Solar Reboot

by Matthew D. Hunt

  “That is exactly none of your business.”

  “It’s everybody’s business now. We don’t know what’s going on, and it’s safest for everyone to stay put. We don’t know who might or might not be involved in these plane crashes.”

  She couldn’t stop herself—she laughed out loud. His frown deepened. “You think I had something to do with the plane crash? Hilarious. Do you know what I do for a living? Do you know where I come from, my history?”

  “I don’t, and ain’t that part of the problem? Now listen, where’s your husband?”

  “I’m gonna ask you to get the hell off my porch.” She stepped back and began to swing the door shut.

  “Now hold on—” His hand shot forward and grabbed the doorknob, while his other seized her forearm.

  Cameron released the door to wrap her hands around his wrists, pulling his arms halfway through the doorway. Then she struck the door with the full weight of her body, slamming it on his elbows and making him cry out in pain. Kicking the door open again, she dragged his hand down and around, slamming his face into the jamb. She twisted his hand up just enough that she was reasonably sure it wasn’t sprained, then spun him once more and struck him in the throat with the heel of her hand—though not too hard. He fell to the ground, choking and gasping. Cameron leaned down and grabbed the pistol from his belt. Then she took the extra magazine from the pouch just beside it.

  “You really ought to button this in place,” she said. “It’s dangerous otherwise. Good luck on patrol out there.”

  She slammed the door as he was still struggling to get back to his knees.

  She’d have to move quickly now. He might or might not get it into his head to come after her alone, but even if he left he’d definitely come back with friends. She stuck the gun in her waistband and the mag in her jacket pocket, then hauled the rest of the supplies to the Jeep as fast as she could. She wanted to do one more sweep through the house and make sure she wasn’t missing anything, but she felt the time ticking by like gunshots. She jumped into the driver’s seat and hit the button to open the garage door.

  The street was clear, and she breathed a sigh of relief. But as she pulled out and turned right to head east toward the freeway, she slowed to a crawl. Out there on her front porch sat Bettie. The old woman’s gaze wandered back and forth, aimless, like she was waiting for something but didn’t know what it was. They focused on Cameron, though, as she pulled the Jeep to a stop and rolled down the passenger window.

  “Hey. I’m heading for the mountains. You want to come along?”

  For a long minute, Bettie thought about it. Then, “Let me grab my tooth brush.” She got off her rocking chair and headed for the house. The chair swung back and forth, empty, gently creaking in the silence of the street. As soon as Bettie walked inside, though, Cameron began to worry about how long the wait would be, and whether those idiots would try to interfere again. But within five minutes Bettie was coming out of her door with a bag. As Bettie climbed into the passenger seat and Cameron hit the gas, Bettie shot her an amused look and quipped “I wanna be Thelma.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Alex opened the car door and climbed out, but stayed next to it. One hand rested on the car door, the other on the roof. He could not tear his eyes away from the burning wreckage before him, nor could he force his muscles to put him back in the car and drive them away. An instinct told him to run forward, to see if anyone could be saved. Another part of his mind told him how stupid that was; there was only fire and twisted metal, and a terrible wound in the earth that stretched for a hundred yards. No one could have survived that.

  Another crash, much closer, drew him suddenly back to the present. On the other, eastbound side of the freeway, two cars had collided. Most likely the drivers had been as transfixed by the plane crash as Alex was. It wasn’t much, just a little sideswipe, and the vehicles coasted to a stop on the other side of the center divider. But rather than get out and exchange angry words, or insurance information, the drivers only sat and stared at the burning flames.

  That drew his attention back to the here and now. Quickly he looked back into the Mercedes, at Piper who sat in the passenger seat. Her face and both hands were pressed to the window; her phone lay on the floor, forgotten.

  “Piper.” She didn’t turn. “Piper!”

  Slowly she looked to him. Her eyes were filled with tears, and more had already left their streaks across her face.

  “Don’t look at it, Piper. Just keep your eyes off it.”

  “What happened?” she said. “Why did it go down?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But . . . were there people on it?”

  “I hope not. I don’t know.” Was it really a lie? Yes.

  “Are you going to go look?”

  Alex lifted his head out of the car again, surveying the wreck one more time. Maybe he was wrong. People survived under incredible circumstances. Some people fell out of planes with no parachute and somehow walked away. Maybe someone . . .

  He batted the thought away immediately. If anyone had been thrown clear of the crash, he could search for hours and never find them. And if anyone had still been alive in the plane when it went down, they weren’t any more. He could feel the heat of the flames even where he stood.

  “Hey! Hey, man! Can I get a ride?”

  The shout drew Alex’s attention, and he turned to see someone approaching from further down the freeway. A homeless man, draped in a thick parka despite the heat of the morning, his face covered in dirt and more than a few teeth missing. He waved a hand rapidly in Alex’s direction.

  “Hey, man, c’n I get a ride? I’m heading west for Philly, you going that way?”

  Alex swallowed, then got in the car. He slammed the door, threw it into drive, and hit the gas. The bum flipped him off as he passed, and Alex heard his angry shouts despite the roar of the wreckage.

  “What did he want?” said Piper.

  “To come with us. Don’t worry about it. We need to stop and pick up some supplies.”

  “What about the plane?”

  “The cops will come soon to take care of it.”

  “Should we call them?”

  “We can’t, Piper!” The words came far, far too harsh, and he regretted them immediately. In a softer voice he tried again. “I don’t have signal. Do you?”

  Through the tears that rose in her eyes at his voice, she looked down at her phone again. Slowly she shook her head.

  He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “They’ll get word, somehow. They found out about these things before cell phones existed, you know? They’ll take care of it.”

  Piper didn’t answer him. She just turned back and looked through the rear window, watching the orange glow that was even now fading over the tops of the trees.

  * * *

  They needed supplies, and they needed them quickly. Now Alex wished he’d picked them up after getting the car, but he’d been in too much of a hurry to get out of the city. They needed an army surplus store, outdoor survival stuff, just in case they had to camp on the road. The next sizable city on the road was . . . Bethlehem? Alex thought so, but he couldn’t be sure. He reached for his phone to look it up, then cursed quietly as he realized they still didn’t have Internet.

  “Hey, keep an eye on your signal, okay? If you get the Internet back, I need you to look up a surplus store in the next town.”

  No answer. Alex glanced right to see Piper still staring out the window. Her face was hidden, but in the mirror he could see tears still making their slow, silent way down her cheeks.

  “Hey. Hey, Piper.” He gripped her shoulder, squeezing it gently. “Piper, look at me. Come on, look at me.”

  Reluctantly she turned, swiping one sleeve across her eyes, another across her nose as she sniffed hard. “What?”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to feel bad about crying.”

  “I don’t . . . I mean, I’m not. I just keep seeing it. There were people. There had
to be.”

  Alex sighed and shook his head—not a denial of her words, but a simple expression of pain. “You’re right. I’m sorry, but you’re right. But it’s done now. There’s nothing we can do about it. So try to stop thinking about it.”

  “I can’t!” she cried. “I just saw it, Dad!” Anger made her tears brim closer to the surface, and they came faster now, her voice breaking with each word and coming only with effort.

  He looked out the window again, at the sky that was too purple. Beside him Piper kept sniffing, furiously trying to rein in her tears. Alex swallowed hard and spoke in a quiet voice. “I know it’s hard to forget. I know what it’s like to have those things flashing in your mind, over and over again, no matter.”

  Sniff. “You do?”

  “Sure. Most people my age do. My grandpa died in a plane crash a few years before you were born, in . . .”

  He let the words hang, and Piper looked at him expectantly. Then realization struck her like a thunderbolt, and she put a hand to her mouth. “Wait, what? I didn’t know that.”

  Alex shrugged. “Yeah, well. You never knew him, of course. And it’s not the sort of thing to bring up all the time. After it happened, I saw those images playing out over and over again in my mind. Didn’t matter if I was watching them on TV for the thousandth time, or if I was outside trying to get some space. I couldn’t forget it, and I kept picturing him in that crash, somewhere in those buildings.”

  Piper wrapped her arms around herself. “God. It must have been so much worse. But . . . how did you . . . I mean, how did it—?”

  “What made me finally stop thinking about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Alex gave her a little smile. “Actually, your mom.”

  She blinked and leaned forward, like a cat listening to a can opener. “That’s when you met Mom?”

  “About six months after, but yeah. She was on leave from her second tour, and you could imagine what things were like for her back then. When I saw her, it was like I could see the same thing in her eyes that I could feel behind mine. Both of us had things we couldn’t stop seeing, even though we wanted to. And we brought each other out of it. She was tough with me when she needed to be, and sweet when she needed to be. I tried to be the same. And it’s the same thing now. I’m here.”

  Piper didn’t answer right away, but just kept looking out the window. After a minute, she gave a long sigh. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Now we need to figure some stuff out. Starting with food. I hope you’re hungry.”

  A road sign told him Bethlehem was just ten minutes ahead, but right off the road he saw the blinking neon lights of a diner. He steered the Mercedes to the off-ramp and pulled into the parking lot.

  * * *

  Without a word, Piper went to sit at the counter. Alex lingered at the door, looking around the room. The diner was nearly empty. A few customers sat at tables in the corner, a few more at the counter near Piper. Most seemed to belong to the big rigs out in the parking lot. Everything was quiet. The silence jarred his nerves, and after a moment he realized why: diners always had the staple background noise of a radio in the background, or the low hum of a TV, and this place had neither. The two screens mounted near the ceiling were black. He rolled his shoulders and went to sit by Piper.

  The woman behind the counter took their order quickly and dropped it off at the kitchen with hardly a word, then came to fill Alex’s coffee cup. He sipped at it gratefully. Sleep had been fitful, and not long enough, and he suspected he’d be facing many more days of the same. Coffee would soon be almost as valuable as drinking water, and he decided to savor every sip of it.

  A couple of seats over, a grizzled old trucker sat munching on some hash browns. He saw Alex looking at him and nodded. Alex nodded silently in return.

  “Come from the city?” said the trucker.

  Alex blinked in surprise. “Yeah. Just this morning.”

  “Can always tell city folk. Especially since I know the regulars here. If you ain’t one of them, you’re a passer-by from the city.” The trucker nodded sagely at this, as though someone else had said it.

  Alex smiled. “Guess you got us there.”

  The trucker seemed to take that for an invitation, because he scooted one stool over until he was next to Alex. For half a second Alex tensed, but he quickly pushed the nerves aside. Just a friendly guy looking to talk, he told himself.

  “You came from the east, huh? Saw that plane crash by the freeway? Terrible.”

  Alex’s throat went dry, and he was suddenly very conscious of Piper by his elbow. He could feel the tension radiating from her, and tried to stall the line of conversation. “We passed it by. Were you coming from the east as well? Where you headed?”

  “Arizona. Or at least, that’s where I was headed. Who the heck knows what’s going on any more. I can’t raise my company on my cell, and no one there’s listening to the CB. If they’re even in the office. Maybe they went home, like sensible folks would. And now we got planes falling out of the sky, and God only knows how many people dying in crashes like that. Terrible times, just terrible.”

  “Excuse me,” Piper whispered, and Alex heard the sob in her voice. She got up and nearly ran for the restroom. Alex closed his eyes and sighed.

  The trucker watched her go, his face melting into a look of regret. “Aw, crap. I’m sorry, buddy. I didn’t even think of . . . I mean, I didn’t mean to upset her.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Alex, though he was sure he’d be dealing with the fallout of that comment for the rest of the day at least. “You said your company’s not picking you up on the CB. How about other rigs?”

  “Oh, they’re on, all right. It’s like our own network of carrier pigeons crossing the country. Name’s Gary, by the way. Pleasure.”

  “Alex. What are they saying?”

  Gary leaned back to look over Alex’s shoulder toward the restroom. Once he was sure Piper was gone he leaned back in, lips twitching mightily from the depths of his massive beard. “It’s dark stuff, son. Dark stuff. That plane ain’t the first to come down, and likely ain’t the last. Airports everywhere are shut down till they figure out what the hell’s going on. Storms are coming in, too. Big ones. Hurricanes in Florida, earthquakes in L.A., you name it. I just came through the midwest, passed through two towns I know in Kansas. This morning an F5 wiped them both off the map. Ain’t been able to talk to a soul there to see if they’re all right.”

  Alex’s throat grew drier with each word. He shook his head, drinking another long sip of coffee. What the hell is going on?

  “Some of the boys are saying it’s the end times, though I don’t know if I believe in all that kind of stuff.” Gary punctuated the declaration with another bite of hash browns.

  “Well, I appreciate you letting me know. Though, when Piper comes back . . .”

  “Lips are sealed, son. Piper, huh? Beautiful name.”

  Alex forced a smile. “Thanks. She hasn’t decided she hates it yet.”

  Gary chuckled. “Just about to hit the teens, right? Don’t worry. They’re bad, but not as bad as people like to say. I got two of my own, though they’re grown now. Gonna try to get them on a HAM as soon as I can find one.”

  Alex winced. Their cabin in the mountains had a HAM. He’d meant to tell Cameron to keep it on, but the moment he’d actually reached her on the phone, the thought had completely fled his mind. He’d have to keep an eye on the cell signal and try to text her if he could—or hope she’d think of the HAM on her own.

  “How far west you heading?” said Gary.

  “Seattle area. We’ve got a cabin out in the woods.”

  Gary gave a low whistle. “That’s a long drive. Any place you can hole up a little closer, until this all blows over?”

  “Who’s to say it will? Besides, my wife’s there. She’d kill me if I didn’t try to bring Piper back ASAP.”

  “I hear that. But yo
u keep yourself away from cities, hear? If I keep going to Arizona, I ain’t going through any place with a population bigger than a thousand. People are gonna get crazy, if they haven’t already, and more so the worse it gets.”

  “You’re probably right. We’ve got supplies.”

  “Get more,” said Gary. Then he straightened suddenly. Alex glanced to his right and saw Piper emerging from the bathroom, still swiping at her nose with a tissue.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said, once she took her seat beside them again. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve got a heck of an old man here,” said Gary, clapping Alex on the shoulder. Piper glanced up at him, then ducked her gaze again. “Sounds like the two of you are gonna have a lot of fun on the road. Make sure you take a second to see some sights, will you? He sounds like a bit of a worrywart. Can’t let him suck all the fun out of the drive.”

  Piper chuckled and looked up once more, smile reaching all the way up to crinkle her eyes. Alex gave Gary a grateful nod. The trucker beamed, rummaging in his pocket.

  “You’re young, so I’ll bet you haven’t seen half the sights the ole U.S. of A. has to offer. They’re something else, I’ll tell you. Here’s something to help you find them.” His hand emerged from the pocket, holding a small furry object. “That’s a jackelope foot. Helps guide you where you need to go, and it’s dang good luck besides.”

  Piper took the thing with a look of confusion. “A jackelope? What’s that?”

  Gary’s eyes went wide, his mouth hanging open in a perfect picture of shock. “Why . . . why, you never learned what a jackelope was? Heck, what do they teach you all in school these days? You don’t seem like no slouch, son. You must have shown her a jackelope or two?”

  Alex kept his face stone serious. “Of course I have. Piper, don’t you remember? We saw some jackelopes when you were five.”

  “Oh, five,” said Piper, rolling her eyes. “Like I’m going to remember back then. What do they look like?”