by Ellis, Tara
Sam was clearly frustrated when the flashlight he found didn’t work and he threw it back into the bag before looking up at her. “What do you hear?”
“What?”
Sam stood and pointed out beyond the parking lot and toward the nearby freeway and distant high-rises. “Do you hear any cars, trains, planes, or machinery? Any sirens or horns?”
Danny swallowed hard. She could see several columns of dark smoke rising along the stretch of highway leading away from the airport. Closer to them, a semi-truck burned near the entrance to the parking lot, its cab crushed under a snapped telephone pole. Someone ran past it, screaming, and continued down the road.
People, small dots at this distance, were milling amongst the endless stalled and wrecked cars. Thicker clouds of smoke hung over the city, but Sam was right; other than an occasional shout or cry for help, the normal sounds of a large city were gone. Especially one in crisis.
“There’s got to be around 200,000 people in the city limits alone,” Sam said. Closing the trunk, he spread one of the maps out on it. “And the first thing we need to do is figure out how to get out of it. As fast as possible.”
Danny knew he was right. Emergency services would be completely overwhelmed and at a standstill, and things would turn into a free-for-all at an alarming rate. “If that surge of energy really came from space, then how large of an area do you think was impacted? How far are we going to have to walk before we can find some help?”
Sam hung his head for a moment. “Danny, you don’t get it. If I’m correct and this was a beam of gamma radiation like I suspect, we’re probably better off than a vast majority of the world. There’s no help out there. We’re on our own.”
The panic Danny had held at bay since the nightmare began suddenly stole her breath as her heart double-timed it. She fought to stay in control, putting a hand on the trunk to steady herself. The only way to cope with the situation was to focus on the moment she was in and how to get to the next. Keep it simple. She’d get home, but in order to do that they had to formulate a plan and it all started with getting out of the city. Danny looked at the map and found the location of the airport. She touched it with her finger and then traced the line of highway that lead to the north, toward Montana.
Slapping both of her hands on the paper, Danny managed a weak smile when it made Sam jump. “So, we head north.”
“North.”
“Sam,” Danny said thoughtfully as he folded the map. “You said we’re probably better off than most of the world. What did you mean by that?”
Sam shoved the map in his back pocket and grabbed the emergency kit. Pushing his glasses back up his nose after he stood, he then ran a hand over his graying hair. “We’re still alive.”
Chapter 6
TOM
Outside Pocatello, Idaho
The inside of the trailer was stifling. Tom had finally broken down earlier after what must have been an hour and opened the screens on the windows, but left the shades pulled. It was close to ninety outside and at least that hot in the bunkhouse and getting harder to breathe by the minute. Both he and Ethan were drenched in sweat. The horses were equally miserable, and although he opened all of their windows and gave them fresh water, they were still restless.
Thump!
Tom jumped at the noise on the roof of the trailer and Ethan cried out in alarm. It was the third time now that something had struck them and he was afraid he knew what they were.
Scooting across the seat, Ethan pulled up a corner of the shade and peered outside. “Dad!” At the risk of having his father yell at him, Ethan yanked at the window covering. The glaring sunlight made both of them squint.
Instead of protesting, Tom leaned across the table to get a look out the window and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. A large crow lay unmoving on the road next to the truck.
Tom pulled the shade partway down without comment, allowing the bottom portion to let in both light and a blessedly cool breeze. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since they didn’t have a working clock although he guessed it had to be close to four in the afternoon. He didn’t know how long they should stay inside, but he couldn’t help taking the dead bird as a bad omen.
Ethan turned back to stare numbly at the card game they’d been playing. “Do you think Mom and Gary are okay?”
“Oh, I’m sure…” Tom’s voice trailed off as the impact of the question struck him. What if they weren’t? They’d been leaving that morning on a plane for Hawaii. Surely, whatever this was couldn’t be that far-reaching. But if it was? Tom hadn’t allowed himself to consider the possibility that the same event had occurred back home in Mercy. That his mother might be sitting alone in a dark house at this very moment worrying about them, and that they were stranded over three hundred miles away from the ranch and six hundred from Vegas.
“Hello!”
Tom’s head jerked up at the sound of a man’s voice from outside and his hopes surged. Maybe it really wasn’t as bad as his imagination was making it out to be. He lunged from the table and grabbed his cowboy hat from the wall while pointing at Ethan with the other hand. “Stay here.”
“Maybe they’re gone,” a woman’s voice was saying from the other side of the truck.
“Hey!” Tom called as he stepped outside. Flinching at the intense light, he made sure his hat was shading his face. The bird was a stark reminder why it was important and he stepped over it on his way to the front of the truck. There were three more birds of various species scattered around the road and he tried not to focus on them. At the moment, he was more interested in the man and woman walking toward him.
“It got your truck, too?”
Tom studied the young man, quickly sizing him up as a non-threat. He looked like a college student who was far outside his element and in need of help. His skin was a painful-looking red and a couple of small blisters were forming on his nose and cheek. The woman with him was around the same age, but her darker Hispanic complexion was faring better. While she still appeared sunburned, it wasn’t nearly as bad as her boyfriend’s.
“Yeah, my truck and all of my electronics,” Tom answered. He gestured around at the dead birds and then the man’s face. “But that’s not all it damaged. Are you sure you want to be out taking a walk right now?”
The man touched his nose gingerly before answering. “I ran our car off the road when the…light hit. When it wouldn’t start again and our phones didn’t work, we decided to walk back home. It’s only a couple of more miles from here,” he added, as if that explained everything.
“We didn’t know we were getting burned until it was too late,” the woman offered. “And it hasn’t gotten any worse for a while, now.”
Tom was encouraged by that bit of news. “Have you seen anyone else? Or do you have any idea what happened?”
“We saw two other trucks a few miles ago.” The guy gestured back the way they’d come, toward Pocatello.
They were currently standing on Interstate 86, which ran east to west. Tom had taken the road to make the short hop over to Twin Falls to pick up the horses. They were around ten miles from the interchange for Interstate 15, which would take them north all the way to Montana, and eventually home to Mercy.
“It’s the same with everyone,” the woman said. “No power. No answers. But they wanted to stay with their rigs and wait for help.”
“Only, I don’t think it’s coming,” the man interjected, his eyes narrowing and his red face taking on a sharp intensity. “They’ve made sure of that.”
“They?” Tom found himself reassessing the situation. Maybe the guy wasn’t as stable as he’d thought.
“It’s an attack.” Rubbing at his face, one of the blisters popped, leaving a smear of moisture streaked across the man’s cheek. He didn’t seem to notice.
Tom glanced at the woman and saw she was concerned as she put an arm around her boyfriend. “I don’t think it was a bomb,” Tom said. “It was too big, and no bomb that I know of
could have had this much of an impact on our electronics.”
“No, not a bomb,” the man agreed. “The weapon came from up there.” He pointed at the sky before turning away from Tom. “It’s an invasion and this is just the beginning.”
Tom watched the couple walk away, muttering quietly to each other. He wanted to laugh at the suggestion that little green men were to blame, but it simply wasn’t funny. It was a stark reminder that people would react in vastly different ways to the inexplicable. They had set out to walk for miles on an already scorching hot day without water or any protection from the sun. Tom resisted the urge to call them back and offer them a bottle of water, because if they were really only a few miles from their house, he and Ethan were going to need it more than they would.
It was also a wake-up call. Tom wasn’t what he’d call a prepper, but he’d read his fair share of survival stories and he knew that if this was a widespread incident, then how they reacted in the next twenty-four hours could make all the difference in how they endured it. He looked back at the trailer and saw Ethan standing in the entrance.
“Aliens?”
Great, he’d heard the conversation. Laughing it off and hunkering down in the trailer would be the easy out, yet as Tom stared at his son, he knew that wouldn’t be enough. Worst case scenario. You had to face a disaster head-on and then hope for the best, otherwise you got left playing catch-up, and that wasn’t someplace Tom was willing to take his son.
“Come here.” Tom waved Ethan over and then led the way to the cab of the truck to have the hard conversation. Going back inside the gloomy, stifling confines of the trailer was too much.
Once they were settled on the bench seat, Tom felt they had at least a small amount of protection from whatever was burning his skin, although he noticed his arms hadn’t gotten hot in the time he’d been outside. Facing Ethan, he really looked at his son, taking in all the details. He was big for his age, the same as he’d been when he was fifteen, going on sixteen. He was already growing a mustache and that, combined with his broad shoulders, gave Ethan the ability to pass for a couple years older. He was almost a man and that was good, because Tom needed him to be one right then.
“I don’t think it was aliens,” Tom said with a crooked smile. “Though I don’t think the guy was that far off base.”
Ethan squirmed nervously on the seat. “What do you mean?”
“That it came from space. He might be right about that, and you’re probably right about the EMP.” Tom pointed out the front window at a hawk on the blacktop. “But whatever killed these birds was something more than an EMP and we have to consider the possibility that it wasn’t just here.”
Ethan sat quietly for a minute before responding and it was obvious that he was doing his best not to get choked up. “Can we go back to Mom’s?”
Tom exhaled heavily and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s twice as far to Vegas, Ethan, and your mom won’t even be there. There’s a good chance they made it to Hawaii. It could end up being the best place to be. I promise to do everything we can to get ahold of her.”
Ethan nodded his understanding and noticeably relaxed, though he didn’t say anything.
“Look, it’s possible that Pocatello wasn’t even affected. We simply don’t know.” Tom placed a reassuring hand on Ethan’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “So I think we have to assume help isn’t coming anytime soon.”
“We can’t stay here, then.”
Tom looked at his son with surprise and a newfound respect. “No, we can’t.”
“How far is it to Pocatello?”
“The last sign said twenty miles and I don’t think it was more than a few miles back,” Tom said.
Ethan thought about it for a moment. “We have, like, five hours or something until it’s dark, so we could make it there by either walking or on the horses. If they still have power and stuff in the city, we could find a tow truck, right?”
Tom tried again to force his son to see the bigger picture on his own. “That would be ideal, but what if the city doesn’t have power? What if the whole state is affected?”
Ethan gulped and a bead of sweat ran down his temple. “If it was from space and affected us the same as a solar flare, then it could be even more than one state, couldn’t it? Like, back when there was that last really big flare in the 1800s, it burned up a bunch of telegraphs and stuff all over the place.”
“Yeah, it could be something like that,” Tom answered and for the first time he didn’t try to shield his son from something that could cause fear. As Ethan looked up at him then, his eyes full of both dread and determination, he felt a new kind of bond forming.
“Then we better take the horses,” Ethan said resolutely. “We can use the third horse for supplies. Do we have very much water? ’Cause remember, the three most important things are water, shelter, and then food.”
Tom was already going over in his head the meager supplies he’d brought for the short trip. Fortunately, the camping gear in the bunkhouse would come in handy. “I think there’s a few bottles left in the mini fridge, and I filled the horse trailer with well water before I left. It might be warm and taste like plastic, but we can dig out the empty water bottles from the trash and refill them all from it. Let’s start by dumping our backpacks and picking out the most important items.”
As Ethan pushed against the passenger door to slide out of the cab, Tom reached across and opened the glovebox. Removing the Kimber 45 1911 handgun, he wrapped his hand around the wooden grip, reassured by its weight. Ethan hesitated when he saw the weapon, raising his eyebrows at his dad.
Tom slid the weapon into the back of his waistband, remembering the crazed look on the man’s face from only minutes earlier. In another day or two, water and horses could be a prized commodity. “Just in case.”
Chapter 7
PATTY
Mercy, Montana
Getting to town turned out to be much harder than Patty thought it would be.
The truck wouldn’t start, and no matter what Caleb tried, he couldn’t get it to work. Patty found it more concerning than the phones because there wasn’t a vehicle Caleb couldn’t fix. She watched silently from where she stood in the driveway as he threw a socket wrench down in frustration.
“I’m going to try the radio.”
“Shouldn’t we just take the horses and go?” Patty asked.
Caleb had been a radioman in the Vietnam war, a job title that was deemed the deadliest of them all. He’d carried on his love for it by becoming a HAM radio operator and belonged to several clubs. A whole room downstairs was dedicated to the hobby and he took it very seriously.
“I don’t expect it to work, but it’s still our best bet for getting some information,” he explained.
Patty let his words sink in. She knew he talked to people all around the world. The dark web of fear started to cast its net again as she considered the possibility that they would need the radio. Her hands became clammy and her nostrils flared as adrenaline coursed through her body. She needed to move again to feel like she was doing something about it.
Leading the way into the shadowy house, Patty went to the pantry and retrieved several candles. “Here,” she said, handing a lit one to Caleb. “I’ll get a few things for our ride to town. I suppose we’ll be taking the horses? It’s been a long time since either of us walked over ten miles and I need to be functional when we get there.” Although she managed to keep her voice level, she wrung her hands nervously as she spoke.
“Patty, we’re going to be okay. We’ll figure this out.” Caleb knew his wife well.
Not trusting herself to speak, Patty simply forced a small smile and watched him disappear down the dark stairs. After setting a couple of candles around the house for later that night, she went to their bedroom and pulled their backpacks from the furthest reaches of the walk-in closet. They lived in the woods, so the pair didn’t feel the need to go camping that often. However, they still had plenty of gear and a wel
l-stocked supply of emergency equipment. She considered taking the bug-out bag from the front hall closet, but that was intended for a grab-and-go situation. She had time to think things through and pack in case they stayed in town overnight.
When Caleb trudged back upstairs less than ten minutes later, the bags were on the kitchen table, half full with a change of clothes and other items, and she was filling water bottles at the sink.
Caleb moved alongside her and started pulling pitchers out of the cupboard. “We should fill these. Without the well pump running, all we have for water is what’s left in the pipes.”
Patty looked at him sideways and raised her eyebrows when their eyes met.
“Everything downstairs is fried. We’re lucky there wasn’t anything flammable next to the battery.”
“And the one you stored at city hall?” Patty pressed.
Caleb smiled. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad you volunteered me for the disaster preparedness committee.”
Two years prior, the town won a grant thanks to a concerned local citizen who stepped up and applied for it. Patty appointed a three-person committee to come up with a city-wide disaster plan, and then they used the money to make sure the city could properly respond. As a result, the basement of city hall had a respectable assortment of goodies, including Caleb’s back-up HAM radio.
“I remember putting my radio in the bottom drawer of an ancient steel file cabinet,” Caleb explained. “So even if this was some kind of electronic pulse, it should have been shielded enough that I can get it working.”
Three pitchers and six water bottles later, they turned their attention to the pantry and took inventory of the food. Fortunately, Patty had made her bi-monthly trip into Helena earlier that week and stocked up. Adding in their emergency rations in the garage, they could easily get by for a few months. They had Emergency Straw filters and a glacial stream a quarter mile in on their property, so aside from the physical labor, drinking water wouldn’t be an issue.