Chapter Six
She couldn’t sleep.
The house was too silent, too dark; the hours crept past like cold syrup, barely moving. Normally Sela went to bed between
ten-thirty and eleven, but after she’d gotten home and locked up—something she double-checked, because not having lights made
her feel more vulnerable—there was nothing to do, no television to watch, and she was exhausted from almost two days of nonstop
work. Going to bed seemed like the thing to do.
Sleep should have been easy. It wasn’t.
She dozed, woke, tossed and turned, dozed some more, then her eyes popped open and she lay staring upward in the darkness,
her mind racing with details of all they had done, all they could have done, and all they still needed to do. She went over
and over the community meeting, trying to think of who should be in charge of what, but the reality was they’d have to go
with the group of volunteers they had regardless of their individual skill sets. In any given community, there was a small
core of people who were willing to commit their time and efforts to getting things done while others simply waited to reap
the benefits. Whether or not that core of workers would be large enough remained to be seen. More “volunteers” might have
to be drafted.
Too bad Ben Jernigan wasn’t one of the volunteers.
Her memory flashed to his hard, scruffy face, the fierceness of his green gaze, and the reluctance with which he’d warned
her about the coming disaster. Interacting with people didn’t come easy to him; even she was better at it than he was, and
most days she sucked ditch water when it came to socializing. But he’d made the effort, which meant he wasn’t totally closed
off; perhaps she could convince him to join them.
Or not.
The problem was, they needed him, but he didn’t need them.
Thinking about him wasn’t conducive to feeling sleepy. Suddenly she was too hot, though she had only the top sheet pulled
over her; the house was too warm without air-conditioning, even with the screened windows open. She threw the sheet back and
lay there in her tank top and pajama pants, hoping for a cooling night breeze, but the air didn’t seem to be moving.
A red glow lit the room, then vanished.
Startled, she sat up and cocked her head, listening for unusual noises. Was there a fire? Her heart thumped, because a fire
now, with the valley’s resources so drastically limited, would be catastrophic for the people involved.
The red glow shimmered through her bedroom again.
She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, expecting to see a neighbor’s house on fire. Instead . . .
. . . the fire was in the sky.
“Ohhh,” she breathed, an unconscious tribute to the spectacle overhead. Entranced, she stared upward for a few minutes, then
raced through the dark house, unlocked the front door, and stepped out onto the screened porch where she had a much broader
view. She stood transfixed by the sight.
If she’d needed a reminder of the magnitude of this event, if she had not yet accepted that the CME had arrived, this was
it. The sky was on fire. Not literal fire, but still . . .
A bloodred aurora danced across the sky, above and around Cove Mountain like a gentle ribbon of crimson light twining into
the darkness in all directions. It was a haunting, celestial waltz of power, and she caught herself holding her breath as
she watched. She couldn’t remember ever being more entranced and terrified and awestruck.
She unlatched the screen door and went down the steps to stand in the yard, turning slowly around, eyes still on the sky.
The aurora danced behind her as well. She’d never before seen an aurora, much less a rare red one. They simply didn’t happen
this far south, until now.
Now the bloodred color, shot through with green streaks, covered the sky like a sheet, trembling back and forth, vanishing
briefly, then flaring back to life and morphing into a shimmery curtain.
How many of her neighbors had had trouble sleeping, unable to turn off the worry, and now stood watching the fiery display
that stood testimony to the immense solar storm? She couldn’t see anyone else in their yards, though the trees blocked most
of her view anyway; surely she’d have heard them talking, though. She seemed to be alone in the night, alone with this unbelievable
grandeur taking place above them.
Ben had been walking for a few hours, driven by a bone-deep impulse. He was walking patrol; he knew it, but still he couldn’t
stop himself. He was annoyed and bitter about it, even angry. Didn’t matter. He was driven to do what he’d been trained to
do. This was an emergency situation and civilians were at risk; he didn’t have to join their meetings or chat with them or
share his supplies with them, but evidently he damn sure had to keep the boogeymen away, at least for tonight.
It was bullshit. He knew it was bullshit.
He still did it.
He’d managed to get a few hours of sleep, but once he’d awakened there was no going back to sleep. And why should he? Through
his windows he could see the dancing curtains of light; why miss the celestial show? Restlessness gnawed at him, telling him
he should be doing something, so he’d gotten dressed, slid his Mossberg shotgun into a scabbard across his back, and started
walking the dark, narrow road down the mountain.
Silence enveloped him. Normally the night was alive with animal sounds, but not tonight. Even the insects were quiet, as if
the world around them had changed and they sensed it.
As he drew closer to the valley he saw and heard—and smelled—what appeared to be a big cookout in a clearing off the main
road. There were a few lights shining dimly, but not too many. He heard the hum of a generator in the distance. Whoever was
manning the smokers and grills kept their voices and lights low. It was a smart move, cooking up the meat they had on hand.
He gave the area a wide berth, preferring to continue on alone and unnoticed. Soon enough they were behind him, and the silence—and
dark—turned deep again.
The eerie sky glowed and danced over the dark, looming mountains. The Smokies were old mountains and had undoubtedly seen
skies like this before, but he sure as hell hadn’t. Holy shit, that was one heck of an aurora. It was the color of blood,
immense and unnatural. The atmosphere had to be highly charged for the sky to turn that shade of red—any shade of red, come
to that.
He’d seen the lights before. Auroras were supposed to be blues and purples and greens across a quiet night sky, not this ominous
crimson. Still, it was damn impressive, this testament to the power of a smallish star about ninety-three million miles away.
If it had been ninety-two million miles away, likely life on Earth wouldn’t exist, because even at the current distance heat
from the smallish star could bubble asphalt. He had to give it to nature, to the universe: it kicked ass.
If he had to spend the night walking the damn valley, at least he was getting to watch something that was damn amazing.
The valley was dark. So many nights and early mornings he’d sat on his porch and looked down at a blanket of lights; he could
see the service stations, the houses with outside security lights, the lamps of night owls who were up late or very early
larks who had already started their day. No matter the time, there had always been an occasional vehicle threading through
the valley roads or running down the highway, headlights stabbing forward. Not now; now there was silence and darkness, no
vehicles, no lamps. It was as if Earth and civilization had been turned back two hundred years—and civilization had, in most
of the industrialized world.
The government bodies had contingency plans, and would function on a deeply reduced basis. The military would be as prepared
as possible, and had portable nuclear reactors that would keep the bases functioning as well as likely providing the key points
from which recovery would begin. Some small electrical company somewhere, maybe several of them, would have hardened its grid,
taken precautions, had backups in place, and would likely come back online well before the major players. Those small bright
spots would be overwhelmed with refugees, though, and might deliberately stay offline until recovery was well underway.
Regular people were pretty much fucked. They’d have to get by as best they could.
And he’d walk night patrol in his tiny corner of the world.
His well-worn boots crunched softly on gravel as he turned down one of the smaller side lanes. With the red glow above lighting
the dark earth almost like a red lens on a flashlight, he could make out the name on the sign: Myra Road. That was where Mike
Kilgore had said he lived—and that Sela Gordon lived on the same road. His steps slowed, and he almost turned back. He didn’t
want to know where she lived, what her house looked like; he didn’t want to be able to imagine her going about life in her
neighborhood, know the roads she would walk, speculate about which room was her bedroom. Yeah—that. Feeding his already uncomfortable
interest in her wasn’t smart. He should turn around, literally not go down this road.
He didn’t turn around. He kept walking.
It was a nice little neighborhood. None of the houses were new, but they all looked well tended, at least by what he could
see by the light of the aurora. All of the yards had neat grass, there didn’t seem to be any piles of junk lying around. He
could smell a few late-blooming flowers, overlying the faint but telling scent of autumn. The living would definitely be easier
in summer, but summer was over.
There were a few dim lights shining. At least one house on Myra Road had a couple of solar-powered garden lamps. The lights
were far from bright; he wouldn’t have spotted them from his vantage point high on the mountain.
Then he spotted her vehicle, a small white SUV, in the carport of a one-story house with a screened porch across most of the
front. The house was maybe forty, fifty years old, sturdy but without flash. A line of evergreen trees blocked the view of