The Solar Pulse (Book 2): Escape the Pulse

by Will Hawthorne

  ‘Okay…’ I said, ‘well, things are pretty fine here, so…’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ he said confidently, looking about his surroundings. ‘One other thing before we go…’

  There it fucking was.

  ‘What would that be?’ The sheriff said from my side.

  ‘Have you or any citizen in the town become aware of any recent vehicle crashes in the area?’

  I didn’t whether to keep quiet or double bluff.

  ‘Vehicle crashes?’

  ‘We’ve recently been made aware that some military equipment may have malfunctioned in the area… Not that we want to give too much information away, of course. It’s confidential, but all within reason.’

  Both of us remained quiet, I out of pretending to not know a thing, the sheriff as clueless as they come.

  We both quietly and strangely admitted that we hadn’t seen a thing. He eyed us for a moment, his face expressionless, but I could tell that the analysis was going on behind his gaze.

  ‘All right,’ he finally said. ‘Well, if you do hear anything then be sure to let us know.’

  ‘Can I ask…’ I said, as he turned to go, ‘how is it that your equipment is working? If the EMP blew the circuits in every electrical item, I mean…’

  ‘Government’s got plenty of equipment stashed away for a rainy day, sir,’ Morgan said, nodding. ‘This isn’t exactly something we planned for, but we’ll be able to deal with it. Trust us.’

  He smiled and returned to the vehicle. ‘We’ll be back through this way in a couple of hours. Meet us out here if you see anything suspicious… Or you just need the peace keeping, of course.’

  With that he returned to the vehicle, seating himself in the passenger’s seat, slamming the door shut before the car took off in the direction it had been heading, out of town towards the road that led past the farm.

  I had been holding my breath ever since we had stopped speaking, and right up until the point that the headlights went out of sight.

  The sheriff and I looked at each other blankly, albeit a brief hint of wariness and confusion in our eyes.

  Then, a look fell upon his face that I had seen a thousand times in college. Rapidly, I grabbed a hold of his head and turned it to the side, turning my own face away so as not to see the stream of alcohol tinged vomit that spewed out of his mouth thanks to the night of heavy drinking that he had started hours before.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Downhill

  I had propped the sheriff up with a jug of water and a bucket at his desk before heading back out into the street to be met by Luke and Helen.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Luke blurted.

  ‘The military, apparently.’

  ‘So they’re not completely incapacitated?’

  ‘I… I don’t know…’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’

  ‘We can’t talk here. People are starting to come back outside. Let’s get back to the house.’

  At a hurried pace we returned to the farm, arriving ten minutes later to find it as we had left it, fortunately. A small part of me expected the place to be in flames, but such a fate hadn’t befallen our bastion yet.

  ‘Something about that didn’t feel right,’ I said, pacing up and down in the living room. ‘I just can’t figure out what it was.’

  ‘Well, seeing a car for the first time in days is gonna be a bit of a shock to anybody,’ Helen scoffed.

  ‘I don’t mean that. There’s just something off about the entire situation. I mean, why show up now? Doesn’t it seem just a little bit of a coincidence that these guys would arrive on some patrol less than an hour after we accidentally bring down one of their drones? Doesn’t that seem strange to you?’

  ‘I thought you said that they mentioned they were looking for something.’

  ‘They were, but what if the patrol was just a cover for the fact that they were searching for the drone? My point is that if that was the thing you were most worried about, wouldn’t you want to cover it up? Wouldn’t you want the public to think that safety comes first rather than spying on them?’

  ‘So what’s your point here?’ Luke asked.

  ‘This is gonna sound crazy, but… What if these guys are part of some rogue military operation that’s using military technology to take over the country and enforce some crazed rule over the population?’

  ‘Well…’ Luke started, sitting back in his chair in the living room. ‘While I used to be a huge fan of all of this conspiracy theory bullshit, you’re starting to lose me. All of this is just speculation. Until we go break down the doors of some top secret military base and probably end up getting shot in the face in the process, we’re never going to find out what the deal is.’

  ‘So you just wanna sit back and do nothing all day? Grow old on a homestead for the next fifty years?’

  ‘I’m not saying that, but you need to remember that it’s only been a few days. We can’t go saving the world from whoever may be planning whatever against the country’s infrastructure. This is bigger than us. Clearly some military force is present in the area, but from where I was standing they seem pretty legitimate to me. I’m focused on two things right now. The first is staying alive, which I’m guessing is what’s on your mind.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘The second is finding out whether my parents are all right.’

  I stared back at him as he blurted it out, his words coming to a sudden stop.

  ‘I… I’m sorry, Luke. I had no idea. You haven’t said anything since we got here.’

  ‘Because we have other stuff to deal with, man. Clearly something is going on, and we’ve gotta focus on looking after ourselves first instead of running out of town, or getting run out of town. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and… I don’t know if I can go on the way we have been. It know it’s only been a few days, but I need to go and check if they’re okay, one way or another.’

  We stood in silence in the living room, Luke getting to his feet, as if despite the calm demeanour he was putting on he could no longer contain what he had been keeping secret.

  ‘So you’re saying what I think you’re saying?’ I asked without a hint of malice.

  ‘At some point, yeah. Maybe not now or tomorrow, but soon.’

  I nodded steadily and looked my friend in the eye, but he had already made his way towards me, his arms outstretched. I did the same, hugging him briefly before we separated.

  ‘Okay…’ I said lightly but firmly. ‘Even if I do fucking love you and I need your company, I guess that I have to respect that.’

  ‘This tone is way to sombre for me,’ Helen suddenly said, standing. ‘And besides, I’m starving. Let’s eat something.’

  ***

  For the next two hours we talked and laughed about anything that our minds cast upon as we slowly made our way through careful portions of tinned food and water. We decided that now was as good a time as any to have a drink of the liquor that my father had left behind for the end of the world.

  By the time we were done we were back in the living room, on the verge of falling asleep.

  Except for me, that is. Despite it having been dark for a good couple of hours, making it a little past midnight by my estimations, I couldn’t sleep. That said, I hadn’t been lucid the entire time that I had been fighting to stay awake. I was on the edge between sleep and wakefulness, unable to move properly into either one. Because of this, when I heard a vehicle engine move past on the road outside, I failed to register whether I was awake or dreaming.

  But that wasn’t what I was worried about. Somebody needed to be on watch anyway.

  I took the gun and headed beyond the porch and into the yard, walking at a dawdling pace up the dried path to the main road. The night was pitch black once again, and my surroundings were a mesh of heat and silhouettes and shapes, the occasional very light breeze moving the shrubbery around me.

  I leant up against the fence by the road, look
ing out into the nothingness that lay before me.

  I was baffled how quickly things had changed. We had gone from normality and calmness to chaos to conspiracies to military patrols to be being split up all in a matter of days. How is a man supposed to deal with this?

  I had never tried to take things for granted in my life. I always knew that it could be taken away at any point.

  I knew, though. I knew to begin with that no matter how comfortable this world becomes, you can’t let yourself be taken in and absorbed by that comfort. If you did, like most of the people in this abundant world of ours did, then you would fall apart and be killed in your bed when the time came that the power running through the wires failed us.

  I stood there for… I don’t know how long. I leant against the fence and breathed against the warm night air, occasionally looking up the road either way, into the long stretches of darkness, into town and further away, back up the road that we had come.

  Then the lights appeared again.

  But they weren’t coming from outside of town, in the direction that I had last seen the military vehicle heading. No, they were coming from the main street of Redwood, the same way that they had been coming the first time that the sheriff and I had seen them.

  I backed up a little, stashing away the gun at the back of my waist once again. The vehicle approached, and through the slapdash mix of dark and light I saw the same shape of the military vehicle approaching. It slowed to a stop once again as it approached me.

  I gulped, my heart pounding.

  It stopped.

  The man on the gun remained where he was, but this time his gun was mounted and on standby, ready to be fired.

  He looked down at me ambiguously as, this time, both men from the driver and passenger’s seats got out of the car and moved towards me.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, trying to remain casual and to keep my voice from faltering.

  ‘Oh, perhaps,’ Morgan said, cradling his gun in his arms in the same fashion that the sergeant by his side was doing. ‘We spoke earlier, I think, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did,’ I said surely. ‘Outside the sheriff’s office.’

  ‘That’s correct. To my recollection we asked you about any military equipment in the area that you might be aware of… Anything that might have crashed, or come down. Whatever term you’d like to use.’

  ‘I remember. And I said no, I hadn’t.’

  ‘I see,’ Morgan continued. ‘Then, I have to ask, would you like to stick to that answer?’

  I had experienced a lot over the past few days, but right then I had never been more scared in my entire life. I tried to avoid their gaze, looking past them towards the vehicle. In town I had been standing on the opposite side of where the vehicle stood now.

  Now, as I looked past them, it caught my eye.

  D.

  O.

  A.

  I paused, taking in the weight of those familiar but completely unknown initials.

  ‘Who the fuck are you people?’ I managed to mutter, rapidly looking between them, before-

  ‘Grab him.’

  They moved so quickly that I couldn’t tell which of the two soldiers grabbed me. Hell, it could have been the guy on the mounted gun that had disarmed me, it was that precise and sharp. When I say disarmed, I meant it – within moments they had removed the gun stashed behind my back, checked the rest of my form for any non-existent weapons, and bound my hands behind me with a ratchet clip.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?!’ I yelled at them. I looked towards the house, seeing that low light on in the living room.

  They followed my gaze.

  ‘Check the house. He could have others with him.’

  Fuck.

  I struggled desperately against the grasp of Morgan, whose comrade was now moving towards the house with his gun raised, the barrel pointing to an area in the dirt constantly a few yards ahead.

  I shouted against the tape indiscernibly, unsure even what I was saying, never mind what could be heard.

  ‘Look, buddy,’ Morgan said, holding onto my arms as I struggled against him. ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Do I have to ask?’

  There was no way in hell that I was thinking straight right now. Any reasoning, even if it involved life or death, didn’t occur to me. I struggled violently, kicking back against Morgan’s legs, and the moment his grip weakened I broke free and started running towards the house with my hands still bound. I was mere yards away from the sergeant – there was always a way to escape, a way out of any situation, I could do this, I could-

  Crack.

  The force of the bullet sent me flailing forwards. With my hands tied I could do nothing to stop myself – I might as well have had no arms at all. I landed roughly on my front, but the shock of the impact was nothing to the overwhelming cold that I felt of the winded shock that struck me… Right before it was replaced by a seeping warmth that spread over my back.

  I am dying.

  I turned my head to the side and looked over towards the fence, a strange last image to take in, the world turned horizontal, the corn and dirt stretching up the darkened, navy sky.

  My head lolled to the side, my last thought before blacking out being the safety of the two people in the house, the only two people left in the world who I trusted or cared about.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Capture

  I had begun to know what darkness was again after returning to Redwood. In the city, even without the artificial lights of office windows, of apartments and streetlights and bars and the flashes of neon in the less desirable areas, fire and gunshots had succeeded in lighting up the night. There was still an awareness of what was going on. I could see the terrible things that people turned out into and the terrible things that they did when the world they had known had completely abandoned them.

  The darkness I was experiencing now, though, was beyond anything that I had ever been met with before. Even after the night that had come down, after the blackout that I had fallen into when the bullet had struck me in the back… This was something else.

  Was I dead? I could turn my head a little, but I could see nothing. There was a smothering sensation all around my face, and while I could still breathe the act seemed like it was becoming more and more difficult.

  Where had the bullet hit me? In the back… Had it punctured one of my lungs? Were they filling with fluid?

  Was I about to drown in my own blood?

  I coughed sharply… No taste of blood. If I was still alive, that is. Maybe this was where you went in the aftermath of your death, darkness and nothing for all time.

  No end, no conclusion.

  No… No, I wasn’t dead. There was a noise. I could hear something. A faint chugging sound. I was moving, too. My body was occasionally rocking from side to side. My hands were bound behind my back…

  ‘Is… Is anyone there?’ I managed to stutter, not knowing whether a response would be a good thing or a bad thing.

  ‘Yep. We’re here.’

  It was Morgan.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said, my own voice sounding strangely muffled… Because I wasn’t drowning or suffocating. I had a cloth bag over my head, obscuring the sight of anything.

  ‘I’m not telling you shit, boy. And I’d suggest that until we reach our destination you keep your mouth firmly shut.’

  ‘How can you expect me to do that? I’m fucking dying…’

  ‘You’re not dying, dumbass. That was a rubber bullet. You’re gonna be a little stiff for a few days but once the bruising dies down you’ll be right as rain.’

  Relief washed over me for the briefest of moments, but it was fast replaced by something else.

  Was Helen okay? Luke? Had they been captured too?

  What if they had made it out and the soldiers had never found them?

  Was it worse to ask or stay quiet?

  I decided on the latter, that it would be better to keep as much information from these people hi
dden as possible.

  I stayed silent. A jarring pain struck me as the vehicle I was held captive in went over a sharp bump, and somewhere in that tiny abyss drifted off once again, my head swooping forward into unconsciousness.

  ***

  ‘We’re here, Lieutenant.’

  ‘All right, time to wake up, Goldilocks.’

  Groggily I dragged my head up. The vehicle had come to a stop, and the moment my captors realised that I was awake I felt a pair of hands land on my back, dig their fingers into the material of my jacket and effortlessly drag me out of the car.

  I was propped up on solid ground, feeling dirt beneath the soles of my boots compressing. The air had suddenly become a little colder.

  How long had we been travelling for? How far away from Redwood was I?

  My arms were grabbed from both sides, two people moving me now, until we came to a halt after twenty or thirty yards of stumbling and dragging.

  There was a clicking sound, and a muffled voice, as if emerging through a phone on speaker, appeared.

  ‘Identify.’

  ‘Morgan, Rogers and Jackson, accompanied by one houseguest.’

  ‘Reference number?’

  ‘Mockingbird. Teakettle. September. Kerouac.’

  Another clicking sound, followed by a buzzer.

  ‘Clear to enter.’

  There was a burst of slightly warmer air several seconds later, and as we moved forwards I knew that we were heading inside somewhere.

  My entire body ached, my throat sore from rapidly breathing the air, as I was near enough dragged into the innards of wherever we were. I could hardly even force myself to stand – by the time we had covered a couple of footsteps I was being dragged through the place. It was an easy task for whoever these people were.

  I was finally seated down, my arms carefully positioned over the chair so that my bound hands stayed secured behind me on the cold, metallic surface.

  I stayed there for a moment as wordless shuffling occurred around me.

  Suddenly the bag was drawn from my head like a sheet being pulled away from a cage. The light was only dim in the small, concrete room, but it was still blinding after the total darkness that I had been encroached within for what seemed like hours – and likely had been.