by Ellis, Tara
Reaching inside, Tom grabbed at Ethan’s arm and started to drag him across the seat. “Now!”
Gasping in both shock and confusion, the teen didn’t resist and pulled himself the rest of the way across the bench seat. Scrambling out the door he hardly got his feet under him before Tom started to haul him away.
“Dad!” It wasn’t a complaint or question, but rather a plea.
Tom barely heard him. All he could focus on was the certainty that they had to get out of the light. He didn’t know if it was some sort of radiation or maybe intense ultraviolet light from the sun, but he figured the aluminum siding of the trailer would offer more protection than the cab with its massive windows.
Once they were huddled inside the compact living space about the size of a small bedroom, Tom finally felt like he could breathe again. The two narrow windows had thick shades that were already pulled.
There were a couple of emergency candles in another drawer and Tom lit them both. Funny, how a thing as small as light from a candle could offer some comfort. Placing them in the center of the two-person table, he sat across from Ethan.
“I don’t know,” Tom said before his son could ask. It was a simple, honest statement.
“That light…”
“Yeah.”
“All the electronics are fried,” Ethan pushed. “It had to be some sort of EMP.”
Tom wasn’t surprised Ethan knew what an electro-magnetic pulse was because they’d had discussions about them before. Tom shook his head. “You know even a powerful EMP from a solar flare or nuke wouldn’t do this.” He gestured around the dark interior of the trailer. “Or this.” He set his useless phone next to the candles. “And definitely not this.” Stretching his arm out across the table, Tom lifted the edge of his shirtsleeve. Even in the dim light a line from what looked like a sunburn was evident.
Ethan shrank away from the sight, his face falling into the shadows. In a matter of minutes, his world had been turned upside down.
Tom turned his hand over and clasped Ethan’s forearm in a vice-like grip. He didn’t have any answers, but one thing he was sure of. He’d do everything in his power to keep his son safe. “We’re going to be okay.”
Chapter 3
CHLOE
Lewis & Clark National Forest, Central Montana
“I know you’re not here to make friends, Chloe. But don’t you think you could try a little harder to have fun? Maybe smile every once in a while?”
Chloe bit back her initial response. Literally. Her bottom lip clamped between her teeth, nostrils flaring, she stopped in the middle of the trail. Turning slowly to face Ripley, the “group leader”, she thought about one of the techniques her school counselor had taught her for controlling her temper.
She counted to five. It didn’t work.
Chloe Benson knew she had a rough exterior. She didn’t have many friends and maintained a very small inner circle. Well, if she was honest with herself, she was her inner circle, as she didn’t trust anyone else enough. So it wasn’t surprising the eager teen counselor, slash excursion leader, came down on her. She could handle that…but don’t tell her to smile.
“I’m wearing your ‘Trek Thru Terrible’ gear,” Chloe said with a dangerously low voice and narrowed eyes. “And—”
“Trouble,” Ripley corrected seemingly oblivious to the teen’s angst. “It’s Trek Thru Trouble.”
“Whatever. I’m wearing it, and I’m carrying it,” Chloe added while turning to point at the huge pack on her back. It dwarfed her five-foot-four-inch frame. “I’ve hiked for two days now in this awful heat, eaten your crappy food, and slept in your crappy tent. I’m here because my parents dropped me off in the middle of nowhere with no way out except to follow you, Ripley. I don’t think any of this is fun and I’ll smile when it’s over.”
Ripley at least had enough sense not to push the issue. Instead, she frowned at Chloe and then stepped around her to continue up the narrow trail.
“‘Trek Thru Terrible’. Ha, that was a good one,” Trevor laughed, nudging her arm.
Chloe gritted her teeth again. Trevor was another one of the “troubled kids” on the outing and had been hitting on her since she’d been abandoned to the cult. That’s what she’d come to think of the three adults leading the ragtag group of teens. Some of the minions were actually drinking the Kool-Aid and getting into all of the survival stuff, but she was a holdout.
There were six of them. Six pathetic souls, aged fourteen to seventeen, with various acronyms after their names that earned them the privilege of being converted by the “Trek Thru Trouble” counselors.
Chloe wore the ODD badge, which stood for oppositional defiance disorder. While lovingly described as strong-willed when younger, as she grew up and became more defiant, it caused problems. She’d made progress this past year, then gotten into a fight at school and almost failed her senior year. Fortunately, she’d graduated earlier that month, but it wasn’t enough for her parents. Under the guise of a “fun science camp that might help you get into MIT” she’d been dragged across three states and into the wilderness of Montana.
Her last counselor had suggested that most of Chloe’s issues were due to her near-genius intelligence since she was easily bored, frustrated, and her filters were weaker than most. So, she found it extra ironic that it wasn’t until they’d pulled up in front of the Trek Thru Trouble office that she figured it out.
Chloe might have made a scene and refused to get out of the car if it weren’t for the fact that there was an element of truth to her being a screw-up. Her final GPA was going to make it nearly impossible for her to get into MIT like she wanted and she was disappointed in herself just as much as her parents were.
When her dad stood there with her bags on the ground and her mom begged her to “do it for her”, Chloe simply hung her head and dragged her feet up the steps. Before she knew what was happening, she’d been handed the large trek pack and her parents had hugged her goodbye. In retrospect, she was pretty sure her parents were on their way to a dream cruise in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, she had five more days of “outdoor therapy”.
Trevor was rushing to keep pace with her, still waiting for a response to what he probably considered a witty remark.
Chloe ran a hand through her mop of short black hair. She’d chopped off her long locks and dyed the tips purple last week in a final act of insolence at the strict private school. She regretted it by the end of the first day. While the “Classic Punk Rock Purple” would wash out in a couple of weeks it’d take months to grow back. However, considering her current situation, she was thankful now for the short ’do. The heat was bad enough as it was; she could only imagine what it would have been like with hair down to her waist.
Trevor’s nasally breathing got markedly louder as they climbed a steep incline and he struggled to keep up. She might be small, but Chloe was fit. She’d never caved and played any sports, but she willingly went running every morning. It was one of the few things that cleared her head and gave her a sense of peace. If she were truthful with herself, she’d confess the mountains and still woods had the same effect. Well, when she wasn’t being trailed by a fifteen-year-old nose-breather.
“Trevor, back off!” Chloe yelled louder than she’d intended. As was her norm, the kinder words in her head were trumped by a flash of annoyance.
Trevor stumbled slightly and actually winced as if the words caused physical pain. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Chloe stopped and turned toward Trevor, ready to apologize. She was almost an adult and she needed to start acting like one, but before she could form any words, the oddest thing happened. She was looking at Trevor and the woods around him began to glow. His blue eyes took on a silver hue as they reflected a surreal light emanating from behind her.
Their climb had taken them to yet another ridgeline, one of many that stair-stepped the saw-toothed mountains that spread endlessly. Chloe spun around to look out acr
oss the expanse. They were facing east and off to her right a bluish-white radiance was rapidly spreading across the southern horizon. Tendrils of light licked eastward and rose about a quarter of the way up the sky. While it only encompassed a small portion of the atmosphere from their perspective, the incredible intensity of it made her squint.
A supernatural stillness shrouded the woods, all sounds fading until it felt like they were in a vacuum of space and time. After only a few seconds, the spectacle began to diminish, leaving a strong afterglow in its wake. Birds began to chirp again and the wind, which seemed to be holding its breath, rustled through the high branches of the ponderosa pines.
Chloe removed her sunglasses to confirm the day still had an abnormal brightness to it, like someone had turned up the contrast and white level in the image.
“That was some wicked lightning!” Jason moved up behind Chloe and Trevor, his dreadlocks brushing her arm.
Chloe moved away from the seventeen-year-old. She didn’t like him, and not in the annoying-teen-crush way she disliked Trevor, but something more at the core. He was also incredibly stupid. “That wasn’t lightning.”
“What else could it be?” Crissy asked. She was the one other trekker Chloe got along with. Even though she was the typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed cheer-leader type that Chloe would never willingly associate with, they had a surprising number of things in common.
“I don’t know,” Chloe answered. She continued to stare at the sky.
“Adam!” Hicks shouted from farther up the trail. He was the second of three leaders. He was in his mid-twenties and was the yang to Ripley’s yin. Where she was nice and comforting, Hicks was there to kick your rear end into shape. “Stop and wait for the rest of us!”
Adam made a constant habit of wandering off on his own and was yet again running far ahead of the group. Quiet and reserved, after two days Chloe still had no idea what his story was, other than he was sixteen and liked to steal things.
Chloe finally tore her gaze away from the sky and sought out the oldest leader, Bishop. She knew he was an engineer in real life and figured he was the most intelligent of the group. She also suspected Bishop wasn’t his real name and wondered why the counselors had chosen to name themselves after characters from the movie Aliens. A sign of things to come? Chloe shook her head at the thought. Not funny.
Chloe saw Bishop had stepped off the trail about fifty feet higher up the ridge, and was digging through his backpack so she quickly made her way over to him.
“Are you going to try and find out what that was?” Chloe watched restlessly as Bishop ignored her and continued to pull items from his pack. “Because we need to find out what it was.”
Pausing, Bishop hung his head in resignation. “I can’t find my radio.”
He looked up at Chloe then and her fear level ratcheted up several levels because he was clearly shaken and wasn’t thinking clearly. She reached down and unzipped a bulking side-pocket. She’d seen Bishop remove the radio several times over the past two days, to check in with “base”. She handed him the long-range walkie.
Offering a crooked smile, the older man took the radio. Standing and turning toward the open vista, he twisted the power knob with an audible click.
The radio remained silent.
“Hey, Bishop! My radio is dead.” Hicks was waving his handheld over his head.
Ripley joined Chloe and Bishop, her face flushed and eyes wide. Turning around, she gestured at her pack. “It’s on the top.”
Bishop dug her radio out and none of them seemed surprised when it was dead, too. Ripley stared at it for a moment before slipping her backpack off. She moved in a frenzied state, upending it and shaking the contents out all over the trail. Dropping to her knees, she snagged a zippered bag and removed her smart phone from it.
Chloe was annoyed, but not surprised. They’d all had their phones taken away before they started out on the trail. Not that it mattered since there wouldn’t be a signal, but it was still a control thing.
“It should at least have power,” Ripley gasped. She was looking up at Bishop, her brows furrowed. I’ve only turned it on a few times since we left. This morning the battery was almost ninety percent.”
“Hey, um…Bishop?” Trevor was edging closer with a flashlight in his hand. “My flashlight doesn’t work, either.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Ripley said flatly. “All our electronics go on the fritz at the same time that— light, or whatever it was happened?”
“Dude, it had to be a bomb!” Ben, the last of the group of teens, was jumping up and down while he spoke. “Right? Don’t you think, Bishop? It had to be. I’ll bet the Russians are freaking invading or something.” Ben was not just hyper-active. The fourteen-year-old was also compulsive and made Chloe’s lack of filters look like she qualified for sainthood.
“It wasn’t a bomb,” Chloe said without even a hint of her normal sarcasm.
Bishop turned to Chloe. “I agree.”
“It was lightning,” Trevor insisted.
Ripley was attempting to turn on her other assorted flashlights and when those all proved useless, she left them strewn on the ground and started in on everyone else’s.
“I think it was something in the upper atmosphere,” Chloe suggested. Her comment was directed at Bishop and he cocked his head thoughtfully in response.
“We’re at an elevation over six thousand feet.” Bishop studied the horizon to the southeast. “Considering the amount of sky involved, I think you might be right.”
“A solar flare.” Ripley’s remark was more a statement than a question.
“Cool,” Ben interjected before running back down the trail.
“Maybe,” Chloe muttered. She’d absorbed some astronomy by researching online for her own curiosity. It was only natural that she would turn to the stars to expand her understanding of the universe. It was hard to find other people to have the type of philosophical discussions she craved, which was why she’d been looking forward to college. She gravitated to Bishop again, figuring he’d taken some physics classes on his way to an engineering degree. “Can you see a solar flare? I didn’t think they were visible.”
Bishop pursed his lips into a thin line and shook his head once in response. “We aren’t going to figure out what it was standing up here,” he announced while gesturing to Hicks and Ripley. “We follow procedure. We’ve been cut off from base, so instead of Hicks retrieving supplies from restock site one, we all take the cut-off. By tonight, we’ll be at the trailhead. If we’re still unable to make contact, we’ll use the Jeep to drive some of us back to town.”
Chloe watched as both Bishop and Ripley began repacking their gear. It was obvious the three adults all felt better with a plan in place.
Ripley had explained the first night that there were two pre-arranged locations along the trek where they’d left vehicles full of supplies for restocking food and supplies. But they were not typical trailheads. They were remote, abandoned logging roads the company had bushwhacked their own trails to. If whatever damaged their electronics also affected the vehicle, it might not be the way out they were hoping for.
Chloe was suddenly more aware of the vast stretch of untamed wilderness spreading out for miles around them in every direction. It didn’t play by any rules.
Chapter 4
PATTY
Mercy, Montana
Patty sat an impressive pot roast on top of the stove and smiled as she placed her famous apple pie on the waiting rack. She was tempted to give it an extra dab of butter on top, but the house was already stifling and she didn’t dare leave the oven door open any longer than necessary.
“And I certainly don’t need the added calories,” she mumbled under her breath while pushing some stray gray hairs out of her face. Most people would probably consider her in decent shape for a woman of sixty-six, but Patricia Wood had high expectations for herself.
“My goodness, woman!” Caleb had snuck up behind his wife and wa
s attempting to reach around her with the intent of pulling off a strip of succulent roast. “That smells amazing.”
Patty slapped his hand, batting it away. “No you don’t, mister! You aren’t getting anywhere near this food until you clean up.”
Caleb moved so that he was standing in front of Patty, a look of innocence on his face. “I washed my hands.”
“You’ve been mucking stalls.” Patty looked up at her husband of forty-five years and saw the same man she’d fallen in love with. His dark eyes sparkled with mischief as he moved into a football stance and she put her hands up defensively, backing away. “Oh, no you don’t.”
He was already advancing on her and easily scooped her up off the floor into a bear hug. Twirling her around in the large country-style kitchen, she squealed while he kissed the base of her throat.
Although Patty struggled, it was only half-hearted and part of their game. One they’d been playing together for a long time. He set her gently back on her feet and planted a big kiss on her mouth before going to the sink and turning on the water.
She watched him as he scrubbed his hands, admiring the way his muscles moved under the worn work shirt. It took her back to the first time they’d met, in a veterans hospital where she was working as a nurse fresh out of school. Caleb had been shot in the thigh while serving overseas in Vietnam and was in rehabilitation. She’d walked into the room where he was bracing himself on the bars, attempting to bear weight on the bad leg.
She fell in love that day, but it took a lot longer for them to acknowledge their feelings. Although it was the seventies, a time where there was a huge push for love and acceptance, Patty came from a small, very white community. Ultimately, nothing mattered save for the love they felt for each other, even when her parents nearly pushed her away for marrying a black man. But they eventually came to adore Caleb and his huge heart and incredible mind.