The Collapse

by E S Richards

  While items like phones, laptops and car computers would be unaffected by the CME, a large enough ejection combined with a direct impact would cause worldwide destruction. Homes and businesses would almost instantly catch fire from power transmission lines being overloaded. Anything connected to ground-based wires could be destroyed, leading to a collapse of the Internet along with the power infrastructure. Orbital communications would also be gone, as satellites would cease to function under the wave of plasma particles streaming through the Earth's magnetic field.

  In the present day, everyone thinks they're invincible. News reports on global warming, threats of nuclear attacks, massive fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and more pop up on the news, but they're either given no serious airtime or they eventually get resolved. They only affect an arguably small enough portion of the population for the rest of the world to shrug their shoulders and keep on going.

  No one wants to believe that a disaster that would affect them directly could happen in their lifetime, and even if that thought occurs for a second, we believe recycling our plastic and turning out the bedroom light is enough to save us.

  Nuclear weapons can be influenced by diplomacy. Fires can eventually be quenched. Buildings can be rebuilt. We can control—or at least respond to—many of the disasters and potential problems in the world today.

  In the end, the most terrifying thing about a CME is how none of us have any control over it. All we can do is hold on, try to survive, and pray to make it through to the other side.

  Chapter 1

  It was such a beautiful day in South Haven. Amy sauntered along the beach, making the short walk from her new publishing job to James’s new school. He had finally settled in now. He and a couple of the other boys were thick as thieves; Amy had even had them both over for a play date last week.

  She had been dubious about moving James away from his father, but she knew she couldn’t stay in that marriage any longer. It wasn’t that she thought Len didn’t love her anymore—in fact, a part of Amy knew he still did—but she had felt for too long that she was only second best to his job. All the time he had spent away from home trying to get that promotion. All the nights he’d come home late, his breath harbouring the familiar smell of whiskey.

  Eventually Amy decided enough was enough and the divorce had to follow. Six months later she and James were starting their new life in South Haven. New job, new school, new opportunities. The future was whatever Amy wanted to make of it and she was looking forward to a clean slate.

  It would take something truly astronomical to ruin her day.

  As Amy continued the short walk to pick up her son, she cast her eyes out to Lake Michigan. From her vantage point you could easily believe it to be the ocean, the sun dazzling off the water and locals relaxing along the beach. There were even a few people kayaking in the water.

  The weather they’d been having this summer was the best Amy had ever experienced. She used to come to South Haven when she was a child with her family, but even thinking back those twenty-odd years she knew it had never been this hot this regularly.

  Amy took it as a good omen. There’d hardly been a single day of bad weather since she moved here and that, she decided, was a very good sign. Reaching into her pocket Amy withdrew her cell. The view was just too perfect for her to not take a picture, even if she now did the same walk five days a week.

  She swiped her finger across her screen, automatically opening up the camera app and focused on the two kayakers in the distance. It almost looked like a postcard; Amy smiled, tapping on her screen to take her pictures.

  Once she’d sufficiently captured the moment, Amy slid her cell back into her pocket and continued her walk. She had to pick James up on time today, especially as he was due to have a video call with Len later.

  Choosing her path around the lake, Amy stepped up to a pedestrian crossing and waited for the lights to change. She was milliseconds away from stepping out into the road when a rough hand grabbed her t-shirt and pulled her back onto the sidewalk.

  “Hey!” Amy twisted around to glare at the man who’d grabbed her when a car came racing past on the road. Had her feet left the sidewalk Amy quickly realized she would have been knocked dead. The man behind her had actually saved her life.

  “Thank you,” she stuttered, shocked by the reality of the situation.

  The man simply smiled and stepped around her to cross the road, the speeding car long gone into the distance. Amy looked twice and did the same, thankful she didn’t already have her son with her. She barely made it to the other sidewalk, however, before more cars came speeding from the same direction.

  Amy jumped to safety out of the road and watched as the two cars raced past her. She got a glimpse of the drivers’ panicked faces as they disregarded the red light at the crossing and suddenly a feeling of dread started to creep into Amy’s psyche.

  What had happened in that direction? The direction of James’s school…

  Immediately Amy’s pace increased. She was half jogging toward her son when a huge explosion tore through the air in front of her. A wave of pure heat knocked Amy off of her feet and she was flung backwards onto the sidewalk. Her head smacked into the concrete and blood instantly began to pour from the wound.

  Dazed, Amy touched a finger to her forehead and winced. Blood was coming out of a gash thick and fast, the sidewalk already speckled red beneath her. Thinking quickly she tugged her scrunchie from her ponytail and over her head, fastening it in place like a sweatband over her injury.

  Amy squinted off in the distance of the explosion, the dramatic increase of heat almost overpowering as she forced herself to her feet. Was it a terrorist attack? Had those three cars zooming past earlier planted a bomb? Was James still at school? Was he still alive?

  In an instant all the pain Amy felt in her head subsided and she was overpowered by the need to see her son. She started running full pelt, heading right into the throng of danger, but she didn’t care. If that’s where her eight-year-old son was then it’s where she needed to be as well.

  As she ran, Amy pulled her cell from her pocket once more and hit speed dial six. Pressing the device to her ear she prayed for someone to pick up, even if it was another one of the kids at the school, she just wanted to hear someone’s voice.

  An angry dial tone buzzed in her ears instead and Amy scowled as she continued to run. The phone line’s just busy, she told herself, all the other parents will be trying to call as well. Amy refused to let the other possibility cross her mind as she redialed, desperate to find out what had happened to her son’s school in the explosion.

  This time when she held her cell to her ear there was no dial tone. She couldn’t hear anything. Looking at the screen Amy realized her phone had switched off and frantically held her finger over the power button to restart it. Instead of springing back to life, however, her cell gradually started to heat up her hand. She flinched and swapped hands, slowing her run to a jog in order to try to figure out what had happened.

  To Amy’s disbelief a crack started to form down the screen. She moved her cell quickly from one hand to the other as it continued to heat up, eventually slowing to a stop and dropping it on the sidewalk in front of her. Her hands were red from the heat of the cell, but what was happening to it in front of her eyes was even more concerning.

  The plastic snapped away from the glass screen and smoke started to rise from the black device. Amy’s eyes widened as she realized her cell was about to overheat and explode. Not wanting to be near another explosion she gave the phone a wide berth and continued running toward the school—ironically the direction of the first explosion.

  A bang behind her told Amy she had been right and her phone had exploded. Then she heard screeching tires and an even louder bang as metal crashed into metal. A car crash? Amy refused to look back. She had to get to her son.

  As she rounded the final corner before 47th Street where she should find James, another explosion burst only a few yards ah
ead of her. Her arms flung up instantly to shield her eyes as somehow Amy managed to stay on her feet during this follow-up disaster.

  It was a gas station. The smell of gasoline now lay thick in the air as Amy realized one of the fuel tanks in the gas station had exploded. The sight before her eyes was horrific. Charred remains of human bodies lay in the direct vicinity, their bodies so badly burned Amy struggled to identify if they were men or women.

  Vehicles had all screeched to a halt in the middle of the road and people were running in all directions, trying to escape the spread of fire as it jumped from building to building. Due to the extremely hot summer South Haven had been experiencing, it meant everything was dry and the trees lining the sidewalk were kindling waiting to happen.

  Amy remained frozen on the corner for a second, her eyes darting between the dead bodies. None of them looked like children. None of them could be her son. The relief Amy felt for a second was quickly washed away as her gaze watched the fire tearing down the street. Tearing toward the small school that James was a part of.

  Once again ignoring any regard for her own safety Amy started running. She was chasing the fire now, forcing her feet to slam into the hot asphalt of the road as she raced toward her son’s school. The fire was definitely going to get there first. She knew she wasn’t fast enough.

  But the children won’t still be inside, Amy told herself. They’ll have been evacuated to safety. He’ll have been evacuated to safety. He’ll be safe. He’ll be safe. He’ll be safe…

  Amy repeated the mantra to herself as she sprinted down 47th Street. The fire had already reached the school building, she could see the flames curling over the fence and caressing the wooden play area round the back. She drew to a halt outside the school gates, the heat of the fire almost unbearable this close. The yard was empty, the doors of the school wide open as it looked to have been evacuated in a hurry.

  So where were the children? Where was James?

  “Mom!”

  Amy spun round at the sound, refusing to believe her ears. But the sight of her son crushed her doubts instantly and she broke into a run again. Dropping to the ground Amy wrapped her arms around James, breathing in his smell from the top of his head and squeezing until he struggled for breath in her arms.

  “Oh baby,” Amy smiled at her son as she finally released him from her hug, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “We left just before the explosion,” James replied to her, a serious tone in his young voice. “I knew you’d come and get me soon.”

  “You left before the explosion?” Amy narrowed her eyes at her son, “How could you have known the explosion was going to happen?”

  “Mrs. Rodgers,” a member of the staff entered into Amy’s field of vision, a serious expression on her face to match the tone of her son’s voice. “If you come back to our evac point I’ll explain everything to you.”

  Amy dutifully followed the teacher further down the street, ignoring the sting of bitterness that—despite the situation—still came with being called by her ex-husband’s name. Fire crews were starting to arrive on the scene now and Amy was eager to get her son as far away as possible.

  The fire was still tumbling the buildings all along the street; the temperature must have reached well above a hundred in the area by now. Firefighters leapt from their trucks before they’d completely stopped moving, shooting strong jets of water onto the fire. Somehow Amy didn’t think it would be enough and she pushed James to move faster back to the school’s evacuation point.

  “How did you know the explosion was going to happen then?” Amy questioned the teacher once they were a safe distance away. She recognized the woman from some school event, but knew she had no hope of remembering her name in her current state of mind.

  “Did you not see the news?” The teacher looked confused. “It was all over the TV, and the radio. What did they call it, a solar flare? A coronal ejection or something? We’ve all been told to…”

  The teacher continued, Amy soaking up every piece of information. Suddenly something clicked in her head. The rising temperatures, her cell phone dying, the gas tanks exploding, the speeding cars, the panicked people. This was something serious and currently she was just standing in the middle of it, listening to some clueless teacher try to suggest what was best for her and her son. Amy couldn’t begin to try to put all the pieces together, but she could tell it wasn’t good. If it had already been on the news then she’d missed a vital chunk of information, information she needed to take care of her boy.

  Snapping into immediate action once more, she took James by the hand and steered him away from the rest of his school members. They were not going to weather this storm in the open.

  Chapter 2

  Glancing from burning vehicle to screaming person, Len knew in an instant he needed to get off the intersection. This could only be the beginning, so things could only get worse from there on out. Quickly his mind ran through the options of where he should go.

  Back to O’Riley’s? Janet should still be there and maybe together they could formulate a plan. The idea quickly faded in Len’s mind and he knew she would never want to leave her pub, plus that place was in the center of all the chaos, it would be like walking back into the lion’s den.

  Somehow he needed to get home. Maybe the full impact of whatever was happening hadn’t reached that far yet. Central Chicago was madness, but his house in the suburbs should be safer. Although without a car Len realized it could take him days to get there in the current state. He needed somewhere closer, somewhere he could wait for the initial disaster to subside and for people to calm down.

  People had to calm down, he thought to himself. This ejection was already all over the news, everyone in government had to be aware of it. They’d be sending aid out to the city soon and when it arrived Len needed to be ready.

  That only left him one option. Unfastening the top button on his shirt, Len decided he needed to go back to the office; there would be people there who could help. Maybe some of the computers still worked so he could get in touch with his son from there. It was the safest place he could think of to start.

  But knowing where to go was one thing, getting there was a completely separate matter.

  Bright fire and terrified screams still consumed his senses. While Len had remained motionless for a few minutes, the city around him was as alive as it had ever been.

  A loud smash drew Len’s attention behind him. Two young boys, probably around fifteen or sixteen, had hurled a tire into a shop window and were climbing inside. His immediate thought was that they were thieving, taking advantage of the lack of security and lining their pockets with treasures.

  As he watched them emerge, however, Len noticed they were carrying bottles of water, a first aid kit, and clean clothes. He looked on as they ran over to a middle-aged couple in the middle of the road. The woman—probably their mother—was unconscious, a massive pool of blood flowing from her abdomen. The man knelt over her, his hands pressed into the wound trying to stop the bleeding.

  Len blinked back tears as he saw the two sons trying to help save their mother. He saw a family falling apart in front of his eyes and everywhere else people ran, their own problems to focus on.

  What if that was Amy? The thought chilled Len to the bone. Somewhere his ex-wife and son were in their own battle for survival, fighting against the fires that consumed the cities to survive. He had to get to them; he couldn’t let his family be broken.

  In an instant he started moving, weaving his way through people and around death. His head was still pounding from the car crash he was in only a few moments earlier, his eyes blurring in and out of focus as he half jogged in the direction of his office.

  A piercing scream caught his attention as Len made it halfway down the block, rising above the rest. He looked into the road expecting to see someone caught in a burning vehicle but the bodies amongst the flames were too many to count. Then a loud crack sounded just ahead of him and he saw
the support of a building begin to falter.

  A huge transport carrier had crashed into the side of the corner building, taking out the entire of the ground floor support. Flames curled around the cab of the vehicle, consuming what had once been a building lobby with bright orange fire.

  Dragging his gaze upwards Len saw the windows filled with people. Each one of them was screaming for help, begging for a way out of their prison. To go down would to be burnt alive; to stay where they were would to be a waiting game. Wait for the fire to reach them, or wait for the building to collapse.

  A woman held a young baby in a window on the third floor, no more than a year old, Len guessed. He clenched his jaw at the thought of what awaited the baby and its mother, already trapped in their coffin, counting down the moments until the lid sealed itself.

  An even worse sight caught his eye at the window above. A man of roughly equal age to Len, also trapped and waiting to die. Except this man had other ideas. He flung a rope of fabric from the window, haphazardly fashioned from sheets and clothing. Len knew immediately what he was about to attempt, but the rope barely reached above the first floor.