by J. Thorn
One of the suspect’s legs buckled and he nearly fell. Definitely four sheets to the wind. Fortified wine, if Harlan had to guess—Mad Dog or Thunderbird. Harlan used the stumble to close on the suspect, feeling braver with the headlights making a big, bright stage of the street. He was close enough to smell the man—old sweat, piss, and a strange, metallic stench like ozone during a thunderstorm.
“Stop where you are,” Harlan ordered.
The man finally turned. He was Caucasian, all right, sporting a ’70’s porn-star moustache with a toothpick jammed between his teeth. The toothpick wiggled, and Harlan realized the wooden sliver wasn’t between the man’s lips; it was protruding from the lower one, a greasy smear of blood marking the point of penetration.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Harlan ordered, although the man didn’t seem to hear. The suspect stuck one pinkie beneath the hoodie to dig at his ear, and stuck the other in his jeans pocket. No way he had a gun in there, Harlan could tell that much, but he didn’t like being ignored.
He drew his Smith & Wesson. “Freeze.”
Saying “Freeze” was awkward, the first time he’d ever felt like a cop on a television show. I’ll be eating donuts if this keeps up.
But Hoodie didn’t seem to care whether Harlan was playing tough. He glared at the officer—and something about his eyes was wrong. They had the wetness of a drunk’s, and that puffiness around the lids, but instead of red spangles splotching the whites, familiar greenish veins streaked through them.
Like the sky. His eyes are like that weird stuff in the sky.
That sounded too much like hallucinogenic hippie hullaballoo. Harlan needed to nail down this situation fast, before it got any weirder. Or worse, before some helpful do-gooder citizen came along and witnessed whatever might happen next.
What happened next was the last thing that ever happened for Officer Harlan McLeod.
Hoodie clucked his tongue, making a chuckling, popping noise, and then charged Harlan. The assault was so sudden that Harlan instantly went for his holster. He’d forgotten he already had his revolver in his hand, and the confusion cost him a precious split-second. Before he could raise the weapon again, Hoodie was on him, clawing and snarling, his teeth clacking together near Harlan’s face.
So much for all that training. The chief is going to be pissed.
Harlan stepped back but lost his balance, and that abetted Hoodie’s momentum. They slapped against the asphalt, with the policeman bearing most of the weight. Something crunched in his lower back and his legs went numb. Harlan tried to raise the Smith & Wesson, but it suddenly seemed to weigh thirty pounds. Then Hoodie’s teeth found his cheek and cleaved a wet strip of meat from his skull.
Harlan bleated an unprofessional squeal as Hoodie hammered and scratched at his body. The pain was bad, but the worst part was those eyes—like rarified lightning, glittering with profane fire.
On his back, he rolled his gaze up toward his forehead, looking at the twin headlights of his cruiser. Ghostly rims of haze circled the orbs, droplets of late-summer mist. Somehow it cast a calming presence over the horrible tableau. Like this was only a show.
Then something went for his throat—the impact simultaneously blunt and piercing—and the light washed over Harlan and vacuumed him into its endless blank brilliance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shits and Giggles.
Those were the nicknames Franklin had given to the idiots on the AM radio talk show. They were what the blabber set called “rising stars,” loudmouths who sought to become even more provocative than Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Alex Jones and his circus-like Infowars network.
Shits was a hawkish Republican from the Midwest who fought for small government, the Holy Bible, and his personal interpretation of the Constitution upon which America was stolen from the natives and bequeathed to rich white men. Giggles was a small-L libertarian who thought John Locke was a liberal and that any public service, including federal disaster aid and orphanages, amounted to totalitarianism disguised as socialism.
In general, Franklin could relate to any debate which started on the fringe right of the spectrum and went off the cliff from there. But he was particularly intrigued today—and neglecting his garden—because Shits and Giggles were talking about the solar flares and their potential impacts. It was difficult to tell whether they were wildly misinformed or just issuing whatever propaganda the Establishment had pushed their way. For all the brazen defiance of the Establishment, talking heads always understood that advertisers were still their corporate overlords.
“It won’t hurt anything,” Shits was saying. “All this speculation is designed to stir fear on Wall Street and send stocks into a tailspin.”
“And that’s a good thing for the wealthy elite who own this country,” Giggles replied, right on the end of the statement as if their schtick had been rehearsed. “Because they already cashed out during the last government-subsidized bubble and are waiting for another crash to buy low.”
Franklin sneered at people who simplified the shell game to a matter of dollars and cents. Just like political noise, the financial markets were diversionary tactics to hide the true consolidation of power. The New World Order was just waiting for the right opportunity, and a worldwide natural disaster would fit the bill nicely.
“Let’s look at infrastructure,” Shits said. “The U.S. has conducted tests that say satellite communications are the weakest link and most vulnerable to solar radiation.”
“Who cares if you lose your cell signal for an hour? The real problem will be when people can’t start their cars.”
Shits was on that one, jumping from subject to subject with an unrestrained glee. The topic didn’t matter—he was an expert on them all. “Only the most recent cars will be affected. Government tests—”
“Did you look at that test? They borrowed cars and had to bring them back undamaged, so they limited the electromagnetic pulse exposure. Talk about foregone conclusions. Now, the Russians back in 1962 had vehicles totally shut down during their tests, and that was before the advent of all this technology.”
“Count on the Rooskies to go balls to the wall. They probably had human guinea pigs sitting behind the wheel, too.”
“Some folks say the older vehicles will still work, but what happens when you run out of gas? What happens if the pumps don’t work and the refineries shut down? Not to mention the gridlock on the highways.”
Franklin had read all sorts of research on the pulse effect, and some scientists suggested a car in a concrete garage would be unaffected. But unless the entire vehicle was in a huge Faraday cage, isolated from any conductivity, then it was a goner. He suspected only the military would plan for such extremes.
But try telling that to a scientist. They looked at facts instead of the truth.
Giggles was on a roll now. “These media reports we’re getting—people going crazy and attacking other people in some sort of mindless rage—I think it’s all part of the program. First they scare you, and then you willingly give up a bunch of rights. Then when you’ve given up enough rights, it’s easy to take away the rest.”
“We lost a police officer in North Carolina, two sailors on leave in Norfolk, a pediatric nurse in Texas, and there are rumors of other unconfirmed deaths. God bless their souls.”
“Mindless rage. Antisocial behavior. Total chaos. Are we talking about Zapheads or are we talking about Congress?” Giggles snickered at his weak joke.
“The Administration is invisible on this issue. That’s what happens when you vote liberals into office. Right now we need some strong leadership—”
“Right now we need folks to take care of themselves and not sit around waiting for government to solve their problems,” Giggles interrupted.
Sounds good to me. Franklin reached for his battery-powered radio but the signal went dead before he touched the dial. He thought the batteries might have drained, but the steady hiss of unfilled bandwidth poured from the spe
aker.
Maybe the Prophecy According to Shits and Giggles was correct and the End Times were finally here. Franklin rose from his chair, crossed the little cabin’s dark interior, and gazed out the doorway onto his little compound. The sunset was a purple scar along the crown of the mountains, and Franklin wondered if the sun was busy dealing its silent destruction as a new part of the world turned to face the heat.
“Rachel, if you’re out there, remember what I told you,” he whispered to the forest. “You’re the only one with sense enough to listen.”
He descended the rough wooden steps into his compound and headed to the chicken coop. Predators were always afoot here in the wilderness, and Franklin maintained a defensive mindset.
We can make it through the night, but what happens when the new day arrives?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Daniel Chien arrived early for work.
So early that it might as well have been considered working late.
He’d been tempted to just sleep on the couch in the Space Center lobby, since he’d only left the observatory three hours earlier and had barely slept a wink. Summer Hanratty had found him much too obsessed for human company, especially the kind of company she wanted, so she told him to give her a call when he returned to Planet Earth.
Once problems began popping up, the Administration had asked for on-the-hour reports, and Katherine Swain had ridden the console whenever Chien took a brief reprieve. Katherine had become just as hollow-eyed as Chien, because they both knew this level of solar activity had never been recorded.
Or even theorized.
Things were heating up. The magnetic field lines from the solar flares had behaved in unexpected ways, splitting and reconnecting in random patterns while the intensity of the coronal mass ejections increased. The center had lost contact with the SDO, as Chien had predicted, and they were essentially working in the dark, relying on ground-level measurements of the solar activity instead of direct readings from outer space. Despite linking an emergency network of radiotelescopes around the world, the data had become spotty. Not only was communication on the blink, but some countries were already experiencing widespread power outages.
The popular press had begun digging into the story, gaining gleeful interest when the concept of “Zapheads” arose. Chien wasn’t sure if solar radiation and gamma rays could affect the electromagnetic impulses of the human brain, but the storm had long entered uncharted territory. If the wiring melted or the signals got crossed, no scientist on earth could predict the effects. Prophets had just as much legitimacy in such realms.
Katherine had reluctantly raised the threat level to Class X. The Administration was sending some FEMA and Homeland Security officials down later today, and Chien had a feeling science would quickly fall slave to politics, just as it had done throughout the course of human history.
As Chien punched his access code into the security keypad, he glanced around the dark parking lot. Half a dozen vehicles were in the lot at 5 a.m., twice the usual number. And yet the August surroundings looked much the same, the maples a brilliant green under the security lights, frogs and crickets wailing around the decorative pond in the landscaped entryway. But Chien could feel something in the air, a charging of the atmosphere, subtle like the coming of a storm.
Dr. Doom was right, huh, Katherine?
He entered the lobby, which was much dimmer than usual, and Chien realized the emergency lighting was on. Not a good sign.
An even worse sign was slumped over the reception desk. Even in the poor light, Chien recognized Tamberlyn, the night security guard. His cap had fallen to the floor and one hand hung limply over the edge of the desk. Chien called his name, getting no response, and hurried across the tiles, his footfalls sounding much too loud in the glass-enclosed lobby. Tamberlyn’s face was pressed into a magazine, the pages splotched with his drool. Chien touched the man’s wrist to feel for a pulse, but the skin was already cool.
Chien picked up the desk phone, but it was dead. He glanced over Tamberlyn’s body, seeing no sign of a struggle. It was unlikely that someone would rob the SDO lab, because the equipment was of such a specialized nature that it would be difficult to pawn, and astronomy wasn’t exactly a cash business. Even the data had little commercial value, because most of it was publicly available.
Katherine!
Chien hurried down the hallway, bypassing the elevators. He hit the stairwell, which was pitch dark except for the ambient glow of a few emergency lights. He stumbled going up, cursing as his kneecap knocked against concrete. Then he was on the second floor and approaching the SDO lab.
The door was open. The lab was usually brightly lit, with lots of monitors, blinking lights, various digital meters, and personal computers. But only a few specks of light were visible, like fireflies against a midnight forest.
“Katherine?” he whispered.
Something moved to his left, followed by the squeak of chair rollers. He turned, and a sudden blur hit him in the chest, knocking the wind from his lungs and his glasses from his nose. He smelled Katherine’s perfume—a sensible discount brand with a French name he couldn’t recall—and beneath it an electric sweaty odor, like a June bug caught in a zapper.
He shouted her name, then called her “Dr. Swain,” hoping to induce some glimmer of professional memory. He pushed at her, and then began punching, as her talon-like hands raked over his face. Her nails cut a searing line of agony across his forehead.
She’s going for my eyes!
He landed a fist against the side of her body, incongruously aware of the bulge of her breasts against him as she forced him to the floor. Katherine Swain wasn’t a large woman, but somehow she seemed to have embodied all the power of gravity. A suppressed chortle vibrated behind her ribs like some kind of wind-up toy. She reared up, giving him a chance to buck her off, but her face froze him into immobility.
The firefly glints he had seen were not the remnants of the mechanical world he so loved. They were organic, an obscene inflection in her eyes. He could only stare and exhale as she clasped both her hands together into one fat fist and drove the flesh hammer down onto his throat.
He spat out an urk as his larynx was crushed.
Sucking for breath, he glanced wildly about the room, looking for a way out. But this time, science wouldn’t be his salvation.
Dr. Doom was right.
CHAPTER NINE
Campbell Grimes thumbed the controls to reload his shotgun, descending a stalled escalator onto the subway platform.
A zombie jumped from behind a pillar, decked out in gray coveralls like a maintenance worker. Campbell barely had time to blow the monster’s head off before two more jumped from the shadows.
He fired—ka-blam blam—eliciting two explosive gouts of animated blood, followed by a scream and an inhuman cry deep in the subterranean cavern beneath the city. Left 4 Dead was one of the most popular video games ever, and despite playing it religiously for the last three years, Campbell was nowhere close to being tired of it. He liked his cooperative protagonists in the game better than most of his friends in the real world—at least he could always count on them to have his back. Campbell had little doubt he would be sitting in an old folks’ home one day and fighting through the same zombie hoards that magically never seemed to age or diminish.
But old age wasn’t on the radar yet. At 25, he was still far from growing up, much less old.
“Come on, come on,” he shouted at the screen. He flipped the controls to send his character onto the subway train, running between the empty benches with his shotgun leveled before him. Sensing a lull in the attack, he clacked another shell into his gun.
A demonic howl arose from the car ahead. He raised the barrel and braced for more slaughter—and the screen went black.
“The hell?” He clicked the game buttons for another ten seconds before realizing the system had lost power as well as the monitor.
Looking around the cluttered living room of his Chapel Hill a
partment, he wondered if Roy had forgotten to pay the power bill again. Roy was the kind of roommate who always had twenty bucks for a couple of twelve-packs, but never seemed to have a hundred bucks for any purpose. The idea of skipping the beer for a few days in order to pay the power bill would never cross Roy’s mind.
Campbell wasn’t exactly Mr. Responsible himself, but he had a little pride. He worked as a delivery boy at Papa John’s Pizza to make ends meet, fooling himself that one day he would get a real career. But what was the point of honesty? Where had that ever gotten anyone?
It wasn’t just the television and Xbox that had lost power. The little orange lights on the kitchen appliances were dead, too. Enough morning sunlight leaked between the curtains to glint off the crushed beer cans on the coffee table.
“Roy?” he yelled.
They each had private bedrooms in the old house that had been carved into apartments by an aspiring slumlord. It was twenty blocks from the University of North Carolina campus, which moved it from the rent zone of “rear entry with an ungreased jackhammer” to the slightly more palatable “full frontal assault.” Which was good, since Campbell had graduated two years ago and didn’t need proximity. Roy, on the other hand, was in the seventh year of his B.S. in Communications program. The problem was that Roy’s communication skills were even worse than Campbell’s, who talked more to virtual friends than the real people in his life.
He called Roy’s name once more, then stood, banging his shin against the coffee table. He inched across the carpet, sliding on his socks so he wouldn’t bump into any other obstacles. The static electricity caused little blue sparks to dance around his toes. If Roy had been sitting there stoned, he would have offered a “Cool, dude,” his catch-all observation for anything that wasn’t “Lame, dude.” That communications degree was really going to take him places.
