The Solar Pulse (Book 2): Escape the Pulse

by Will Hawthorne

  ‘That was before I knew that I could trust you. Now that I know that you’re as crazy as I am, I can show you a couple of things.’

  Dolores suddenly tapered off left, onto the sidewalk and down the driveway of a suburban house not unlike all of the others on this street. Single-story houses that stretched much wider than they did in depth. The place looked like all of the others, save for closed blinds in the middle of the day and grass that could do with a cut – but unless somebody had a scythe kicking around then that was another job altogether.

  She unlocked the myriad of locks that stood atop each other along the outside frame of the door with a ring of keys, the final coming undone by a key that rested on a chain around her neck.

  The smell of metal hit me the moment we went inside – it was the taste of sleep and blood, although I could tell from the off that neither of those things were present in the house.

  Dolores took off into the next hallway, beckoning me with a hand. I followed through the hazy light that had found its way in through the cracks of every covered window in the place, stopping almost immediately around the corner as she reached up from a cabinet beneath a set of stairs and handed me a small bottle of water.

  ‘I’ve got plenty, and like you said it’s warm out there. Water’s gonna be something that the people in this town are gonna have to start thinking about, and fast. River’ll keep ‘em, but the water needs to be cleaned before they go drinking it. Gonna be interesting… This stuff is like gold dust. Remember that. Sooner or later somebody might be pointing a gun at you in the hopes of getting some.’

  I nodded in agreement, unscrewing the cap and taking a swig. There’s nothing like quenching your thirst after being in the sun, but I had to remind myself to conserve it.

  ‘Come on,’ Dolores said, turning and heading sharply up the stairs.

  ‘Where are we going? The attic?’

  ‘The roof.’

  ‘… Why?’

  ‘There’s something you need to see up there. Street level you can’t get a clear view, but up here we should be able to see.’

  ‘See what?’

  Dolores didn’t respond as she crossed into the attic, and I followed her.

  It had been converted a little, but any newly available space had been filled by a haphazard gathering of survival items – it was like the stash we had in the basement back at my father’s house, only much more expansive.

  ‘So you and my dad were really into prepping, huh?’

  ‘You could say that,’ she laughed. ‘All insulated in here. Keeps the place cool, stops the food from going rotten, you see… Yeah, we talked about the end of the world and how it might happen all the time… I tell you, honestly, it certainly felt good to wake up and know that I was right about all of this after being called crazy for so long, but it’s like getting revenge on schoolyard bullies, or anyone for that matter. For a few minutes or hours or even days it might feel good, but eventually you just go back to that feeling of wishing that everything was back to normal.’

  ‘I get you… Is that a laptop?’ I asked suddenly, going off track completely as I looked over at the rectangular metallic sleeve on a desk nearby.

  ‘It is. Anti-static case, so it’s been kept safe.’

  ‘God…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My girlfriend has her thesis on a USB pen back at the house. I think she’d love to check that it was all intact. Not that it’s important anymore, but she put in a hell of a lot of work towards it…’

  ‘Bring her over to check it. I’ll be glad to have some company.’

  I smiled and nodded, looking to the side.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘About your father?’

  ‘No, actually – well, kind of… You said that you and my dad used to talk a lot about how the end would happen. Was this how you thought it would go down? An EMP?’

  ‘I have no idea, honestly. Your father thought it the most likely occurrence, but there are plenty of others. Civil war. Economic collapse. Zombie invasion.’

  I laughed at the last one, but Dolores turned to me and didn’t even crack a smile.

  I killed my laughter fast.

  ‘Up here.’

  Dolores reached up to the sloped ceiling and pulled back a blackout tarp that I hadn’t even noticed – it fit the description – revealing a large window in the ceiling. She pushed it open and before I could even offer a pair of cupped hands to push her up and through the window, Dolores had jumped up, grabbed a hold of the ledge and effortlessly performed a muscle up to push herself out onto the roof; a true sign of strength. I was doubtful if even I could manage that myself.

  ‘See that chrome black box on the table there? The little one? Pass it out to me.’

  I did so, before jumping up myself and just managing to claw my way out to the roof. It was warmer out there than in the insulated and ventilated attic.

  In the peace of the day there was something romantic about being stood on the roof of a suburban house, seeing above the blocked eyeline of everything else. I didn’t mean with Dolores, just to clarify, but in the context of everything that was happening. Considering the chaos that I had experienced in the city, the serenity of being able to peacefully take in a view like this one was a privilege.

  ‘Is this a regular occurrence?’ I asked. ‘You coming up here?’

  ‘We’d drink beer sometimes in the dark on summer nights. That’s not what we’re up here for, though. Here.’

  Dolores clicked the black box open, revealing two pairs of carbon fibre binoculars. She handed a pair to me and took the other for herself.

  ‘What are these for?’

  ‘What d’you think? Just give me a second…’

  She brought the binoculars to her eyes and began to survey the skyline, over the tops of the trees and into the clouds.

  I stood patiently, attempting to track her eyeline but seeing nothing. Briefly it occurred to me that Dolores could indeed have been insane, and that she was actually just going to point out nothing to me other than some rare bird that had been lurking in the treetops.

  But then-

  ‘There she is…’ Dolores muttered, a smile rising to her lips. ‘Okay… Follow my line of sight. Right over there above the line of trees in the forest. It’s moving.’

  I brought the binoculars to my eyes and adjusted the focus, the magnified image clearing before me as I surveyed the sky for whatever it was that Dolores was talking abou-

  ‘Holy shit...’

  It wasn’t a bird, that was for sure. It took me several moments to figure out what I was seeing, as if the CGI of a blockbuster had been pasted onto my eyes, but as I zoned in and followed the object that was hurtling through the sky at a steady, gliding speed, I couldn’t help but hold my breath.

  ‘What… What the fuck is that?’ I muttered breathlessly. ‘Is that a plane?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Dolores said casually, confidently. ‘It’s a drone.’

  Chapter Eight

  Drone

  ‘How can that possibly be a drone?’

  Briefly I glanced over at Dolores, but in a moment of desperate immediacy I returned my gaze to the binoculars and focused in on the object once more.

  It was still there. It hadn’t been a trick of the eyes, unless she had drugged the water with a hallucinogen.

  ‘Seriously, how is that thing even in the air?’

  ‘If an EMP was triggered then a faraday cage would keep electrical objects safe. Of course you’d have to know that the event was going to happen in the first place. If you did… And I’m assuming that whoever set that thing off did… Then you could deploy a drone without it taking any damage.’

  ‘That doesn’t look like your typical consumer drone.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s military.’

  ‘Military?’

  ‘Military-grade, at least. You don’t set things off like that unless you’re a billionaire playboy with expensive tastes or you’re government
funded.’

  ‘Why is it here?’

  ‘Surveillance, obviously. What else?’

  ‘So you’re saying that in the wake of the biggest disaster in American history, the US government are instead spying on the public instead of helping them.’

  ‘Who said anything about the US government?’

  I could have been looking at a herd of bears with wings flying out of the sky when the meaning of Dolores’ sentence sunk in – whatever I was looking at through the binoculars didn’t register to me at all.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, slowly lowering the binoculars and looking to her again.

  This time, though, she was already looking straight at me.

  ‘Who’s to say that it’s our own government doing this? Isn’t it just as likely that it’s a foreign government that’s watching us?’

  ‘How would that even be possible? How could they possibly be prepared for this? We’ve all been hit unexpectedly.’

  ‘True… Unless a foreign body carried out a sophisticated hack on our detection systems and hid the fact from us.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I scoffed, shaking my head. ‘Seven billion people on the planet… You can’t keep that kind of thing secret. Somebody would let it spill.’

  ‘There are probably thousands of people just like that who’ve accidentally had car crashes or been shot right around the time they made such claims… Discredited as crazies or psychos or eccentrics. Just like me. There would have certainly been people like that if my theory is true, but their voices would have been suppressed and drowned. It’s easier to do that sort of thing in China and Russia, who are the top contenders for the role of the killers of our free world.’

  I looked back out into the distance, finding the speck of a drone moving through the air.

  ‘You really think we’re being watched?’

  ‘The proof is right there… It’s question of who is watching us.’

  ‘And why here of all places?’

  ‘My dear boy,’ Dolores laughed, reminding me of her age. ‘Please tell me that you can’t be so arrogant to think that we’re the only place being monitored. There are probably thousands of things darting around the country – but how would we know? We can’t call or text or communicate with even the closest town in any way without heading there in person.’

  I shook my head and looked up at the evening sky. Darkness had begun to fall fast, and the exhaustion hit me out of nowhere once again.

  ‘I need to sit down,’ I muttered, sinking to the surface of the roof and laying back.

  ‘Take a minute,’ Dolores said, looking back out over the horizon.

  ‘I just need to rest my eyes…’

  With that, in a sudden daze, I drifted off…

  ‘Sammy boy.’

  ‘What… What is it?’

  My eyes flickered open, but it made no difference whether they were closed or not. All was blackness. My eyes had been open one moment, and I had blinked and hours had passed. Night had fallen.

  I sat up and looked about, zoning in on Dolores’ voice. It took me a moment to realise that she was stuck halfway out of the roof window, suspended on her forearms.

  ‘Stay quiet… Somebody just broke into the house.’

  Chapter Nine

  Intruder

  Despite the fatigue that I was constantly fighting, her words woke me up immediately, not just into literal wakefulness but into the moment itself.

  ‘Get down here. Make sure you’ve got a hold on that gun of yours.’

  She disappeared into the attic and I moved over, keeping low in the near pitch-blackness. It was a cloudy night, and the only source of light that came from the room was partially blocked. I could hardly see my hand in front of my face.

  I positioned my hands either side of the window and lowered myself down into the attic, feeling my feet touch down on the floor. A hand on my shoulder almost send me straight back through the roof considering how high I jumped, but Dolores’ whispering voice quickly followed it.

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Two, I think. I got a feeling who I it might be, too.’

  We stood in silence for ten, fifteen seconds, until I heard the barely stifled footsteps moving across the landing.

  We were stood across from the stairs, the railing and the gaps in the bannisters emerging to me through the darkness as my eyes adjusted. We were out of the way of the line of sight if anybody were to look up, but there was no door that would block the set of stairs that led up here.

  If somebody wanted to come up to the attic, they would.

  I reached into the back of my pants and found the handle of the gun, producing it to rest by my side, barrel facing the ground.

  ‘You armed?’ I whispered.

  ‘I can use my hands if need be.’

  ‘Are you fucking serious?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Then, the footsteps.

  One sounded – it creaked, louder than the others, and it immediately became apparent that it was because somebody had placed their foot on the bottom step that led up here.

  ‘Stay on this side,’ Dolores whispered. ‘You’ve got a better angle.’

  Without another word she crossed to the opposite side of the room, pressing herself into a small indentation in the wall. She had been silent in doing so – but the intruder making their second and third steps in our direction hadn’t been.

  I backed into the corner, hidden in darkness just as the silhouette of the head of the first person came into view.

  I could tell nothing about them beyond a strong, heavy build as his shoulders rose up, then his hips, then his legs, too big to stay quiet.

  He reached the platform and looked into the room – right at me. I waited, holding my breath, my pulse pounding painfully.

  If he knew I was here he would have made a move by now.

  Footstep forward. Two, three, four…

  Creak. Creak. Creak.

  Stop.

  Click.

  He wasn’t cocking the gun that I suddenly realised was in his hand. The opposite, actually. He assumed that he was safe.

  A deep sigh escaped him, in this moment in which he assumed that he was alone. He wiped his forearm over his forehead.

  Suddenly he moved again at a dawdling pace, veering over to where Dolores was hiding. She had been so still that I had almost forgotten about her.

  Darkness encroached. He must have been no more than a yard away from her, but it didn’t register.

  He turned back into the room, away from Dolores.

  ‘Nothing up here,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Nothing that I can see, anyway.’

  ‘You can’t see shit up there, that’s why.’

  I recognised the owner of that voice immediately. The tone, the pitch – the man from the police office who had almost pulled a gun on me before I got there first.

  ‘What do you wanna do then?’

  ‘This place is empty. Old bitch is probably out in the woods with those two little shitheads she came in with.’

  ‘You mean the guy that pulled the gun on you?’

  ‘Him… Might as well burn the place down now. Be a nice treat for her when she gets back.’

  ‘Right?’ Our visitor laughed, still stood up here. ‘I’ve got the matches. I’m coming down.’

  He hadn’t even taken a single step when Dolores emerged from the indentation in the wall and jumped onto his back. I wanted to swear, to ask her how the fuck this plan would keep us alive, but I didn’t need to – through the dark I heard it, and then I saw the image.

  She hadn’t just jumped onto his back – she had wrapped her forearm tightly around his neck, interlocked it with her opposing hand, and was proceeding to crush his windpipe.

  He flailed about, slamming backwards into the far wall in an attempt to rid himself of this attacker that had latched onto him, but there was no such luck; Dolores held on tight, I hearing her release sounds of strength as sh
e pushed all of the force she could into suffocating this stranger to death.

  But the gun was still in his hand.

  He raised it, attempting to aim at Dolores, but there was no way that his arm would move in any fashion that it would allow him to strike her.

  Still, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to fire it anyway.

  Boom.

  It was a revolver, that I knew for sure, considering the sonic pulse that seemed to resonate through my ears. They were ringing like a fire alarm, and the first thing I heard as my hearing trickled back was the sound of the man’s footsteps stampeding up the staircase.

  I was still stood in my hiding place. Mere seconds had passed since Dolores had jumped him.

  He came into view, his blackened form appearing over the bannister.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’

  He went to make a move.

  Once again, I pull the gun first. In the dark a threat is pointless because it won’t be seen.

  I pulled the trigger.

  The spark lit up the air again for the briefest of moments. In it I saw him flail back as the bullet struck him – in the shoulder. He was too big for that, though. He had yelled out, looked down at his shoulder as if he were examining a bug…

  Then he bounded forwards at me.

  He grabbed me by the collar roughly, before I even had a chance to defend myself.

  No, that wasn’t a grab… One hand was, but the other was the knife sticking out of my shoulder.

  One for one.

  The adrenaline quelled the pain, but desperation coursed.

  I drew the gun up but he slammed it out of my hand, sending it floundering into the darkness below. With the weakening of his control I kicked him back with a knee to the groin, sending him falling back once again with a grunt of pain. Vaguely I registered Dolores and the other man falling to the ground as he lost consciousness, the floorboards shuddering with the force of the crash.

  I heaved a breath, bringing my hand up and wrenching the knife out of my shoulder. Even with the adrenaline the pain was sharp and horrendously intense.

  Suddenly I was armed again.

  I positioned it into my grasp, stepping forward towards his form on the ground. I brought the knife back, keeping my aim dead on this time – and it would have been, were it not for the fact that he somehow managed to catch my arm before the blade could make contact.