by Connor Mccoy
She’d appeared out of the reeds a few yards from where the fish had landed. Her gaze flicked from him to the fish and back again. She remained still for several minutes, her ears flicking back and forth, before she shot forward, seized the trout and disappeared again. Glen smiled and retreated back to the cabin.
It became a ritual. He’d head out to the pond at dusk, and every second or third day the fox would appear and wait for him to toss her a fish. He sometimes would see her on his on hunts. She’d be carrying a small mammal or bird, so he felt comfortable that she still was able to survive on her own. But she came to the pond regularly and sometimes would sit companionably on the far bank, watching him, before trotting over to her fish retrieval spot and waiting for him to feed her.
The fox never ate the fish in front of Glen. He wasn’t sure if that was because she wasn’t comfortable eating in front of him, or if she had kits in her den that she was feeding. But one day she was followed out of the reeds by two round and clearly well-fed kits. The vixen kept them behind her with bared teeth and growls. They were unafraid and would have wrestled and tumbled right up to Glen if she had let them.
He threw the fish, and when the kits leaped upon it and started tearing it apart he threw another for their mother. Later, when they slipped back into the undergrowth, she shot him a look, which Glen interpreted as, “I’m trusting you, don’t disappoint me.”
That summer the fox family regularly spent time on the river bank, the young foxes frolicking in the water, wrestling or trying unsuccessfully to catch fish, while their mother lay in the shade, watching. At first, she had kept a watchful eye on Glen, but as he never approached her family she began to relax and even would doze in the afternoon sun while Glen tended his vegetable patch or chopped wood for the winter.
Glen was sitting at his table eating rice and beans and watching the vixen teaching her kits to fish when everything changed. He was craving meat and wondering if he had overhunted the woods around his cabin. It had been days since he’d trapped even a squirrel. He supposed he’d better plan a hunting expedition before winter set in. But he was tired. The previous night he’d been awakened by the howling. So he’d sleep tonight, prepare tomorrow, and leave the following day.
It wouldn’t serve him well to set out on a several day trip in less than peak form. It would be too easy to miss something, take a wrong step, and end up dying in the forest, hobbled by a broken leg. Prime prey for some other predator, animal or human.
Movement out by the pond caught his attention. His fox, as he liked to think of her, was standing with her head up and ears forward, very still. With two flicks of her ears she turned and, yipping to the cubs, they melted into the undergrowth. Glen wondered what had startled her. A predator maybe?
He went back to making notes on the fly page of a novel, the only paper that remained in the cabin, when a knock sounded on the door. His head flew up, and at first he thought he must have imagined it, but it came again. And then the latch rattled.
Glen stood, pushing back his chair so sharply it fell over. He stared at the door, uncertain how to proceed. The blinds on the windows at the front of the cabin were closed, but if the person or persons walked around back, he’d be vulnerable. The back wall was largely windows, affording a view onto the back deck overlooking the pond. It was peaceful and beautiful and if he’d had any brains we would have boarded up those windows. They had no blinds.
“Please help us.” A woman’s voice pleaded from the other side of the door. “Our friend is injured. Oh, please.” The knocking devolved into a slapping of palms against the wood. The woman was sobbing, whimpering “please,” over and over again.
Glen remembered the old woman turned away by her daughter, killed by the people she had lived with. Did he want to lower himself to that level of inhumanity? He took a step toward the door and then another. He picked his rifle out of the stand by the door and checked to see if it was loaded. The slapping at the door stopped.
He jumped when the knocking started again. It had a different quality this time, more like a hammering. Whoever was pounding now had something that could be used as a weapon. Metal and heavy. He readied his rifle, pulled the bolt back and, blocking the door with his shoulder, cracked it open.
“Oh, thank God,” a tall reedy brown-haired woman choked out. She stood behind a blonde woman with a metal flashlight she’d been using to hammer on the door, and behind them both a man was slumped against the post holding up the porch roof, holding his arm across his gut and covered with blood from the waist down. As Glen watched, he slowly slid to the porch floor, tilting crazily as he tried to maintain a sitting position.
The brown haired woman had wild eyes, and was shaking, clearly unable to control herself. She was choking back sobs and had a hand held over her mouth. The shorter blonde woman looked detached, which could be a sign of shock as well, but also could mean she wasn’t invested in the others and just didn’t care. Glen thought he caught a glimpse of anger in there as well.
The man’s face was covered with a sheen of sweat. He clearly was in a lot of pain, judging by the amount of blood he’d lost. He was staying conscious only by extreme effort and it was taking its toll on him. Glen thought they only had a small window of time before he became deadweight.
Glen carefully unloaded the rifle and set it back in its cradle, leaving the door wide open, because once he’d made the decision to help they were coming in anyway. “Help me,” he croaked to the shorter woman, the one who’d been glaring at him, but was able to keep her shit together. The other one had begun sobbing the minute he’d opened the door.
They supported the groaning man between them, pulling him up and helping him into the cabin. He was soaked in blood and left a trail of it behind them.
“Clear off the low table,” he barked at the sobbing woman, the words coming out as a croak. It had been so long since he’d spoken to anyone.
She grabbed the coffee cup and swept the books onto the floor so that Glen could lay the man on the table. He looked up from the man, gauging which of the women might be able to help, and noticed the tall brown-haired woman was pale, sweating and shaking.
“What is your name?” he asked, his voice still rough from disuse.
“S-S-Sally,” she stuttered. “Sally Winter.”
“Sally Winter, you are suffering from shock. I need you to lie down on the couch with your feet raised on the arm, and pull that blanket over you.” He motioned to the wool blanket hanging over the back of the couch. “Okay. Can you do that for me?”
Sally nodded and collapsed on the couch. The other woman pushed her down and lifted her feet onto the arm of the couch before pulling the blanket over her. Sally was sobbing softly, trying to calm herself, with little success.
Glen looked for the short blonde. She was standing by the windows looking out at the pond. She didn’t seem at all distressed by her companions’ condition.
“Blondie,” he said rudely, hoping to shake her out of her lethargy. “I need you to come here.”
She turned and complied, a slightly puzzled look on her face. “Are we going to help him die?” she asked. “Because I’m pretty sure he’s not going to recover from this.”
“Then why did you bring him here?” Glen asked sharply. “I’m a surgeon, and I might be able to save him, but I’ll need your help. What’s your name?
“Mia,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”
“First, grab the whiskey from the cupboard over the sink, and get some down, Sally.”
While Mia went to rummage for whiskey and glasses in the kitchen, Glen busied himself with rolling a towel to put underneath the man’s head and fetching a blanket for covering his arms and chest. When Mia had done as he asked he said, “See the door on the left down that hall? It’s the bathroom. Look in the tall cabinet for the sterile saline. Grab that and a box of sterile gauze.” Glen turned his attention back to the man and noticed Sally watching him. She had the blanket clutched up under her chin.
“W
hat’s his name?” he asked her.
“Christian,” she said. “Chris.”
Glen nodded and turned back to his patient. Chris was watching him dully, no hope or expectation in his eyes.
“I’ll do my best for you, Chris, but it’s going to hurt, and I need you to lie as still as possible. Okay?”
Christian nodded his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Mia came back in the room with the saline and gauze and Glen nodded to a lamp table nearby.
“Drag that over, and put the supplies on it.”
She did so, intelligently placing the table where the light from the oil lantern would do the most good, setting the supplies neatly in a row next to it. Whatever else Mia was, she had a calm head on her shoulders.
“Now back into the bathroom,” he said. “On the shelf above where you found the saline there is a medical kit. Use both hands, and carry it level – just like it is on the shelf. Everything is sterile, and the lid has a nasty habit of popping off if you aren’t careful. Bring that here,” Glen said.
He turned back to his patient. He’d put off the inspection of the wounds for far too long. He unbuttoned what remained of Chris’s flannel shirt and pulled it aside, tugging gently to remove the shreds of fabric from the wounds. Chris held himself rigid, a moan escaping clenched teeth.
The wounds were deep and looked to Glen as if Chris had been both clawed and bitten. His experience as a neurosurgeon didn’t exactly prepare him for the scope of damage to Chris’s torso. In addition to the gaping slashes made by claws, there was a chunk missing from his lower abdomen and puncture wounds from teeth, which were going to be difficult to close in these circumstances.
Glen picked up a bottle of saline, broke the seal and dumped it in the wounds to wash them out. Chris screamed and passed out.
Chapter Three
In retrospect it made sense that governing bodies around the world kept the news of the Space Storm quiet. They were running solution scenarios and didn’t need their people panicking, stampeding, or blaming whomever for the impending disaster. Why have to deal with rioting civilians if you didn’t have to do so? The consequence, of course, was that no one was prepared.
When the news starting leaking in the weeks before the Earth traveled through the pocket of radiation that the news outlets had named Space Storm Agatha, people went into high gear. There was a run on survival supplies, and when the stores sold out, the thefts began. In one town a group of citizens broke into an old EMI warehouse and stole everything usable. Unfortunately, the supplies had been designated for the National Guard in their effort to assist those who were hardest hit after the storm passed.
Those supplies never were recovered.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter. Everyone was hard hit. Only those who’d been preparing for an EMP for many years were better off than anyone else. Unless you counted the uber rich, who were able to buy anything they wanted. They were set until their fuel ran out.
Every morning Glen brewed himself a pot of strong coffee, which he would consume while listening to the radio. At first the news was puzzling. There were rumors of an impending disaster. People who studied ancient texts were coming out of the woodwork, volunteering to tell what they knew to every TV and radio station in the world. They pointed out the signs, repeated that, through the ages, there had been a cyclical pattern of encounters with the Space Storm.
Of course, the effects weren’t so damaging before electricity. Radiation sickness killed some cattle, and some children were born with deformities. But whole civilizations didn’t collapse. One show devolved into a shouting match between two self-proclaimed prophets regarding details so trivial as to be meaningless.
The scientific community had as much trouble coming to a consensus as the prophets. One set believed the Space Storm would pass with as much fuss as the much-hyped millennial computer system crash that never came to pass. According to scientific expert Tom Flannery, there was no reason to expect any negative effects from the small amount of radiation emanating from the cloud.
But if you listened to EMP expert Nolan French, you’d know to build yourself a Faraday cage and put any electronics safely in it. He suggested transforming your garage into a Faraday cage so your vehicle would be drivable after we passed through the Space Storm. Glen lined a garbage can with cardboard, tossed in his two-way radios, his spare computer, rechargeable batteries, and a solar charger. He backed up photos of Sarah and Clarence onto a flash drive and dropped that and a drive with his music into the can. Then he sealed it all with aluminum tape.
His generator presented larger problems. He wasn’t interested in traveling into town to find a box. So he built a wooden platform over a sheet of metal and stuck the generator on it. Then he built a box around it. He used glue instead of nails or screws. And then surrounded the wooden box with aluminum foil that he taped to the metal base. It may or may not work, but he wouldn’t know until the Space Storm had passed. And truthfully, what use would all that stuff in the can be if there wasn’t any kind of Internet or electricity available? Just a fancy way to look at pictures of his family or listen to music, really.
The voices on the radio got more frantic every day leading up to the event. It was unclear if the radiation would be harmful to humans. People in the cities planned to ride out the storm underground. In rural America, root and storm cellars were made ready. People were hunkering down, gathering supplies, and even boarding up windows. Glen wasn’t sure what good that would do, but if it made people feel better, then why not? The world was going into hiding.
Except for those on the fringe. There were always nutjobs who had to do it differently. There were groups of people making plans to party on the highest buildings in the cities, up Half Dome, or on the beach. He heard what sounded like a Valley Girl talking animatedly about how she was going to a party on the roof of the Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles, unless the party at the beach was going to be more fun. She was having a terrible time deciding which one to go to.
Glen’s plan was to stay inside. If there were caves nearby, that would have been his choice, but there were not. He was staying off the roads, which were bound to be populated by idiots of one sort or another. He would stay put. Anyway, it was likely a bunch of excitement about nothing, like the year 2000 all over again.
He’d opened his Faraday cage and set his spare, battery-powered radio in it before taping it up again, berating himself even as he used the last of his aluminum tape. If the power went out, there would be no radio stations to listen to, would there? He did it anyway, feeling vaguely foolish.
The morning of the end found Glen with his cup of coffee and the radio on. Every station was covering the event. On PBS the local broadcaster was on the road.
“I’m headed east on I-64 and it’s a bright morning. It’s hard to believe we’ll be knee deep in space dust in another hour or so. The road is spooky. There just isn’t any traffic anywhere. Except, Christ! A car just passed me going so fast it had to be over one hundred miles per hour. Where’s he going in such a hurry? Or she? To be fair, it could have been a woman. They were going too fast to tell.”
That hour passed, and Glen stayed locked on the radio.
“The sky is showing some interesting signs.” The reporter was subdued now. Tense. “There are reports of aurora borealis in some of the strangest places. This must be the cause of the radiation in this cloud. The governments of the world are encouraging people to stay inside. The “Space Storm” should pass in about two hours.”
Glen looked outside of his cabin to find the sky changing from its typical midday blue to a darker, almost dirty pink color. His station went dead, and he spun the dial, listening for any sign of life.
“We now are seeing the full effects of this “storm.” We have lost communications with nearly everyone we were talking with.” Glen didn’t know who this was, but it was all he had, so he listened. “I think we have experienced effects like that of an electromagnetic pulse. Lucky for you listeners
I am broadcasting from deep in the Earth,” and then his radio went dead.
Glen didn’t dare pull the spare radio from his Faraday cage, so he sat in silence for the rest of the day, watching the Northern lights flicker and undulate as if they were alive. He knew the scientists had predicted they’d be out of the cloud in two hours, but if the Northern lights were any indication, the scientists had been wrong. He wasn’t leaving the house until the sky went back to normal.
He stayed inside for two days, watching the sky, the woods, and the pond. No fish floated to the surface of the water and birds still were flying. That was good news. The radiation hadn’t been strong enough to kill on contact. In fact, once the sky went back to normal, there wasn’t much to show that the Earth had encountered a space storm at all. Only the lack of electricity.
He’d pulled out the radio and spent time every morning listening, but even the last person he’d heard, who’d claimed to be deep underground, was gone. Of course, if the transmitters had been fried, then it wouldn’t matter how safe the radio operator’s equipment was, there’d be no way to get the signal out. Still, every morning, Glen twirled the dial, listening for signs of life.
It wasn’t until his foray into the town, when he’d worked for the ham radio, that he began hearing voices again. And what he heard chilled him. Widespread looting. Martial law declared in the cities. People dying in hospitals that no longer could help them.
The cities were running out of fuel quickly. The generators that kept medicines chilled and medical equipment functioning were falling silent. People who thought solar or wind power would save them were disappointed when the diodes that controlled delivery were fried.
Those people who actually were prepared hunkered down and didn’t open their gates to strangers. If you weren’t already part of their plan, it was too late now. Those preppers who knew to keep their solar and wind equipment in a Faraday cage were not about to save the people who didn’t.