by J. Thorn
“Okay,” Alexander said. “I could see a panic if people weren’t prepared. And your average person won’t be prepared even if you give them advance warning. Remember Hurricane Sandy? We might need some troops on standby if the National Guard and local police can’t handle it.”
“Not just grocery stores. Hospitals, police stations, and fire departments will lose not only their power but their ability to communicate. Not to mention all those planes. Do you know how many thousands of flights are in the air at any given time? And almost all those planes run on computers or have electronic components. One big pulse could knock them all out of the sky.”
“You’re making the problem so big that it’s almost pointless to plan for it,” Alexander said. “Like nuclear war. If it hits, you’re doomed anyway.”
“Sticking our heads in the sand won’t help.”
Gutierrez fell silent and pressed his palms against each side of his head. He squeezed his skull so hard that his fingers were white. His lip trembled.
“You okay, Mr. Gutierrez?” Alexander wondered why the administration let civilians make decisions about national security. They clearly couldn’t handle pressure under fire.
“As you can understand, Major, we’ve been hopping all over Capitol Hill on this,” Schlagal said. “It’s a hot potato that no one wants to catch.”
“I’m sure the Commander-in-Chief doesn’t want it anywhere near his desk,” Alexander said.
Gutierrez’s face clenched, his cheeks crinkling around his grimace. “Don’t…make this…about politics.”
The major held up his hands, palms showing. “Hey, we all know who gets the credit on those rare occasions when things go right. And we’re here when they need a fall guy. Like if this solar event becomes a real problem.”
“It’s not just a single event,” Schlagal said. “It’s a phase and a cycle. NASA says the worst is yet to come.”
“Well, in one way, if it gets worse, things get simple. We impose martial law in the name of national security. The fringe militia and the liberals will grumble, but everyone else will welcome it if it makes them feel safer.”
“I’m not so sure we can open the door for the administration to gain more power,” Schlagal said. Gutierrez appeared to be having troubled breathing. Alexander wondered if the man suffered from asthma.
“Abraham Lincoln used executive powers to the extreme,” Alexander said. “Nationalizing the banks, suspending the Fourth Amendment, and lying as a matter of policy. History remembers him as a compromiser, but he actually was a benevolent dictator. Of course, half the country would have argued about the ‘benevolent’ part.”
“Half the country might be in the dark next week,” Schlagal said.
As if to punctuate her statement, the lights flickered again. Alexander frowned and glanced at his laptop computer. Even though it had a battery back-up, the screen went blank. “Okay, then. I’ll kick it up the chain of command.”
Gutierrez stood, shoving his chair backward so hard that it tipped over. He clenched his fists and pounded them on the tabletop in time with each word he uttered. “There…is…no…chain.”
The major didn’t like the way the guy’s dark eyes glittered, as if the wiring behind them had shorted. Maybe he had snapped from the stress. Not all that surprising for a civilian, but worrisome because other lives might depend upon his actions and decisions. Alexander needed to take control of the situation immediately.
“We need an update from NASA—”
Gutierrez interrupted by diving across the table, reaching for Alexander. Schlagal yipped in surprise. The major, instincts well honed by combat training, rose into a defensive stance. Gutierrez crawled across the slick maple surface, the knees of his nylon trousers struggling for traction.
“Henry?” Schlagal said.
“Scenario!” Gutierrez bleated.
Alexander didn’t like the look in the man’s eyes. At Fort Benning , Ga., he’d once been jumped by a private who’d screamed “Remember Pork Chop Hill!” over and over. It had taken three M.P.’s to drag the attacker away, but not before Alexander had thrown five or six hard punches to the man’s head. The man didn’t even seem to feel the blows. Later the private was booted from the Army for possession of narcotics before he could be court-martialed for assault on an officer.
Gutierrez now appeared to have that same mindless rage boiling inside him. He slapped Alexander’s laptop to the floor and jumped off the table. Alexander was a good four inches taller, but Gutierrez still charged him, hands open like the claws of a crab, going for the major’s throat.
Despite the sudden ferocity of the attack, Alexander kept his calm, ducking under the assault and slapping Gutierrez off-balance with a judo-inspired elbow. Helen Schlagal broke from her own shock and raced for the door. Gutierrez snarled like a rabid dog and jumped at Alexander again, this time actually snapping his teeth together with an audible clack.
The lights went out again and in the darkness, the major heard the door click open and Schlagal calling down the hall for help.
Where are those back-up generators?
Alexander didn’t have time for the next thought, because Gutierrez slammed into him with the full force of his 180 pounds. Luckily most of it was stomach, the flab of a career civil servant. Alexander spun away from the blow and drove a fist toward where he guessed the man’s nose was but struck him in the temple instead. Gutierrez grunted and collapsed in a heap.
When the lights flickered back on a minute later, Helen Schlagal returned to the room with two guards to find Alexander bent over Gutierrez’s limp form, checking his jugular for a pulse. Alexander shook his head. They tried CPR until a medic arrived, but it was too late.
No one knew it at the time, but Gutierrez was Victim One in the tsunami of solar radiation rolling across the globe.
CHAPTER FIVE
The drive home had been nerve-wracking. The six-lanes seemed packed with road ragers, even by Charlotte standards. Rachel had found herself squinting through the windshield up at the bright sky above, but the sun seemed its usual angry late-summer self.
Finally home, Rachel made a cup of chamomile tea. She punched up some Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod and lodged an ear bud in one ear, then flopped on the couch with a paperback copy of a Stephen King thriller. The walls of her efficiency apartment were paper thin, and she could hear Fox News blasting from her neighbor’s television set.
Rachel was about to plug in the second ear bud in an attempt to block out the bombast, but she heard the words “solar flare” and shut down her iPod. Moving to the wall, she cocked her head, feeling a little like a snoop but rationalizing her actions as scientific curiosity.
“Solar activity has been associated not only with localized power outages, but also a rise in aggressive behavior. Republican leaders in Washington have been calling on the president to address the situation, but so far the White House is mum. Let’s go to Landry Wallace at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for a special report on the behavioral changes. Landry?”
Wallace delivered a staccato rant that made little sense. Rachel had difficulty following it. She was too poor to afford cable, and she would never have voluntarily watched the news even if she were plugged into what her grandfather Franklin called “the Idiot Grid.” However, at one point during Wallace’s interview with a CDC official, she heard him refer to “Zapheads,” the nickname given to those affected by the heightened solar activity.
Rachel decided to browse the Internet for more developments, but a knock interrupted her. Only one person would drop by without phoning first.
“Mira,” Rachel said, welcoming her friend into the apartment.
“I smell chamomile.” Mira was a tall, dark-haired Filipino whom Rachel had met in the complex’s laundry room. They borrowed sweaters, earrings, and belts from one another to expand their wardrobes on the cheap, although Mira sported fashion far more elegantly than Rachel did.
“Want a cup? Only cost you a buck.”
Mira pretended to dig in the pocket of her jeans and came up with an empty palm. “Put it on my tab.”
Going to the little counter that comprised the kitchen, Rachel said, “Did you hear this crazy stuff about the solar storm?”
“Yeah. Sounds like some people are getting heat stroke or something. I saw the cops take down a skateboarder on the street outside. He was punching away while five of them wrestled him to the ground.”
“What did he do wrong?”
“Some lady downstairs said he busted a plate glass window and attacked a mannequin.”
“That’s weird. They don’t even have real mannequins anymore, except those real creepy ones in Old Navy. Most of them don’t even have heads.”
“Zapheads,” Mira said. “That’s what they are calling them. It’s like some kind of psychological condition. A stress thing.”
“Cool. If it keeps up, maybe the state will boost funding for counselors.”
“Nah. Cops are cheaper.”
They settled onto the couch with their tea. Rachel glanced at her iPod. The screen was blank.
Weird. I left the music running.
She picked it up and tapped the glass screen. Nothing happened.
“What, you got a text?” Mira asked. “A hot date?”
“Like there could be any other kind of date in this weather.”
“When you get a job, you can move into a place with air conditioning.” Mira motioned at the box fan perched in the room’s lone window, above Rachel’s bed. “Or marry a guy from Alaska.”
Rachel frowned at the iPod and put it back down on the coffee table. She hoped it wasn’t broken. Her mother had given it to her as a graduation present. “I’m not really marriage material.”
“You’ve just got to find the right man. Or right woman.”
“You know I only believe in Biblical marriage.”
“Which one is that? King David’s first, where you trade the foreskins of 200 Philistines for a bride, or his other seventeen marriages?”
“Don’t get literal on me.”
Mira shrugged. “I’m not the one worried about my eternal soul.”
Mira’s father had been a steward for a cruise line, diligently saving money so his family could afford to live in the United States. Having been an American for most of her twenty-four years, she had eagerly adopted the country’s lax morality, although Rachel had educated her in the more conservative ways of the Bible Belt. The playful tension over their respective spiritual beliefs had proven to be a centerpiece of their relationship.
“Well, Judgment Day may come sooner than you think,” Rachel said, although she had never gleaned much sensible prophecy from the Book of Revelation. In some chapters, the sun went black, and in others, it fell into the sea. Her grandfather believed most of the Bible’s prophecies were written by schizophrenics. “In a complex problem, the simplest answer is usually the right one,” he’d once said to her.
“You know what they say about doomsayers,” Mira fired back. “Even if they turn out to be right, they’re still assholes.”
“You’re starting to sound like my grandfather.”
“Who must be a truly fascinating wacko, from what you’ve told me.”
“You’re only insane until the majority comes to see your point of view,” Rachel said. “Maybe we can go visit him in the mountains. If we can find him.”
“Bet it’s nice and cool up there right now while we’re baking away here in the city.”
All Rachel knew of his location was his cryptic references to “Milepost 291” on the Blue Ridge Parkway. In typical Franklin Wheeler fashion, he’d made her promise to commit the name to memory and never tell another soul. Given the persecution and harassment he’d faced for his loudly libertarian beliefs, she understood his paranoia and his desire to slip off the grid and away from the spotlight.
Mira pulled her cell from her blouse pocket. “Dang.”
“What is it?”
“Stevie was supposed to call.”
“Getting stood up again?”
“We’re just hanging out, not dating.”
“What does that mean? Sex without having to say you’re sorry?”
Mira ignored the jab. “No bars,” she said, tapping her phone.
“That’s weird. There are towers all over the place. You have to drive half a day to find a dead spot.”
“Maybe it’s that solar thing. I’ve still got power, just no signal.”
“I read that communications might be interrupted,” Rachel said. “Also supposed to have some static on the radio and TV.”
“Well, ain’t nobody got time for that.”
“The worst is supposed to be over by tomorrow. Something about the sun rotating away from the earth so the solar flares spew out to the far side of the solar system.”
Mira finished her tea and carried the cup to the tiny sink. “Well, you just enjoy the sunset alone. I’m going to track down Stevie.”
CHAPTER SIX
Officer Harlan McLeod had only been on the force for nine weeks.
As a rookie, he got the crap shift, midnight to six. That wasn’t so bad, since Taylorsville was a sleepy town in the foothills of North Carolina and the worst crimes he’d handled were a cemetery vandalism and a few domestic disputes. In all cases, alcohol was involved.
The big excitement of the evening was that two of the department’s cruisers wouldn’t start, so both he and Stefano in Unit Seven had to switch from their usual cars. The city’s maintenance staff couldn’t figure out the cause, although it appeared electronic in nature. He’d hit the street thirty minutes late, but it had taken only an hour for boredom to set in.
Now, as he cruised the four-block Main Street and the courthouse square, he wondered how long he’d be able to take this gig before he applied for a big-city post. He wasn’t all that romantic about police work, taking his two-year basic law-enforcement training because he didn’t want to go to college or enter the military. Sure, this was the era of “Unsung heroes,” where everyone with a uniform commanded respect whether that respect was earned or not. But Harlan was more interested in a job than a career, and he figured as long as he veered well away from politics and registered as an independent, he’d log plenty of paychecks.
The moon was faint and fuzzy, and beyond the pale streetlights, a strange greenish glow licked at the clouds like a series of veins. The department had received a bulletin warning of possible radio interference. Something to do with the sun, Maurice from Communications had said. Harlan didn’t know what to make of that. Why should the sun be causing trouble in the middle of the night?
Harlan decided to test out the radio. He said into the handset, “Unit Twelve here, I’m ten-twenty on Main Street. Routine patrol.”
A little static cut in before the response. “Ten-four.”
Routine.
Harlan debated pulling into the service dock behind the courthouse and catching some shut-eye. He’d squeezed off a few catnaps on previous shifts and had mastered the art of sleeping lightly. He’d even learned how to prop his laptop on his steering wheel so that it would look like he was working. But he was too bored to sleep.
His luck was in. A hunched-over figure scurried down a side street. Nothing good ever came from being out at 3 a.m., and Harlan couldn’t resist tailing the guy for a block or so. If the guy fled upon realizing he was being followed by a cop car, well, that counted as probable cause.
The cruiser’s lights swept over the figure, pinning his silhouette against the whitewashed brick of a furniture store. Harlan wondered if he should call in the pursuit, realizing he’d mentally elevated the person to a “suspect.” But he didn’t want to be ribbed if the suspect was just some guy whose car broke down after his wife booted him out of the house. The chief wasn’t a ball-breaker, but he definitely believed in rank and pecking order. Harlan hadn’t been around long enough to be making his own interpretations of the law.
He gunned his engine a little, cau
sing the headlights to brighten. The figure neither accelerated nor turned, just lurched on ahead with an unsteady gait.
Looks like public drunkenness at a minimum. Might be carrying, too. A drug bust would get me in good with the chief.
Of course, the suspect could be packing a concealed weapon as well. This was America, after all.
Harlan punched the accelerator and closed the fifty yards in seconds, the engine’s roar reverberating off the concrete, glass, and asphalt of the downtown. That got no rise out of the lurching man, and Harlan screeched to a halt and threw the gear lever into PARK. He got out, leaving the car running.
The man maintained his unsteady pace. He wore a red hoodie, the sleeves cut unevenly just below the biceps. His jeans were halfway off his ass, showing gray underwear with a black waistband. Something flashed at the man’s side, and Harlan realized it was a watch. Suspect was white. Like they all were in Taylorsville.
“Police,” Harlan called, in the firm, commanding tone they’d taught him in Basic.
The suspect might have cocked an ear—maybe—but kept on down the block. Soon he’d be in the shadows at the back of the furniture store. Harlan debated hopping back in the cruiser for pursuit, but now it was getting personal.
“Halt!” Harlan said, his voice cracking just a little. Very unprofessional. This guy was getting to him in a big way.
Damn it, I’m the authority here. I’m in control of the situation.
He unbuttoned the strap on his hip holster, although he didn’t touch the butt of his .38 Smith & Wesson. In Basic, he’d had one rule hammered into his crewcut skull: Don’t pull it unless you mean it.
He wasn’t sure if he meant it yet. He was annoyed, nervous, and frustrated. Not a good position for making snap decisions.
He should call it in now. Stefano, a good old Jersey Italian, was manning Unit Seven somewhere in the industrial park. The chief encouraged back-up on all but the most routine duties. “Cover your ass, or the gravedigger will cover it for you,” the chief liked to say.
