Solar Reboot

by Matthew D. Hunt

  “Hello?” Cameron spoke with a slow slur.

  His heart skipped a beat, and Alex leaned back in his bus chair with a sigh. “Cam. Thank goodness. Are you okay?”

  He heard a sharp rustling, probably of bedsheets. “Of course. Why? What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said, heaving a deep sigh. What was wrong with him? There was no reason for this sense of anxiety hiding just at the corners of his mind. But he couldn’t shake it. “Nothing. I just haven’t been able to call since we woke up. The city’s power is out. Apparently it’s the same all across the country, and some others, too.”

  “Yeah, we’re still on the backup generator here, too. No idea when they’re going to get it sorted.”

  “If they do.”

  She was silent a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Hey, listen, flights have been cancelled all over the place, so we’re going to get a rental and drive west.”

  “You’re going to drive all the way home?”

  “Maybe. If flights come back up, we can stop in Pittsburgh or Cleveland, catch a plane from there. But just in case . . .”

  “Okay.”

  He blinked. He’d expected an In case what? “Really?”

  “Sure. Piper must hate you right now.”

  Alex glanced at her across the bus. She caught him looking, and met his gaze with a glare. “Nah, she’s fine. Hey, listen. If it gets any worse there—or, I don’t know, even if it stays the same for too much longer—head to the cabin, okay?”

  “You really think that’s necessary?”

  “I hope not. But if the power stays down for a week, or even a couple of days, a city isn’t the place to be.”

  “We’re hardly in Seattle, babe. No one’s going to—”

  The call cut off. Outside the bus, the sky . . . rippled. It was like a wave of hot air rushed across it, coming from the west, and where it came the sky turned reddish, edging toward purple. Alex watched it for a second, awestruck, then looked down at the phone. The signal bars were gone, and no amount of staring brought them back.

  * * *

  The bus pressed on, oblivious, and soon dropped them off at a Metro car rental place in Jersey City. The streets were empty, and a brisk wind had struck up. The sky was still purple. Alex tried to ignore it all, focusing on the door of the rental shop as he hustled Piper toward it.

  “What did Mom say?”

  “Nothing much. Power’s down there, too, so it’s probably a good thing we’re not trying to fly.”

  “I am not going to get excited about this road trip, so you can stop trying.”

  “Ten-four.”

  In the front office, a single greasy twenty-something stood behind the counter. She looked bored out of her mind, and the presence of customers didn’t seem to do anything to alleviate it. Alex tried to win her over with a smile as he stopped at the counter, but she didn’t return it. Her bronze name badge read Mindy.

  “Hey, I’d like to rent a sedan, one-way.”

  The girl sniffed and tapped a button on her keyboard. After staring blankly at her screen for a second, she looked back to Alex and shrugged. “Sorry, sir. Our computer system seems to be down.”

  Alex looked back over his shoulder. The front door still very clearly had an Open sign on it. “You’re a car rental place. And you can’t rent cars? Why are you even open, then?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew the answer: Mindy probably saw it as a total dream to come in to work and get paid for hours where she couldn’t even do her job.

  Sure enough, she shrugged. “Boss didn’t call to tell me to take the day off. Plus, people can still return cars. Can’t just leave them stranded, or whatever, I guess.”

  Alex took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. Piper tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, Dad. They’re closed. It’s not like there’s anything we can do about it.”

  He gently pried her fingers from his arm. “If someone comes back with a car, what would you do? I mean, some of them have to pay, right? How do you process them?”

  Mindy stared at him for a moment, then sighed and looked over his shoulder at the clock. It provided no help, so she met his eyes again. “They fill out a form with their payment info. We’ll process it whenever the computers come back up.”

  “Okay. So can I please have one of those forms to take out a rental?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t know if your credit card—”

  “I’ll pay cash,” he said. “And you can photocopy my driver’s license and insurance information. I’ve got it on me.”

  Another long-suffering sigh. But Mindy levered herself away from the counter and went to a file cabinet to retrieve a paper form. Piper leaned in close to Alex, whispering.

  “Dad, don’t be so mean. She just works here.”

  “I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just—”

  He had to stop abruptly as Mindy returned with uncustomary speed. She probably wanted them out of the office as fast as possible so she could go back to doing nothing.

  “Here you go, sir. Just fill this out. I’m afraid we only have a single car available for you.”

  Alex looked at the form. A Mercedes G-Class, for $169 a day plus a $500 deposit. He glanced up.

  “This is the only car you have available?”

  Mindy met his stare dead-on. “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  Touché, Mindy. Touché.

  Alex forced himself to swallow several angry words and filled out the form. They could get something cheaper in whatever city they ended up at the next day. And at least the G-Class had a lot of carrying room. If power was still out the next day, he meant to pick up some supplies. As quickly as he could force Mindy to move, he paid for the rental, gave all his info, and took the keys. They drove away from the rental shop as fast as Alex thought he could without getting a ticket. It was twenty minutes since the sky had gone purple.

  He felt a little better once they hit the 78, and better still when the freeway carried them out of the city proper and into the suburbs. Now they were surrounded by green forest on all sides, except for the occasional turnoffs into the little communities and small towns that surrounded New Jersey’s city sprawl. Alex breathed a long sigh of relief at the familiar feel of nature all around him, at the freedom from claustrophobic humanity.

  “Jeez, Dad. You’re so hyper.” Piper’s nose was buried in her phone again. “But at least the car’s nice.”

  “It had better be,” Alex muttered. Louder, he said, “I just wanted to get moving. You know me—I hate waiting.”

  “We couldn’t have even taken one day? I wanted to hang out with Elizabeth.”

  “I know, honey. But listen, about that. We can’t just offer to pick people up on this trip, okay? I want to get home as fast as we can.”

  Something about his tone caught her attention. She clicked off her earbuds and pulled them from her ears. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  He shrugged, trying to ignore the nagging feeling scraping at the back of his neck. Hard to do when it just kept getting stronger and stronger. But how could he explain it to Piper, when he himself didn’t know why he was so nervous? He could hear, or imagined he could hear, a keen whine in the air, like the scream of a plane’s engines. Just nerves, he told himself.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. You’ve seen how the sky is acting. And the weather looks like it’s going to kick up soon. I just don’t want to waste any time. The faster we get home, the happier I’ll be.”

  Now Piper was looking out the windows, eyebrows furrowed anxiously. “So the sky’s a weird color. So what? What does that mean?”

  The whine grew louder. Not nerves after all, but a plane. Probably flying in to Newark. The sound agitated Alex’s already-frayed nerves. “I don’t know. And that’s what’s got me a little worried. That, and the power going down. If they don’t get it back up soon, it’s going to get worse. And listen, sweetie, I don’t want to worry you. But if it does get worse, it could ge
t a lot worse. That’s why we need to look out for each other, and not pick people up like this is a regular road trip. Okay?”

  Piper swallowed hard, and to his relief she nodded slowly. “But . . . Elizabeth, and her mom. They’re going to be fine, right? I mean, it’ll be safe in the city?”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to hesitate, for just a moment longer than he should have. “I’m sure they will be. People tend to band together when things get hard. It might be a little exciting in the city, but they’ll be fine.”

  Suddenly the whine in the air became a roar. On instinct Alex slammed on the brakes. The Mercedes compensated for the sudden lurching speed change, and he guided it to the shoulder. Just as he pulled the car to a stop, the earth shook with a tremendous explosion. A colossal tower of fire bloomed to life in the field across the freeway, and the debris of a passenger jet flew from the crash like the rain of hell.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cameron woke to an explosion that rattled the house windows.

  Instinct took over, a subconscious compulsion gained from years sleeping in deserts half a world away, and she leapt over the back of the couch to huddle behind it for cover. Panic made her heart thunder in her ears, and she stared around wild-eyed as she looked for the source of the explosion. After a minute she came back to herself. Blinking hard, she lifted her head up over the couch again.

  Though the whole house had shook, it didn’t look like any windows had broken. She went around to check them all, just to be sure. Then she realized she didn’t have her phone, and went to retrieve it from the side table by the couch. There was no signal. The time read 6:15am. Forty minutes ago, her call with Alex had been cut off, just before she’d drifted back to sleep.

  Now that she was sure the house was safe, her head was starting to throb. Too much wine. She stumbled into the kitchen and threw some coffee on, then went back to the living room. The TV was still out. But their sound system had a radio connection, so she flipped it to a news station.

  . . . working to confirm reports that multiple flights have gone down all across the country for unknown reasons. Details are very hard to confirm at this time. We are working to get any solid information about which flights may have suffered failures, or why. So far as we know, there is no indication that this is any kind of attack, and we ask for your patience—

  Cameron turned it off. A plane crash. That would explain the explosion, she supposed. But why? It couldn’t have anything to do with the power outage, could it? Planes certainly didn’t rely on ground power to stay up in the air.

  The murmur of voices outside distracted her, and she returned to the front window. On the street outside, several of the neighbors had converged. It seemed almost abnormal how many of them there were—did that many people really live in this neighborhood? Cameron was never a social butterfly on the best of occasions. Except for Bettie, she doubted she knew the names of most the people she saw outside.

  As though summoned by the thought, Bettie appeared on the sidewalk, looking over the low white picket fence that rimmed Cameron’s front yard. Before Cameron could duck back out of sight, Bettie saw her. She lifted a hand and waved energetically.

  “Cameron! Come on out! Something’s happened.”

  Time to be a social butterfly after all, it seemed. Cameron sighed. If she didn’t go out, Bettie would no doubt come after her to see if anything was wrong. She gave a brief wave to tell Bettie she’d heard, then went to get some proper clothes on.

  Outside, about two dozen people had gathered. Cameron stood off to the side of them, where she was quickly joined by Bettie. She caught brief snatches of the conversation. A few of them had heard the same news Cameron had about the planes, and they were filling in the others.

  “Where’d the plane go down?” said one of them, a soccer mom Cameron barely recognized. She had her hands buried in the pockets of a flannel sweater, though it wasn’t even below sixty outside.

  “I think I saw it up north. Just caught the tail end of the explosion.” Cameron was almost certain the guy’s name was David. He was a real roughneck type, huge mutton chops hanging from his face and a veteran’s cap on his head. She’d always thought those caps were self-aggrandizing, especially for newer vets. A ninety-year-old guy wanted to sport his World War II cap? Sure. But who went around boasting they were a backup convoy driver in Iraq in ’98?

  As the others babbled on, Cameron studied the crowd more closely. There were several more like David, thick men with beer bellies and red cheeks. More than one of them had a pistol on their belt. That raised her hackles. Sure, they probably had permits. But she’d lived in this neighborhood for more than a decade, and while she wasn’t friendly with these people, she was sure she’d have noticed if they made a habit of carrying guns around with them. This wasn’t normal procedure. They were packing because they were scared.

  Her ears pricked up at the conversation again, focusing more closely now. “One thing’s for sure,” David was saying. “We’ve gotta set up some kind of neighborhood watch.”

  “There’s already a neighborhood watch,” Bettie pointed out.

  “Oh yeah? Who’s in it?” said David.

  Hilariously, only the soccer mom from before raised her hand. Cameron fought the urge to snicker.

  “That’s my point. This is probably some kind of terrorist attack, and—”

  Cameron was somewhat gratified to hear indignant shouts spring up from many in the crowd, matching the rise in her own pulse. Normal people didn’t just go tossing around the T-word like that.

  “The news is saying there’s no evidence it’s an attack of any kind, terrorist or otherwise,” said a pencil-necked guy in spectacles and a bathrobe. Cameron hoped that wasn’t his everyday attire.

  “You believe everything you hear on the news?” said David. “They wouldn’t tell us if it was a terrorist attack, unless the towel-heads were right on the street with their—”

  More angry shouting. Some of the other armed men started edging toward David, forming a little group around him.

  A decision crystalized in Cameron’s mind: she was getting out. Now. With people tossing out slurs and flashing weaponry already, she didn’t need Alex’s paranoia to tell her things were going to get worse long before they got better.

  Bettie’s head was turned the other direction for a moment. Cameron took a slow step back, and then another. Quickly she whirled and walked back for her house, doing her best to ignore the argument that grew louder and louder behind her.

  * * *

  The Jeep was already loaded with most of the stuff she wanted to take with her. She opened the garage and pulled it in, opening the back to load in a few more things. First she grabbed two sleeping bags. The cabin had plenty of blankets, and places to use them, but it never hurt to be prepared.

  Sounding a lot like Alex right now, Cam. She shook the thought away.

  Next she grabbed every last supply they had for Piper—the spare pump, some backup meds, and the needles for emergency injections they’d never had to administer. She had plenty of canned food in the car already, but she loaded up with everything left in the house; meager compared to the backup stores at the cabin, but enough for about ten meals. Who knew how valuable those meals might turn out to be.

  Finally, there were weapons. Cameron might not have felt the urge to walk around brandishing them, but she and Alex always had a couple on hand. But the only thing she could get to was a little Ruger 10-22. Practically no stopping power. It would only be useful against another person if they were ignorant enough about guns to think it was dangerous. There was also a pistol, a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, but it was in a safe under the bed that only opened to Alex’s fingerprint. Cameron had never seen much need to program her own print into the lock, and now she cursed herself for it. But it would be fine. They had half a dozen guns at the cabin, and she wasn’t expecting much trouble on the road there.

  Ding-dong.

  Well, crud.

  Warily, Cameron went to
the front door. She put an eye to the peephole only to discover David on the other side. He stood tall, one hand on the piece at his belt, eyes roving across the neighborhood over his shoulder.

  No chance he was here for any good reason, Cameron supposed. She thought about pretending she wasn’t home. She’d been quiet as she approached the door so he wouldn’t hear her footsteps. But with a twinge of anger, she decided against it. Screw this guy, and screw his gun-nut buddies, if they thought she was going to hide in her house so they couldn’t see her. She jerked the doorknob almost savagely and threw it open.

  David turned to her, mouth set in a grim line, and gave a solemn nod. “Hey there. It’s Cameron, right?” He offered a hand.

  “David, isn’t it?” She didn’t answer him, or put out a hand to take his.

  His mouth twisted a little, and he withdrew the hand. “Daniel, actually. Lotta people get it wrong, though, so don’t worry about it.”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  The twist turned into a frown. “Well, I just wanted to let you know, the neighborhood agreed to set up a watch. There’s gonna be a bunch of us around, so if you see something, you need to tell us about it.”

  “I need to, huh?” Cameron felt a familiar tightness in her chest, and her knuckles were white as they gripped the edge of the door.

  “Yeah, you do.” Evidently Daniel had decided manners weren’t worth it. “No telling what kind of trouble could be coming down on us, and it’s up to all of us to—”

  He stopped, eyes moving past her to the kitchen just down the hall. Cameron cursed inwardly. The extra food was all splayed out on the kitchen table, and the sleeping bag was on one of the chairs. She refused to look at it, and kept her eyes on Daniel’s face.

  His eyes narrowed. “You going somewhere?”