Solar Reboot

by Matthew D. Hunt

  “There was a loose post about a quarter mile away,” said Bill. “Looks like the bear pushed the fence over there. No way to know it woulda done that.”

  “Sure,” said Cameron, nodding. Of course Bill could have checked the fence posts, but it wasn’t worth arguing about now. “We’ll go and check the rest of it for any other loose posts along the line.”

  “Fair enough,” said Bill.

  “We’re also going to need to post guards,” said Cameron. “Two, always, on rotations.”

  Everyone went quiet, looking around at each other. Aubrey was the first one to speak. “But everyone already has jobs.”

  “They’ll be in addition to normal jobs,” said Cameron. “I’ll stand watch, same as Wade. Russell, Hernando, I’d appreciate it if you stepped up.”

  “Sure,” said Russell. Behind him, Hernando nodded.

  “Two during the day, two at night,” said Cameron. “The night watch gets to sleep the day after their rotation on guard duty.”

  “And I’m in charge of the rotations?” said Bill.

  Cameron winced inwardly. “You’re the head of security.”

  Bill’s mouth twisted. He’d noticed she hadn’t said Of course, or even Yes. But he didn’t press it. “Fine. I’ll work out a schedule.”

  “Always two. We’ve got three rifles. At night each guard can have one. But during the day the hunters will need two, so the other guard will take Scott’s shotgun, and everyone carries handguns, all the time.”

  “I thought handguns didn’t work against bears,” said Aubrey.

  “There’s other animals out there besides bears,” said Wade. “Wolves, cougars. Other people.”

  That sent a chill rippling through the room. “We’re not going to shoot people,” said Aubrey.

  “Of course not, if they’re peaceful,” said Wade. “But they might not be. And everyone’s a little bit more friendly when you’re showing a piece.”

  That drew a bark of laughter from Bill. “Dang, you thought I was a jerk for saying things like that. I guess your boyfriend has special privileges.”

  Wade shot out of his chair and took two steps towards Bill. Cameron got up and snatched the back of his shirt, dragging him around. “Knock it off, Wade.” She stepped past him right in front of Bill—who, to his credit, didn’t back away, though it seemed clear he wanted to. “Bill, you’re in charge of everyone’s safety. Maybe don’t make things more dangerous by being a complete asshole. Everyone else, we’re not turning into an army. We’re not putting guns in the hands of trigger-happy idiots. But today a bear broke into the cabins. Thank god it came for the clubhouse and our food. What if it had gone for one of the cabins? Someone could have died. All we’re doing is making sure that doesn’t happen next time—if there even is a next time. Got it?”

  A slow, quiet murmur of assent rippled through the room.

  “Good. No one leaves the fence line alone, and with a firearm more powerful than a handgun. That’s all we got. Everyone get back to it—or take today off, if you want. It’s been stressful, and we deserve it.”

  Everyone drifted away. Cameron brushed past Bettie and walked out into the rain, alone.

  * * *

  She didn’t head back for her cabin, but instead headed for the tree line and took a little walk through the woods, enjoying the relative shelter the branches gave from the rain. If she were honest with herself, it wasn’t the woods she wanted—she’d already spent hours beneath the trees earlier when she was hunting with Aubrey. But if she went back to the cabin, Bettie would want to talk to her, and right now she wanted to be alone.

  “Cam!”

  Her jaw clenched. So much for that.

  Wade approached, jogging to catch up to her. “Where you going?”

  “For a walk.”

  “You’ve been out all day.”

  Cameron shrugged and turned to walk on. Wade fell into stride next to her.

  “It’s smart,” he said. “Posting guards. I know it feels like Bill’s fear-mongering horse shit, but it’s smart.”

  “I know,” said Cameron.

  “It’s not going to be long before people start getting desperate. Everything on the radio makes it sound like it’s getting worse and worse out there.”

  “I know,” said Cameron, a bit too much venom in her voice. They’d all heard the scattered radio reports. They didn’t come often, and only lasted a few minutes at a time, but word spread quickly whenever voices came through the static. No one had figured out how to restore the national power grids, and things were starting to get desperate in a lot of the cities.

  Wade studied her from the corner of his eye. He probably thought she didn’t notice, but she did. Cameron knew she often gave the appearance of being lost in thought, and when she did, people didn’t think she was paying attention to her surroundings. It had been that way a long time, and people always used to comment on it in the service. What they didn’t realize was that she was always paying attention to what was going on around her, trying to use it to pull her away from her thoughts. When a lot was on her mind, she was at her most observant.

  “I can’t imagine what it must be like out there for someone right now,” said Wade in a low voice.

  Cameron barely kept herself from shaking her head. He was subtly hinting at Alex and Piper, but Wade had about as much subtlety as a brick. If he wanted to talk around it, though, she wouldn’t stop him. “I’m sure it’s pretty hard. At least we’re safe here.”

  “Yeah. But even this isn’t exactly peachy. The bear, the weather. Guard duty, for chrissake. Everyone can see you’re taking a lot on your shoulders.” She gave him a look, and he shrugged. “I’m just saying, I’m here. You know? We were both in the service. We both know what it’s like to have a lot riding on you, and to be worried about other people.”

  All right, enough subtlety, thought Cameron. She looked him dead in the eye. “Alex is going to bring Piper home,” she said. “I know it. I’m not worried about it. I’m only worried about keeping the cabins here until he does.”

  Wade pursed his lips, and then raised his hands as if he was surrendering. “All right,” he said. “No problem. Just offering.”

  He turned and walked away, heading back for the cabins. Cameron watched him go for a moment before she turned and walked back off into the trees. She wondered briefly if he knew she was lying.

  CHAPTER 20

  The truck was dead silent as they drove away from the wreckage of Broadus. The road turned west just south of the town, and the flash flood passed harmlessly by them. Alex tried not to look back at it, tried not to see the cars and bits of houses floating on the tide, and wonder how many people were caught in the waters.

  The shock began to fade, and he blinked hard as he realized not a word had been spoken since the town. He looked at the couple in the truck’s front seat. Both of them had their gaze fixed on the horizon ahead, as though they weren’t even aware of his existence.

  “Thank you,” said Alex quietly. “We would have … thank you.”

  “Of course,” said the man driving. His black hair hung down to his shoulders, resting on a faded red and white flannel shirt. His knuckles on the wheel looked soft and free from calluses.

  The woman riding shotgun loosed a half-sob, covering her mouth with one hand. The driver reached over and took her left hand in his right, squeezing her fingers in his own.

  “I … did you know anyone?” said Alex.

  “No family, but a lot of friends,” said the driver. He glanced over his shoulder at Alex, but not for long. The rain had intensified, and the road wasn’t well-maintained. “I’m Graham, by the way. This is my wife, Willow.”

  “I’m Alex. This is Piper, and Denny.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “New York. But our home’s in Washington. That’s where we were headed.”

  “On foot?” Graham shook his head. “You’re brave or crazy.”

  “We had a car, but it got wrecked. The ra
in.”

  “Well, we’ll take you to the reservation,” said Graham. “We were headed that way ourselves, though we weren’t planning on getting on the road till tonight. I can’t go farther than that.”

  “I understand, of course,” said Alex. “We’re incredibly grateful.”

  “No problem,” said Graham. He shook his head, looking at the storm outside. “All this rain, and almost summer. I never thought I’d live to see anything like that flare. I mean, it was only a matter of time, but the odds …”

  Alex and Denny looked at each other, frowning. Denny shrugged. Piper barely seemed aware that a conversation was taking place. “What do you know about the solar flare?”

  “Not enough, but a bit more than most,” said Graham. “I’m a meteorologist. Actually I was a weather guy on a local station, which broadcast out of Broadus. We got a warning almost as soon as the flare went off. A lot of the bigger orgs tried to warn people—NASA got on the horn about it, everyone was trying to say this was going to be big. But I don’t think they knew just how big it was going to be, and D.C. didn’t take it seriously. I guess they thought some crazy scientists were trying to live out their Armageddon fantasies.”

  “Armageddon,” said Alex. He snorted. “Sounds about right. So what is this? I thought solar flares were common. Is this one just bigger than normal?”

  “Bigger than normal, but not even close to the biggest,” said Graham. “There’s bigger ones all the time, but you gotta realize, the odds of one doing this are practically non-existent. The sun is huge, in case you hadn’t noticed. If it were a basketball, Earth wouldn’t be a ping pong ball, or even a marble. It would be smaller than a pea.”

  “Small target,” said Denny.

  “Exactly. Flares send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation all the time, but they’re like needles firing out in a straight line, and Earth is a long, long way away. It’s like spinning in a circle in the middle of a football field, blindfolded, shooting a sniper rifle every few seconds. Even if someone’s standing on the edge of the field, the odds you’ll actually hit them are tiny. But eventually, even a blind man gets lucky. Heck, two years ago there was a flare twice as big as this one—but it was on the other side of the sun.”

  Alex shuddered. “You mean this could have been twice as bad?”

  “No, man. Twice as strong is a million times as bad. This flare just sent a glancing blow off the edge of our atmosphere. You know Earth’s got a magnetic field, right? Well, that’s what keeps us from being nuked by the sun’s radiation. But that glancing blow disrupted the field, and that’s why the flare had the EMP effect. Took out all the electronics. And meanwhile, it sort of … cooked the atmosphere a little bit. Messed everything up, like climate change kicked into fast forward. If the solar flare had been even ten percent stronger, it could have wiped us out. Still might, the way things are looking.”

  Piper’s attention was finally drawn to the conversation. “How do you know all this? It hasn’t happened before, has it? I think I would have learned about that in school.”

  “Huh. You’d think,” said Graham. “But there’s been five mass extinction events in Earth’s history, and we’re not a hundred percent sure what a couple of them were. Schools don’t think it’s very helpful to tell kids, ‘Hey, all life on the planet could be wiped out in an instant, and there’s no way to tell when it’s gonna happen.’”

  “Graham,” said Willow reproachfully. She wiped a couple of tears from the edge of her eyes. “You’ll scare the girl.”

  “It’s fine,” mumbled Piper. But her eyes were wide with fear.

  “So if you know what’s happened, do you know what’s still in store?” said Alex. “Is there an end to all this?”

  “That’s … a little harder to know,” said Graham. “People have been running simulation models on this sort of thing for decades. But there’s not a lot of sample data.”

  Alex’s jaw clenched as he saw Piper go a shade paler. He tried again. “Is there a best-case scenario?”

  “Best-case? After some heavy weather, the climate—and the magnetic field—resets itself with a series of massive storms.”

  “Wait, what?” said Piper. “These are massive storms.”

  “Oh, no, girl,” said Graham. “Sorry. But even in the best case, the worst isn’t on the horizon yet.”

  * * *

  The truck was quiet again after that.

  Alex put his arm around Piper, trying to give her some comfort, though he knew it was probably an exercise in futility. He could hardly blame Graham for telling the truth, but he wished the guy had tried to soften the blow at least a little. Alex doubted Graham and Willow had kids. There were some things you just didn’t tell children, your own or other people’s. Some things were unimaginable.

  After a while, though, Piper started to squirm. She looked uncomfortably around, frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” said Alex.

  “I … I, uh …” Piper’s frown deepened. She leaned closer to whisper. “I have to go to the bathroom. I don’t feel good.”

  Alex looked ahead through the windshield. There were no buildings in sight anywhere. “Can you wait? Just till we find a gas station or something.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and she shook her head. “I told you I don’t feel good. I don’t think I can wait.”

  It probably wasn’t wise to try and push her now. “Graham, I’m sorry, but can we make a pit stop? Piper needs a second.”

  “Pit stop? Can it wait until we get to a gas station? There’s a one just about ten miles away.”

  Alex gave Piper a quick look. Ten miles would take a half hour in this weather. “I don’t think so.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Graham.

  He pulled the truck over to the side of the road, leaving the engine running. Alex slid out so Piper could exit the cab, both of them throwing up their hoods against the rain, as Max jumped from the bed of the truck to join them, Denny stayed in the truck, uncharacteristically silent.

  There were a bunch of bushes and shrubs near the freeway, and Alex walked Piper towards them. When they reached one tall enough to hide her from the truck, he waited discreetly while she went around the other side. He looked back towards the truck, where Graham, Willow and Denny waited with a light on inside.

  All the world around them was gray, from the clouded sky to the road to the land around them. When it rained in the Pacific Northwest, everything sprang out in brilliant green, so bright and colorful it looked Photoshopped, even when you viewed it with the naked eye. But whether it was this part of the country, or the sheer fury of the rainstorm, the ground was just a slimy gray mud that clung to the boots and got in everything. When they eventually made it to the cabins in Washington, Alex fully planned to spend an entire week inside, away from the rain, in his pajamas, and sit near the fire as often as he possibly could, just enjoying the lack of weather constantly assaulting him.

  Piper had been out of sight a moment too long for his liking. “Piper?” he called out. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, a little too quickly.

  Alex frowned. “What is it?”

  “I … I think I …” He heard her squelching footsteps, and she emerged from around the bush. Her skin was ghostly pale.

  “Are you okay?” said Alex, truly concerned now. “Did you throw up?”

  Piper shook her head, biting on her lower lip. She turned around, and Alex saw a red spot on the rear of her jeans.

  He stood frozen, staring at it, his throat suddenly dry.

  “Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay, this is fine. That’s—ah, that’s fine. Okay, fine. Um. Let’s get back to … to the truck. This is fine.”

  “I know it’s fine,” said Piper. “Jesus, Dad.”

  “Nope, this is okay. Really. Don’t worry about it,” said Alex, aware of how nonsensical he sounded. Inside he was screaming, Seriously? Seriously, right now?

  They made their way back to the truck, Piper looking more and more mi
serable with every step. When they were a few yards away, Alex stopped her and ran up to the cab, tapping on Willow’s window. She frowned at him through the glass as she rolled it down.

  “Ah,” said Alex. “So … do you, um. Do you have any … I mean, Piper just—” He cut himself off and closed his eyes. Jesus Christ, Alex, you’re not a teenage boy. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Piper just got her period. It’s … her first one. Do you have any …”

  Graham’s eyes went wide, and Willow rolled her eyes. “Oh, lord. Poor girl. I wish I had some pads or tampons with me, but I don’t. Here.”

  She opened the door and pushed past Alex, shaking her head with a little smile. She went to Piper and took her arm, leading her toward the truck with an arm over the girl’s shoulders. Piper just stared at her feet, her cheeks now beet-red. Better than pale and bloodless, I guess, thought Alex. Then he mentally kicked himself for using the word bloodless at a time like this.

  From the back of the truck, Willow pulled Graham’s tool box from the bed, and encouraged Max to get back in. “We don’t need you in the way right now, boy.” She said with a smile. Inside the tool box was a pile of rags, clean, thankfully. Willow took a couple of them and folded them over.

  “Here,” she said, handing them to Piper. “You can use these as temporary pads until we get you the real thing, which we’ll do soon. Okay? It’s going to be uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine,” mumbled Piper. “Thank you.”

  “You should head back out to put those in. You know what to do?”

  “I think so,” said Piper, and then repeated, “Thank you.” She wandered around the back of the truck where no one could see.

  Willow cocked her head as she looked at Alex. “You’re not catching any breaks on this trip.”

  “We sure aren’t,” said Alex. “I appreciate your help. I’m not … exactly the best person to help her with this.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those husbands who acts like his wife’s a leper when she’s on her period.” Willow folded their arms and looked at him appraisingly.