Solar Storm: Homeward Bound

by Vincent Keith

  “Sir, this is a Washington driver’s license, and this permit is from Utah, care to tell me why that is.”

  “Sure, Utah permits are issued to non-residents after an examination and are reciprocal in more states than any other permit. It’s valid in Washington, and a lot of other states. It beats carrying five or ten different licenses. Won’t do me any good in California, but short of being a politician, nothing will in California.”

  “You realize it’s not valid in Oregon?”

  “Oh… crap. Hang on.”

  Jack dug into the wallet again and pulled out two more cards.

  “Here”

  “What are these?”

  “One Oregon out of state CHL, and one Washington residents CPP. Just in case.”

  “I see.”

  She examined the two documents. She wasn’t familiar with the Washington permit, but the Oregon license was familiar.

  “Well, it looks like you have the paperwork covered. I’ve never met someone with more than one.”

  “I shouldn’t need any you know.”

  “Ah… yes, well… Did you know you’re about five hundred feet from the California border?”

  “Yep, and I planned to store it in the locked saddle bags until I got back out of the People’s Republic.”

  The Ranger flashed her first smile since Jack had told her of the morning’s events.

  “Right. I’ll hang on to these until I’ve filled out my report.” She turned to Sara and said: “Let’s go talk to your mom.”

  By the time Jack got his permit and license back, two more rangers and a county Sheriff had arrived. Police were now looking for ‘the asshole’ as Jack thought of him.

  “Mr. Donovan, I’m sorry you got dragged into this. If it’s any consolation, the family counselors for this county are pretty good. There’s a chance this will turn out okay. They’ll keep them safe and make sure they get the counseling they need.” The deputy sheriff nodded and headed back to his car where Sara and her mom were waiting.

  Jack was sitting at the table next to his bike when the Ranger came over and sat down. “Sorry about earlier, I’ve had more experience with abusive relationships than I’d care to remember. It might have affected my reaction.”

  “Yeah, well…” Jack looked down at his feet. He didn’t feel like letting her off the hook for over-reacting, but he was also sick of the whole business and just wanted to be gone.

  “I almost stayed in a motel last night, now I wish I had. This day has just sucked.”

  “Look, I really am sorry about over-reacting.”

  “Nah, it’s not that. It’s Janet and her asshole boyfriend. People like them shouldn’t be allowed around kids. Maybe she’ll change but she’s been subjecting her kid to that crap for years, so I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Right. I’ve heard all the psychobabble, and I still don’t get it. It’s that whole victim mentality I’ll never understand. If that little girl is as smart as she seems, she’ll get the hell away from her mother as soon as she can.”

  Jack almost missed the “I did” she muttered to herself. He wondered what kind of childhood she’d had.

  “I’m too frazzled to want to camp out tonight, I don’t suppose you know of a motel close by. I was heading to Reno today to restock on food and pick up parts for the bike. Then spend the rest of laundry day in Truckee. I just don’t have the energy to go that far today.”

  “Well, I think your day is about to get much better,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “My Aunt owns a B&B not too far north of here. Just past the lake and located right next door is my uncle’s custom bike shop.”

  “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “Nope, I know the B&B is empty at the moment. I’m sure my uncle will be happy to let you use his shop, and I’m pretty sure he’ll have whatever parts you might need.”

  “It sounds like you’re close to your Aunt and Uncle.”

  “Should be, they raised me, adopted actually. Get your stuff ready and I’ll call in and sign out, I’m off in about five minutes anyway. You can just follow me to the Goose Down Inn.”

  SHARED REALITY

  Jack wound down, his story trailing off. The memories triggered a lot of emotions he didn’t want to deal with. He just wasn’t ready to tell her the rest.

  Rachael sat watching him. He’s an odd duck. He cares about people, yet he’s got a hardness about him. He’s been through something… He must have considered what it would mean to help us, what passing those houses along the way would mean, not knowing if the people could help, or needed help. Yet, here he is, giving us food, and shelter, knowing that the long road ahead of him will be harder. Still… He was able to kill those men… She shivered, not sure if the memory or the chill in the air was the cause.

  She’d known hard men. There were plenty of them around military bases. She was sure many of them had a core of… decency, caring, sympathy? She wasn’t sure which word fit best. But they hid it to some extent. Her husband had. Perhaps afraid that showing his humanity would cause him to break and shatter. He’d spent more time with the guys, less and less at home. Then he went to Afghanistan, and it killed him.

  Outside the ring of light thrown by the campfire, darkness had settled. Jack forced his thoughts back to the more immediate problems.

  “Well, talking about the past won’t solve any problems right now. So…”

  Rachael looked up, her thoughts returning from the past. She wanted to hear more, to know this man who had saved her and her daughter from rape, possibly death. She could tell he wasn’t ready to share more. Not yet.

  “No, you’re right, but…thank you for telling me that.”

  Jack didn’t quite know what to do with that. Why is she thanking me for wasting an hour of her life with my whining about problems I had ten years ago?

  Steve’s voice came out of nowhere — Dude! Get your head out of your ass and back in the game.

  Jack turned away from the light to hide his smile. He could always count on Steve to jab him with the sharp spear of reality and burst his bubble, even when the doofus was eight hundred miles away.

  “As things stand,” said Jack, “unless I’m much mistaken, there will be no food deliveries outside of the main urban centers, and perhaps not even there. Part of it depends on how widespread this is. If it’s only a few thousand square miles, we’ll get help. Things will get back to normal in a year, maybe sooner. But judging by that Aurora, I’d say our problem is much bigger.”

  “Is that where that came from?” asked Rachel, pointing up. “We’ve only lived in the South and more recently, Southern California… San Bernardino. My husband is… was… Army. Anyway, I thought this might be one of those rare times you can see the Northern Lights south of Alaska.”

  “It’s rare for sure. I don’t know how much longer it will last. But based on what I’ve read, I’d say we got hit by the biggest solar storm in history. Two hundred years ago, the Aurora would have been the only way to tell. There was a good size storm a while back, affecting an area of Eastern Canada, Quebec if I remember correctly. The reports I read only talked about the power grid going down, and people being without power for a while. Nothing about cars, or auroras, which is one reason why I believe this is bigger, a lot bigger.”

  Jack stirred the fire and added a few more sticks, buying time while he considered how to explain what would happen next.

  “We shouldn’t be expecting any help. By now people have emptied the stores unless the local law stopped them. Individuals who arrived late are running out of food. We’ll see a lot more like those two men who attacked you. I’m not sure how they knew there’d be no help coming, I suppose they could have been the type who just don’t care.”

  He took another sip of hot chocolate.

  “There are a lot of folks who think mankind has become more enlightened, that we’ve evolved, but we haven’t, not really. People mostly behave the way they do because going along with what society e
xpects is easier. Now? Expectations will change, in a lot of cases trying to get along and share will be a death sentence.”

  Lexi snuggled in close to her mom, eyes going between Rachael, Jack, and the dogs. The smile that had accompanied the hot chocolate faded, replaced by tight lips and her eyes got big.

  “I’m sorry, this is scary, but you need to understand. If this covers the whole US or more, we’re essentially back in the dark ages.”

  “Or the Wild West?” Rachael asked looking pointedly at Jack’s hat.

  Jack smiled, and tipped his cowboy hat, “I reckon so ma’am, I reckon so.” He chuckled, “I guess I do sort of look the part.”

  “Cowboy hat, long coat, cowboy rifle, jeans, you need different boots and a different shirt,” said Rachael. “And a horse I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a string of horses, but I wouldn’t want to be planning a hike of several hundred miles in cowboy boots.

  “The hat is very practical. One hundred percent beaver fur, which is as waterproof as you can get outside of Gore-Tex or rubber. The brim is stiff enough to hold up and keep the sun and rain off your face and neck. The duster is water resistant and has a wool liner, so it’s warm and comfortable. I’ve been in the hard rain for two days, and it’s still dry inside. Eventually, it will get damp on the inside, but the wool will still keep me warm, if not exactly dry. For a long hike a Gore-Tex jacket and rain pants would be nice, but for what I usually do this holds up better. Besides, it’s what I’ve got.”

  Jack picked up the pot and swirled it to mix the contents. The girls’ cups appeared, but not quite as quickly as the last time.

  “I guess Wild West might not be too bad a description. Horse transport will become more common once we get past the starvation period. The law will be what you can do for yourself because you can’t call 911 anymore. People will be a lot thinner on the ground, in more ways than one. If you’re not willing to work, and work hard… Well don’t expect any handouts, they’ll be a long time coming.

  We’ve just become a cashless society but not in the way the State intended. Banks are gone along with all of the fiat wealth that they represent. At some point gold and silver will probably have value again. We’ll eventually figure out some form of money. But right now, I wouldn’t trade the food I have for its weight in gold. Most of what we took for granted is broken. There will be a few cars, mostly older ones, and even those will be next to worthless once the gas runs out. The military will have some working equipment. Folks in the prepper community will too, but that’s nothing compared to the hundreds of millions who are totally unprepared.”

  “Hundreds of millions?” asked Lexi.

  “Billions worldwide? I’m just guessing, but in the US we’ve got three hundred and thirty million people, and perhaps a few million of them are even remotely ready for something like this.”

  “Oh.”

  “We won’t know how bad things are until we can establish radio contact, and we may never know. I’ve got some gear I hope is still working. In a few days I’ll try the radio and see if I can get more information, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Now I wish I hadn’t taken that job in Seattle. At least we had an apartment in San Bernardino.”

  “No, you should be glad you’re not in a city, if this covers a big enough area, the cities will be war zones. I expect there are already riots and looting. That seems to be the natural reaction nowadays. Areas with lots of racial tension or significant gang populations have probably gone to war. Food will disappear from the shelves faster in a city than anywhere else. If you were on a military base, you’d be okay for a while.”

  “We lived in town, my husband died almost five years ago, in Afghanistan.”

  “Mom, what about my friends? What are they going to do?”

  “I don’t know honey, I guess we’ll just have to hope for the best.”

  “Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” said Jack. “Pretty much the prepper motto. In any case, we need to figure out what you’re going to do. I need to keep moving. I have friends who may still be in Lakeview, but I don’t plan to stay long. We’ll have to find food as we go because what I have won’t last. Not at our current rate. I’m not going to just leave you out here on your own with nothing, but I can’t afford to waste a lot of time either.”

  Rachael stared at the fire. Her thoughts confused, she had no home, no transportation, no food. How am I going to take care of Lexi, unless…?

  “Lexi, why don’t you try to get some sleep,” she said.

  “Mom, we don’t have sleeping bags, and it’s cold.”

  “I know honey, just put on as many layers as you can and try.”

  Lexi, yawned, “Can’t I stay here? It’s warm.”

  “No. Jack and I need to talk, and you need your sleep. Now scoot.”

  “Lexi, there’s a sleeping bag laid out in the big tent. Let me get the stove going, you’ll be warm enough.”

  Jack carried a small stack of wood into the tent and lit the stove. He’d have to check it every hour, but it would warm the tent in minutes. Lexi crawled into the sleeping bag. Dusty came in and settled down between her and the tent wall.

  “Dusty, guard.”

  She put her head down on her huge paws and sighed. Jack wandered back out to the fire.

  “Sweet girl,” he said.

  “She is, she’s everything to me. All I have left. I owe you and…”

  “Nope,” said Jack. “No talking like that. It’s not that I’m not tempted, I’m not dead. But I don’t think I could live with myself under the circumstances. Is that why you sent Lexi to bed?”

  “You think I’d talk about this in front of her?”

  “No. Thing is, we’re a long way from having to talk about that at all.”

  Rachael’s right eyebrow rose in question.

  “I’ve gone through my whole life trying to do the right thing—often the right decision is the hardest. Who am I, if I pull you out of that mess, then put you right back in it?”

  Her features relaxed, “You’re an odd man, is who you are.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Most men are pretty decent as long as we have the rule of law—and they’re not afraid of starving. Individual relationships…well, everyone can get mean when things aren’t working out right. We’re often meaner to people we know and love than we’d ever be to a stranger. But without the rule of law, the animal is very close to the surface.”

  “You’re not an animal, not in the way those other two were.”

  “Until this happened, I’d never killed anyone either, and as much as I hope that was the last time, I don’t believe it for a minute. Perhaps it’s because some of us are operating under a higher law than what the State represents. Maybe it’s just our indoctrination in Western values. I suppose we’ll find out as time goes on.”

  “Indoctrination?”

  “Sure. The entire country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Our basic morality comes from there. Our Constitution embedded our belief in the dignity of the individual and God-given rights into the fabric of our culture. Although it’s been shifting to something much darker, a nihilistic collectivism base on victim culture.”

  Jack poked at the fire, more to give him a moment to focus his thoughts than because the fire needed it.

  “Some towns with a strong leader will hold together, some won’t. The rule of law depends on society cooperating, and when everyone is fighting for survival, cooperation is likely to be in short supply. Even though now is when we need it most. There’s hope for the little towns where everyone knows everyone else. It’s harder to steal from your neighbor than a stranger. Even so, it will happen.”

  Jack poured the cooling water into plastic bottles then refilled the pot and returned it to the grill. He pulled the second pot off the grill and set it on the ground to cool.

  Rachael sipped her chocolate and considered the idea. She’d had enough second-hand experience with gang violence to convince her it w
ouldn’t take much to push the street gangs into full-scale violence. Not the usual turf wars, but against anyone who got in their way.

  “But surely the police will try to hold things together,” she said.

  “In the cities? Only if they’re interested in suicide. They’ve always been severely outnumbered. The City of New York has the largest police force in the country, something like thirty-five thousand cops. But the city has eight and a half million people. How many cops are willing to leave their families at a time like this? The only thing that kept the city from falling apart under normal circumstances was that most people were law abiding. When things blew up, they rarely went off all at once. Look at the riots over the last few years. I wouldn’t go near Seattle, Portland or Spokane, at least until we find out more about how widespread this is. From what you’ve said, you don’t have any place to go, and nothing to hold you to a plan?”

  “Well, I was heading to Seattle for a job as a Nurse Practitioner and part-time ER nurse. It’s a good job, but if what you say is true, then… Either I’m needed more than ever, or there’s no job.”

  “Nurse Practitioner! Well, you’re in better shape than I feared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If this is widespread, then there are no ambulances, no fire departments, no hospitals. They might get mobile military hospitals set up, but I don’t see how they’re going to support them. It takes fuel to run generators, and while there’s a lot of fuel around unless someone gets organized in a hurry, there won’t be any new fuel. The stuff that’s available, well it goes bad pretty fast. Besides the entire strategic stockpile of oil was only good for three months.”

  Jack paused for a moment, thinking. “Then again, it may be that ninety-nine percent of everything that used fossil fuels no longer works. If that’s the case, I suppose it’ll last a bit longer.”

  Jack moved the boiling water off the fire to cool.