by Tom Abrahams
“Apparently you’re blind anyhow,” Nikki said. “What does it matter?”
Rick took a step toward the light. “I didn’t…that’s not…really?”
“I’m kidding.” She laughed. “It’s fun to watch you squirm.”
“Hey,” said Mumphrey, “I’m all for fun and all. I used to be married. I’ve dated women and such, but is this really a good time for you two to be courting each other? No offense intended.”
“You’re right,” said Rick. “Now’s not the time.”
“Not the time for what?” A shadowy figure stepped from the house into the garage. She walked closer to the group and Nikki’s light found her. Jackie Shepard was pulling her hair back off her face with a wide elastic band.
“Nothing,” said Rick.
Jackie dropped her hands onto her hips and nodded toward the car. “So it’s working?”
Rick looked over at the gas can and the tube running into the car’s gas tank. “Seems to be.”
“Good,” she said. “I won’t have any need for it, so it’s good you can use it.”
“Thanks again,” said Nikki, “for the gas and for your hospitality.”
Jackie sighed. “You’re welcome,” she said. “I don’t know how hospitable I’ve been. I’m doing what anyone would do.”
Nikki shook her head. “I don’t know about that.”
Rick checked the second can. It was nearly full. He did the quick change and started filling the third and final can.
Jackie adjusted the band on her head. “When do you leave? You seem pretty anxious. You don’t have to be. I don’t want anyone feeling like they have to leave.”
“We don’t,” said Rick. “I mean, I don’t feel that way. I think we’re better off the sooner we leave.”
“I think Candace feels the same way,” said Jackie. “She’s drawing out maps, trying to remember exactly how to get to Coupland without a GPS.”
“I’m thinking by the end of the day,” he said.
“Hey, Mom.” Marie appeared in the doorway. Her voice wavered. “There are people from NASA at the front door.”
Jackie walked toward her daughter. “What? What do they want?”
“They won’t tell me,” said Marie. “They said they want to talk to you about Dad.”
Jackie brushed past Marie and took her daughter’s hand as they weaved through the house toward the front door. Rick and the others followed, moving through the laundry room, the kitchen, and then to the front of the house.
Rick saw Jackie’s silhouette framed by the pinkish mixture of the sun and the faint aurora outside. In the open doorway, standing on the front porch, were three people: two men and a woman. She was shaking their hands. The woman reached out and offered Jackie a hug. Hers was the only name he caught: Irma Molinares, astronaut and mission liaison.
Jackie invited them inside, her hand tightly gripping Marie’s, and she moved to the side, allowing them to enter.
All three of the official-looking trio wore grim looks. They had thick, dark circles framing their bloodshot eyes. The creases along their foreheads and in the spaces between their cheeks and mouths ran deep. Their clothes were wrinkled, shirts untucked. The woman’s sleeves were rolled haphazardly up to her elbows. Jackie led them into the family room, where the visitors found seats on the sofa. She sat on the ottoman, sharing the space with Marie. Chris was standing behind them next to the easy chair.
Irma Molinares leaned forward on her knees, her hands clasped together. “So, Jackie,” she said, “I told you I’d update you as soon as we knew something.”
Jackie nodded. She wrapped one arm around Marie and drew Chris to her side with the other. She was bracing herself. Rick started to take a step toward Jackie but reconsidered. It wasn’t his place.
“We know a Soyuz capsule deployed from the ISS,” said Molinares. We know it entered the atmosphere and that it took a sharp descent that was likely manually engaged.”
Jackie gasped. “So they’re alive?”
“We can’t say that,” said Molinares. “What we can say, with certainty, is that the Soyuz was functional after the geomagnetic storm. We know at least one of the three crew members was able to get into the Soyuz and initiate the undocking sequence. We also know that at least one of the men was on board the Soyuz as it reentered the atmosphere, because the angle of descent was manually entered. The computer would not have chosen that steep an entry without someone at the controls.”
Jackie’s shoulders slumped. “So you know one of them is alive? And you know that statistically, given that my husband was inside the station when the storm hit, he is more likely to be the one alive?”
Molinares glanced at the men sitting on either side of her. “We know one of them was alive at some point after reentry,” she said. “It is probably fair to say that it is more likely your husband was the one aboard than the other two, but that is making a huge assumption that—”
“Look,” one of the men interrupted. “We can’t go that far. We don’t know if the crew member aboard the Soyuz is alive. Therefore, and I apologize for sounding harsh, we don’t know if your husband is alive. We can’t even tell you how many were aboard the Soyuz. The sensors transmitting the data aren’t fully operational.”
Jackie’s hands were in front of her and balled into tight fists. “But chances are—”
“Chances are,” the man cut her off, “there’s a thirty-three point three percent possibility your husband was the one on the Soyuz. I can’t give you a statistical probability about the survival of whoever it was in the capsule.”
Chris put his hand on his mother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you know if the person on board is alive?”
“We lost contact,” said Molinares. “Not everything is functional. We’ve managed some work-arounds for some of our equipment. Not all of it works yet. Initially the only data we had that told us the Soyuz had deployed was a measurable decrease in the ISS mass. As far as the descent is concerned, the last transmission we received was a data packet that indicated a change in trajectory consistent with a ballistic descent.”
“Irma,” said Jackie, “speak in English.”
“It changed course,” she said, “and we lost the signal.”
“So where did it land?” asked Chris.
Molinares again checked with both men. “All I can say is that there is a narrow band around the Earth in which the Soyuz can land. Because of where the ISS is positioned in orbit, we know more about where it can’t be than where it actually is.”
“It’s supposed to land in Kazakhstan, right?” asked Marie. “Isn’t it there?”
Molinares moved her head to one side and then the other. Rick could see she was equivocating. “It could be,” she said, “but we honestly don’t know.”
“And you can’t find out?” asked Chris.
The man who hadn’t spoken yet leaned forward on his knees. He spoke with his hands. “We have to hope that whoever was on board will try to get in touch with us,” he said. “There are a variety of ways he could try to do that. Right now, it’s a waiting game.”
Jackie took a deep breath and held it. “Okay,” she said, exhaling. “We wait, then. Thank you, Irma.”
“We had something else to ask you,” said Irma. “I mentioned yesterday we could provide you shelter. If you’re interested, we could take you back with us now.”
Jackie looked around the room. Her eyes lingered on Rick’s. “All of us?”
Irma cleared her throat. “No. Only you and the kids. We can’t accommodate everyone. I apologize.”
“You should go,” said Rick. “That way, when they find Clayton, you’ll be the first to know.”
Jackie pressed her lips into a straight line and looked around the room, taking the measure of everyone in the house. Rick could almost see her mind working, considering the needs of each person taking shelter in her house.
“No,” she said. “Not yet. I can’t leave my house.”
Irma’s eyebrows arche
d with concern. “Are you sure?”
Jackie nodded. “Yes. We’ll be okay here. We’ve got food. We’ve got a roof over our heads. We’ve boarded up the broken windows. We’ll be fine. I want to be here when Clayton comes home.”
“The offer stays open,” said Irma. She started to stand.
Rick stepped closer. “Can I ask a question?”
Irma sat down, looked at her compatriots, and nodded. “Go ahead. don’t know how much we can answer.”
“How bad is it?” he asked. “How long before the power is on and life starts getting back to normal?”
Irma deferred to the men, one of whom cleared his throat and pulled at the collar on his shirt. He looked at the floor, his eyes focused on something other than the people in the room. Rick could sense the discomfort in his voice as he spoke.
“Without overstating it,” the man said, “we have no idea what normal will look like.”
“So it’s bad?” Rick asked.
“Yes,” said the man. “It’s bad.”
CHAPTER 9
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 2020, 11:03 AM MST
BOULDER, COLORADO
Chandra tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and surveyed the surrealism around him. He was walking to his home three miles from the research center. It was a ten-minute drive or an hour-long walk. Given that his car was immobile, his feet were the only transportation available.
He was stepping a path up the center of the two-lane road, winding his way among the abandoned trucks, SUVs, and cars. Chandra stopped at the back of a Honda Civic. He balanced himself on the trunk while he adjusted his right shoe. He was wearing loafers not intended for a long walk, and they were wearing the soft skin at his heel. He rubbed the tender, reddened oval at the bone and looked up toward the east. The sun was relatively high in the sky and had escaped the pinkish cast of the faint aurora still undulating near the horizon. It gave the appearance of a beautiful cloud-effected sunset.
“It gives us life and threatens us with death,” he said. “So, beautiful and so dangerous.”
Chandra looked at where he’d traveled and then gauged the march still ahead. He was getting close. He planted his palm on the back of the Civic, a car similar to his own, and wondered if he’d ever drive again. The chances weren’t good, not with what had happened and what was coming. It was surprising to him the CME had disabled virtually every car. An electromagnetic pulse would have that kind of power, but a CME? Even his calculations didn’t account for the widespread destruction of all electronics. Then again, nothing like this had ever happened. It was plausible, he concluded. The sun was a magnificently complex ball of gas.
He looked back at the sun and did some quick math in his head. If he wanted to drive to the sun, he’d be traveling a steady sixty miles per hour for ninety-three million miles. It would take him about one and a half million hours, give or take, which was a little less than sixty-five thousand days, or about one hundred and seventy-seven years.
One hundred and seventy-seven years.
He started walking again. Yet the Earth-altering blast of magnetic radiation exploding from the sun would be arriving in a matter of days. Really, it was unfathomable. Their existence, life as anyone knew it, was over.
No nuclear war, no tectonic devastation, no melting ice caps or rising seas. This was the sun ending it all. A hot ball of gas that had spent the last forty and a half billion years providing the perfect conditions for life on their planet was on the verge of setting civilization back thousands of those years.
He looked at the houses lining either side of the street and imagined the families inside them. They had no idea that what they’d already experienced was only the beginning of fit all. They had no idea that their government was leaving them to fend for themselves in the aftermath of what would eventually become a lawless wasteland.
He wanted to run door-to-door to warn them, to tell them what was coming and that the power wasn’t coming back. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets, made the final turn on Cripple Creek Square, and walked the final few feet to his condominium in Shanahan Ridge. He climbed the wooden steps to his front stoop and slid his key into the red door of his home.
He and Anila had bought it six years earlier. They’d paid what they thought was a lot of money for a two-bed, two-bath condo built in 1979. But she’d loved the high ceilings, the loft with the old-fashioned stovepipe fireplace, and the balcony with the unobstructed view of the Flatirons.
He shouldered the front door closed and inhaled the familiar scent of his house. He stepped through the entry and tossed his coat on the sofa on his way into the kitchen. It was all white with black tile countertops, as it had been when they bought it. Anila had wanted to upgrade to granite, but they’d never gotten around to it. Chandra dragged his hands along the tile and flicked on the cold water at the sink. He pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it.
The cold glass felt good in his hand. It was comforting to be in his home. He spun around and pressed his hands against the sink. This would be the last time he’d ever be here. His eyes moved from the magnet-adorned refrigerator to the round oak dining table permanently topped with two place settings. An empty flower vase sat in the middle of the circle. He’d been meaning to replace the one that had died.
Chandra lifted the glass to his mouth and drew a sip. He closed his eyes as he drank, relishing the water flowing across his tongue. He emptied the glass and set it in the sink. There was no need to put it in the dishwasher.
He stepped to the built-in pantry door adjacent to the refrigerator and pulled out a soft-sided cooler. He unzipped it, set it on the counter, and then picked through the refrigerator. He plucked a couple of oranges from the produce drawer along with a half-eaten block of cheddar cheese wrapped in cellophane. He plucked a couple of bottles of Coors Light and dropped them into the cooler.
From the freezer he took a frozen bag of mixed vegetables and an icepack. He stuffed them into the cooler’s remaining space, closed it up, and walked it to the sofa, setting it on the back next to his coat. Chandra ran his fingers along the sofa as he walked to the master bedroom. He checked his watch. Treadgold had given him enough time to walk home and back and gather enough essentials to last him for the trip from Boulder to their destination.
He hadn’t told Chandra where they were going or how long it would take. He did say that once they arrived, they’d likely spend the foreseeable future there. He’d told Chandra there would be food, shelter, and clothing. He’d also suggested that if there was anything Chandra really wanted to take with him, now was the only time to get it.
The scientist looked at his unmade bed and a wedding photograph of Anila on the table next to it. He took a deep breath and fell face-first into the sheets and blanket, staring at the empty wall. It was painted white, but a pinkish hue was cast from the light coming in through the large window on the opposite side of the room.
There wasn’t any artwork on the walls. There were nails and anchor holes from where pieces of art and ornately framed photographs once hung. Chandra had taken them down and not replaced them. There were no decorations of any kind save the simple drawstring blinds hanging on all of the windows.
His home wasn’t much more than a place to lay his head and watch football on Sundays. He hadn’t thought of it as anything but a crash pad for some time, but as he lay there contemplating the truth of leaving it forever, he was overcome with a paralyzing nostalgia. He didn’t want to let go.
Part of him wanted to stay in the bed, pull the covers around him, and lie there until the end came. There were worse ways to go than in your own bed, regardless of the nasty particulars.
He reached past his head with one arm and pulled the photograph of Anila from the dresser, dragging it in front of his face. He tried focusing on her face, but the image blurred through the welling tears in his eyes.
His throat closed and, despite his efforts to stop them, the tears rolled down his cheeks and across his face into the bed linens.
Chandra knew leaving the house was leaving Anila behind too. Though he knew it was what she would have demanded of him. She was always the strong one.
Even as the cancer ate her body, she’d been the optimistic one. She’d been the one who insisted he live his life, go to work, and watch football. For months she’d pushed him to be the best version of himself, the man she loved.
“Don’t let my death ruin who you are,” she’d said. “You still have work to do. You have a world to change.”
Nine months after her diagnosis, the disease took her. It killed him too. He’d poured himself into his work, subsisting on microwave popcorn and Sobe water. Occasionally he’d drive through Taco Bell for a bean burrito without onions.
Struggling to control his sobs and the shuddering that racked his body, he regretted not having listened to her. He should have lived. He should have celebrated every day.
He dropped the photograph to the floor and slid from the bed onto his feet.
“Enough moping,” he mumbled. He checked his watch again. He needed to move. Treadgold had warned him they wouldn’t wait. As it was, those on the Descent Protocol list had grown anxious. It was time to go.
Still catching his breath, he slunk into the bathroom and packed his toiletries. He stuffed the zippered bag under his arm and carried it to his closet, where he pulled a duffel bag from the shelf and tossed it onto the bed.
He wiped his nose with the back of his arm and packed two or three days’ worth of clothes into the bag. He zipped it up, slung it over his shoulder, and walked backwards out of the room. His eyes fell on the photograph of his wife. He blew it a kiss and shut the door.
Chandra pulled on his coat, took the cooler, and opened the front door. He was halfway down the steps when he tossed the keys back into the house onto a hallway table near the front door. He didn’t need them anymore.
He bounded onto Cripple Creek Square, walking west, then north. He’d trek through South Boulder, cut across the eastern edge of Green Mountain Memorial Park, and find his way back to the research center.
