Solar Storm: Season 1 [Aftermath Episodes 1-5]

by Richardson, Marcus

  Jay recognized by the tone of her voice that she wouldn't argue the point any more. "Well, if you're sure, then I trust your judgment." He winced. The sound of his own voice wasn’t nearly as convincing as he’d hoped.

  “I know…it’s not awesome timing but it could be huge.”

  Jay sighed. “I worry about you, that’s all,” he admitted. “I know, I know, it’s silly—I’m more at risk driving right now than you are in one of those planes. But I still worry.”

  “That’s why I love you,” she said, her smile evident even through the static.

  He turned into his neighborhood and rolled by the large Meadowood sign illuminated by a single floodlight. In the early mid-winter dusk, his headlights lit up a section of the street and the first few houses. It looked like a normal Friday night before Christmas—multicolored lights adorned the houses next to glowing icicles hanging from gutters and single candles glowed softly from several windows.

  The crust of snow on the ground provided the seasonal backdrop and Jay couldn’t help but smile. For a second there, his neighborhood looked like a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Then his headlights swept over a family milling around a minivan up ahead. Unconsciously, as if he were passing an accident on the road, he slowed. Instead of boxes and bags of presents, he saw a TV, coolers, winter coats and at least a half dozen backpacks bulging at the seams.

  Jay laughed. "Honey, check this out. So I pulled in the neighborhood and the Ralee’s are out in the front yard loading up their van with camping gear." He honked twice and waved as he rolled by. The family, so intent on loading their vehicle, never looked up. Jay watched Tim Ralee point back into the house and urge his oldest son to go fetch something.

  "Isn't it a little chilly to be camping?" Kate asked with her own chuckle.

  "Well, they're always out looking for the next adventure—maybe they want to see if they can find some sweet northern lights or something,” he said, raising both hands off the wheel in imitation of the hard-working, hard-playing Ralee.

  "Leah told me no one can see anything yet. This was just the radio event. They're wasting their time if that's what they're up to…"

  Jay shared another laugh with Kate as he turned down their street but the sound died in his throat when his headlights brought his own house out of the gathering darkness and flashed off the front windows. His eyes caught movement to the left of his driveway—Mac stood there in a white, fur-lined parka dressed for an expedition to Hoth.

  "Hey Hon, have to call you back.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Looks like Mac wants to go looking for a tauntaun.”

  “I would normally question a statement like that, but since you mentioned Mac I’ll just say good luck. Tell him hi for me.”

  Jay laughed as the car bumped over the curb and pulled into the driveway, tires crunching over frozen snow.

  “You headed to the hotel or staying at the airport?"

  "I'll just sack out here in the terminal. I've only got four hours, so it's not worth trying to find a hotel. The pilot’s lounge has cots, it's no big deal. I'll try to catch what sleep I can. Text you in the air,” she said, her voice sounding tinny and distant.

  "Okay, when should you be touching down in Hawaii?" Jay asked as he raised a hand in greeting to an enthusiastic Mac. Behind him, a huge dark shape filled the MacKinnon driveway. Jay sighed. Mac was definitely up to something.

  "It’s about a 6 hour flight I think. We should be arriving, oh…7:30 in the morning local time, so maybe 11:30 tomorrow morning your time?" Kate said, pulling Jay’s attention away from their eccentric neighbor.

  Jay shifted into park and turned off his car. "I can’t imagine spending that much time on an airplane in one of those cramped seats,” Jay said, suppressing a shudder.

  Kate laughed again, “It’s not so bad up on the flight deck—the 747s are huge…”

  Jay nodded at Mac through the window when the older man made an impatient gesture with his hands, the bulky gloves bobbing up and down.

  “Okay. I love you," he said after a moment.

  The line was quiet for a second, interrupted by a brief burst of static. He feared he'd lost the signal when her voice came back, filling the car with the sound, "I love you too."

  He reached to hang up with a smile on his face but the signal dropped before his hand got to the screen. Jay frowned, staring at the dash. His stomach tightened at the bad omen.

  "I was wondering where you were…” barked Mac as soon as the driver’s door opened.

  Jay grunted as he hauled his briefcase out of the front seat. "Hello to you too." He shut the car door and turned to face Mac and the huge truck parked behind him. “What the hell is that thing?"

  A slow smile crept across Mac's face. "That thing is my secret weapon. An M-35 Deuce and a Half. They put a shit-ton of ‘em up at auction a few years back and I've been retrofitting her at my bug out location."

  "I'm sorry, your bug what?" asked Jay stepping across the shared yard to inspect the huge vehicle.

  This thing has got to be close to ten feet tall!

  “Bug out location—where you run to when the shit hits the fan."

  Jay blinked. “Oh, of course.” He walked around the rear end of the truck. “Jesus Mac, this thing is huge—look at the size of these tires."

  "Yes she is, originally built in 1983, she can carry ten fully loaded troops and enough gear for a week. I had her bobbed last year."

  “Bobbed?”

  Mac put his hands on his hips and his voice took the tone of proud father. “Yeah, bobbed. Bobtailed. They go in and cut the ass end off, take out the rear axle.”

  Jay leaned around the side of the vehicle and noticed it wasn't much longer than the average full-size SUV. "It does look a little short."

  "Yeah, I didn't want to, but it makes her a lot more nimble. I can get in a lot more tight spots now and still maintain off-road capabilities. Plus, she's waterproof."

  "Waterproof?"

  "Well, sort of. I can drive her into the water up to the bottom of the windshield."

  "Are you serious?" laughed Jay. "Why the hell would you want to do that?"

  The smile fell from Mac's face, ringed by the gray fur-lined hood of his parka. "Haven't you been watching the news like I told you? The end is coming, brother." He looked back up the street. "Where's Kate?"

  "Oh, she's in L.A.—she says 'hi' by the way."

  "All things considered, shouldn't she be home by now?"

  Jay tried to dampen the sudden bit of anger that flared in his chest. "I'm touched you're concerned about my wife's whereabouts, but no she shouldn't be home. She picked up an extra flight early tomorrow." He shrugged.

  Mac frowned and scratched his chin with one ridiculously large mitten. "Where to?"

  "Hawaii," Jay said fumbling with his cold keys. His car chirped behind him as he found the right button.

  "Hawaii?" Mac blurted. "Christ on the Cross—that's no good at all, Cantrell. No good at all! She needs to get home."

  Jay eyed Mac. "Why? What the hell has got you so spooked? Your nonexistent coronal mass ejection?”

  “I’m no officer—I don’t get spooked.”

  “Mac,” Jay sighed, “there's nothing on the news—you're being paranoid."

  "No I'm not—some geek in a lab coat at NASA let it slip this afternoon: there is an ejection on the way. It's directed right at us and it knocked out a couple satellites, that's why we didn't know earlier. Only now the hackers have taken down damn near the whole internet…"

  Jay shook his head, standing on his front porch. "I've had the news on almost all day trying to stay on top of the radio interference issues at the library and I haven't heard anything. When did this pronouncement come out?"

  "Well, it's not official yet but—”

  Jay laughed as he picked up a small package next to the door. "I want to go in and have dinner,” he said reading the address label. The new iPad case he ordered a few days back had arrived.<
br />
  “I'll talk to you tomorrow, Mac. Try not to hurt yourself with that monster, okay?"

  “I'm serious!” Mac called after him. “I'm loading up tonight. You need to come with me, Cantrell. If Kate’s going to be out of the country, there’s nothing we can do to help her. But you either need to come with me to my bug out—”

  Jay turned and walked back, waving Mac to silence as he glanced around. “Would you stop yelling about bug out locations?"

  Two houses down Jay noticed another heavily loaded car in the driveway. Someone came out from the Danner house and threw a bag into the back seat of Todd Danner's little Hyundai.

  Jay continued to argue, but he felt his confidence waver at the sight of Todd's car all loaded up. "I don't even know what the hell that means, but you’ll get everybody all riled up again." He waved to Jose Cortegera across the street. Jose didn't notice Jay's wave and rushed to his truck and tossed a cardboard box into the bed. Jose took a quick look up and down the street and hurried back inside. Jay saw Maria waiting for her husband at the doorway, illuminated by light from inside the house. She had their firstborn, Esteban, on one hip and a travel bag in her other hand.

  The last time Jay had seen the normally unflappable Jose move that fast was during the previous winter's major ice storm. Jose worked as a lineman for ComEd and had been called up in the middle of the night on an emergency to repair a downed power line across town. Even then, with the wind howling and freezing rain stinging exposed skin in 40 mile an hour winds, Jose Cortegera simply lowered his shoulders and got to work without a complaint and minimal haste.

  "A rushed job is a redo waiting to happen. I don't have time for redoing work," Jose was fond of saying.

  Jay watched the Cortegeras for a long moment. He's spooked.

  "You expect me to sit here when the end of the world comes?" Mac laughed. He motioned toward the Cortegra’s house. “There’s a few here that get it, even if you don’t.”

  “Mac,” Jay began.

  “The rest of ‘em are sheep! I bet nobody in this neighborhood has more than three or four days worth of food in their pantry.” He turned to regard the people loading up cars, further down the street.

  Jay followed his gaze and was shocked to see just how many people were packing vehicles for what looked like long trips. Suburbans, trucks, sedans, and even a Mini Cooper had boxes and bags strapped on in ungainly and rushed packing.

  "What the hell…?" Jay muttered.

  Mac continued as if he hadn't heard Jay. “When everything goes to hell, they're gonna be starving and they're gonna be mad. I don't intend to be here. I'm offering you and Kate safe haven—"

  Jay turned away from the surreal and troubling activities of his neighbors. "When and if—and that's a big if—this thing hits, and I'm not even sure it will, we don't know how bad it will be," Jay started, holding up a hand to prevent further argument.

  "I assure you we can take care of ourselves. Thank you for the generous offer, Mac—seriously—but if Kate's flying to Hawaii, I doubt she’ll even make it home by Sunday.” He looked across the street at Jose, who nearly fell on a patch of ice as he struggled with another armload of gear for the back of his truck.

  “By then all this'll have blown over anyway…" Jay said, sounding nowhere near as confident as he’d wanted.

  Mac peered at him from under his fur-lined hood, his eyes narrowed. He looked calm except for the vein pulsing on his left temple. "You don't get it do you, Cantrell?” he asked in a puff of vapor. “It's not going to blow over. It's set to slam right into us.” He sighed and looked around.

  "Mac, come on. I tried finding out more at work today, but NASA and all the news sites on the internet were shut down. The hackers—"

  Mac raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, I can see you don’t believe me, even though can see plain as day what's going on here,” he said gesturing broadly at the neighbors. “At least promise me you’ll go get Leah. I can't stand thinking that she’ll be stuck out at that hippy school by herself—"

  "All right, that's enough, Mac. IU Brookville isn’t Berkeley or anything—for crying out loud, she’s studying astrophysics not basket weaving!” Jay raised his hands palm up in front of his chest. “You know what? That's enough. I'm not going to stand here and talk about my wife dying and leaving my child abandoned in the wilderness.” Jay started toward his house but couldn’t resist turning for one final comment. “Besides, I can take care of my family!" he snapped.

  He slammed the door to the garage, ignoring the protestations of apology from Mac on the other side. Deep down he knew the man cared about Leah and Kate, but Mac had no tact at all.

  Jay grimaced. Well, did have all the tact of a drill sergeant, which was only natural since…he was one.

  He dropped his briefcase on the table and tossed the keys on the counter. After a moment to gather himself and massage his temples with eyes closed, he felt better. First order of business was a beer. He definitely needed a beer. Jay clicked on the TV in the living room on his way to the fridge and ignored the commercial as he opened a Sam Adam’s Cherry Wheat.

  He leaned against the counter and sipped his beer, listening to the latest news about the solar flare and disrupted global communications.

  “We’ve all had issues with cell phones today, just ask any teenager—”

  The co-host laughed and smiled. “That’s true, we've heard of widespread Internet connection issues and social networking has seen record complaints from Facebook to Twitter, SnapChat, and everything in between.”

  “I'm sure selfie-sticks everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief,” droned the anchor before his wry grin faded. “On a more serious note, the hacker disruptions, led by the group calling themselves 'The Proletariat', have caused thousands of websites around the world to crash today, all under a massive, coordinate Denial of Service Attack, according to a source at the FBI's Division of CyberCrimes."

  His co-anchor picked up smoothly, "While serious and most definitely irritating, the hacker attacks pale in comparison to what the solar flare is doing—Channel 6 has learned that widespread radio disruptions are derailing more than just our phone calls and Facebook posts. An ambulance in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin suffered a critical GPS failure early this morning and a patient nearly died when radio communications, also compromised by the flare, sent the ambulance to the wrong hospital…” the local anchor reported.

  “Here in Chicago,” his partner commented, “there have been reports of several fires throughout the downtown area that went unnoticed due to what some are calling nature’s rolling blackouts.”

  “The good news, Diane," the anchor said, "is that eventually local crews contained every one of those fires.”

  “And the problems aren’t limited to the Midwest,” added Diane. “The governor of New York has issued an unprecedented request for people to put their phones down in a controversial move to free up bandwidth for cellular service remains to first responders…”

  Jay moved away from the TV and back into the kitchen, ignoring the continued ramblings of the anchors. There was definitely a problem out there. He pulled out his dinner from the fridge, only half-listening as the reporters explained a problem with UN translation services at the climate change summit.

  Jay smirked. Hiccups at UN conferences, mixed signals, and spotty cell phone coverage hardly amounted to something worthy of abandoning his home. As he reheated last night’s leftovers in the microwave, he glanced around the corner at the screen and read the scrolling text:

  …European Space Agency—over NASA's objections—prepared to announce ‘significant’ coronal ejection detected leaving the surface of the sun…details at the top of the hour…

  A blast of cold trickled down Jay’s legs as he stared at the TV. The reporters weren’t even mentioning the “breaking news” but he felt his pulse quicken. Jay left his plate in the microwave and stared at the scrolling line of text as it repeated itself once then disappeared, replaced with the latest updates about r
acial tensions in Chicago. The reporters joked about staring at the sun, then moved onto the daily political shenanigans from Washington.

  "He was right,” Jay said in a half-whisper. He stared at the garage door. Maybe after dinner he’d go talk to Mac after all.

  CHAPTER 5

  LEAH CANTRELL SIGHED AS she stared down at her physics textbook. The math didn't bother her, but she was already splitting her attention between homework—not due until Monday—and the TV in the corner of her small dorm room. She had the sound up trying to listen for news updates about the solar flare, but she found the idle banter from her roommate more than enough to distract her to the point of madness.

  She sighed and leaned back in her uncomfortable, school-provided chair—not much more than a barstool. “Hey Erin, can’t you plan your social calendar out in the quad?”

  Erin paused her phone conversation long enough to stick out the pink tip of her tongue. "No, I can't—those losers from 6B are in there playing Dungeons & Dragons or something."

  "Well, it's bad enough that the TV’s all messed up," Leah said gesturing at the static-filled TV, "but I can't concentrate at all on my homework with you talking dirty with Brett—"

  "Relax, okay?" Erin said as she dropped the phone on the bed. "I lost the signal, anyway. Stupid cell phone has been giving me so many problems today. I guess I need go to the Apple Store tomorrow.”

  Leah shook her head and turned back to her homework. "I wouldn't bother,” she muttered, “it's not your phone. It's the flare."

  "What flair?" asked Erin, looking down at her phone. “I don't have anything on it except this little case…”

  Leah closed her eyes before she answered. "The solar flare that hit us this morning? It's been screwing up radio signals and satellites all day today.” The blank look on Erin’s face convinced Leah to try a different tactic.

  “Did you try using the GPS on your phone today?" she said with more patience than she felt.