Ryan stared at the inferno, transfixed by the enormity of the blaze. Pyres undulated and crackled, draping the city in a dancing blanket of fire. He scanned for wreckage on Commonwealth Avenue, desperate for clues to explain the apocalyptic scene. He’d expected to see the tail section of a commercial airliner or a colossal crater, but the street looked untouched. Even the buildings across “Comm Ave” looked undamaged. Something was off, but he couldn’t bring it into focus. He followed the fires lining Granby Street, tracing them toward the Charles River and beyond.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
The city’s confusing grid of tree-lined streets had been brought to life by the flames, leaving the structures intact.
Could a solar flare do this?
Ryan had no idea. He started to pull away from the window, but stopped.
That can’t be right.
He checked his watch again. 5:01. Sunrise was still an hour away, but the lights were out across the city. Despite the near daylight conditions created at street level, he couldn’t identify a single light—anywhere.
Ryan fumbled for the desk lamp. Click. Nothing. He swiped his smartphone and wallet from the hutch and sprinted to the vestibule, trying the side-by-side switches. The room remained dark.
This has to be a solar flare. What else could knock out the electrical grid and set fire to the trees?
Another thought crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. They would have been hit by the shockwave already if it was a nuke. Either way, his only mission at this point was to reach Chloe and figure out what to do next. Stay in Boston or trek north? He lifted a blue, twenty-gallon plastic storage bin from the closet floor and dropped it on his bed.
The bin had been the last item to leave the car, hidden under a blanket by his dad. Ryan had nearly refused to take it up to his room. Of the 21,000 incoming freshmen, he didn’t want to be the only one with a “paranoia pack” taking up precious space in his closet. Of course, that was the point of the bin. Boston University represented a small city of students, most of them completely dependent on the university’s infrastructure for their basic survival needs. With his mom in tears over dropping him off at college, he decided to take it and spare her the worry. Based on what he had experienced over the last few minutes, Ryan was fairly certain that the university’s infrastructure had ceased to exist. The emergency bin didn’t sound so ridiculous anymore.
The container held an olive green backpack, two CamelBak water bladders and a sealed plastic bucket of dehydrated food pouches. The backpack had been outfitted with enough gear and food to support a two-day journey. Each of the bladders held three liters, which was the theoretical minimum he should drink per day if hiking. Realistically, he’d need more, which was why his dad had stuffed a Katadyn microfilter into the backpack. His first task upon leaving the dorm room was to fill both of the CamelBak bladders. Beyond that, everything he needed to walk back to Maine with Chloe was inside the backpack.
The pack contained a hat, old sunglasses, maps of Boston and New England, a compass, extra cash, parachute cord, a thirty-foot section of remnant sailing line, a small emergency radio, first aid kit, fire-starting kit, flashlight, three MREs, a Gore-Tex bivouac bag, N95 respirator and an emergency blanket. The only thing he didn’t have was a knife. Any knife, no matter how small, was classified as a weapon by university police and strictly forbidden. Even a Swiss Army knife could get you expelled. He dug through one of the outer pouches and found the flashlight. He aimed the LED light at the window and tested it, relieved that it filled the entire room with a bluish-white light. He had no idea what kind of damage a solar flare could do to battery-powered equipment.
He considered unpacking the dehydrated food bucket, but there was no way he could stuff anything else into the backpack. The bucket would be awkward to carry, but it had a sturdy handle, and he wasn’t going far enough for it to become a real problem. He’d cover the three miles to Chloe’s apartment in thirty minutes. Forty tops. He heaved the backpack onto his shoulders and tightened the straps. With the bucket in his left hand, he leaned against the door and listened. The screaming had faded to sporadic yelling.
Ryan unlocked his door and stepped into the darkness. Without exterior windows, the hallways were pitch black. A beam of light blinded him.
“You all right, dude? Can you believe this?” said a male voice.
“Did you see what happened?” asked Ryan, locking the door to his room.
“The whole city blew up, brother. We got nuked or something.”
A different voice spoke up. “It wasn’t a nuke. There’s a huge contrail in the sky, running from west to east. It disappears at about a forty-degree altitude over the southern horizon. We’ll see more of it as sunrise approaches. I calculate that it struck somewhere off the coast, due east of here.”
Ryan flashed his light at the two of them.
“Dude, watch it with the light. It’s like a million times brighter than this,” he said, directing his beam into Ryan’s eyes.
“Thanks for the demonstration. What do you mean ‘it struck’?” asked Ryan.
“I think we got hit by an asteroid or some kind of—”
The student with the flashlight interrupted. “That was probably an ICBM fired from China. West to east, it makes sense.”
“I’ve seen the ground footage of the space shuttle reentering the atmosphere, and this is about twenty times thicker.”
“It still doesn’t explain why the lights are out. Nukes create an EMP,” said the first student.
“Not if they hit the ground,” said Ryan, pushing past the two of them.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here. If the power’s out for good, you need to start filling up any kind of container that will hold water. Even a trashcan,” said Ryan, pushing open the bathroom door.
“Wrong bathroom, dude,” he heard as the door closed.
“Hello. Anyone in here?” he yelled, before flashing the light along the row of stalls.
“Definitely not the men’s room,” he whispered.
Directing the light in the opposite direction exposed several sinks set into a long Formica counter. The wall-length mirror anchored to the wall behind the sinks had shattered, filling the white basins and covering the tile floor with razor-sharp pieces of broken glass. Satisfied that he was alone, he dropped the backpack on the floor next to the nearest sink and pulled out both of the water bladders, filling them with cold water.
He hoped the others took his advice about the water. Without power to run the building’s water pumps, pressure wouldn’t last very long on the sixth floor—or any floor. He’d just tucked the second bladder into his backpack when a thunderous explosion rattled the bathroom, rebooting the hysterical screams he had heard earlier.
Maybe we did get hit with a nuke.
Ryan crouched against the wall next to the sink and waited several seconds in the dark, hearing nothing but continued screaming. Activating his flashlight, he opened the door, finding the hallway thick with dust.
Not good.
A female student bolted out of the cloud, knocking him out of the way. He grabbed her arm and held her in place.
“Hold on! The floor is covered in glass!”
Coughing and sobbing, she yanked her arm free and stood there in bare feet.
“What just happened out there?” asked Ryan.
She looked up at him with a vacant stare. Her jet-black, curly hair was coated in dust, and she had several small cuts across her face.
“Something exploded in Boston,” she stated flatly and started crying again.
“Like a bomb?”
“I don’t know. I was facing downtown when all of the fires started to go out. Then it hit us. It was like a shockwave or something. How is my face?”
“Small cuts. Nothing serious. Where’s your room?” Ryan asked, shining the light on her.
“On the other side,” she mumbled.
“You need to go back to your room a
nd put on some shoes and long pants. Hiking boots if you have them. Then fill up any container you can find with water. Tell everyone to do this. It’s extremely important,” he said, stepping out of the doorway to let her by.
“Okay. Water—uh—all right,” she said and disappeared.
Ryan directed his light forward along the left side of the hallway, looking for the door to the stairwell he had used last night. He pushed it open and heard the hollow echo of screams and feet clattering against the stairs. Air quality in the stairwell vestibule was markedly better than the hallway, and he could see across to the door leading to the other side of his floor. The far door opened, and a shirtless student wearing red soccer shorts and flip-flops entered the vestibule, shining a flashlight in his face. The student nodded and rushed past him, yelling unfamiliar names into the hallway Ryan had just left.
He joined the mass exodus in the dark stairwell and let it carry him to the ground floor, jostled and shoved until he spilled through a pair of double doors into the main thoroughfare connecting the three Warren Towers dormitory buildings with the cafeteria and main lobby. The lighting situation remained the same on the ground level, utterly dependent on the few students who had thought to bring flashlights to college.
The emergency lighting system had failed to activate, which didn’t come as a surprise to Ryan based on conversations with his dad. Hardwired into the building’s electrical grid, the battery-powered lights were susceptible to a solar flare or EMP-generated electrical surge.
He spotted a gap in the oncoming flock of students and dashed to the other side of the hallway, his feet crushing gravel as he ran. He flashed his light at the ground, exposing small pieces of concrete and dust. Before he could aim the beam at the ceiling, someone yanked the light from his grip. The light moved quickly away, darting through the swarm of students headed toward Warren Towers’ main lobby.
“Fucking asshole!” he screamed, pushing his way in the direction of the wavering light.
He considered chasing the thief, but quickly gave up the thought. The flashlight had already served its primary purpose, and the risks of pursuit far outweighed the return of an item he could replace at Chloe’s apartment. If the crowd became agitated by his antics, he could lose his bucket of dehydrated food or, even worse, his backpack. Ryan turned his back on the stolen flashlight and moved along the wall, against the flow of students, searching for one of the lesser-known exit doors leading directly onto Commonwealth Avenue. He ran into the door handle a few seconds later and stepped into a pitch-black stairwell, closing the door behind him.
Ryan reached into the blackness and edged forward slowly, groping for the railing. He could pop one of the chemlights in the backpack to light the way down, but he wanted to save those for a real emergency. Walking down one flight of stairs while clinging to a railing didn’t qualify. His hand found the smooth metallic railing, and he took the stairs carefully. Less than a minute later, he emerged from Warren Towers and stepped onto the glass-covered sidewalk. The fires in most of the trees and bushes had been extinguished by the blast, but a few continued to burn, casting a hazy glow over Commonwealth Avenue.
Burning ash, pulsing like orange fireflies, floated down the street—carried west by a warm breeze. A lone police siren wailed in the distance. Ryan walked into the eastbound lanes of Commonwealth, checking for traffic out of sheer habit, but he’d be surprised to see any cars. All signs indicated that the power outage had been caused by some kind of power surge, and he still couldn’t find a single light on the horizon. He continued east on the deserted road until the southern sky appeared behind Warren Towers. Ryan stared at the sky in awe.
Definitely not an ICBM.
An ugly column of uneven gray and white smoke streaked diagonally across the sky above the four-story buildings set back from Commonwealth Avenue, terminating high above Boston. He detected a faint difference between the distant, shadowy buildings and the lowest points of the sky. He checked his watch. Only eighteen minutes had elapsed. The sun would be up in thirty-five minutes.
Staring at the trajectory of the contrail over southern Massachusetts, he roughly calculated that it must have landed in the Atlantic somewhere just beyond Boston. A chilling thought hit him. His family was on a sailboat off the Maine coast.
Shit.
Ryan took the smartphone out of his pocket and pressed the home button. The device activated, but couldn’t locate a signal, further evidence that the grid had been taken down by some kind of electrical phenomenon. But did that make any sense? If this whole mess had been caused by a rogue asteroid or meteorite, there should be no EMP—maybe. He tried the phone one more time, hoping it just needed a few moments to locate a signal. “No Service.” He really hoped his family was safe.
Warren Towers disgorged a steady flow of panicked and injured coeds onto Commonwealth Avenue, quickly blocking the eastbound side of the road and spreading laterally. The lone siren had faded. He glanced at his phone one more time, just in case the initial cell tower failure had been a temporary glitch. “No Service.”
He assessed the dense crowd approaching from the center of the dormitory complex and decided to head in the opposite direction. He’d been one of very few students wearing a backpack during the exodus and the only student carrying a bucket of dehydrated food. The crowd was more confused than hostile, but it wouldn’t take much to bridge the gap. If one enterprising and unscrupulous individual recognized the opportunity represented by Ryan’s gear, the situation could be turned against him. His best strategy was to avoid crowds.
“Are you getting a signal?” yelled someone behind him.
Ryan turned to face two guys supporting a blonde female student. She wore a pair of running shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. In the dim monochromatic light cast by a dying tree fire, her ankle looked severely swollen. A two-inch vertical cut above her right eyebrow bled down her face.
“We need to get an ambulance. She’s really messed up.”
“I can’t get a signal,” said Ryan, approaching them, “and I don’t think help is coming. I heard one siren, and that’s it.”
“Shit. Her ankle is smashed, dude.”
“Looks like it’s broken,” said Ryan, kneeling in front of her leg. “I assume you can’t put any weight on this?”
She shook her head and grimaced.
“You need to get her to a hospital. I can patch up her head, put a compression wrap on her ankle—but that’s about it,” said Ryan.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” asked one of the students.
“On the other side of the turnpike,” said Ryan, pointing south. “Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They should be able to fix her up.”
Ryan led them to a small park next to Warren Towers, where they could avoid the prying eyes of several hundred desperate students. He carried a limited medical kit with enough basic supplies to treat three people for relatively minor injuries. Attracting a crowd might end badly. Treating the girl carried enough risk, but it was the right thing to do for now.
“How far is the hospital?”
“Less than a mile. You need to go west to St. Mary’s Street and take that south over the turnpike. You’ll keep going south. I don’t know the streets. What’s her name?”
“Elsie. I think she’s from Denmark. You don’t think we can flag down a car or something to take her?”
“I haven’t seen a single car. If we got hit by an EMP or solar flare, you might not see one all morning.”
“This is un-fucking-real,” said the student. “I need to get back into my room.”
“You’ll be better off at the hospital. Set Elsie down on this bench,” he said, stealing a peek at the crowd.
The ground-level structure blocked most of his view of the crowd, which was good for now. He dropped his backpack while they set her down, and removed the kit. Basic was an understatement for a disaster scenario like this. He could easily go through most of the gauze pads just treating the cut on her head.
&nb
sp; “Is this good?” one of them said, standing next to the bench.
“Perfect. Do me a favor and keep an eye on the crowd back there or any people approaching us. This isn’t a big kit,” said Ryan.
“Got it. Are you an off-duty EMT or something?”
“No. I showed up here with the rest of you.”
“Where did you get all of this stuff?” said the other student.
“My parents are a little paranoid. Elsie? How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Dizzy and my leg hurts,” she croaked in a faint Scandinavian accent.
“Swedish?”
“Ja.”
“My parents took us on a tour of Scandinavia. Stockholm first, then we drove along the coast to Helsingborg, crossing over to Denmark. We stopped in Iceland on the way back. One of our best trips.”
“I love Iceland. We travel there every other year,” she said.
“Elsie, I’m going to give you some ibuprofen to help with the pain, but—”
“It’s not going to help,” she interrupted.
“Exactly. Better than nothing, though. I need to disinfect your wounds, which will hurt. I can’t do much for your leg. Good to go?”
“Good to go,” she said, extending a thumb.
A few minutes later, Ryan packed up the kit and donned the backpack. Elsie sat up on the bench with three butterfly bandages on her lower forehead and a clean face. He checked the compression wrap around her ankle one more time before replacing her sock and shoe.
“That should keep everything under control until you get her to Brigham,” he said.
“I don’t know if we should go. I have shit in my room, and—”
“Do you have any food in your room?” said Ryan.
The guys shrugged. “Some chips.”
“Guess what? The cafeteria is closed. Permanently. The stores are closed. Permanently. This is a major deal. Relief efforts will naturally focus on the hospitals. You want to be at a hospital, not here. Warren Towers is an empty shell. Eventually, you’ll have to leave. You safely deliver her to the hospital and find a way to help out. Get in at the ground level of volunteers. You’ll get a hot meal, water and a roof over your head, which is more than anyone around here will be able to say in two days.”
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 40