The Solar Pulse (Book 2): Escape the Pulse

by Will Hawthorne

  I squinted around myself, a reactionary ringing rising to my ears.

  I was sat in the same clothes that I had been wearing all night… Or day. I had no idea what time it was. The room was small, concrete-composed, overbearing. There was no furniture beyond the chair that I was sat upon.

  In front of me stood two men. They were clearly soldiers, evident from their attire. One was Lieutenant Morgan, and the other was one I had never seen before. He was taller, and somehow held more authority than his comrade. He stood carefully, solidly, as if a car might bounce off of him if it were to strike him.

  ‘This is the one that we were led to,’ Morgan said quietly, but still loudly enough for me to here, and intentionally so. ‘He denied knowledge of our drone crash. It was evident from our conversation that he knows something. His house was set up like somebody who was preparing for the event.’

  ‘Anyone else in the house?’ The other man’s deep voice sounded, his tone calm but expectant.

  ‘No. Evidence of a few bedspreads, but we found no one.’

  ‘All right. Leave us be.’

  ‘Captain.’

  Lieutenant Morgan gave me an emotionless, blank look before exiting the room, closing a thick metallic door behind him.

  I had seen cop shows in the past where a two-way mirror gave a perfect view into the interrogation room, or at least a security camera that gave a live feed.

  This room was blank, void of both mirrors and cameras.

  I had managed to gather my bearings. We both stared back at each other. I refused to break.

  ‘So, where do we start?’ He asked, stepping out of the shadows and into the light of the bulb. He was clad in military gear, and would be ready to head out on patrol with the addition of a helmet, a rifle and a bullet proof vest. That said, a pistol was equipped and strapped at his waist.

  I had little doubt that it was loaded.

  He sat down in the chair across from me, looking me in the eye once again.

  ‘How about…’ I said, gulping again. ‘You tell me who the fuck you people are?’

  The man smiled lightly, chuckling once behind closed lips.

  ‘Who does it look like we are?’

  ‘I know what it looks like you are,’ I said. ‘I just didn’t know that the US government had so soon taken to capturing its citizens and tying them to chairs, even in the event of a crisis like this. This isn’t MKUltra.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s much worse than that. And the US government has been doing bad things for a long time, they’re just very shit at covering it up. They think they’re good at, but they’re not. Not really.’

  ‘So are you gonna answer my question?’

  ‘You’re not exactly in a position to be asking questions.’

  ‘What position am I in?’

  ‘Well,’ he continued, exhaling deeply and cupping his hands over his stomach as he got comfortable, ‘If this were a metaphor then you’d be bent over and I’d be stood here with a paddle in my hand. Pretty crude image, I know, but you get what I’m talking about.’

  ‘So why am I here, then? Are you gonna kill me?’

  ‘What possible use would you be to us dead? No, you’re not here for us to kill you. You’re here for us to ask you some questions. And at the end of it all you might get to go home.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is that you’re expecting me to tell you.’

  ‘I’m expecting a few things at the very least.’

  ‘Try me.’

  I was a little breathless with the anxiety, and this tough-guy attitude that I was trying to push. If the mirror had been in this room I would be staring it down in the cockiest way possible right now.

  ‘All right,’ the man continued. ‘First question. What information do you have relating to the military drone that came down in a field outside the town of Redwood last night?’

  I took a few long, drawn breaths, lightly chewing the inside of my mouth.

  Was it better to deny the truth until they forced it out of me or just to be real from the start?

  ‘I know that it exists. I saw it come down in a field and I went to check it out.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See, this is my main issue. When we found that drone it had been pretty much untouched, aside from a little scuffs from its crash landing.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we found it hours after it came down. It’s software had been scrambled by something in the area, and whatever it was that brought it down clearly did it intentionally. You don’t accidentally hack into a military drone and crash it at the drop of a hat. Where I get confused is the point at which this drone crashes and nobody goes to strip it down or move it. Why is that? You got any ideas?’

  I thought further, but with every passing second I realised that I was falling more and more into the trap of presumption on the Captain’s behalf. He knew that he had me. I could only make up excuses so fast.

  What else could I do?

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you everything that I know. But I need to ask you something first.’

  ‘Very well. Ask away.’

  ‘Who do you think I am?’

  The Captain smiled lightly, eyeing my analytically.

  ‘What do you mean by that? Your name? I haven’t had the pleasure yet.’

  ‘It’s Sam,’ I said without reluctance. ‘I mean who do you think I am in this grand scheme? Do you think I’m some kind of foreign spy? A sleeper agent?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I know what this is. I know that the sun gave off an enormous solar pulse a few days ago and that it took out every electrical device in the country. I also know that for some reason this country was entirely unprepared for it.’

  ‘And you were?’

  ‘Were what?’

  ‘Prepared for this?’

  ‘No. We barely escaped the city. But my Dad taught me a few things, which has helped me so far.’

  ‘Your father? He a prepper?’

  ‘Sort of… You know what a prepper is?’

  ‘I’m from a military family, of course I fucking know what a prepper is.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘So where’s he?’

  ‘I don’t know. We got into town and he was gone. Said he’d gone to the mountains to wait this thing out.’

  The Captain looked back at me ambiguously, remaining quiet. I couldn’t read him in the slightest, but I could tell that he was thinking about something. It was the same trick that I had tried to pull.

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘Are you gonna answer my question?’ I asked. ‘Am I under military arrest for being a spy?’

  ‘I’ll make that decision once I’ve got some more information about you. What happened next?’

  ‘Next…’ I started, choosing my events carefully. ‘I arrived in town and met up with a few people. Somebody who my Dad knew had spotted something flying in the area. This drone of yours. She had a laptop…’

  ‘So this woman was the one that brought the drone down?’

  ‘No…’ I continued quickly. ‘On my way out of the city I met a university professor, who… He gave me a USB drive with what I thought was some work on it.’

  ‘Whose work? What professor?’

  There was no way that I was going to make this up quickly enough. I had to come clean.

  ‘Fine… I wasn’t travelling alone. I was with my girlfriend, and a close friend. She works at the university, and she knew this professor. He was a kind of prepper, too, and he gave her this USB pen with her research work on it. She works with agriculture, it’s unrelated to the pulse. But when I plugged this USB pen into this laptop that this lady had to check that the work was unharmed, there was something else on it. There was a program, and when I started it, it detected something called… Aurelius. That was it. There was a number, too, but I can’t remember it. It was a simple enough program, and when I tried to shut it down I acc
identally shut something else down… And I think that that something else was your drone.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that a random professor at a college just so happened to have a program on his USB pen that brought down a multi-million dollar piece of military hardware? How am I supposed to even know that this guy exists?’

  ‘You’re the military, and it seems that you guys have some tech stashed away for a rainy day like this. You tell me.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Professor Moody. I don’t know his first name. He works at the college in the applied sciences department.’

  Another long silence stretched out as the Captain sat back. I didn’t say anything in response. We must have sat there for several minutes as we both dwelt on the information I had revealed, both considering the implication, albeit in different ways.

  This time it was me who broke the silence.

  ‘Listen…’ I started, the Captain’s eyes flitting up to look at me. ‘I don’t have any fucking clue what’s going on here. I’ve thought more about conspiracy theories over the past few days than I have in my entire life, largely because nothing about this situation makes an ounce of sense. A few days ago I was a normal guy working in the city, as cliched as that sounds. Now I’m tied to a fucking chair in a military stronghold – or whoever you people are – with an enormous bruise from a damned rubber bullet on my back. I’m exhausted, and I don’t know anything about this beyond what I’ve seen and what I’ve stumbled on. But I know that none of that is gonna convince you of anything. I don’t even know why I’m wasting my breath telling you this… You’re just gonna kill me anyway.’

  ‘Not quite,’ the Captain smiled, taking a pretty lax response to a man contemplating his oncoming demise. ‘Two things are gonna happen now. One – I’m going to go and speak to some people. Two – I’m going to move you to another room, which means putting that bag over your head again.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ he said, standing and retrieving the bag from his pocket.

  ‘This is so weird.’

  ‘Of course it is. The world ended.’

  ‘No, not that…’ I said, managing a laugh. ‘It’s just… For a guy in charge of whatever you people are, you’re not nearly as much of a hardass as your kind of person is portrayed as in the movies.’

  ‘Obviously,’ the Captain said, positioning the bag in his hands and carefully capping it over my head. ‘It takes some level of intelligence and critical thinking to survive in a situation like this. Being a dick in a world that has nuclear weapons will end up getting everybody killed.’

  With that he placed the bag over my head once again…

  But that wasn’t the end. Not even close.

  A minute or so later I was lifted up entirely – not just myself but the chair with me. I was carried out of the room, from what I could tell, and through the interior of the windowless structure that I was inside. I had no idea where I was going. I was nothing but a floating consciousness at the whims of others, until the chair was placed down on the solid ground beneath and I regained some sense of place in the world.

  ‘Listen very carefully,’ the Captain’s voice said. He spoke clearly and slowly, enunciating each syllable of every word. ‘… Because I don’t particularly enjoy repeating myself. I am going to undo your binds, and then I am going to walk out of the room. You will know when I have left the room because you’ll hear the buzzer to indicate that the door has closed. Once I’ve left the room you can remove the hood from your head. If you make a move from your seat, even to remove your hood, before you hear that buzzer, I will not hesitate in shooting you in the head. Is there any part of that that doesn’t make sense?’

  ‘No… Not the rules, at least. I just don’t understand why you’ve moved me to another room to do this.’

  ‘It’ll become clear in a moment. Or it won’t. That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘You’ll see. Or you won’t. Are you ready for me to remove your binds?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  I felt the Captain’s presence move to the back of the chair, and the ratchet clip come undone. Despite the reactionary desire to pull my hands to my front I controlled myself, leaving them where they were as the Captain’s footsteps crossed the room towards the door. Metal creaked, the door clicked to it’s closing position, and the buzzer sounded.

  I took a long breath, leaving it a few more seconds until I moved.

  Then, slowly, I brought my hands to my front. No gunshot. I raised them to the bag, clutched it in my shaking grasp, and took the bag off from over my head.

  This room was a little nicer than the last. Still no windows, but the addition of a bed, a bookshelf, a table and a few chairs made a big difference.

  That wasn’t the only difference, though, because I wasn’t alone in this room.

  There was a figure stood by the small, steel dining table, a figure whose image it took me a moment to process, not because of the blurred world that emerged in the wake of the sharp transition from darkness to light, but because I was struggling altogether to believe that it was, in fact, who I was seeing before me.

  ‘Sam…? What… What are you doing here…?’

  His hands had been buried in his pockets, but they quickly emerged into the open, palms unclenched and accidentally welcoming, as he stared back at me with disbelief, and I at him.

  ‘Dad…?’