Solar Reboot

by Matthew D. Hunt

  “Almost got your ass kicked by a dead guy and a gun, Alex,” he muttered to himself. “Maybe be a little more careful.”

  Slowly he slithered out of the window, shotgun in hand. Once more he turned to leave, but once more a hunch turned him around again. He reached in past the corpse again and pulled the trunk release. As the trunk popped open with a thunk, he heard the clatter of something heavy and metal.

  Jackpot.

  In the trunk he found a pistol and two mags of ammo, plus a box of shells for the shotgun. There were also some wool blankets and water. He had blankets. He had water. He took them anyway.

  He must have looked ridiculous, coming back to the car carrying it all, his pockets bulging with the pepper spray and cuffs, because Piper gawked at him through the window with eyes as wide as dinner plates. At first he made some effort to hide the guns, but he soon gave it up. How could she miss them? So he stowed everything in the trunk, except the pistol, which he shoved in his waistband.

  Piper stared at him as he slid back in behind the steering wheel.

  “What happened to the car?”

  Alex pursed his lips and shrugged. “Not sure. Whoever flipped it must have gotten away quick, but they left a bunch of stuff inside.”

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but his key turned in the ignition, and she was cut off by the engine revving to life. When the noise settled back down to a steady hum, she’d given up on whatever she was about to say.

  * * *

  After two corpses in twenty-four hours and a crap night of sleep, he shouldn’t have blamed himself too badly for what happened next. He was nervous. On edge. He knew it by the way his hands were shaking on the steering wheel, and so he tried to ease himself. He stopped after a half hour and took Max out of the back to let him do his business by the side of the road. But when they got back on the road again, he didn’t feel any better. His foot kept dropping harder on the accelerator, and he was always looking at the clock.

  What time was it now?

  How much farther had they driven?

  How much farther did they have to go?

  It was his mantra, and he repeated it every few seconds.

  Piper’s question shocked him from his thoughts, so abruptly that he found himself growing annoyed before he could help it. “You took stuff from that car. That was like Pete?”

  “Yep,” he said offhandedly.

  “But Pete was dead.”

  His jaw worked as he tried to think of a smart answer. Goddammit. Why hadn’t he thought his answer through? “Well, I don’t know where the owner of that car was.”

  “But you took their stuff, like they were dead.”

  “I…” He trailed off. Think, think.

  “Were they dead?”

  Slowly he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yeah,” he said finally. “He was dead. It was a cop car. That’s why there were guns in it. The cop died in the crash.”

  Piper swallowed hard. “Okay.”

  “This is what I was talking about before, Piper. Things are dangerous now, and—”

  “I get it,” she said. “I got it the first time.” Then she wrapped her arms around herself and turned away, looking out the window. Max pushed his head up and licked her cheek, but she pushed him away gently.

  Alex’s foot fell heavier on the accelerator. Then heavier. The freeways were empty, so he soon found himself at ninety before he realized it. But then, like driving through a curtain, they were in a rainstorm. Alex cursed under his breath as the rain forced him to slow the car.

  “Don’t swear,” said Piper.

  “Okay, mom,” said Alex. He glanced at her. She gave a little smile, and he returned it. Thank god she hadn’t already forgotten how to smile.

  Even with the rain, he kept going faster, before the steering wheel would jerk in his hands and he realized his speed had crept up too far. Then he’d slow down, only to realize he’d done it again a few miles later. The rain got worse, until it fell in grey sheets that kept them seeing farther than ten feet in any direction. Thunder and lightning began to rage around them, until Max was full-time whimpering in the back seat.

  “Can you try to keep him calm, Piper?” said Alex. “I’ve got to focus on the road.”

  “He’s afraid of the storm,” she said, twisting in her seat to scratch behind the dog’s ears. His whining only increased. “Maybe we should stop.”

  “Where?” said Alex, sharper than he’d meant to. He waved a hand and went on more gently. “There’s nothing around here, Piper. No farmhouses, definitely no hotels.”

  “We can sleep in the car,” said Piper. “The rain is—” Her words were cut off as Max gave a loud bark. Alex jumped, and the steering wheel jerked in his hands.

  “Jesus Christ,” he growled. “Come on, Max. Piper, can you please—”

  “It’s not his fault,” Piper said, getting angry now. “Look at the rain, dad.”

  Max barked again, and kept barking. And then lightning crashed into a tree right off the road, detonating it in a shower of sparks.

  Alex slammed the brakes on instinct, even as his mind screamed, Idiot! The car spun out, skidding no matter how he tried to correct it with the steering wheel. Piper screamed, and Max howled as they careened off the road. There was a ditch, and as their wheels went over its edge, Alex thought, We’re going to flip over. In his mind’s eye he saw the cop car, and the dead cop inside it.

  But the car didn’t flip. It slid down the side of the ditch, slamming into the bottom with a jarring shake that wrenched the seat belt against Alex’s neck. Piper’s scream cut off abruptly, and for a heart-stopping moment Alex thought she’d slammed her head into the window. But then he saw she was just frozen in place. Her mouth was still open, though no sound came out, and she was shaking.

  “Are you all right?” he croaked. His throat hurt like crazy.

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Shit!”

  The driver’s side rear window had shattered, and rain was pouring in. He dove back, looking for the bag with Piper’s diabetic supplies in it.

  “Your supplies are going to get all—”

  “It’s fine, dad. It’s in ziplock bags, remember?”

  Alex stopped his frantic digging. She was right, of course. He’d have remembered that, if he had been thinking straight. What with all her swim meets, she’d dropped her supply bag in a pool once, and they’d had a waterproof one ever since, with everything in ziplock baggies, and had upgraded her pump to a water proof one as well, at no small cost.

  “Right,” he muttered. “Right. Okay. Let me try to get us out of here. Check on Max.”

  Piper did it, though Max was clearly all right, if shaken. Alex pressed the gas pedal. The car shuddered, but didn’t move. He put it in reverse, but still got nothing. Groaning, he levered himself out of the driver’s side door, though it was almost horizontal the way the car was leaning.

  The rain beat on him like an angry drunk. And the moment he was out in it, he gave a frustrated sigh, because he knew the car wasn’t going anywhere. Both left wheels were bent at crazy angles. The axles could be broken for all he knew—they were definitely bent far past any ability to drive.

  “Well, you get your wish,” he said after climbing back in the car and shutting the door against the storm. “We’re not driving anywhere. We’re going to wait in the car until this storm blows over.”

  “What?” said Piper. “The car’s almost sideways. I don’t want to wait here.”

  Alex arched an eyebrow. “You want to wait outside?”

  She scowled and looked out. But then her brow furrowed deeper. “Dad, is that a train?”

  He leaned over and peered out. It was a train. Maybe a quarter of a mile away, half-glimpsed through the rain. It wasn’t moving. It looked old, maybe even rusted, likely a remnant on some abandoned track out here in the middle of nowhere.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said.

  “Why don’t we wait in there?”

  Ins
tinct immediately told him No. But he gave it a second thought. He didn’t want to stay, and likely sleep, in a tilted car any more than Piper did. And if the boxcars were unoccupied, they’d likely be safer than the car was with its broken window.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll check them out. If someone’s already there, though, we’re coming right back to the car.”

  “Of course. I don’t want to sleep in a train car with some creepy old hobo.”

  From the back of the car, Alex pulled the shotgun and extra ammo, and then loaded up as much water and supplies as he could into two of the backpacks, giving the smaller one to Piper. They could always come back to the car after the storm let up, but someone else might come by before then, and he couldn’t be sure their supplies would stay where they left them.

  They both set off, half-jogging, neither one eager to remain in the storm a second longer than they had to. Alex kept scanning the area all around as they went, watchful for anyone approaching. He doubted anyone was out in this downpour, but if they were, he didn’t want to be caught unaware.

  No one showed their face by the time they reached the cars. Alex climbed the little half-ladder next to the big door and shoved it open. The car inside was empty—and dry. Piper gave an excited whoop and began to climb up into it.

  “Hold on,” said Alex. There were two other cars, one on either side of the first. He went to each of them and opened them as well. But they were empty as well, and he closed them against the rain before climbing into the middle car with Piper. Max leapt up into the car beside them, and Alex rolled the door shut.

  It wasn’t bright outside, but the darkness in the car was absolute. He pulled out his phone and used its flashlight, but only long enough to pull out two sleeping bags and lay them down next to each other. The moment they were laid out, Piper shucked off her raincoat and dove into one of them, hunching down in the warm fleece.

  “Brrr. It’s freezing out there.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s summer.” Alex kept a deadpan expression as she raised her eyebrows incredulously. Then he let his smile crack, and she laughed in response.

  “You’re so dumb.”

  “The dumbest.” He clicked off the light and climbed into his own sleeping bag beside her. “Get some rest. I’m going to wake you up before sunrise, most likely, and I don’t want to hear any complaining.”

  “Okay,” she said, voice already sounding drowsy. It had been a long day.

  “And Piper…if you get up in the middle of the night for anything, and I’m still asleep, don’t touch the gun or go outside.”

  The train car sat in dark silence for a moment. “Okay,” she whispered.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was a while before he could drift off. He lay awake, wondering what kind of world this was that would make him draw such a promise from his daughter.

  CHAPTER 14

  The day after she spoke with Alex on the radio, another group of refugees came to the cabins.

  Their arrival was heralded, as per usual, by shouting in the direction of the gate. Cameron and Bettie were out working in the garden—and whereas Cameron had leapt into action the last time they’d heard a fight breaking out, now she just sighed and straightened up, rolling her shoulders against the ache of stooping over the plants.

  “Swear to God, if Bill is making trouble again, I’m going to deck him.”

  “He sure could use it,” said Bettie, frowning. “Guess we’d better go and make sure no one kills each other.”

  She followed the words with a chuckle to soften them, but Cameron had to suppress a little shiver. Bill was a bit of a megalomaniac, and circumstances had become a bit extreme. Bettie’s offhanded joke was an echo of a thought Cameron had been suppressing, pushing so far back she could pretend it wasn’t there.

  They hopped in the Jeep and headed for the front gate, though Cameron didn’t lean on the gas too hard. When they got there, it was an all-too-familiar scene: Bill standing just inside the gate, hands on his hips, scowl on his face, and a truck outside the gate, the driver looking hesitant a couple of feet away from his door. Only this time the driver wasn’t Wade or a park ranger, but some guy in a flannel shirt and jeans. His arms muscular, if not bodybuilder-thick, and the set of his shoulders told Cameron he worked with his hands. There were a few other people in his car, but Cameron couldn’t see them through the glare of the overcast sky on the windshield.

  “What is it this time, Bill?” said Cameron.

  “Damn it, you don’t need to come down every time someone pulls up to the gate,” said Bill, doubling down on his angry grimace.

  “Past evidence indicates otherwise. You almost turned away a friend of mine, and then a park ranger who had news about my husband. I’ll continue keeping an eye on things around my cabin community, if it’s all the same to you.” Then, while his face was slowly growing red and he was trying to come up with a scathing comeback, she brushed past him and went to the gate. “Hey there. How can we help you?”

  “I … I’m hoping—that is, we were hoping we could take shelter here,” said the man. “That is—”

  “You can’t,” said Bill, seemingly determined to take the anger he was afraid to direct at Cameron and turn it on the man instead. “This isn’t a hotel, and even if it was, we don’t have any vacancies.”

  “Sure,” said the man, mouth twitching. For such a solid-looking guy, he was surprisingly tongue-tied. “We thought the place would be abandoned.”

  Footsteps behind them made Cameron turn, and she saw Wade approaching at the head of some of the others in the community. Wade’s dark eyes were narrowed, and he was looking at the man on the other side of the fence with a suspicion not unlike Bill’s own, which only made Cameron even more nervous.

  “The place ain’t abandoned,” said Bill, who hadn’t seemed to notice the arrival of the others. “You can see that, so now you can turn around and go somewhere else.”

  “I—we don’t know where,” said the man, shrugging helplessly. “Listen, I—my name’s Jeremy. That’s my wife in the car. Her name’s Theresa. We’re from Seattle. Or we were. But it’s crazy there. We can’t go home.”

  “Not our problem,” said Bill.

  “Oh, come on now,” said Bettie. “What are you gonna do? Let them starve and freeze to death out there?”

  Bill glared at her. “Lots of people gonna starve. Lots of people gonna freeze to death.”

  Cameron wished like hell that Bill wasn’t such an asshole, because it made her want to disagree with him on principle—even when, like now, she knew he was basically right. If things really were going all to hell outside the borders of the cabin community, they didn’t have the land or the resources to take in every single person affected by the disaster.

  But they weren’t talking about every single person. At least not yet. They were only talking about four people.

  That brought to mind something else, however. “Who all’s with you?” she said. “You’ve got more than just your wife.”

  As if those words were a signal, the back right door of the car burst open, and a girl got out—and that was how Cameron thought of her at once, a girl, because she had to be young, though she was old enough and endowed enough and carried herself like she knew exactly how much of a woman she was. Every movement swayed, and around her halter top and short denim shorts were a lot of tattoos, so that the eyes of every man present immediately snapped to her, and stayed.

  “Jeremy, I’ll take over,” she said, voice lightly dusted with a Russian accent. She looked at Cameron and Bill and gave a little smile. “My parents have a cabin here. They’re the Sokolovs. I don’t know if you know them, but they do.”

  Bill shook off the look of her just enough to fold his arms over his chest. “Never seen you before. Anyone could say that.”

  “I’m Gina Sokolov. Are you the caretaker? You know my mom and dad, Simon and Yolanda. There s
hould be pictures of me in the cabin.”

  That only deepened Bill’s scowl, which was so full of leer that Cameron wanted to deck him. But then the car’s other back door opened, and the fourth passenger got out. Cameron’s gut, which had already gone uneasy at the sight of Gina, began to roil in earnest.

  The kid had to be even younger than Gina, though he sure tried to carry himself like he was older. His pants hung low, and his too-large sports jersey did nothing to cover the full tattoo sleeves that ran the whole length of his arms. Everything about him said he itched for a fight, like everyone present had insulted his mother and he’d come to settle the score. Cameron didn’t like to make snap judgement, but she knew this was a kid from the streets. And that didn’t bother her in and of itself—she met plenty of such kids in her line of work, and most of them were decent enough. But just as every man present had looked at Gina with immediate and barely-restrained lust, now they all focused on the new kid with ugly, angry appraisal. Whether he really was a troublemaker or not, they all thought he was, and that could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “Who the hell is this?” said Bill.

  “He’s with me,” said Gina. But that wasn’t really an explanation, and from the suddenly-nervous look on her face, it seemed that Gina knew it. “Can you open the gate now?”

  “Not a chance,” said Bill. “Even if you’re who you say you are—”

  “If her parents really do have a cabin here, we can prove that easily enough,” said Bettie. “You can’t just turn them away without even checking—”

  “I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  They went on, voices steadily rising, but Cameron’s attention went to Wade as he sidled up next to her.

  “Bill’s got one point—we can’t take just anyone who comes by,” said Wade, voice low so that only she could hear.