After Sundown

Chapter One

Ben Jernigan snapped awake at the first beep of his computer alarm. What felt like a lifetime of training had him moving and

on his feet in front of the computer before his conscious caught up with his subconscious. He scrubbed a hand across his face

and turned on a lamp as he focused on the information displayed on the computer screen in very tiny print. Swearing under

his breath, he enlarged the screen—and then swore out loud.

His cell phone rang no more than ten seconds after he began reading. Very few people had his number and any call coming in

at—he glanced at the time on his bedside clock—2:43 a.m. wasn’t a call he’d ignore.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to elevate his tone from growl to something intelligible. The abrupt awakening had adrenaline pouring

through his system, tightening his muscles, sharpening his vision, his thought processes racing. He hadn’t been shot at in

over two years, but his sympathetic nervous system was still ready for action.

“You reading this?” The voice belonged to Cory Howler, longtime buddy from the military who now worked with the government

in a somewhat murky job description that had him in position to know a lot of shit. People who knew shit were invaluable in

every organization, no matter how large, or how small.

“Yes. Data?”

“Bigger than Carrington.”

“Shit,” Ben said softly. The Carrington Event was a series of powerful coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, in 1859 that had melted

telegraph wires and set some telegraph offices on fire. Technology in the nineteenth century had been limited to telegraphs;

now the developed world ran on technology, and the damage would be catastrophic. Satellites would be fried, the power grids—most

of them, there were a few that had hardened security—would go down, gasoline supplies would vanish because the pipelines would

be damaged, food supplies would dry up, and cities would become the sixth level of hell.

Small CMEs that had little or no effect on technology occurred almost daily, but those mild solar storms couldn’t be compared

to what was coming.

“What’s the timing?”

“About thirty-six hours from now. We’d have had more lead time but one of the GOES satellites is down for maintenance, or

malfunctioned and they don’t want to say so. Bad timing,” Howler said in wry understatement, given the magnitude of the impending

disaster. “It’s a series; we’ve seen four so far. The first one will hit the Far East in about twelve hours, but the ones

behind it are bigger, wider, and traveling faster. The Middle East and Europe are going down.”

Ben didn’t miss the qualifier “so far.” They expected more than four. The fourth one would hit the Atlantic, which would play

hell with any ships at sea, but any CME after that would hit the American continents, making this a worldwide shit-storm.

The thing with a series of CMEs was that the first one sort of cleared the way, cosmically speaking, for the ones behind it

and they grew in intensity and speed.

“What are your plans?” he asked, because Howler had a family to take care of.

“I’m packing up the wife and kids right now and sending them south. I want them away from the city, and as far south as possible.”

Ben grunted. The farther south they went, the more survivable the winter would be.

“What about you?”

“I’m making preps, but hanging here for another twelve hours or so. Then I’ll meet up with Gen and the kids and we’ll hunker

down, try to survive. My guess is close to a year before the grid comes back up.”

That was an optimistic guess, but not completely outlandish. “Will there be a warning?” He didn’t assume there would be, because

the government was so screwed up someone could persuade the head honchos that “panic in the streets” was somehow worse than

actually making preparations. On the other hand, governments weren’t the only entities who could see this thing coming. Word

would get out, but sooner was better than later.

“It’s being framed,” Howler said. “Word is we’ll hear something right after daybreak, but I’m betting it might not happen

until this afternoon. The morons might think it could be a false alarm and wait until Japan is hammered. You know how it goes.”

He did, unfortunately. “See you on the flip side.”

“Take care, bro.”

Ben ended the call and began pulling on his clothes. He was largely self-sufficient, but there were still things he could

do to harden his position, expand his resources, safety measures he could put in place. He had solar panels to protect; his

ham radio would be worthless for a while after the CME hit because the atmospherics would be fucked, but he needed to protect

some of the components so they’d work when the atmosphere did settle down; he also had to protect his generator and get it

topped off with propane, get extra gas for his truck and ATV.

There was no way to get enough gas to last for the duration. This wasn’t going to be a short-term event. Both the corporate

side and the government side had had their heads in the sand for decades, opting to do nothing because of the cost and gambling

that a catastrophic solar storm wouldn’t hit Earth, at least on their watch. Some of them had just run out of luck. The sun

called the shots, and the sun had just lobbed the energy equivalent of thousands of nuclear weapons at them—no explosions,

but enormous damage.

The people who were paid to think of events like this and the likely outcomes had predicted that the worldwide mortality rate

would be at ninety percent by the end of the first year. Ben didn’t think it would be that bad, because people were more resourceful

than government entities gave them credit for being.

There wasn’t much he could do right now, with dawn still hours away. On the other hand, neither could he go back to sleep.

He went to the kitchen and made himself some coffee, then checked the thermal signatures on his security setup to see if any

bears were wandering around in his yard, or even on the wraparound porch. Bear encounters here in the east Tennessee mountains

were a fact of life, and he gave the bears the right of way.

There were a few small signatures, birds and what was probably a raccoon, but nothing bear-sized. He took his can of bear

spray, a pistol loaded with shotgun pellets, and his coffee cup out on the porch looking out over the valley. Just because

there wasn’t a bear now didn’t mean one wouldn’t come along. Settling in a rocking chair and propping his booted feet on the

porch railing, he sipped the coffee and looked out over the twinkling lights of Wears Valley, far below.

He’d lived here almost two years now; a military buddy from this area had steered Ben to the mountains, and though he’d initially

thought about maybe building a small cabin tucked away in the mountains, when he’d seen this place he’d put in an immediate

offer. It was larger than he’d planned, but the location was ideal, situated high on the side of Cove Mountain. The rudimentary

driveway leading up to it was steep, impassable to regular cars, and even most pickup trucks couldn’t make it unless they

were jacked high enough to clear the big rock Ben had moved into the middle of the driveway as another deterrent. He could

have put a chain across the driveway but then he’d have had to get out and unlock it every time he came and went, and for

the most part he’d just be making things tougher on himself. Not many people ventured up here.

He liked being alone. He was more content this way. After years of combat and dealing with bureaucrats who didn’t know their

asses from a hole in the ground but were nevertheless in charge of life-and-death decisions concerning him and his men, he

was done. He got out, and now he just wanted to be left the hell alone.

That meant he never let down his guard. He had a top-notch security system, monitors, alarms; he was serious about keeping

people at a distance. A couple of times some nosy neighbors—or tourists, and he didn’t know the difference because he didn’t

know any of his neighbors, if someone who lived over a mile away could be called a “neighbor”—had hiked all the way up here.

His motion alarm had alerted him the moment they cleared the curve and set foot on the wide, flat area where his house sat,

and he’d stepped out on the porch with his shotgun broken open and draped over his arm. Neither time had he had to say a word;

just the sight of a big, muscular man with a dark scowl on his face and a shotgun in his hands was enough to send the trespassers

the hell off his property.

Sitting here on his porch in the predawn darkness, listening to the nightbirds, the rustling of the trees, not a soul anywhere

around him—this was why he’d moved to the Tennessee mountains. He didn’t have PTSD—no nightmares, no flashbacks, no sweats

of terror. Maybe some shrink would tell him that his extreme withdrawal was a form of PTSD, but that’s what shrinks did: come

up with diagnoses that justified their jobs. As far as Ben was concerned, anyone sane who had spent years dealing with the

bullshit he’d dealt with would react the same way.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know people, or at least know their names. By necessity, he’d met some of the valley residents. People

insisted on talking to him, even when he limited his responses to grunts. That was almost the only drawback to the area: Southerners

were friendly. They talked to everyone. He didn’t want to be talked to. Once an elderly couple he’d just met had invited him

to supper; getting away from old people was almost as hard as escaping an ambush, because they were persistent with their

offers of hospitality. He’d felt as if his skin was being peeled away, and all he’d wanted to do was duck and cover.

He hadn’t even met any women he’d been remotely attracted to. Scratch that, his subconscious immediately said. Sela Gordon,

the owner of the little general store / gas station on the highway . . . he’d noticed her. For one thing, she was quiet; she