The Dead Road

by Seth Patrick

  Just ask Kendrick.

  He suddenly realized why silent had rung a bell. It was what Patti had alluded to.

  He said he didn’t want me to be around for the silence. He said he wanted to spare me that.

  Silence. What kind of silence?

  John Trent’s records came up on screen. John Trent, it said. AT&T Telecommunications Engineer.

  He picked up the phone again, ready to try every damn FMRC number he could find.

  Then, simultaneously, the live-news stream froze and his phone line went dead.

  The hum of activity in the office didn’t miss a beat, but Never’s heart did. He reached into his pocket for his own phone. There was no signal showing.

  He stood up. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Can everyone check their cellphones? Anyone got a signal?’ Infuriatingly slowly, a few people checked. Nobody had a signal.

  With perfect timing, the power went off, prompting a complaint from everyone in the office. He stared at his blank monitor, feeling vaguely like his brain had short-circuited.

  Enough was enough. He clapped his hands together as loudly as he could manage. ‘Can I have everyone’s attention, please?’ Some conversations continued. ‘Hello!’

  The office fell into total silence. Even Hugo came out of his corner office, his face somewhere between scowling and bemused.

  ‘Everyone should get home,’ said Never. ‘And stay there until everything is back up.’

  Hugo came over to him and spoke in a lowered voice. ‘You can’t just order the office to close, Never. It’s the solar flare they predicted. The news said it might hit the power in some places, but it won’t last more than a few hours. It’ll probably be back up in a minute.’

  ‘One problem with that,’ said Never. ‘The flare doesn’t hit for another half-hour.’ Hugo had no response. ‘Go home, Hugo. I mean it.’ He raised his voice again, and was aware of how shaken he sounded. ‘I mean it. I don’t think it’s just here.’ Everyone stared at him, baffled and uneasy. What the hell could he tell them, that wouldn’t make him sound crazy? ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Before it gets dark.’

  He took his coat and left.

  There was only one place to go. As he drove, negotiating the streets where all the traffic lights were off, he saw people standing outside shops and buildings, looking around themselves and examining their phones. There was a sense of curiosity written on their faces, many of them smiling as if they were kids who’d woken to snow. Shrugs and laughter, faced with something that was unusual, but just a brief inconvenience.

  He looked up to the late-morning sky. No aurora was visible, but he imagined it would be too dim to see against the bright blue.

  It would be daylight for another nine hours.

  He had a terrible feeling that it would all change when night came.

  11

  When he pulled into the drive at Annabel’s, Sly’s van had already gone. He knocked on the door.

  ‘Hi, Never,’ said Annabel, with a little frown. She was surprised to see him, but he supposed that his agitation was pretty apparent.

  ‘Sly’s gone?’ he said.

  ‘She went to find the file Kendrick mentioned.’ She led him inside. ‘Power’s out, by the way.’

  ‘No shit,’ said Never. ‘Where’s Jonah?’

  ‘In the kitchen. What’s up? You look tense.’

  ‘The power’s out,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that worry you?’

  Annabel shook her head. ‘It’ll be back on soon.’

  ‘Fuck that! Everything went off. Everything. Internet, landlines, cell networks, power. All of it went off, before the flare hit.’

  ‘I thought the flare happened hours ago,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘The news was saying—’

  ‘You’re both right,’ said Jonah, appearing. ‘The flare happened hours ago, but peak effects don’t happen until the solar wind reaches us, the coronal mass ejection. The geomagnetic storm’s what takes out power, and they were predicting for –’ he checked the time – ‘about now.’ He looked at Never and shrugged. ‘When the power failed I just figured the estimate was off. Richmond’s affected too?’

  ‘Everywhere is affected, Jonah,’ said Never. ‘Look, before the power went, the landlines went down, cell networks went down, Internet went down . . . They’re all different systems and, if anything, the power should have gone first.’

  Jonah and Annabel shared a long look. ‘What are you saying?’ said Annabel.

  ‘I’m saying that someone was making damn sure the communications failures happened. I’m saying maybe they got their timing off.’ He was thinking about the drone submersibles they found on the undersea cable. A thought struck him. ‘How easy would it be to block satellite communications?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Annabel. ‘But I know someone who will.’

  *

  As Annabel drove to Cathy’s place, Jonah grabbed a flashlight and brought Never down to the lower basement. After his dream of Tess and Annabel, Jonah had felt uneasy all morning. With Never’s arrival, and his insistence that everywhere was affected, he’d fallen into an oddly numb state. He felt like he was going through the motions of living, but it was already too late.

  ‘What makes you think it’s everywhere, Never?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you feel it? Nobody’s going to know what’s coming. Nobody will know, even when it hits them, because there’ll be no warnings.’

  Jonah tried to swallow his fear. He’d brought Never down here because power generation had been something he’d been sure to deal with early on, at least as far as purchases went.

  ‘We have two options for power,’ he said. He pulled out a box.

  ‘Ah, you did get the spares for the generator,’ said Never, delving inside. ‘You just didn’t do anything about actually fixing it.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Jonah said. ‘But we have another option.’ Not wanting to bring in someone from outside to do the installation, he’d told himself he would get around to it. Thus far, he’d failed. As with the generator, the idea that there was no immediate hurry had been too appealing. ‘Here it is,’ he told Never, pulling away a sheet that covered variously sized boxes.

  ‘Oooh,’ said Never, pulling out one of them as if it contained treasure. Which, for Never, it did. They were solar panels and high-capacity batteries, the latter too heavy for one person to move, but they weren’t the ordinary run-of-the-mill variety. When your girlfriend was wealthy, why skimp? ‘These are pricey! Why haven’t you put these up yet? They’re simple. Come to that, why the hell didn’t you mention them to me? I’d have done it for you.’

  Jonah frowned. ‘What, tell you I was prepping for global disaster? I didn’t want to give you something else to worry about. I told you I was happy letting you think it was over. That was why I didn’t mention what Tess told me.’

  ‘Did you tell Annabel yesterday?’ said Never.

  Jonah nodded. ‘I told her what I told you. But Tess said something else. I told you I had some kind of vision, after the little boy?’

  ‘Here we go,’ grumbled Never. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘She said one word. Pandora. She just kept saying it over and over.’

  ‘Pandora? Like the box?’

  ‘Like the box.’

  ‘Do you think it was just in your head?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonah. ‘At first I wasn’t sure, but I think she really sent me a message. Somehow. So far, I have no idea what the hell she meant by it, though.’

  ‘Great,’ said Never, pulling out more of the solar panels. He gave Jonah a particularly sarcastic look. ‘If you see her again, ask for more details.’

  *

  It didn’t take long for all the necessary boxes to be brought up to the courtyard, ready for installation.

  ‘And by installation,’ said Never, ‘I mean propping up at a bit of an angle.’

  ‘There’s some timber in the storage shed by the garage,’ said Jonah. ‘I got that to make frames to fix the panels to.’
r />   ‘Right,’ said Never. ‘Let’s consider that to be gilding the lily, OK?’ He started to read through the instruction manual.

  ‘It was the connection to our electricity supply that I was worried about doing.’

  ‘That’s pretty easy,’ said Never. ‘Especially now that there isn’t one. I’ll have it all up and running in half an hour, trust me. It’s a clear day, might even have the batteries well-charged by nightfall if we’re not drawing much in the meantime.’

  Jonah heard the approach of Annabel’s car and left him to it.

  He was surprised to see Cathy in the passenger seat, and there was something in the rear of the hatchback, the seats folded down to accommodate it.

  ‘Jonah,’ said Cathy. She looked exhausted, but she gave him a tired smile.

  ‘You go on inside,’ Annabel said to Cathy. ‘Jonah and I will start bringing your gear into the house.’

  When Cathy was out of earshot, Jonah said: ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I asked if she had a satellite phone.’

  ‘Living here in the Quiet Zone, that’d be damn close to Original Sin,’ he said.

  ‘It was just to start the conversation. I said we were worried that the power cut was wider than people realized.’ She paused. ‘OK, I said you were worried. I also may have pulled a face and implied that you’re a little bit paranoid.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see I could go all out and tell her the crazy stuff. She would’ve slammed the door in my face.’ She opened the rear door of her car. Inside were two large cardboard boxes full of electronic equipment.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asked.

  ‘Cathy’s been a radio skulker for decades.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘She sits and sifts through the airwaves for anything interesting. It’s a hobby. Living in the Quiet Zone means she can get weak signals that’d be swamped otherwise. She said if she had power, she’d be able to find out how widespread this was, hence . . .’

  ‘You brought it all here! Good. The power won’t take long to be up, according to Never. Did Cathy have an opinion on the flare causing the power outage?’

  ‘She did,’ said Annabel. She looked at the sky. ‘I asked if the lack of an aurora was odd, but she pointed out that the previous aurora had been the strange one. She mentioned some figures and said it could easily have triggered blackouts if the power companies underestimated the strength of the flux, as they might have to shut parts of the grid down in a panic and spend a while checking for damage before they put it back on. We have a bet as to whether we’ll get her radio set up before the power returns.’

  ‘You’ll collect on that one,’ Jonah said. ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten dollars. Now grab the end of this and let’s get it inside. Who knows? Maybe everything will be fine in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Who knows,’ said Jonah, absently. He reached into the car.

  *

  ‘I hope my daughter’s OK,’ said Cathy. She was assembling her equipment with the kind of practised grace that came with years of experience.

  ‘She might be better coming out to stay with you,’ said Annabel. ‘She’s not far, right? An hour’s drive or so? I can take you if you’d rather not go alone.’

  Cathy considered it, but frowned. ‘This is all going to be fine,’ she said. ‘We’ll be laughing about it in an hour, trust me.’

  At that, Never came in and flicked on a light. ‘Ta da!’ he said, turning it off again. ‘We’re good to go with power. Although it’s drawing a fair bit, so if you’d be so kind, Jonah, and scoot around the house unplugging everything? Fridge and freezer should be OK to leave.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jonah, and he started to go from socket to socket around the room.

  ‘I’m Never,’ said Never, extending a hand to Cathy as his eyes took in the jumble of equipment she was configuring. He didn’t need to ask her what it was. ‘Good to meet you. Anything I can do to help?’

  ‘There’s an aerial in that box in the corner,’ she said. ‘It’s a spare of the type I’ve got set up at home. Takes a little care to put together, but I’m sure you’re up to it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Never. ‘Should it go anywhere specific?’

  ‘On a roof, if possible.’

  Annabel spoke up. ‘The garage has a flat roof, if you’ve enough cabling to reach it.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Cathy, ‘I have enough cabling to reach the coast.’ She smiled. ‘My husband used to tell me that, anyways.’

  As he walked over to the box of aerial parts, Never paused. ‘I was thinking, are any of your neighbours old, or vulnerable? It’d be worth asking if they’d want to stay here.’

  Jonah, pulling the last plug from its socket, stared at him in shock.

  ‘I’m allowed to be thoughtful,’ said Never. He frowned. ‘Aren’t I?’

  Jonah came closer. ‘I was thinking more about privacy,’ he muttered.

  ‘I think the time for privacy has passed,’ said Never. Jonah grumbled and went off to unplug things elsewhere in the house.

  ‘Philip is a retired surgeon,’ said Cathy. ‘Right up the far end of the valley. Next to him is Petro, but they’re both pretty independent souls. You folk really should try and relax. It’ll be fine.’

  Jonah came back. ‘It occurred to me to try the TV,’ he said. ‘I figured they should have their own generators. Nothing.’

  Cathy shook her head. ‘They’d not necessarily have power for their broadcast beacons. Are you terrestrial or satellite?’

  ‘Both,’ said Jonah. ‘Nothing’s showing.’

  Cathy frowned. ‘That’s digital for you, see. A geomagnetic storm creates a mountain of interference. With digital, you either get a usable signal and a basically perfect picture, or it drops below threshold and you get zip.’ She plugged one final cable in. ‘OK, Never. Get the aerial up. We’ll find out what we can hear.’

  *

  Jonah joined Never as soon as he’d finished his trip around the house. There were a few things he knew would be drawing power – various chargers, for example – but it was only once he’d done the whole house that he remembered the shelter below him. Outdated batteries, essentially automotive, which were trickle-charged from the mains supply.

  He went down the tunnels to the shelter and cut the power supply to the batteries, making sure to kill the tunnel lights once he was back in the basement. When he returned, Never confirmed that the drain he had complained about had vanished.

  Once the pieces of the aerial were laid out, Never seemed to get into his stride. Much of it slotted together without a fuss, and soon they were lifting the part-assembled pieces onto the garage roof ready for final assembly.

  ‘We’ll want to anchor this down,’ said Never. ‘Maybe some guy lines too. Later, though. Lily, gilding.’

  Jonah gave him a grim smile. ‘Cathy’s under the impression we’ll be taking it apart almost immediately.’

  ‘I hope she’s right,’ said Never, but neither of them believed it for a moment.

  Jonah looked at the sky, and thought he could see the faintest hint of green wisps fluctuating up there. ‘Is that the aurora back?’ he said.

  After a moment of squinting, Never shook his head. ‘I can’t tell. It’s not as clear as last time, if it is.’

  Jonah nodded. He wasn’t sure either – the human mind was hungry for pattern, and it simply could have been his brain filling in something that wasn’t there.

  They went back inside, Never feeding out the cable from the aerial. Cathy had plugged her equipment in, and she held out her hand for the loop of cable. As soon as it was attached, she switched the receiver on and started to tinker. A single speaker rested on top of the equipment, and from it came a continuous hiss.

  ‘Ongoing interference,’ she said. ‘A flare gives you an initial burst of trouble, then when the coronal mass ejection reaches the planet you get the more serious problems. The problems keep going as long as the geomagnetic storm lasts.’
She played with the dial for a minute, but Jonah could see a frown forming. She flipped a few switches and tried again. All Jonah could hear was the static, but from time to time Cathy paused and went back and forth across the same frequencies. She grabbed a pair of headphones she’d brought but not connected, put them on and plugged them in, cutting off the speaker. She had an increasingly intense expression on her face, very carefully shifting frequency. Occasionally she paused, refined the position and listened again.

  After a few minutes, Cathy took her headphones off. ‘There’s quite a narrow band that’s less clouded with interference,’ she said. ‘Getting some signals, but they fade in and out. The folk at Green Bank could probably learn something interesting from that, given time. The rest of the spectrum is just a mess. Unusual atmospherics, I think.’

  ‘The aurora might be back,’ said Jonah. ‘I couldn’t be sure if I was really seeing it, so it’s very faint if it’s there at all.’

  Cathy nodded. ‘An aurora can create plasma layers that reflect radio signals better,’ she said. ‘It can vastly increase the distance signals travel, but the same goes for the noise.’ She unplugged the headphones, and the speaker crackled into life.

  Jonah strained to hear anything different from it, but couldn’t – then he realized he could just make out something underneath the static. Perhaps it was simply his mind again, creating meaning out of noise, like the old EVP tapes that TV shows about hauntings loved so much, so-called electric voice phenomena – supposedly hearing the voices of the dead, when nothing was really there.

  Cathy was poised at the volume control, and when the static dropped lower she turned it up. With a startlingly loud click, a male voice came on: ‘Were there any signs of spiking? Check for that, see if . . .’ It faded back into static.

  She turned it down again. ‘That’s reasonably local,’ she said. ‘From what I listened to before, it’s a couple of power company guys talking. No idea if they chanced on the frequency or had the skill to look, but it’s all been shop talk. Drowns out weaker signals, though.’