“Erin…”
She sighed and flopped back on the bed. “I told you, that was no riot. The real riot happened yesterday. Once the townies figured out the dining hall was out of business, they turned on all the local shops. Main Street got straight up wrecked."
Thom stood and moved to the window. He pulled back the heavy blanket and peered down to the street, two floors below. "That must have been all that noise we heard earlier." He turned back to face Erin. "Those weren't firecrackers were they?"
Erin stared at the ceiling and rubbed the back of her neck. "No…" she whispered, her eyes closed. "The cops started shooting…then one of the townies shot back…"
"Was anybody hurt?" asked Leah.
"Lots of people. But I don't think anybody was shot. Most everyone who got hurt, got trampled…like me."
Leah put a hand to her mouth and gently brushed the hair from Erin's dirt-crusted forehead. "How bad are you hurt?"
Erin shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line. "Not too bad, it just hurts to walk, sit, or breathe. It's nothing. I think I twisted my ankle when people knocked me to the ground. A couple people stepped on me as they were running from the gunfire."
"So they were stealing food and water?" asked Thom.
Erin laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. "That's the kicker. In the beginning, yeah, everyone wanted food and water. But then once things got going, they decided to take everything they could get their hands on."
Thom shot Leah a knowing look.
"I think they must've broken into every shop on Main Street. People got hurt with broken glass trying to steal clothes, TVs, you name it. Even that junk store on the corner got trashed…I've never seen anything like it," she whispered.
"It's only been two days…" muttered Thom. "I don't believe this is happening…I can't believe it."
"Well believe it, mister," Erin said as she rolled over on her side, wincing with the effort. "It's like total anarchy out there! I walked all over this campus at least three times looking for food…I even begged… nobody's giving anything out. It's so freaking cold out there, I swear it feels like it's gonna snow again. All I want to do is get something warm to eat, curl up in this blanket, and sleep for a week."
Leah looked at Thom. "Well, we don't have anything warm to eat, but we can get you some peanut butter and bread…"
"I got it—be right back," Thom said.
Erin waited for him to leave, then squinted at Leah. "So seriously, are you guys doing it?"
"Would you forget about Thom for a second?" Leah snapped. "You've been out there for a while—have you heard any news? What's it like on the outside?"
Erin sighed and closed her eyes, snuggling into the quilted blanket. "I don't know, why do you care so much? He's kinda cute you know. What happened to his face?"
Leah ignored the jibe. "Because it matters—it matters to all of us!" Leah hissed. "We need to know what's going on out there so we can figure out what's going to happen here."
"How do you figure any of that matters?"
Leah sighed. "Look, if it's like this all over the country, then we know there's not any help coming for us. And if that's the case, then we gotta get our act together and take care of ourselves. There won't be any running home to mommy and daddy."
"If you're so sure of yourself, why does it look like you're about to cry?" asked Erin.
Leah wiped at her face and blinked. "Because I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I wish Kate was here. Kate would know what to do—she's had training for this shit."
Erin cracked an eyelid. "Training? For the end of the world?" She laughed. “Sign me up!”
"No, Kate was in the Air Force—a combat pilot. They teach them how to survive behind enemy lines…that kind of stuff."
Erin was quiet for a moment. "So this is like, we're at war or something?"
Leah stared at the dead computer across the room. "We may as well be. We have to think of anyone not living in this building as the enemy. Or at least as people not friendly to us," she added quickly.
"Thom already got beat up trying to protect me—over some milk and stale bread." Leah shook her head.
"Yeah but you got away."
Leah looked at Erin and didn't have the heart to tell her about Brett's involvement. "We got lucky. But people broke into the dorm across the street last night," she said nodding toward the window.
"I saw that…" Erin said. "But that's nothing. Over on the north side of campus, two dorms have burned to the ground. I saw…" Erin close her eyes and pulled the blanket up tight around her shoulders.
"What did you see?" Leah asked gently.
"I saw bodies…dead bodies…students—like us, you know? Just laying out in the snow like someone…like they fell asleep and forgot to wake up. So much blood…"
Leah put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God…"
"It's like everybody's gone crazy," Erin muttered.
"Maybe…maybe somebody caught the building on fire while they were smoking or something?" Leah asked, frowning at the shaky sound of her own voice. "I mean, we can't jump to conclusions and think there was some kind of attack or anything…"
Erin laughed again. "Yeah, because that would be crazy. But bright lights in the sky at night and all the power going off, the world falling apart…that's not crazy at all…"
Thom came back with a paper plate, sliced bread, and a packet of peanut butter. Under one arm he carried a small jar of jelly. He offered the plate and jelly to Erin.
"It's not much, but it's food."
Erin smiled when she took the plate. "Thank you so much! I haven't eaten anything since breakfast yesterday," she said through tears.
As she ate, Erin told them the rest of her story. She told them about the rumors of rapes and robberies that had filtered in through the campus grapevine. None of it seemed to have happened on school property, she added around mouthfuls of stale bread, but the fact that she heard the same story from different groups of people encountered on her travels convinced Erin the towns surrounding Brookville were starting to fall apart.
Leah couldn't agree more. "The problem is we need to know if this is isolated to our part of Indiana, the country…or the world."
Thom crossed the room to the window again and peeled back the thick, velvety blanket the girls had re-attached to the ceiling. "Well I sure as hell don't want to go back out there today. The lights weren't as bad last night as Friday, but they still creep the hell out of me. I need to head back to my old room and make sure I get the window covered up."
He stopped in the doorway and turned. "Leah, thanks for suggesting I come up here…now that I know what's going on out there, I really don't want to be on the ground floor by myself."
Leah sat on her bed after Thom left and stared at Erin as she licked peanut butter from her fingers.
"What do we do now?" Leah asked.
Erin put the plate on the bed and collapsed back under the blankets. "Oh, my God that was good…and why are you asking me?"
"Because I don't know who else to ask."
Erin sighed. "I don't know what to do. But I know I'm happy to have made it back here, so I'm going to take a nap."
"Well I don't know if we're any better off than anyone else—"
Erin sat up on one elbow. "No, we're way better off. You should see some of the other dorms out there. It's like Lord of the Flies or something. One of them has blankets and sheets and shit hanging from windows with SOS messages." She shook her head.
"This is the only dorm I've been to since all this went down where the people weren't stoned or drunk off their asses. Whatever's going on, trust me, we're better off staying here than going back out."
Leah thought about that for a moment. She still felt like there was so much left to do. She and the others had already started ransacking all the empty rooms for every scrap of food and drop of water they could find. But the vandalism across the street and the stories Erin just relayed told her they had more work to do. A lot more work.
She stood and tucked the blankets around Erin's shivering body. "Get some rest."
"Wait—where are you going?" Erin blurted.
Leah paused in the doorway. "We’re going to run out of light soon. I think we need to prepare the building."
"Prepare for what?" Erin laughed. "It's already the end of the world."
"We need to be ready for looters. Or…townies…or whoever the hell is breaking into the dorms. It's only a matter of time before they reach our building, right?"
"So what are we gonna do?" asked Erin.
Leah leaned against the door frame. "I have no idea."
CHAPTER 3
JAY LEANED AGAINST HIS car and let the warmth of the small campfire radiate from its metal side into his back. He held his wounded hands toward the fire and tried not to stare into the flames—like Mac warned him—to preserve what little of his night vision remained.
It wasn’t like he needed to see anyway. Jay glanced up at the writhing ribbons of light that stretched across the sky. He noticed for the first time that most of the aurora now shifted from greens and pinks into purples and reds. Now and then a spike of yellow flared. He didn’t understand what it meant, but he knew the overall strength of the lights were fading every day. If he squinted through the canopy of bare limbs sheltering him from the open sky, Jay could just about make out a few of the brighter stars—an impossible task just 24 hours ago.
A gust of wind rustled leaves and the fine dusting of snow on the ground. He shivered and pulled the fur-lined hood of his parka tighter around his face.
An idea occurred to him. When he’d parked for the night, he’d made the fire as close as possible to the Escape, keeping it contained in a ring of rocks only a few feet away. Taking a quick glance around the sparsely treed spot of land, Jay opened the passenger side doors, aimed them right at the fire and hoped its warmth would heat the car’s interior.
Jay figured in a worst case scenario, he’d just run the car for a while throughout the night as needed. He had plenty of gas and two full cans in the trunk as a reserve. According to his map, he’d reach Leah tomorrow. Whatever gas he had left would get them a good ways home—if not all the way.
Hours on the road by himself without the comforting presence of Mac’s Deuce and a Half had left Jay with frayed nerves and mentally spent. Every car he passed—and every car that passed him—he saw as a threat. Every time somebody drove by and glanced at him, he saw the faces of those thugs in the pickup that shot at him.
He repaired the driver’s window with a thick plastic tarp Mac had given him before they parted ways, but it did little to keep the cold air out. Jay hoped the space blanket he’d tucked around the edges would reflect enough of the heat from the fire to keep the car warm throughout the night.
He fumbled inside his coat pocket and pulled out the picture he'd taken from home of him and Leah last summer. Her bright eyes and wide smile warmed his heart despite the frigid air strangling his soul. He caressed the image with one grimy, bandaged thumb, holding onto the picture as if he could wrap his arms around his daughter.
"I'm coming for you, baby. Daddy’s coming…"
Off in the distance, a twig snapped and Jay lifted his head, stuffing the picture back into his coat pocket. His heart thundered in his chest as he strained to hear over the crackling fire.
Without taking his eyes off the surrounding landscape, Jay reached down with his left hand and scrabbled in the dirt and melting snow for the tire iron he kept with him at all times. The reassuring weight of the cold metal in his hands calmed his nerves somewhat, but it was a long time after that before he finally relaxed.
The fire had almost burned itself out when Mac’s radio HAM chirped. The sound echoed through the dark woods and now that the light from the fire had faded, the world glowed once more in the purples and greens of the aurora.
Jay got to his feet, climbed into the passenger seat, and shut the door as quietly as he could. He locked all the doors and lowered the seat down below the window. Ensconced in the steel and plastic cage of his car, he let out a sigh and the relatively warm air. His trick had worked to an extent. He was still cold, but not as cold as sitting outside. And he hadn’t spent any gas in the process.
The more I save, the more we’ll have once I get to Brookville. For the first time since leaving home, Jay thought of the return trip as a real possibility. Part of him didn't think he'd ever make it to her school, and now he was only a day away. Jay let himself indulge in the luxury of planning for the trip home.
Unfortunately, thinking of home made him think of Kate.
The radio chirped again, interrupting his melancholy thoughts. "Mongoose, you read me?" asked Mac’s voice, scratchy through the disturbed atmosphere.
Jay looked at the glowing radio in his hand and pushed what he hoped was the right button.
"Yes, Iceman,” Jay said, rolling his eyes at Mac’s insisted upon callsigns. “I can hear you…just barely. Can you hear me?"
The reply was immediate. "Not too bad. How you holding up, over?"
Jay swallowed and fought the urge to wipe his eyes. "I haven't had any problems since we split up—since this afternoon. Found a nice little place to hole up for the night. Even got a fire going…over," he said, feeling silly at the HAM radio terminology.
"Do yourself a favor—don't start any more fires."
"Why not? It's freezing out here."
"Because that fire will draw people. Over."
Fear gripped Jay’s spine with icy fingers and turned it into a column of frozen rigidity. "I never thought of that…" He lifted his head and pulled back his parka enough to peer over the door’s rim. Were there people out there even now, silently working their way toward his car?
Oh shit…was that what that noise was earlier? Somebody sneaking up on me?
Jay gripped the reassuring weight of the tire iron in his hand and for the first time questioned his judgment on not bringing a gun.
"You may need to sleep with one eye open tonight…over."
Jay sighed and closed both eyes, sending a prayer to every god he could remember. Get me through this, please. All I want to do is get to Leah. Help me save my daughter, please.
"Mongoose?"
Jay swallowed, but when he spoke, his voice was tight. "Yes?"
"You need to be strong for…for her. You can do this. Over."
Jay shook his head and fought back the urge to scream no I can't! He clenched his teeth for a moment and squeezed the radio to the point where he thought he might break it before he found the strength to reply. "I…I don't know if I can. It's so cold…I heard a noise earlier," he whispered.
"If somebody is really desperate, you’d know by now. The fire still burning?"
Jay peered over the rim of the door again. The bright orange fire that had blotted out the lights above was gone. In its place glowed a few surly embers.
"No, it's out."
Mac’s voice faded for a moment, filled with static, then returned. "…keep you safe. Don't light any more fires at night. They can be seen too far away and will draw too much attention."
"Mac…" Jay said. He lost his train of thought and released transmit button.
"No names!" hissed Mac. "We don't know who’s listening to this."
Jay shook his head. "Does it matter? If anyone is listening to this and can help, I hope they do."
The radio was silent for a moment. Jay almost thought he'd broken something, or it ran out of batteries when Mac’s voice cut through the static again.
"And if people out are there up to no good? You want them finding you? I'm not doing this because I'm trying to be a hard ass, Mongoose…I'm doing this to keep you safe. Once you get…the package…you got to be smart."
Jay took that in and thought on it, mulling over and relishing the thought of enveloping his daughter in a hug. The package. He frowned at the sterile code name for Leah.
"How…" Jay cleared his throat in an attempt to wipe the emotion from his v
oice. "How far out are you?"
Mac sighed. "Oh, I should be there by nightfall. I'm gonna have to pull over and stop soon to refuel, but I'll be up shortly after dawn and should be in around sunset. The roads are pretty clear this way—I haven’t had to slow down hardly at all." After a slight pause, Mac continued. "And you?"
Jay thought about what Mac taught him in his impromptu lessons on operational security before they parted ways. Don't give out any names, identifying information, locations, or anything that would allow someone to find out where you're at or where you’re going and intercept you.
It sounded foolish at the time, but the more Jay thought about it the more he realized that if someone did find him and tried to prevent him from reaching his daughter, Leah’s chances of survival would shrink exponentially.
"I…I'm about halfway there,” he lied. If Mac figured out what he was doing, fine—if not, there was nothing the old man could do about it, anyway. “I think I can get there by the day after tomorrow. The drive has never taken this long before," he chuckled nervously. “Lots of stalled cars.”
"I think that's something everybody’s saying now," Mac replied. “You set up camp the way I told you?"
Jay lifted his head to peer out in the darkness again. He couldn't see the empty cans strung on fishing wire tied to the trees in a circle around the camp, but he knew they were there. He spent almost an hour, fumbling with frozen fingers and cursing in the twilight to set up the early warning system the way Mac had explained it, but he still wasn't sure it was set completely right. He supposed if he woke up dead, he'd know.
"I think so, yeah. I tested the cans and they'll make a pretty good racket."
"OpSec, Mongoose, OpSec. Listen, I think you're on the right track. Try to get some rest. I'll check in with you in the morning."
“Roger that, Iceman, over and out," Jay said, indulging in a brief spurt of humor. I sound like a trucker.
To his surprise, Mac replied with all seriousness, "Copy that Mongoose. Over and out."
The radio fell silent, so Jay shut it off. Mac had given him a charging kit, but it was somewhere in the back and he didn't want to turn on one of his flashlights and waste precious batteries to find it in the dark. Better to conserve power now and charge it once he got back on the road in the morning. He struggled to find a comfortable position in the passenger seat and wrapped his arms over his chest. As he lay there in the quickly chilling car, his mind drifted back to Kate.
Solar Storm: Season 1 [Aftermath Episodes 1-5] Page 19
