point of view,” Rachel said. “Maybe we can go visit him in the mountains. If we can find him.”
“Bet it’s nice and cool up there right now while we’re baking away here in the city.”
All Rachel knew of his location was his cryptic references to “Milepost 291” on the Blue Ridge Parkway. In typical Franklin Wheeler fashion, he’d made her promise to commit the name to memory and never tell another soul. Given the persecution and harassment he’d faced for his loudly libertarian beliefs, she understood his paranoia and his desire to slip off the grid and away from the spotlight.
Mira pulled her cell from her blouse pocket. “Dang.”
“What is it?”
“Stevie was supposed to call.”
“Getting stood up again?”
“We’re just hanging out, not dating.”
“What does that mean? Sex without having to say you’re sorry?”
Mira ignored the jab. “No bars,” she said, tapping her phone.
“That’s weird. There are towers all over the place. You have to drive half a day to find a dead spot.”
“Maybe it’s that solar thing. I’ve still got power, just no signal.”
“I read that communications might be interrupted,” Rachel said. “Also supposed to have some static on the radio and TV.”
“Well, ain’t nobody got time for that.”
“The worst is supposed to be over by tomorrow. Something about the sun rotating away from the earth so the solar flares spew out to the far side of the solar system.”
Mira finished her tea and carried the cup to the tiny sink. “Well, you just enjoy the sunset alone. I’m going to track down Stevie.”
CHAPTER SIX
Officer Harlan McLeod had only been on the force for nine weeks.
As a rookie, he got the crap shift, midnight to six. That wasn’t so bad, since Taylorsville was a sleepy town in the foothills of North Carolina and the worst crimes he’d handled were a cemetery vandalism and a few domestic disputes. In all cases, alcohol was involved.
The big excitement of the evening was that two of the department’s cruisers wouldn’t start, so both he and Stefano in Unit Seven had to switch from their usual cars. The city’s maintenance staff couldn’t figure out the cause, although it appeared electronic in nature. He’d hit the street thirty minutes late, but it had taken only an hour for boredom to set in.
Now, as he cruised the four-block Main Street and the courthouse square, he wondered how long he’d be able to take this gig before he applied for a big-city post. He wasn’t all that romantic about police work, taking his two-year basic law-enforcement training because he didn’t want to go to college or enter the military. Sure, this was the era of “Unsung heroes,” where everyone with a uniform commanded respect whether that respect was earned or not. But Harlan was more interested in a job than a career, and he figured as long as he veered well away from politics and registered as an independent, he’d log plenty of paychecks.
The moon was faint and fuzzy, and beyond the pale streetlights, a strange greenish glow licked at the clouds like a series of veins. The department had received a bulletin warning of possible radio interference. Something to do with the sun, Maurice from Communications had said. Harlan didn’t know what to make of that. Why should the sun be causing trouble in the middle of the night?
Harlan decided to test out the radio. He said into the handset, “Unit Twelve here, I’m ten-twenty on Main Street. Routine patrol.”
A little static cut in before the response. “Ten-four.”
Routine.
Harlan debated pulling into the service dock behind the courthouse and catching some shut-eye. He’d squeezed off a few catnaps on previous shifts and had mastered the art of sleeping lightly. He’d even learned how to prop his laptop on his steering wheel so that it would look like he was working. But he was too bored to sleep.
His luck was in. A hunched-over figure scurried down a side street. Nothing good ever came from being out at 3 a.m., and Harlan couldn’t resist tailing the guy for a block or so. If the guy fled upon realizing he was being followed by a cop car, well, that counted as probable cause.
The cruiser’s lights swept over the figure, pinning his silhouette against the whitewashed brick of a furniture store. Harlan wondered if he should call in the pursuit, realizing he’d mentally elevated the person to a “suspect.” But he didn’t want to be ribbed if the suspect was just some guy whose car broke down after his wife booted him out of the house. The chief wasn’t a ball-breaker, but he definitely believed in rank and pecking order. Harlan hadn’t been around long enough to be making his own interpretations of the law.
He gunned his engine a little, causing the headlights to brighten. The figure neither accelerated nor turned, just lurched on ahead with an unsteady gait.
Looks like public drunkenness at a minimum. Might be carrying, too. A drug bust would get me in good with the chief.
Of course, the suspect could be packing a concealed weapon as well. This was America, after all.
Harlan punched the accelerator and closed the fifty yards in seconds, the engine’s roar reverberating off the concrete, glass, and asphalt of the downtown. That got no rise out of the lurching man, and Harlan screeched to a halt and threw the gear lever into PARK. He got out, leaving the car running.
The man maintained his unsteady pace. He wore a red hoodie, the sleeves cut unevenly just below the biceps. His jeans were halfway off his ass, showing gray underwear with a black waistband. Something flashed at the man’s side, and Harlan realized it was a watch. Suspect was white. Like they all were in Taylorsville.
“Police,” Harlan called, in the firm, commanding tone they’d taught him in Basic.
The suspect might have cocked an ear—maybe—but kept on down the block. Soon he’d be in the shadows at the back of the furniture store. Harlan debated hopping back in the cruiser for pursuit, but now it was getting personal.
“Halt!” Harlan said, his voice cracking just a little. Very unprofessional. This guy was getting to him in a big way.
Damn it, I’m the authority here. I’m in control of the situation.
He unbuttoned the strap on his hip holster, although he didn’t touch the butt of his .38 Smith & Wesson. In Basic, he’d had one rule hammered into his crewcut skull: Don’t pull it unless you mean it.
He wasn’t sure if he meant it yet. He was annoyed, nervous, and frustrated. Not a good position for making snap decisions.
He should call it in now. Stefano, a good old Jersey Italian, was manning Unit Seven somewhere in the industrial park. The chief encouraged back-up on all but the most routine duties. “Cover your ass, or the gravedigger will cover it for you,” the chief liked to say.
One of the suspect’s legs buckled and he nearly fell. Definitely four sheets to the wind. Fortified wine, if Harlan had to guess—Mad Dog or Thunderbird. Harlan used the stumble to close on the suspect, feeling braver with the headlights making a big, bright stage of the street. He was close enough to smell the man—old sweat, piss, and a strange, metallic stench like ozone during a thunderstorm.
“Stop where you are,” Harlan ordered.
The man finally turned. He was Caucasian, all right, sporting a ’70’s porn-star moustache with a toothpick jammed between his teeth. The toothpick wiggled, and Harlan realized the wooden sliver wasn’t between the man’s lips; it was protruding from the lower one, a greasy smear of blood marking the point of penetration.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Harlan ordered, although the man didn’t seem to hear. The suspect stuck one pinkie beneath the hoodie to dig at his ear, and stuck the ot
her in his jeans pocket. No way he had a gun in there, Harlan could tell that much, but he didn’t like being ignored.
He drew his Smith & Wesson. “Freeze.”
Saying “Freeze” was awkward, the first time he’d ever felt like a cop on a television show. I’ll be eating donuts if this keeps up.
But Hoodie didn’t seem to care whether Harlan was playing tough. He glared at the officer—and something about his eyes was wrong. They had the wetness of a drunk’s, and that puffiness around the lids, but instead of red spangles splotching the whites, familiar greenish veins streaked through them.
Like the sky. His eyes are like that weird stuff in the sky.
That sounded too much like hallucinogenic hippie hullaballoo. Harlan needed to nail down this situation fast, before it got any weirder. Or worse, before some helpful do-gooder citizen came along and witnessed whatever might happen next.
What happened next was the last thing that ever happened for Officer Harlan McLeod.
Hoodie clucked his tongue, making a chuckling, popping noise, and then charged Harlan. The assault was so sudden that Harlan instantly went for his holster. He’d forgotten he already had his revolver in his hand, and the confusion cost him a precious split-second. Before he could raise the weapon again, Hoodie was on him, clawing and snarling, his teeth clacking together near Harlan’s face.
So much for all that training. The chief is going to be pissed.
Harlan stepped back but lost his balance, and that abetted Hoodie’s momentum. They slapped against the asphalt, with the policeman bearing most of the weight. Something crunched in his lower back and his legs went numb. Harlan tried to raise the Smith & Wesson, but it suddenly seemed to weigh thirty pounds. Then Hoodie’s teeth found his cheek and cleaved a wet strip of meat from his skull.
Harlan bleated an unprofessional squeal as Hoodie hammered and scratched at his body. The pain was bad, but the worst part was those eyes—like rarified lightning, glittering with profane fire.
On his back, he rolled his gaze up toward his forehead, looking at the twin headlights of his cruiser. Ghostly rims of haze circled the orbs, droplets of late-summer mist. Somehow it cast a calming presence over the horrible tableau. Like this was only a show.
Then something went for his throat—the impact simultaneously blunt and piercing—and the light washed over Harlan and vacuumed him into its endless blank brilliance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shits and Giggles.
Those were the nicknames Franklin had given to the idiots on the AM radio talk show. They were what the blabber set called “rising stars,” loudmouths who sought to become even more provocative than Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones and his circus-like Infowars network.
Shits was a hawkish Republican from the Midwest who fought for small government, the Holy Bible, and his personal interpretation of the Constitution upon which America was stolen from the natives and bequeathed to rich white men. Giggles was a small-L libertarian who thought John Locke was a liberal and that any public service, including federal disaster aid and orphanages, amounted to totalitarianism disguised as socialism.
In general, Franklin could relate to any debate which started on the fringe right of the spectrum and went off the cliff from there. But he was particularly intrigued today—and neglecting his garden—because Shits and Giggles were talking about the solar flares and their potential impacts. It was difficult to tell whether they were wildly misinformed or just issuing whatever propaganda the Establishment had pushed their way. For all the brazen defiance of the Establishment, talking heads always understood that advertisers were still their corporate overlords.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Shits was saying. “All this speculation is designed to stir fear on Wall Street and send stocks into a tailspin.”
“And that’s a good thing for the wealthy elite who own this country,” Giggles replied, right on the end of the statement as if their schtick had been rehearsed. “Because they already cashed out during the last government-subsidized bubble and are waiting for another crash to buy low.”
Franklin sneered at people who simplified the shell game to a matter of dollars and cents. Just like political noise, the financial markets were diversionary tactics to hide the true consolidation of power. The New World Order was just waiting for the right opportunity, and a worldwide natural disaster would fit the bill nicely.
“Let’s look at infrastructure,” Shits said. “The U.S. has conducted tests that say satellite communications are the weakest link and most vulnerable to solar radiation.”
“Who cares if you lose your cell signal for an hour? The real problem will be when people can’t start their cars.”
Shits was on that one, jumping from subject to subject with an unrestrained glee. The topic didn’t matter—he was an expert on them all. “Only the most recent cars will be affected. Government tests—”
“Did you look at that test? They borrowed cars and had to bring them back undamaged, so they limited the electromagnetic pulse exposure. Talk about foregone conclusions. Now, the Russians back in 1962 had vehicles totally shut down during their tests, and that was before the advent of all this technology.”
“Count on the Rooskies to go balls to the wall. They probably had human guinea pigs sitting behind the wheel, too.”
“Some folks say the older vehicles will still work, but what happens when you run out of gas? What happens if the pumps don’t work and the refineries shut down? Not to mention the gridlock on the highways.”
Franklin had read all sorts of research on the pulse effect, and some scientists suggested a car in a concrete garage would be unaffected. But unless the entire vehicle was in a huge Faraday cage, isolated from any conductivity, then it was a goner. He suspected only the military would plan for such extremes.
But try telling that to a scientist. They looked at facts instead of the truth.
Giggles was on a roll now. “These media reports we’re getting—people going crazy and attacking other people in some sort of mindless rage—I think it’s all part of the program. First they scare you, and then you willingly give up a bunch of rights. Then when you’ve given up enough rights, it’s easy to take away the rest.”
“We lost a police officer in North Carolina, two sailors on leave in Norfolk, a pediatric nurse in Texas, and there are rumors of other unconfirmed deaths. God bless their souls.”
“Mindless rage. Antisocial behavior. Total chaos. Are we talking about Zapheads or are we talking about Congress?” Giggles snickered at his weak joke.
“The Administration is invisible on this issue. That’s what happens when you vote liberals into office. Right now we need some strong leadership—”
“Right now we need folks to take care of themselves and not sit around waiting for government to solve their problems,” Giggles interrupted.
Sounds good to me. Franklin reached for his battery-powered radio but the signal went dead before he touched the dial. He thought the batteries might have drained, but the steady hiss of unfilled bandwidth poured from the speaker.
Maybe the Prophecy According to Shits and Giggles was correct and the End Times were finally here. Franklin rose from his chair, crossed the little cabin’s dark interior, and gazed out the doorway onto his little compound. The sunset was a purple scar along the crown of the mountains, and Franklin wondered if the sun was busy dealing its silent destruction as a new part of the world turned to face the heat.
“Rachel, if you’re out there, remember what I told you,” he whispered to the forest. “You’re the only one with sense enough to listen.”
He descended the rough wooden steps into his compound and headed to the chicken coop. Predators were always afoot here in the wilderness, and Franklin maintained a defensive mindset.
We can make it through the night, but what happens when the new day arrives?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Daniel Chien arrived early for work.
So early that it might a
s well have been considered working late.
He’d been tempted to just sleep on the couch in the Space Center lobby, since he’d only left the observatory three hours earlier and had barely slept a wink. Summer Hanratty had found him much too obsessed for human company, especially the kind of company she wanted, so she told him to give her a call when he returned to Planet Earth.
Once problems began popping up, the Administration had asked for on-the-hour reports, and Katherine Swain had ridden the console whenever Chien took a brief reprieve. Katherine had become just as hollow-eyed as Chien, because they both knew this level of solar activity had never been recorded.
Or even theorized.
Things were heating up. The magnetic field lines from the solar flares had behaved in unexpected ways, splitting and reconnecting in random patterns while the intensity of the coronal mass ejections increased. The center had lost contact with the SDO, as Chien had predicted, and they were essentially working in the dark, relying on ground-level measurements of the solar activity instead of direct readings from outer space. Despite linking an emergency network of radiotelescopes around the world, the data had become spotty. Not only was communication on the blink, but some countries were already experiencing widespread power outages.
The popular press had begun digging into the story, gaining gleeful interest when the concept of “Zapheads” arose. Chien wasn’t sure if solar radiation and gamma rays could affect the electromagnetic impulses of the human brain, but the storm had long entered uncharted territory. If the wiring melted or the signals got crossed, no scientist on earth could predict the effects. Prophets had just as much legitimacy in such realms.
After: First Light (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 0) Page 4
