"That was amazing, Maggie." She coughed again.
The older woman tittered, blushing under the praise. "Oh, it wasn't anything special, just a little something I whipped together. It's the least I could do to pay you back for helping us out. If you hadn't come along, well, I just don't know what we would've done."
"Fixed the tire myself," muttered Jonathan between mouthfuls of soup.
Maggie waved her husband off with a snicker. "Oh, don't mind him, Kate—he gets grumpy when he's been too long without insulin," Maggie said with a smile.
"Margaret," Jonathan muttered, still bent over the soup bowl and glaring through bushy eyebrow.
"Oh, forgive me…I've broken your precious rule about talking to strangers again, haven't I?" Maggie said. She winked at Kate. "The fumes must be cooking my brains."
Jonathan rolled his eyes and went back to his soup slurping.
Kate smiled and glanced out the long window behind Maggie. The light faded fast in the desert. It would be dark soon. If she needed to gather firewood and prepare to make camp outside, she had to get going.
Maggie saw her glance out the window and smiled again. She reached out a hand and placed it light as a feather on top of Kate's.
"Now now, dearie, don't worry. You'll be staying in here with us tonight."
Jonathan choked on a mouthful of soup. His face changed colors into a mottled red as he sputtered in indignation.
"My goodness, Jonathan, 73 years old and you still can't eat your soup any better than a toddler!"
The old man said nothing but his hand curled into a fist, clutching the paper napkin on the table. He shifted his eyes to glare at Kate.
"I don't mean to be an imposition," Kate began. And I don't think any of us will survive sleeping in this rolling gas can.
"Nonsense!" Maggie replied. "You fixed that flat tire—we’d be happy to take you as far as we can—"
"That's enough, Margaret!" Jonathan blurted. "We can not be picking up every stray we find along the road or we'll never make it to Sam's place."
"Did I say anything about picking up stray animals? I'm talking about a young woman right here in front of us, who—if I may remind you—you drove right past last night in her hour of need. And now she has taken, out of the kindness of her heart, time to fix our vehicle.” She folded her hands on the little tale and looked down her nose at Jonathan.
Kate was grateful for the bandana over her face as she smiled. She couldn't tell if it was Maggie's tone or the fumes that made her think the cloth moving up and down on the old lady's face was so funny.
“We most definitely will take her as far as we can without slowing ourselves down. End of discussion," Maggie said with a firmness of voice that made Kate think of her old commanding officer. She adjusted her bandana and that was that.
Kate blinked, looking back and forth between Maggie and Jonathan as they stared at each other across the tiny kitchenette table like angry outlaws. The awkward silence stretched on for a few moments before Maggie turned her attention back to Kate and pulled the robe around her shoulders a little tighter, like a mother hen smoothing ruffled feathers.
"Now then," she said, her voice slightly muffled. "Since we'll have plenty of time for visiting, why don't you tell us about yourself, dearie. You said you were trying to get home? Where's home?"
Kate looked at her empty soup bowl. She adjusted her own bandana and said, "My husband and I live in Bloomington, Illinois, but my stepdaughter’s at college in Indiana."
"Jesus, that's halfway across the country," muttered Jonathan, managing to denote a smudge of sympathy in his voice.
"Jonathan Rommage, I will not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my home, do you hear me?"
Jonathan withered under her words and nodded, clearly understanding the threat behind his wife's voice. He swallowed and tried to sit up straighter.
"Well…we can take you as far as Missouri," he said in a voice full of resignation. "But you'll have to figure out a way across the Mississippi on your own."
Kate’s heart raced. Missouri! That was practically home. "Oh, thank you—thank you so much!" Kate gushed, the tears welling in her eyes caused by relief, not fumes. "I didn't know if I would make it home on foot—”
“There, there,” mumbled Maggie, patting Kate’s hand. "It's all right, child."
"Well, you still might not make it," Jonathan muttered.
"What?" Kate sniffed, wiping her eyes. "Why not?"
"You won't have heard then, dearie?" Maggie asked as she leaned over the table. "About all the troubles?"
Kate almost laughed. "I know about the solar flare and the CME," she said. "I'm an airline pilot—I was trying to land at Los Angeles when everything went down.”
Maggie looked at Jonathan who simply grunted and looked down at the table. The old lady turned her watery, enormous eyes back to Kate. "So you've been on the road the past week?"
"Yes, I drove through Phoenix and Flagstaff…Albuquerque…things are getting strange out there." She coughed again. "Then I ran out of gas."
Jonathan grunted. "At least you weren't towing a ton of dead weight behind you."
"Jonathan, not now," Maggie snapped.
"That little car of yours is killing what little fuel economy we get in this monster. You haven't even driven it in five years—” he began.
"Shush," she hissed. Maggie put her hand back on top of Kate's and gripped tight with a surprising strength. "I’m afraid it's gotten a lot worse than strange."
"How bad is it? Is the whole country down?" Kate asked, fear tightening around her heart.
Maggie nodded, pulling her hand back. "We haven't heard much, mind you, but what we have heard—mostly snippets of news from people when we get stuck in traffic snarls—"
"And that happens less and less these days," Jonathan added.
"We hear that things are falling apart faster than the government can put them back together," Maggie concluded.
Jonathan coughed. "Not that the government was any good at fixing things in the first place."
For once, Maggie agreed with her husband and nodded. "This is bigger—people are saying this is bigger than anyone can fix." She looked around, as if expecting someone to be hovering over her shoulder, listening to their conversation. “There's some who fear it's….global.” Maggie whispered "global" and pulled her robe tight across her withered chest.
Kate shivered. “That’s bad,” she muttered under her bandana.
Maggie handed Kate a tissue. "Shush now, there's no need to cry over it. We'll see you safe to the Mississippi—how far is it for you to get home from there, child?"
Kate looked into the eyes of the old lady, deadly serious again. "Close enough. I can walk it within two days, I think." She sniffed and wiped at her stubborn tears, angry at herself for showing such emotion.
“There, now…I’m sure you’ll make it home just fine,” offered Maggie.
Kate sniffed again. "I'm more worried about my daughter…"
"Well and who wouldn't be?" Maggie asked with a motherly smile. "I know, why don't you tell us about your family? It will help pass the time while Jonathan gets us on the road again."
“What? Me?” asked the old man, a cold beer in his hand from a mini-fridge tucked into the wall. He looked at Maggie, the beer, and Kate, then sighed. “Fine,” he muttered, putting the beer back.
"You'll see—once we get moving, the fumes go away. It's actually not that bad," Maggie said, patting Kate's hand.
Jonathan muttered to himself about wasting gas and dragging scrap metal behind them, but dutifully moved into the driver's seat and started the RV's engine.
Kate smiled and started talking.
CHAPTER 3
JAY GRITTED HIS TEETH against the jarring vibration. The wrecked police cruiser’s rear wheels were horribly out of alignment—Jay feared his spine would be too if he had to endure too much more. The faster he went, the more the car shook. He kept his speed under 40 to lessen the moaning from the
back seat.
In his heart, he knew the poor girl they called Becca would never survive. He just didn’t want her to die until he could pass her off to someone with medical training. If she passed, and they were still on the road home, what was he supposed to do with her body? Who would he tell? He hadn’t seen a cop since he got a lift from Officer Polczek days ago in Blooming Grove.
Jay wiped the back of his pine-scented glove against his nose. His stubbled cheeks scratched the waterproof fabric, the sound loud in his ears. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Haunted, bloodshot eyes stared back at him.
What's happened to you? That girl is dying and all you care about is how much she'll slow you down…
A glance at the passenger seat told him no one in the car looked their best. The kid with the bruised face—Leah’s friend Thom—stared out the windshield like a war veteran, watching but not seeing as the world moved around him. His face was a mottled mess of half-healed bruises and scabs from the beating he took defending Leah.
Jay clenched the wheel tighter. He hadn't been there to protect his own daughter. Jay swallowed—he’d seen how Thom looked at Leah. The boy was obviously in love with her; it would explain why he sacrificed himself for her, why he fought to defend the dorm, and why he stayed when everyone else left.
The other kid, Hunter, seemed to hang around for Becca’s sake. Jay flicked his gaze to the backseat, watching his daughter as she tended to the poor girl wrapped in blankets. Their patient’s face was pale as snow, her lips colorless. She already looked like a corpse, if not for the sheen of sweat on her forehead.
As Jay watched, Hunter gently whisked away a few strands of hair from Becca's forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and struggled to focus on his smiling face.
The girl’s death would be hard on all of them, but Jay knew it would hit Hunter the hardest. He turned his attention back to the deserted road.
Focus. It won’t do anyone any good to crash.
Not like he had much chance of doing that. Jay’s eyes moved out of habit, searching the road in front of him for hazards, flicking to the side and rear mirrors to monitor the locations of nearby cars—only there were none. They had the whole road to themselves. A few vehicles lay abandoned, parked haphazardly along sidewalks near looted stores, but for the most part, the only thing moving on the street besides their police cruiser was drifting snow.
Jay frowned at the white sheen of snow rippling on the wind as it blew across the road. The world had ground to a halt a few days after Impact. People stayed home and tried to see what might happen next, but when the realization came that no one was coming to the rescue, everyone freaked at the same time.
Aiden’s Crossing, the traffic-stop of a town they were driving through at the moment seemed to be no exception—the one-horse town looked deserted. Jay glanced at the dash. The thermometer read 24°. Anyone with any sense stayed inside, global crisis or no.
The car hit a pothole and everyone bounced and complained. Leah barked an expletive at her father to drive carefully when the patient moaned.
“Sorry,” Jay replied, biting back his rebuke of her language. It wasn’t the right time. “The road’s not in the best shape…”
“I guess we shouldn't expect to see any snow-plows any time soon,” muttered Thom from the passenger seat.
Jay swallowed again. No power meant no gas at gas stations. The food and water supply already ran dangerously low, as evidenced by the chaos back on campus. But Jay never thought about basic services like sanitation crews and snow removal. It was a good thing they were on the way home—one good snow-storm might shut down every road in the state. He gripped the wheel tighter and felt a trickle of sweat slip between his shoulder blades.
We need to go faster.
“Slow down, Dad—it’s too rough back here.”
Jay eased off the accelerator with clenched teeth. “Sorry.”
“Hey, there’s a bunch of people up there,” Thom pointed out, gesturing off to the right.
“Maybe they have medicine?” asked Hunter.
Jay took a quick glance and saw the furtive gestures and hunched shoulders. They’d spotted him too late, but ran for the road nonetheless. In the split second he took to look at them, he noticed one thing immediately—they were all young men. Jay hit the accelerator as the first rock sailed past the car.
“What are you doing?” asked Leah, draping her arms over Becca to keep her stable. “Slow down!”
“No—speed up! That guy’s got a gun!” warned Thom, one hand against the window. He ducked.
“Everybody hang on!” Jay hollered. He gunned the abused engine and the squad car responded like a wounded donkey. The car accelerated but shimmied wildly and a horrible grinding sound erupted from the rear wheels.
The sound of an exploding window took Jay’s mind off the car’s alignment troubles. Leah screamed, but looked unhurt in the mirror, despite the bits of glass in her hair.
"Is anyone hurt?" he yelled.
"Just go!" screamed Thom.
“Stay down!” Jay hollered over the engine. He swerved around an overturned dumpster blocking the lane and fishtailed on some black ice. Struggling against the jerking wheel, Jay barely maintained control long enough to get them out of range. The group of men on the edge of town raised arms and clubs in the air, venting impotent rage.
That was too close…we've got to pay more attention.
They drove in silence as the miles rolled by and the town gave way to isolated farms, dormant fields, and trees. Jay tuned out the muted conversation among the kids as they struggled to rationalize how their lives had changed so much so fast.
Driving on autopilot, Jay almost missed the sign pointing the way to Blooming Grove. Jerked out of his reverie about better days filled with sun and love and Kate’s smooth skin, he slowed down and turned.
“Where are we going?” asked Thom, a note of rising alarm in his voice. “I thought you said you lived in Indiana?” He glanced at the map in his hands. “I think this is taking us away from the main highway.”
“I know this place—we can get help for…” His eyes met Leah’s in the mirror. “There’s people here who can help.”
I hope.
They drove by snow-covered homes and burned-down buildings. Blooming Grove had changed—for the worse—in the two days since he’d had soup at the United Church of Christ.
Had it been only two days? It seemed like a lifetime ago that Logan and Shelly stood in line with Jay to step in out of the cold and have a hot meal before agreeing to help him steal a car. And here he was, rolling back into town in a stolen cop car. Jay resisted the urge to smile.
I wonder what Logan would say if he saw me in this thing?
Jay frowned, thinking of Shelly and how she’d robbed him at gunpoint. If I see you, I'll run you over.
“What happened here?” asked Thom.
“It’s like the whole town burned down or something, man,” added Hunter.
“I thought you said people here could help?” asked Leah. “This place looks worse than south campus.”
Jay looked at his daughter in the mirror again. He glanced out the window at the charred ruins of the United Faith Church of Christ. “It was here…I mean, I was in there a couple days ago and…there were so many people…”
“Hope they weren’t in there when it went up…”
Jay glanced at Thom. “There’s a fire-truck—see it down the street?” He turned the car without waiting for a response. “They’ll have an EMT or something who can help.”
“For sure,” agreed Hunter, though his voice was anything but confident.
They drove down a deserted residential street, empty houses watching them pass with the indifference of a cemetery. Only three homes had fresh tire prints in snow-covered driveways. Only one house had smoke drifting up from a chimney into the leaden sky.
As they approached the fire-truck, a man emerged from the passenger seat of the big red vehicle and raised a hand. He wore heavy
protective gear emblazoned with the town’s insignia from his head to his boots. Black soot smeared across most of his clothes dulled the bright-colored fabric.
Jay put the protesting cruiser in park and looked at Thom. “Keep them here. I’ll be right back.”
The cold air blasted his face and made him blink as he shut the cruiser’s bent, protesting door. He adjusted his fur-lined hood and turned into the wind to see the firefighter stop a few feet from the car.
“Jesus, your ride’s seen better days.” Recognition dawned in the tired man’s eyes. “You’re not a cop.”
Jay looked at the car. “I didn’t do this, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m trying to get my daughter and her friends home from college—they go to IU Brookville,” he said, jerking a gloved thumb over his shoulder. “We found the car. The officer abandoned it…”
“I can see why,” the firefighter whistled. “Doesn’t matter though—you’re not supposed to be driving that thing around—you’re no cop.”
Jay blinked. “I’m supposed to be at home with my wife, two states away, not risking my life to bring my daughter home. I’m not supposed to be watching the world go to shit around me.”
The firefighter stared at him a moment, seemingly oblivious to the biting wind. He sighed and his shoulders slumped slightly.
“Ain't that the truth.”
“Look—there was a fight on campus, the girl in the backseat,” Jay said, gesturing for the firefighter to have a look. “She was shot. I’m not a doctor—I don’t know what to do. Can you…?”
A pained looked crossed the creased, soot-streaked face of the firefighter. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Jay looked around. “Well, isn’t there anything you can do to help? I think—” He caught himself and lowered his voice. “I think she’s dying.”
The man in front of him stared down the street toward the remains of the church. “Lot of that going on lately.”
Jay turned and followed his gaze. “What happened?” he whispered.
“We don’t know, someone probably kicked over a heater or something in the night,” the man said, his voice drifting to Jay’s ears on the wind as if from a great distance. “It went up so fast. I lost two good men last night.”
Solar Storm: Season 1 [Aftermath Episodes 1-5] Page 33