Survival EMP (Book 1): Solar Reboot

by Hunt, Matthew D.

  Gary’s eyes went wide, his mouth hanging open in a perfect picture of shock. “Why . . . why, you never learned what a jackelope was? Heck, what do they teach you all in school these days? You don’t seem like no slouch, son. You must have shown her a jackelope or two?”

  Alex kept his face stone serious. “Of course I have. Piper, don’t you remember? We saw some jackelopes when you were five.”

  “Oh, five,” said Piper, rolling her eyes. “Like I’m going to remember back then. What do they look like?”

  “Well, it’s all in the name, see. They’re like a mix of jackrabbits and antelopes. Little rabbit bodies, but huge old antlers springing out of their foreheads.” Gary held his hands about two feet apart. “They can get about this big, though most are a touch smaller.”

  Piper gaped at him. “Rabbits with antlers? You’re joking.”

  Gary raised his left hand. “Hand to God. Heck, ask your dad. He took you to see them, after all.”

  Alex fought as hard as he could, barely managing to keep the grin from his face. “He’s right, sweetie. You’ve seen them, even if you don’t remember.”

  Piper’s brow furrowed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “You know . . . come to think of it . . . I think I do remember something like that.”

  Gary snapped his fingers. “See? Told ya. Keep an eye out for them this time around—you got that foot on you, you’ll see them for sure.”

  She looked at the “jackelope” foot with fresh interest. “Really? Can they, like . . . sense it?”

  “Well, scientific folk don’t like to agree, but everyone knows they can,” said Gary, tapping his nose confidentially. Alex marveled at the man. He seemed like he would have been perfectly at home spinning this tale in front of a warm fire, while the stars danced above and wolves howled in the distance. “Anyways, I’d best be getting on my way—wherever that might be. Your lunch is on me.”

  “No, that’s not necessary,” said Alex, trying quickly to rise.

  Gary put a firm hand on his shoulder to push him back down. “I insist, son. Least I can do. Take care of that girl of yours. And you—Piper, is it?—take care of that jackelope paw for me.”

  “I will!” she said. “And thank you.”

  “Thank you,” said Alex. “Be safe.”

  “You all do the same.” Gary dropped a fifty dollar bill on the counter and left.

  “He was nice,” said Piper, thumb running across the jackelope paw.

  “He was,” said Alex softly. I hope he makes it home.

  CHAPTER 6

  The highway pass through the Cascades had been madness, and now a windstorm was picking up. Cameron gripped the wheel harder, knuckles jutting white against the backdrop of grey water pouring down the windshield. As anxious as Cameron was, Bettie was worse; knees pressed into the panel before her, she had one hand on the handle above her head and the other death-gripping the seat. Cameron’s eyes kept drifting to the edge of the road just a frightening few feet away, past which was a hundred feet of empty space to the bottom of the canyon.

  “Feel like music?” After the long silence they’d been driving in, Bettie actually jumped at the sound of Cameron’s voice.

  “No thanks,” said Bettie. “Not just yet.”

  “We’re almost off the freeway. The mountain road will be a lot better.”

  “It would have to be.”

  Cameron chuckled at that.

  A few minutes later, Cameron breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted the turnoff ahead. The moment they were off the highway, the wind lessened. And now there was no precipitous fall just a few paces away, but land that rose away sharply to either side of them, like a funnel dragging them upward. Bettie relaxed at last, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes.

  “Good Lord, thank you.”

  “Wishing you stayed back home?”

  “Not even a little bit. I’ll take a windstorm over crazy white boys swinging their guns around any day.”

  Cameron clicked on the radio, this time without asking. With the tension leeching away, she felt the need for some background noise. But the speakers only blared static, no matter how many stations she flipped through.

  “Probably no radio signal this far up in the mountains,” said Bettie. “You got a CD?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Cameron, switching it to CD. She didn’t voice the first thought in her mind: she’d driven this road a thousand times before, and radio reception was never a problem. This wasn’t the mountains. It was the storm, or the solar flare, or some combination of the two.

  The Dixie Chicks began fiddling away. Cameron turned it down to a comfortable ambiance. But now that the adrenaline was beginning to fade and she had nothing to focus on but the broken yellow line winding ahead, Cameron’s thoughts drifted elsewhere. Where were Alex and Piper in all this? Safe, no doubt. Alex had already gotten them out of Manhattan. But safe for how long? The summer weather had turned crazy, and only looked to be getting worse.

  “You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?”

  Cameron shrugged. “Can’t help it.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I’m thinking about my boy. He was supposed to come by the house today.”

  “I’m sure he stayed home. What with the weather.”

  “I’m sure he did,” said Bettie. “Hope so, anyways.”

  They passed another bend in the road, and Cameron slammed on the brakes. There, just fifty feed ahead, a mammoth pine tree lay across the road, slanted, the bottom end closer to them.

  “Damn it.”

  Bettie swallowed nervously. “What do we do?”

  Cameron looked around. The ground on either side of the road stretched just a few yards before it sloped up sharply. There was just enough space between the top of the tree and the slope that she thought she could squeeze the Jeep around the left side, but it would be a tight fit.

  “I think I can make it through that gap. But you should hop out and wait, just in case.”

  “Sure. Good thing we’re driving this and not some little Toyota.”

  “Good thing for sure. Here, take my jacket.”

  She pulled her parka from the back seat and gave it to Bettie, who stepped out and began walking along the tree’s length. The wind buffeted her hard, but she hunched down and pressed on through it.

  Cameron edged the Jeep past her and beside the tree. The car soon filled with the crunching sound of tires on gravel. Slowly she edged up to the gap. She’d been wrong. There wasn’t quite enough space.

  “Run over the top of the tree, or edge up the slope?” she muttered to herself. If she drove with her left wheels on the incline, the Jeep could turn. But if she tried driving right over the tree, the tires might pop. They were strong, but not invulnerable. She had a spare, but she didn’t relish the thought of unloading the supplies in the trunk to reach it.

  Slope it is. She turned the steering wheel slightly right. The left tires began to lift. Soon she was almost 45 degrees, and crawling at a snail’s pace. Heart in her throat, she passed the top of the tree and turned back down, and soon was on asphalt again, where she stopped. Bettie caught up soon and leapt in, blowing into her hands.

  “Good Lord, I thought you were going over. Thank goodness I wasn’t in the car. I probably would have had a heart attack.”

  “Over and done with,” said Cameron, forcing a smile. “Now we’ve had an adventure, and we can ride out the rest of this storm sitting around our cabin fire and drinking wine.”

  “Now you’re talking. Any chance you got some within arm’s reach?”

  “Not open. We’re driving.”

  “You really think anyone’s gonna care all the way up here?”

  The forced smile became real, became a laugh. “Just hang on, Hemingway. Twenty more minutes and I can get you nice and liquored up.”

  * * *

  The sun had vanished behind the mountains by the time they reached the cabin community, but it was still mid-afternoon, and its light still filled the sky to show
them the way. Cameron knew from long experience that real darkness wouldn’t come for another couple of hours.

  The iron gate stood closed. Cameron dug through the glove compartment for the clicker. But when she pressed the button, nothing happened. Frowning, she tried again, with the same result. She got out of the car and walked up to the gate. No one around. The little station at the front was empty.

  “What the hell?” she muttered.

  The passenger door slammed behind her. “What’s wrong?” said Bettie.

  “Door’s not opening, and no one’s posted. The caretaker must be slacking on the job. His name’s Bill. Weird guy, though I guess he keeps to himself and lets others do the same.”

  “That him?”

  Cameron stepped over to look past the guard house and follow Bettie’s outstretched finger. There through the wind and the light drizzle that had begun to fall, she saw a figure approaching from the other side of the fence. As it got closer, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was Bill.

  “Hey!” she called. “Hey, Bill! The gate opener’s busted—or my clicker is, but I replaced the battery not too long ago.”

  “It ain’t busted,” said Bill, drawing to a stop just on the other side of the gate. He had a ridiculous brown hat on (A Stetson, for chrissake, thought Cameron) and it was pulled low over his brow. “I turned it off. Don’t want just anybody trying to come in.”

  “How could just anybody come in?” said Cameron. “They’d need a clicker.”

  Bill leaned forward, looking at her through the gate’s narrow bars. “Who’s to say they owned the clicker? Might’a stole it offa somebody.”

  Cameron sighed and tried not to roll her eyes. “Okay, well, I didn’t. You know me. Open the gate. Please.”

  His eyes drifted past her. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Happy to introduce you out of the weather. Open the gate, Bill.”

  “She got a name?”

  “Bettie.” Cameron’s nostrils flared. “Open the damn gate.”

  “Hm. Awright. But maybe don’t be bringing in a whole buncha other friends, you know?”

  “I can bring who I want,” said Cameron through gritted teeth. “It’s my cabin.”

  “Sure, I guess that’s right,” said Bill. “Come on in.”

  He went to trip the switch. Cameron stalked back to the car, Bettie following a half pace behind. Once the Jeep’s doors had closed, Cameron let out a frustrated growl and slammed her hand into the steering wheel.

  “What an obnoxious prick. Every time I come up here I swear I’m gonna call the property manager and get Bill fired.”

  “Probably a little shorter with me here than he woulda been otherwise,” said Bettie, her voice carefully nonchalant.

  Cameron looked at her uneasily. “I…I don’t think…”

  “Honey, I’ve been seeing that look in people’s eyes since before you were born. Trust me.”

  The gate was open. Cameron slowly pressed the gas and passed inside. “Promise—as soon as the storm’s over with, I’ll call and have his ass thrown out. Deal?”

  “Sure,” said Bettie, smiling a little. But she turned away to look out the window, and away from Bill.

  * * *

  Cameron’s cabin was near the back of the property, so they passed a number of others on their way in. Some had cars in front, most didn’t—but nearly all of them had big old campers or RVs. Common custom in the community was to bring the family up for a stay in the cabin, but to take the RV out and into the mountains for the “real” camping experience. Cameron didn’t know that she considered an RV to be “real” camping, but these were mostly wealthy retirees, and she guessed they could do what they wanted with their money.

  At last they reached the cabin. Higher than most of the others, on a little rise that looked over most of the surrounding land, it was a wonderful mix of cozy and spacious. Cameron and Alex had hunted for almost two years before they’d found their perfect spot. They’d nearly signed the deal on a few others, but once they walked in the doors of this one, it was game over.

  “Well, this is lovely,” said Bettie. “My goodness, why don’t you just live up here all the time?”

  Cameron smiled. “Not much work for nurses this deep in the woods. But trust me, Alex has tried to convince me to make this our home more than once.”

  “I don’t blame him. Heck, hire me as your house sitter. I’ll spend every day up here if you let me.”

  The garage door opened at her clicker. Bill didn’t turn that off, at least, she thought. She backed the Jeep in and closed the door behind them. But rather than unload the supplies from the car right away, she went straight into the house. Nothing would spoil, and she wanted to check the windows for wind damage. A quick tour of the house showed her everything was fine—there weren’t any trees within fifty feet of the house—but she headed out to close the outdoor shutters anyway. When she got back, Bettie was wandering around the house admiring all the rooms.

  “It’s decorated to a tee,” said Bettie. “This is a really nice place, honey.”

  “It’s too hot in the summer,” said Cameron, waving a hand dismissively. “Not that we’ve got that problem now.”

  Bettie rushed to the window and looked out back. “Is that a garden?”

  “Yeah. Tried growing some flowers one year. They didn’t take too well.”

  “Of course not. Those are rose bushes, and it looks like you tried to grow them in autumn.”

  Cameron looked over at her, taken aback. “How can you tell?”

  “The way they grew—stunted like that, hardly any life in them. You can tell they started strong but it got too cold too quick.”

  “You know a lot about plants, huh?”

  “Honey, I could grow a cornstalk in concrete.”

  Cameron chuckled. “Well, knock yourself out. We’ve got a ton of seed supplies downstairs.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “Yeah, there’s a basement. In fact, I was just going to check it.”

  She opened the door and descended the creaky wooden steps. She had to fumble for the light switch for a moment before she remembered where it was. Finally the single bare bulb in the ceiling came on, dousing the room in a dim orange glow.

  There before them were stacks and stacks—pallets and pallets, in fact, since Alex wanted to keep them safe from potential flooding—of food. Boxed, canned, any form of packaging that enhanced the shelf life. Soup and powdered milk and hard, hard bread, the kind that was edible and nutritious long after it had gone hard and lost any semblance of flavor. Built into the back wall were metal doors to freezers full of meat ready for cooking.

  Bettie gasped. “You could feed an army with all this.”

  “Or three people for about a year,” said Cameron, smirking. “That’s what Alex calculated, anyway. With a little room to spare.”

  Bettie looked at her askance. “Honey, there’s preparing for the worst, and then there’s crazy. Did your husband really think you’d ever need all this stuff?”

  Cameron smiled ruefully and pointed back up the staircase. “Just look at what’s happening to the world outside, Bettie. Maybe he right? You don’t have to tell him I said that though.”

  CHAPTER 7

  They drove in silence after they left the diner. A few times Alex caught himself looking over at Piper, feeling the urge to speak. But her gaze remained out the window and far away, and so he let the silence reign. The decision was even easier when he realized he didn’t know what to say.

  Near sundown, he flirted with the idea of driving through the night. But that didn’t seem necessary, at least not yet. A voice in his head—hopeful, and therefore relegated to the very back where it couldn’t make too much noise—said that he still might be blowing things out of proportion. But even if it was wrong, they might as well get sleep while they could. If things really did go to hell, as he thought they might, there were bound to be more than a few sleepless nights ahead of them.

  A storm picked up
and tipped the scales in favor of finding a place to stop, and he finally pulled off the freeway a few miles past the Indiana border. The downpour was getting torrential, and he jacked the wipers up to full as they crept along the side of the road. Finally he spotted a Best Western and pulled into the parking lot with a sigh of relief. Alex finally turned her eyes away from the window, and he winced internally at the anxiety he saw in her eyes.

  “We’ve been in four states today.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Cool?”

  “Dang right it’s cool. Hashtag on the road again.”

  He saw the way she tried to keep her brow furrowed, but she couldn’t stop a smile breaking through the dark mood. “Oh my god, shut up.”

  “Come on, let’s get a room.”

  The hotel’s front counter was manned by a young, lackadaisical girl who might have been a cousin to the girl who rented them their car that morning. She even gave Alex the same eye-roll when he tapped his fingers impatiently on the counter, spurred by the slow speed she took down his credit card number with pen and paper, since the computer wasn’t working.

  But eventually he got two keys, and they ran through the pouring rain to their hotel room. Again, Alex felt like maybe he and Piper should talk before they went to bed, but she just wrapped herself in her blankets and went out like a light—a light that wasn’t working, because there still wasn’t any electricity.

  Maybe it’s for the best, he thought. She’d seen a lot of stuff that day—more than he hoped she’d ever have to see in her life. Maybe a night’s sleep was just what she needed. What they both needed.

  But when he woke up just after dawn, sleep hadn’t provided the answer to any of his problems. Outside, the rain was coming down twice as hard as the night before. There was frost on the ground, or perhaps small, icy bits of hail.

  Hail. In March. He fought back a sudden shudder.

  He turned from the window and started going through the room. There was no minibar, but he took nearly everything else that wasn’t bolted down: the towels, the soap and the shampoo, the packets of coffee and sugar packets that sat near the TV. He was folding up his sheets and blankets, planning to take them, too, when Piper woke up. She peered at him from beneath the edge of her blanket, brow furrowed.