EDEN

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Could be atmospheric,’ Cody finally forced himself to break the silence. ‘Maybe some kind of temperature anomaly that’s blocking signals?’

  Jake looked across at Reece, who shook his head, his black fringe swaying across his eyes.

  ‘It’s possible, but unlikely. Temperature inversions in water can create channels of silence where submarines like to operate, and similar things can happen in the atmosphere but not with enough variation to block all signals. Something would always get through.’

  ‘What about fossil fuels running out?’ Bethany asked. ‘Oil runs everything, right?’

  ‘Wouldn’t stop the broadcasts so fast,’ Jake said. ‘There’d be generators running, nuclear power stations would still supply fuel to cities and so on. We wouldn’t be cut off so quickly.’

  Bobby Leary raised a hand, his face pinched with concern.

  ‘What about a nuclear war?’ he said in a voice that seemed hushed, as though he were afraid to raise the possibility.

  Jake looked across at Bradley.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the soldier said. ‘CFS Alert’s monitoring equipment would have recorded the blasts, and there would have to have been hundreds of them to silence literally everything. Every city would have needed a direct hit. If that had happened we’d see it in the atmosphere even out here, the smog and debris and from so many cities burning.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Bobby said, ‘although I’ve heard that nuclear weapons emit an electromagnetic pulse that can fry electronics, shutting them down for good. Maybe that could have….’

  ‘It wasn’t a bomb,’ Charlotte said simply.

  Everybody fell silent as Charlotte kicked off the bench and landed with a thump, staring into space.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Jake asked.

  ‘The aurora, last night,’ she replied. ‘It coincided with the loss of signals from outside?’

  ‘Roughly,’ Cody agreed.

  ‘We lost satellite communication at the same time that the aurora started,’ Jake added.

  Charlotte ran a hand through the thick tresses of her hair then turned to face them.

  ‘I know what happened,’ she said finally. ‘It’s why I tried to shut the power down here, and why it came back on all on its own. It was caused by something known as a Coronal Mass Ejection.’

  ‘A what?’ Bradley uttered.

  ‘A solar storm,’ Charlotte explained. ‘Giant blasts of solar material a thousand times larger than our planet normally held in loops of the sun’s magnetic field. Some of these loops become large enough that they break free of the solar surface and blast across the solar system. They occur every day, but most times we don’t know anything about them as the Earth’s magnetic field deflects any that head directly for us, causing the aurora borealis and aurora australis as waves of charged particles batter our atmosphere.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bobbie said. ‘So far, so normal, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlotte agreed, ‘but just a few years ago NASA took the unprecedented step of making a global warning about the possibility of solar super-storms over the next decade or so. The sun works in eleven year cycles, pulsing up and down in its level of activity. If a major super-storm coincided with a weakened magnetic field here on Earth, which is what we’re experiencing right now, then there would be nothing to deflect the storm itself.’ She looked across at Jake. ‘It would strike the Earth’s surface, perhaps for hours.’

  ‘In English, for Christ’s sake,’ Bradley shot at her. ‘What the hell’s happened?’

  ‘It’s like the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon,’ she said, ‘but many orders of magnitude greater and across the entire planet.’

  Bradley stared at her. Beside him, Sauri spoke. ‘The whole planet?’

  Charlotte nodded, her brow furrowed.

  ‘The huge power of the blast bathes the atmosphere with charged particles. They in turn hit ground level and strike power grids, navigation devices, computers, cell phones — anything with a current running through it. The extra power overheats the circuit, whatever it is, and either melts it or blows it up. Silicon chips run virtually everything, and without them… ’

  ‘There’s no power, no electricity,’ Reece finished the sentence for her.

  ‘Instantly?’ Bethany asked, and was rewarded with a nod from Charlotte.

  ‘How could it happen across the whole planet?’ Cody asked.

  Charlotte glanced out of the window into the darkness.

  ‘The storm lasted for hours, and the Earth revolves as it moves through space in orbit around the sun. That storm could have hit pretty much the entire planet, enough to take out every single industrialised nation. ‘

  Cody felt a new and nauseating pulse of alarm thread its way through his body.

  ‘But the authorities must have known about this. They must have had some kind of contingency plan?’

  Charlotte scoffed in disgust.

  ‘NASA and the European Space Agency have been shouting about the dangers of a major solar storm for years. Every administration has simply ignored them. Governments across Europe ignored them. In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences published a report detailing the potential collapse of the United States technological base and the subsequent fall of civilisation as we know it.’ She shook her head. ‘Nobody took any notice.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Jake said. ‘The population isn’t going to disappear because of this. They’ll rebuild the infrastructure. They’ll get the power back on, get things moving again, right?’

  Reece shook his head.

  ‘It’s not a problem of technical repair. It’s an issue of scale. We’re not talking about a few transformers popping or a couple of GPS satellites going off line. It’s every single electricity-reliant system on the planet. Power grids and stations, financial systems, water plants, air travel, transport, farming, communications, computers — everything. There’s no way the whole thing could be repaired in time to prevent a collapse. With no power there will be no heat, no light, no fresh water from taps, no hospitals, no military, no nothing. Within days people will be suffering from starvation and dehydration. They’ll eat mouldy food, drink contaminated water. Sickness will emerge, and from that, pandemics. Make no mistake about it: if Charlotte’s right about this storm then everything’s about to go to hell.’

  ‘How would you know all of that?’ Bradley snapped.

  ‘I’m a prepper,’ Reece replied. ‘My folks lived out in Montana, spent their entire lives waiting for some goddamned apocalypse that never came. Oil running out, new Ice Age, super volcanoes — you name it, they worried about it. Didn’t worry about smoking though, which was what got them both in the end. I learned a lot from them over the years and kept a little emergency stash just in case. Trouble is all my damned survival gear is back in Great Falls.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bradley uttered. ‘That’s why you’re so damned sociable.’

  ‘How come this hasn’t happened before?’ Bethany asked Charlotte.

  ‘It has,’ Charlotte said. ‘In 1859 the Carrington Event, a major geomagnetic solar storm, hit the Earth. The aurora was visible even over the Caribbean. They were so bright during the night over the Rocky Mountains that miners began preparing breakfast, believing the sun to be rising behind the clouds. Telegraph systems across the United States were totally blown, often shocking the operators and settling paper alight, and the telegraphs often carried messages even after they’d been unplugged, such was the charge.’

  Cody’s mind focused on Danielle and Maria as Charlotte went on.

  ‘It happened again in 1989, when a minor storm took out the Hydro-Quebec power grid for nine hours. This isn’t a rare occurrence. It’s just that in recent decades we’ve become so reliant on electrical energy that we’ve become vulnerable to these storms.’

  ‘Couldn’t they have sent a warning?’ Bobby asked her. ‘The government I mean, or people watching the sun? That’s your speciality, right?’

  ‘Yeah, it is,’
she agreed. ‘But it depends on the energy of the blast. Normally they take three or four days to reach the Earth, plenty of warning time. But the storm in 1859 got to us in seventeen hours because a previous, smaller event had cleared the path between the sun and the Earth of solar debris and particles. The sun is currently at its solar maximum, at its most ferocious. If this recent storm was also ejected after a smaller outburst then it could have travelled here in twelve hours or less. There would be no time. The best that governments could do is attempt a shut down of the global power system to mitigate the damage, but even that might not work if the storm was powerful enough.’

  Bradley Trent slapped his own head with his hand. ‘I thought you damned people were supposed to be geniuses? You’re telling me that overnight the entire planet’s gone to hell and we’re stuck up here on our own?’

  Jake looked at the team around him and his gaze fell on Cody.

  Cody rubbed his head with thumb and forefinger as a dull ache spread between his eyes.

  ‘Without power and infrastructure, food will run out in a matter of a few days,’ he said, hating the sound of his own words as images of Maria filled his mind. ‘Fresh water will disappear from cities as the pressure in the system is lost. No central heating and as it is winter most of North America will freeze. People will try to flee the cities, searching for food and water. Federal and State government will be totally overwhelmed. They’ll try martial law but it won’t work. There are nearly four hundred million people in the United States and without modern farming and transport they’ll be facing mass starvation in just a few days.’ He hesitated as the enormity of what was happening struck him. ‘The same things will happen across the globe, in every country, to billions of people.’

  An image of Maria’s face, smiling and laughing on the computer monitor, swelled in his mind as pain pinched at the corners of his eyes.

  Cody looked up at Jake. ‘Jesus, we’ve got to get out of here, right now.’

  Cody turned and burst out of the accommodation block and across the ice, scrambled up a bank near the edge of the compound until he looked out across the dark and barren plains toward the south where sheer cliffs and mountains maintained a lonely vigil against the Arctic storms.

  Across the horizon, a faint glow of pink light shone like the distant star that it was.

  The bitter chill bit deeply through his three sweaters as a fine hail of snow swept across the ridge before the wind, but he felt nothing but a horrified numbness that encapsulated his body in a rigor of despair. Cody’s legs failed and buckled beneath him as he crumpled to his knees in the snow, his gaze fixed upon the feeble rays of sunlight sweeping the heavens a world away.

  The thought of his little girl trapped in a world collapsing into anarchy and despair filled him with an acidic horror that scalded through his veins.

  ‘Oh God, what have I done?’ he gasped.

  Tears spilled from his eyes, running as far as his cheeks before they froze into globules of ice.

  Foot falls crunched through the snow behind him, and Cody swiped a sleeve across his face as Jake joined him on the ridge. Cody did not look at Jake, his eyes glued to the distant sun as though its light were the only thing keeping him alive.

  A heavy Arctic Jacket fell gently across his shoulders as Jake laid it there, ice crystals pattering against the fabric as they skimmed through the frigid air. Cody reluctantly pushed his arms into the sleeves as he heard other footfalls joining them on the ridge.

  Jake slowly squatted down on the ice beside Cody and stared out toward the distant sunlight.

  ‘You know that we can’t leave here, Cody,’ he said. ‘It’s much too far. We’d never make it.’

  ‘The snowmobiles,’ Cody snapped. ‘We’ll tow supplies.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘We couldn’t take enough fuel and food with us. It’s more than a thousand miles to the nearest settlement. We’d die long before finding anybody.’

  Cody felt the rage of a lifetime swell inside him, as powerless to escape as he was. It seethed and seared and then imploded into helplessness.

  ‘I can’t leave them,’ he managed to rasp. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You already did,’ Jake said. ‘But right now all you can do is stand up.’

  Cody looked at Jake, who stuck out a thickly gloved hand.

  A thousand conflicting thoughts and memories passed in utter silence through Cody’s mind. He wanted to leap off the ridge and start running south. He wanted to punch Jake in the face for not understanding. He wanted to find a gun and turn it on himself for his stupidity and his selfishness. He wanted to die. And he wanted to live.

  Cody took Jake’s hand and got to his feet.

  ‘We need a plan,’ Jake said.

  ***

  8

  Week 7

  My dearest Maria,

  I don’t know where to begin.

  It is hard to write these words. Something inside of me wants to destroy everything, to burn and break in fury at the cruel blow that fate has delivered us all. My every thought is with you. I cannot sleep for the fear that infects me, of what you may be going through and for rage at my inability to help you. Nothing in my imagination could have prepared me for such terrible suffering, yet I know that it pales into insignificance compared to what you must be facing right now.

  Despite our shared horror at what has befallen mankind, we have managed over the past few days since the solar event to formulate a plan of action. Jake has become the rock of our team almost overnight. He has, I suspect, the least of concerns as he has no family to worry about. Bobby, an orphan, appears also to have risen to the challenge. The rest of us labour through our duties like robots, unable to free our thoughts from family and loved ones. For all we know, as we work our cities burn and citizens are dying in countless numbers.

  Like all of them, I can only hope and pray that somehow the spirit of human cooperation and companionship that allowed us to rise above our fellow species on this planet will shine through once again, and save those dearest to us from the unimaginable fate of succumbing to the disaster that hangs over us all.

  *

  ‘We’re on our own.’

  Jake’s voice had sounded small in the immense darkness outside the observatory.

  Cody had stood alongside Bethany, the rest of the team beside them. Hoods raised, puffs of their breath billowing out into the cold air. The entire group had been overwhelmed with a sombre resignation that had reminded Cody of the soldiers who had fought in the trenches of the First World War or stormed the beaches of the Cotentin on D-Day: still alive and yet doomed. The futility of their situation had hit hard but they had remained silent as Jake spoke.

  ‘We’ll shift the rest our gear to the Alert base and live there permanently. There are more resources, the fuel tanks are larger and we’ll be able to monitor the airwaves using their equipment. We can only hope that somebody’s still out there that can make some kind of rescue attempt.’

  Nobody had argued.

  ‘We’ll re-route all power to the smallest accommodation block to conserve fuel. Everything but the snowmobiles can freeze to hell for all I care. Brad? How much fuel does the base hold?’

  Bradley had shrugged. ‘Two or three month’s when full, about half that right now.’

  ‘Good,’ Jake said. ‘That’s for the whole base. We might last a year or more if we conserve it down to a single building. We’ll need to create an inventory of the remaining food and then take a good look at some of the snowmobiles they’ve got there. It’s a long shot but maybe, somehow, we can figure out a way to drive them far enough south to get us out of here once the winter breaks.’

  ‘I thought you said that was impossible?’ Charlotte had asked. ‘That we couldn’t carry enough fuel?’

  ‘It is,’ Jake had admitted, ‘at the moment. But staying here indefinitely is what’s really impossible. Maybe we can jury rig one of the vehicles to carry enough fuel to get us down to Eureka.’

  Cody had ment
ally pictured the outpost of Eureka, hundreds of miles away on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island. No longer permanently occupied, it would likely hold stores and supplies, perhaps even fuel.

  ‘Let’s get to it,’ Jake had clapped his gloved hands in the darkness, the sound echoing out into an icy oblivion, and in that one motion had condemned the team to a winter north of the Arctic Circle.

  *

  The interior of the storage facility at CFS Alert was utterly black as Bradley Trent unlocked a side door and slipped inside, Sauri close behind. The door slammed shut with an echo that chased around the big metal building.

  Bradley flicked on a flashlight and the beam sliced through the darkness, illuminating ghostly tendrils of diaphanous mist that swirled on the freezing air and glistening ice clinging to the interior walls like galaxies of tiny stars. Crates and boxes were stacked high on pallets, marked with labels that denoted the contents: jackets, boots, snow chains, bathroom necessities.

  ‘Where’s the food stored?’ Bradley asked.

  Sauri gestured toward the far side of the building, where ranks of empty metal racks stood near a wall that faced the accommodation block. Bradley hurried over, his flashlight sweeping the empty racking.

  ‘Jesus, they cleared us out.’

  Sauri said nothing as Bradley hunted up and down the racks and rifled through nearby cardboard boxes. The soldier lifted a tin from one of the boxes and stared at it in disbelief. In the darkness and in the harsh beam of the flashlight, his sudden laughter seemed almost demonic.

  ‘They left us the biscuits!’ he roared.

  Sauri said nothing as Bradley turned and hurled the tin against the wall of the building with a crash of cold metal against cold metal. The tin rattled to the floor as Bradley hammered a gloved hand against his head.

  ‘Why didn’t they come and get us?’ he shouted. ‘Why leave us here to rot?’

  Sauri looked at his companion for a few moments. ‘We won’t rot. Much too cold.’

  Bradley stared at Sauri for a long beat. ‘Well thanks genius, glad to see your cup’s still half goddamned full.’