Solar Cycle 24

by Darrel Bird

  Part 9: The common people

  Two months later Alley Gorton sat in her apartment in Seattle waiting for her husband Bob to come home. Nothing was moving in Seattle, no groceries, no electricity and no water. The only news was on the little battery-powered radio; they were lucky enough to find.

  The government had been instructing people on how to try to care for themselves and treat the horrible sores, but they weren’t telling them where or how to get food. The medicine for the treatments were impossible to come by. She was six months pregnant, and they had their five-year-old son to provide for.

  The government had instructed them to only go out between 11 pm and 2AM because that was when damages from the solar rays were at minimal, but it was dark as a dungeon in the streets of Seattle at that time of night and Edward had been forced to forage in the day light as everyone else had. He had developed horrible sores, which were treated with salt water and some salve he scrounged out of some drugstore. He dared not approach private dwellings as people had been shooting first and asking questions later.

  Edward had been going out scrounging for food daily, but he had been forced to range further and further from the apartment. Last night he hadn’t come home and when he didn’t get home this morning, she knew he never would come home. Something had happened, and she knew if he didn’t come home today she would be forced to hit the streets to forage tomorrow.

  She fed her boy the last can of soup before dark fell, and then prepared to get some sleep; she put the boy to bed and then she slept and she dreamed.