by Ellis, Tara
Leaning away from him, Danny pushed her head into the small pillow that came with the blanket. At least she’d gotten a window seat. That gave her about two inches of extra space to play with.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask that you turn the laptop off.”
Danny peeked again and grinned at the look on the man’s face as he cowered under the reprimand from the stewardess hovering over him.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. Of course, I’ll put it away.” The middle-aged man fumbled with the computer, almost dropping it. He finally managed to cram it into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, and then pushed his glasses up his nose before leaning back.
Danny estimated the Hispanic man was in his fifties and he had a pleasant demeanor about him, if a little nerdy. Good thing he wasn’t a big man or else they’d be rubbing elbows. Danny joked that she’d inherited three good things from her Samoan father: exotic features, skin that always looked tan, and a good sense of humor. Everything else, as her father said, was simply big. A big mouth, big temper, and big shoulders. Ones that didn’t fit into either dainty dresses or planes very well.
Math man glanced up and saw Danny staring at him.
Uh-oh. Eye contact.
Doing her best not to sigh on the outside, Danny smiled and attempted to close her eyes again.
“Sorry about that. I’m Sam Ruiz. Nice to meet you.”
As Danny opened her eyes to deliver a cordial but dismissive response, the air blowing in her face stopped as an intense, bluish-white light filled the cabin.
Sam flinched and turned his head away from Danny as the window behind her flooded with blinding light, even though the shade was drawn. His silhouette was seared into her vision and she saw his outline superimposed over everything as she blinked rapidly, squinting against the already fading glow. Screams, gasps, and the sound of a crying baby echoed through the cabin as Danny rubbed at her eyes, trying to make the afterimage go away.
Then the explosions started. The lights had already been off in the plane in preparation for takeoff, but the running lights on the floor went from a dim radiance to a piercing intensity before bursting. Screams and shouts filled the plane as various electronic items left on overheated. The PA system crackled and then an eerie silence replaced it as everyone held their breaths for what was to come next.
Danny pushed the buttons over her head, confirming that everything was dead. She fumbled blindly at the shade with numb fingers.
“What was that?” a man yelled to no one in particular.
“Lightning?” a woman suggested from across the aisle.
Seconds after the light appeared, the plane’s engines gave a loud coughing choke and the whole aircraft quivered amid new gasps and cries of fear. A horrible grating noise reverberated through the small space before falling silent, leaving a deafening hush in its wake.
It didn’t take long for the sound of panic to replace it.
Sam looked back at Danny, his eyes wider than should have been possible. Leaning across her, he pushed her hand aside and yanked at the window shade. He stayed that way, splayed out on her lap, his chest heaving as chaos erupted around them. Danny started fighting back against him, confused and still reeling from the light show, when he interrupted her.
“Wait!” Sam urged, pointing out the window. Falling halfway into the impossibly small space between Danny’s legs and the seat, he pulled himself up by the armrests, bringing him back into her lap. “It’s not just our plane. Look!”
Barely resisting the urge to slam the man’s face back into the darkness at her feet, Danny instead looked out the window, pausing with her hand on his forehead.
The tarmac had gone dark, noticeable even in the daylight. On the plane next to them, someone opened the emergency escape door and the slide had deployed but only partially inflated.
Behind it, another, larger plane slid by sideways before veering off the runway. It bounced hard once before one of its wings slammed into the ground, causing it to swing wildly around. The other wing hit even harder, buckling under the force and sending the plane into a lopsided skid, out of their limited view.
Her breath coming in ragged gasps, Danny forced herself to look away. She didn’t understand what was happening.
Sam, seemingly satisfied with her response, managed to get his feet under him and sat down in his seat. “Get your phone,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Danny blinked. Disaster scenarios were her thing. The ability to control the chaos. Or at least work within the chaos to guide the outcome. It had been a long time since she’d experienced such an adrenaline rush and she drew upon her years of training and conditioning as a medic to combat her fight-or-flight response. Concentrating on her breathing, she closed her eyes and reduced her world to nothing but her heartbeat. As it slowed, her head began to clear and with it, rational thought returned.
Opening her eyes, she saw that Sam was digging in his backpack and she leaned over to retrieve her purse from under her seat. She understood now that he wanted to see if their phones worked or not.
“Mine won’t turn on,” Sam said, waving his iPhone in the air.
“Nothing,” Danny confirmed, dropping her dark phone back into her purse. She held up her tablet. “This is toast, too. And it’s hot.”
“We have to get off the plane!” a man bellowed. “Stop pushing!”
Danny twisted in her seat and saw a large man standing at the emergency door. In the dim interior it was hard to tell exactly what was happening, but it looked like a mob of people were pushing their way toward him. Her usual envy for the coveted leg space offered by the emergency exit row evaporated.
“No!” Sam tried to call out above the noise. Everyone was talking at once and no one was listening. “Stay on the plane!” Daylight streamed inside as the battle with the door was won, and he turned away, defeated.
Danny struggled to put it together. “Why do we need to stay on the plane?”
“Until we know what happened, this may be the safest place.”
Danny studied the man for a moment, ignoring the shouts and cries of alarm as more people jumped out the door. “Are you a scientist or something?”
Sam shook his head, unsettling his glasses so he had to push at them again in a practiced motion. “No. High school chemistry teacher.”
“Well, that’s closer to a scientist than I’ll ever be,” Danny said. “What do you think caused that light? A solar flare or something?”
Sam grimaced. “No, that’s a common misperception. Solar flares produce electromagnetic radiation that isn’t visible.”
“What about the northern lights?”
“That’s the charged particles from the flare interacting with the Earth’s magnetic shield.” Sam pointed at the window. “Nothing like what we just witnessed.”
A massive impact from somewhere behind them rocked the plane, throwing Danny into the back of the seat in front of her. Grunting, she clawed at the headrest to steady herself. Turning her face sideways, she watched in horror as the front half of a plane, now a fireball, careened past.
“They’re falling from the sky,” Sam muttered.
“Oh, God!” someone moaned nearby. “Hurry!”
Amid renewed sobs, the remaining passengers surged toward the only escape. Danny had to fight her own instinct to get out of the cramped space but she agreed that until they knew what they were up against, it was best to stay put. It was a long walk back to the terminal.
Ten rows up, the door to the cockpit flew open and a tall, handsome man with pilot wings pinned to his lapel stepped out. Another man, presumably his co-pilot, was close behind him.
“Hey! What are you doing?” he demanded, waving his arms to get the attention of those remaining. He shoved his way through the last of the passengers crowding the aisle and grabbed at the stewardess who was helping people through the opening. “What are you doing?” he repeated, his face flushed. “We need to stay on the plane.”
The young woman st
umbled back from him. “But, it’s an…emergency. The engines—”
“The engines lost power,” the captain finished for her, yelling over the remaining handful of people vying for space. “Everything lost power. The plane, our phones, the tower. There was some sort of explosion of light to the southeast.”
“How far on the horizon?” Sam rose partway from his seat to get the men’s attention. When they failed to respond, he grabbed at the co-pilot’s arm, just within his reach and repeated the question.
The co-pilot yanked his arm away in agitation and turned to Sam. His brows drawn together, he rubbed lightly at his chin. “It covered the whole horizon.”
“The whole horizon?” Sam countered.
“Yes, the whole bloody horizon.” The man’s hand moved from his jaw to his nose, rubbing at something Danny couldn’t quite see in the dim light. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Sam nodded and looked like he was going to ask another question, but a desperate call from the stewardess drew both the captain and co-pilot’s attention. As they maneuvered through the throng of remaining passengers, desperately trying to calm them down, they passed by Danny’s unshielded window. Warm afternoon sun illuminated both men’s faces, and Danny felt a chill run down her spine as fear clawed at her stomach.
Both of their faces, necks, and arms were bright red, like they had spent hours lying on the beach without sunscreen. They rubbed absent-mindedly at the red burns and the few small blisters that were appearing, seemingly oblivious to their condition.
Sliding back down in her seat, Danny’s mind raced, trying to find an explanation that linked all of the phenomena that were happening. Whatever was going on felt far more insidious than a bright flash of light and a loss of power, especially if it could cause the pilots to look like they’d taken a long walk in a hot desert.
Reaching out, she silently pulled down the shade on her window, wondering if it would even matter.
Chapter 2
TOM
Outside Pocatello, Idaho
Tom reached out and turned the channel on the radio. Again.
“Dad,” Ethan complained. “Anything but country.”
Thomas Miller raised an eyebrow at his son. He was turning sixteen in a month and suddenly he had a fondness for heavy metal and foul language. If they made it through the seventeen-hour drive without a blow-out it’d be a miracle. Grunting, Tom switched it to a classic rock station. Several summers of Guitar Hero at least gave them some common ground.
Satisfied, Ethan leaned back in the passenger seat of the big truck. Rolling down his window, he stuck his feet out and then grinned at his dad. He had the same dark hair and green eyes as Tom, along with his stubborn streak.
Not taking the bait, Tom instead tried to strike up a real conversation. They’d managed to avoid one for most of the day, since they’d left Ethan’s mom’s house in Las Vegas. “Given any more thought to football?”
Shrugging, Ethan dropped his feet back inside. “I dunno. I know you’re hoping I’ll carry on the Miller legacy, but I’m thinking baseball might be my calling. So, when are you going to let me drive?”
“You don’t have a license.”
“I’ve had my permit for, like, six months. Gary lets me drive all the time. I know what I’m doing.”
Tom clenched his teeth and breathed twice before answering. “I’m glad your stepdad is willing to let you drive his Fiat, but we already discussed this. We’re hauling three horses that weigh around six thousand pounds and are worth twice as much. It’s not happening. You can drive all you want once we get to the farm.” He’d agreed to pick up two of the horses for his neighbor when they found out he was driving past the horse breeders on his way back from Vegas. The third was Ethan’s surprise birthday present.
Ethan sulked quietly.
So much for a conversation.
Tom was a hard, but fair man. At least he liked to think he was fair. At thirty-five he was successfully running the family ranch near his hometown of Mercy, Montana. His only regret about moving back after his father’s death was the time lost with his son. When Ethan’s mom remarried three years ago and moved down near Las Vegas, they went from spending every weekend together to being instantly reduced to a couple of holidays and summer vacation.
“Hey.” Tom reached out and gave Ethan’s arm a nudge when he didn’t respond. His son was the most important person in his life and Tom didn’t want to start off the summer on a bad note. “I’m sure you’re a regular Mario Andretti, and I’m sorry about the small-car jab. Starting tomorrow, the back forty and Grandpa’s old Chevy truck are all yours.”
Ethan still wouldn’t look at him, although he unfolded his arms and sat up a little straighter. “I don’t know how to drive a stick.”
“Exactly!” Tom exclaimed. Smiling, his gruff demeanor was transformed and his son finally shifted to face him.
“You’ll teach me?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tom said. And he meant it. “It’s the same truck I learned to drive in.”
“Don’t Fear the Reaper” blared over the speakers and Tom reached to turn it down, eager to share one of his favorite stories about his dad, involving the ’57 Chevy, a steep hill, and several cows. His hand wasn’t quite to the knob when the music suddenly stopped, as if he’d willed it to happen. Hesitating, Tom pulled back and realized at the same time that the steering wheel had gone rigid under his hand. The truck’s engine had cut out, and taken the power steering and brakes with it.
Reacting automatically, Tom threw all of his six foot one, two-hundred-thirty-pound frame into the attempt to control the runaway truck and trailer. As he stood on the brake, the oversized tow mirror outside his window inexplicably glowed. Shifting his vision from the blacktop to the mirror, Tom saw a spectacle of light that stretched across the horizon behind them and to the south. The bluish glow rapidly spread a third of the way up the sky and filled the cab, forcing him to close his eyes against the glare.
“Dad!”
The light was gone as fast as it came. Still wrestling to gain control of the truck, Tom blinked to clear his vision while shoving his arm out in front of Ethan. The gesture didn’t even make sense as they both had their seatbelts on; it was an act of parental instinct.
The back of the F450 Super Duty started to slide and Tom knew the gooseneck trailer and horses would be lost if he didn’t stop it. Throwing both hands back on the wheel, he grunted with the effort, but was able to turn into the slide. The dually tires bit into the asphalt and he straightened the truck out as they finally slowed to a stop in the middle of the two-lane highway.
His heart racing, Tom drew in a ragged breath and struggled to form a cohesive thought. Reaching out blindly for Ethan, he grabbed at his son’s arm and held on. “You okay?” His voice sounded weird, even to him. He was normally very controlled, but his emotions were raw and near the surface.
“Ethan!”
“Yeah,” Ethan mumbled. His hands were still pressed firmly against the dash, braced for the expected impact that didn’t happen. “What was that?”
Tom shook his head in response and tried to start the truck. They needed to get out of the road before someone came around the corner and hit them. Nothing happened. Not dry clicking from the starter, no whine from the fuel pump, no anything. Frowning, Tom turned the key again, with the same result. The truck had two batteries and way too many computer chips in it for it to break down in the middle of the road for no reason whatsoever.
“Stay here,” he barked at Ethan and exited the cab without waiting for a response. He needed to grab the emergency road kit and put out some flares since his primary concern was his son’s safety and that of the horses.
The bunkhouse trailer spared him the cost of a hotel during the trip, but it also meant he had one heck of a long rig, now sprawled across two lanes of sixty mile-per-hour highway. Opening the back of the extended cab, Tom grabbed the kit from behind the seat. Tossing it to the ground, he pu
lled his phone from his back pocket as he squatted down next to it. He wasn’t sure if he’d have a signal out there, but his best bet was to call AAA.
His phone was dead.
Brows furrowed, Tom scooped up the flares. Before he could stand, a sound he couldn’t place filled the air around him. A large shadow blocked out the sun and he looked up, shocked to see the underbelly of a commercial aircraft only a few hundred feet above them.
It was descending rapidly, wobbling as it fell. Before he had a chance to even register how silent the engines were, it disappeared from sight and a moment later the unmistakable sound of an impact shook the ground.
Planes are falling from the sky? Tom gritted his teeth and forced himself into action.
After dropping a flare out in front of his truck he jogged toward the back of the horse trailer while keeping an eye on the road. He expected another vehicle to come screaming up on them at any moment. It wasn’t a busy road by any means, but it was still early in the day and they weren’t that far out from Pocatello.
“Dad, was that a plane?”
“Stay in the truck!” Tom shouted, not willing to take the time to try to explain something he didn’t understand.
With a second flare burning around thirty feet behind the trailer, Tom stopped to check on the horses. They tossed their heads and stamped at the floor when he poked his head in. They appeared unharmed, so he headed for the bunkhouse. It ran on its own battery and he had his phone charger in there, but as he pulled the door open it was immediately apparent that it had also lost power.
Standing in the doorway, he flipped the switch two more times. His frustration grew as he stumbled through the dim interior and knelt down in front of a row of drawers, pulling the bottom one open. In it was a flashlight and some other basic camping items. He flipped the flashlight on. Nothing. Shoving the contents around, he came up with an old headlamp. Dead.