Deep Shadows Page 4

  Patrick’s Mustang started with a roar. He tapped the horn lightly and waved to them as he drove away.

  Carter sank onto the porch steps. “It’s a flare, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Their cars work because they’re older.”

  “That would be my guess.” She glanced at the house, as if there was something in there she was dying to get to, but then she sat down next to him.

  “And the explosions?”

  “Planes. Some planes crashed. And maybe a train.”

  “This changes everything.”

  His mom nodded. “What do you know about flares?”

  “Not much, but anyone who has ever watched TV knows what happens if the grid goes down—no phones, no computers, no cars. Soon we’ll be foraging through people’s houses looking for cans of beans.”

  “Let’s hope things don’t deteriorate to that level.”

  “We studied flares in science, but Jason spent that time throwing spitballs.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “He wasn’t coping with being a senior very well.” Jason Snyder was Carter’s best friend. Some days he thought Jason was his only friend. “But then again, science can be pretty boring.”

  “I thought you liked Coach Parish.”

  “Yeah. He’s cool. But marine life? Atoms? Stars? All that stuff… it’s information I don’t need to know.”

  “Huh.” That was what she said when she didn’t want to start an argument.

  “We have Google, Mom. Or we had it. I didn’t need to memorize the definition of a black hole.”

  She didn’t agree or disagree. Instead, she leaned forward, casting a worried look toward the power lines. “See how they’re starting to sag?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take a picture with your phone.”

  “Of the power lines?”

  “Yeah. Then we’ll take another in an hour.”

  “Okay.” It sounded like a stupid idea to him, but sometimes his mom had good reasons for doing stuff. He took the photo, studied it, and then he clicked his phone off.

  “I need to go inside and check my notes.”

  “Notes?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute.”

  He followed his mom inside and stood in the middle of the living room, wondering what he was supposed to do. Finally he called out, “I’m kind of hungry, and the microwave doesn’t work.”

  “Peanut butter sandwich, son. Make us both one while I find my folder.”

  Carter pulled out the all-natural peanut butter, wheat bread, and natural apple preserves, along with the skim milk. Occasionally he wished he could eat like everyone else, but most days he accepted his life for what it was. As he made the sandwiches, he told his mom about walking to the grocery store, finding it closed, and seeing the note the manager had put on the door.

  “Guess I’m out of a job until the power comes back on. If it comes back on.”

  She sat at the table with a large manila folder marked “Carrington Romance.”

  “Terrible title.”

  “That was my working title.”

  There was a time he’d been embarrassed that his mother wrote romance books, but then she’d shown him a royalty check. The stuff paid pretty well, though he knew the job wasn’t easy. He’d seen firsthand how much time she spent at her desk. He could barely crank out a two-page English assignment. The thought of writing four hundred pages made his hands sweat.

  “Read this.” She passed him a sheet titled “1859 Carrington Event.”

  He devoured the first of his sandwich as he skimmed the article. Downing his glass of milk, he asked, “You’re saying this is happening now?”

  His mom passed him another sheet: “Doomsday Fear.”

  “I’m going to need more milk if you expect me to read all of this.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the gallon of milk. Thinking of what he’d just read, he held up the gallon and asked, “Should we save it?”

  “It won’t be cold in the morning. You might as well drink it now.”

  There was a tap on their front door screen, and then Max stepped inside. Carter liked Max. He liked the fact that someone was looking out for his mom, even though she thought she could handle everything on her own.

  “Looks like an aurora feast.” Max sank into the chair on the other side of his mom.

  “Did you deliver your passengers?”

  “I dropped Mr. and Mrs. Smitty off at the police department. Hopefully they can help them with a tow truck.”

  Carter hadn’t noticed anyone else in Max’s truck. Mr. and Mrs. Smitty? Had their car stopped working? He shrugged. There wasn’t anything he could do about it if every car in Abney quit. “I can make you a sandwich.”

  “Thanks, Carter. I’m starved.”

  Silence pushed against the windows as Carter made the sandwich. No refrigerator hum. No television or radio or phone binging that he had a message. It creeped him out. How did people stand so much quiet in the old days?

  He set the sandwich in front of Max. “Mom says the milk won’t last. Want a glass?”

  “Think I’ll stick with water for now.” He glanced around the room. “Speaking of water, have you filled your tub or jugs or…”

  His mom held up a hand, effectively shushing Max. It was obvious that she hadn’t been listening. She had been in her this-world-doesn’t-exist reading zone. Suddenly she dropped her hand, slapped the folder shut, and stared at Max, then Carter. He knew from the expression on her face that things were even worse than they had first thought.

  SEVEN

  You’re sure about this?” Max took another bite of the sandwich, the peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth and causing him to reach for the glass of tap water. Something told him they wouldn’t have time to eat again before morning.

  “I’m not the one who claimed to be sure. NASA wrote that report.”

  “And there’s more… more documentation in there.”

  “Yes. Reports on Carrington as well as the likelihood of a similar event happening in our lifetime.” She glanced at Carter and the phone in his hand.

  “Still doesn’t work,” he grumbled. “I mean, I know it won’t, but I keep hoping…”

  “Go take another picture of the power lines. Then I want you to show both of them to Max.”

  Carter rolled his eyes, but he walked outside and took the photo.

  “Why—”

  “This report.” Shelby thumbed through the contents of the folder again, pulling out a printout titled “Solar Flare or Nuclear EMP.”

  She pushed the paper toward Max. “This states that a CME can last from a few hours to several days.”

  “Like Carrington.”

  “Exactly, except in 1859 we didn’t have power lines strung across the country. Telegraph communications around the world failed.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “The voltage from the solar flare is attracted to long, heavy metal lines.”

  “Power lines.” Max didn’t have trouble understanding what Shelby was showing him, but he did need time to process it. He finished the glass of water.

  Carter came back into the house, screen door banging shut behind him, his phone still in his hand.

  Max turned his attention back to the report Shelby had given him. “This says that transmission lines would naturally collect the atmospheric energy.”

  “And here…” She leaned over him and pointed farther down the page. “It says that the wires will heat up, and then they will begin to sag.”

  They both glanced toward Carter. He moved between them and pushed a button on his phone.

  “This is the first one I took.”

  “About an hour ago,” Shelby murmured.

  “And this is the one I took just now.”

  The lines were significantly lower, drooping so that it seemed even the power poles were beginning to tilt.

  “We need to go see the mayor.” Max stood and began gathering the
things he had dropped on the table—keys, wallet, and phone.

  “There’s nothing Perkins can do.”

  “She has to know.” Max put his plate and cup in the sink. “Carter, you need to fill up any containers you can find with water.”

  “But the water is still working. I just poured you a glass.”

  “Just do it, Carter.” His mother was picking up all of the papers, stuffing them into her folder.

  “Electricity pumps water up to the water tower,” Max reminded him. “When you turn on the faucet, the water flows out. But once Abney’s water tower is drained, there won’t be any way to refill it.” As he spoke, Max stared out the window over the sink. He could make out the swing set Carter had played on as a child. It reminded him of everything the boy had been through, but he wasn’t a boy anymore. And now? Now he would need to become a man rather quickly.

  “Don’t you have any good news?”

  Max grabbed his ball cap off the table where he’d tossed it. “You can find more containers in my house. You have a key.”

  Shelby shoved the folder into her shoulder bag. “Stay here, okay?”

  “Where would I go? It’s past midnight, planes are apparently falling from the sky, and everything is closed.”

  “Promise me you’ll stay here.” She waited until Carter nodded, and then she added, “We’ll be back as fast as we can.”

  Max was already at the front door when Shelby turned back.

  “Carter, if there’s a fire, I want you to get out. Don’t try to save anything. Get a safe distance away from the house and wait for me.”

  Instead of arguing, Carter stared down at the pictures on his phone.

  “Let’s go.” Max held the door open, and Shelby walked out in front of him. The neighborhood was quiet, each house dark and all of the residents inside. He could almost forget what he’d seen in Shelby’s folder. Other than the glow of the aurora, the street and its row of tidy houses offered a peaceful scene, contradicting the fact that the world as they knew it had already begun to change.

  Neither of them spoke as they drove through the streets of town. Abney had recently grown to six thousand residents. It wasn’t a large community, but it was a county seat. People would turn to Abney when they needed assistance.

  “What about your parents?” Shelby asked.

  “They’ll be fine, for now.”

  “But you’ll need to check on them.”

  “Eventually. I’ll drive out to High Fields once we know the situation here.”

  The name High Fields made him smile—it sounded rather lofty, like something out of a novel. It was indeed on top of a small plateau, affording a nice view of the Texas countryside. If this thing was as bad as Shelby thought, they might consider leaving until it was rectified. He knew they would be safe at High Fields, but first he needed to understand the situation he was leaving behind in Abney.

  Shelby leaned forward, peering out the window. “How did you know they’d all be here?”

  It was an odd sight—so many cars parked around city hall at midnight on a Friday evening. It confirmed that what they were experiencing wasn’t merely a bad dream.

  “I drove by when I dropped off Mr. and Mrs. Smitty.”

  He parked the truck and unfastened his seat belt.

  Shelby reached out and touched his arm. “Do you think they’ll listen to us?”

  “I don’t know.” He wanted to wipe the worry from her face, but that was something he’d been trying to do for years. Shelby Sparks was not one to accept help easily or often. “All we can do is try.”

  She nodded once, clutched her large shoulder bag to her chest, and hopped out of the truck. They entered city hall, and Shelby stopped, staring around the room with her mouth open in surprise.

  The scene in front of them could best be called controlled chaos.

  Emergency lights were working, so their generator was in working order. Officers from the Abney Police Department had congregated in the middle of the room. Max guessed they had come off the eleven p.m. shift but weren’t ready to go home until they knew what was happening. All five of the council members were present, but three were staring at their phones. The other two were standing in front of a map of Abney, studying it as if to find answers.

  At the front of the room was the mayor, the mayor pro tem, the police chief, and the fire chief. Eugene Stone, the mayor pro tem, was practically shouting at the other three, waving his arms and jabbing a finger in the air to make some point.

  The mayor, Nadine Perkins, seemed to be listening to the men standing in front of her, but they were interrupting one another. As Max and Shelby pushed their way through the crowd, he realized the other three were firing questions at Perkins.

  The mayor almost looked relieved when she glanced up and caught Max’s eye. He motioned toward her office, and she nodded in the affirmative, excusing herself from the group and meeting Max and Shelby at her office door. She ushered them inside.

  “Bob Bryant doesn’t want to send his officers home until he understands what we’re dealing with. Luis has no way to know who might need an ambulance.”

  “The ambulances work?” Max asked.

  “Yes, and so do the police cruisers.”

  “Probably because they’re older,” Shelby muttered.

  “The problem is that all of the phones are down, and Eugene—” She left the sentence unfinished.

  Max could imagine the trouble Eugene Stone was giving her. Stone remained bitter that he had lost in his bid for mayor when Perkins was elected. That he’d lost the position to a woman, and one relatively new to town—she’d moved there ten years ago—had not helped. He had run again in the next election and won the council seat, eventually being appointed mayor pro tem.

  “Enough of my problems,” Perkins said. “Tell me what you two are doing out at this hour. Tell me I don’t already have legal problems from…” She gestured toward the window, which was covered with a blind. “This.”

  Max had filled in a few times when the town needed legal counsel. The job of city attorney officially belonged to Calvin Green, but he’d experienced health issues over the last year.

  “I don’t know about legal problems, but Shelby has something she needs to show you.”

  He suspected that Shelby only knew the mayor because everyone in a small town knew everyone else. She didn’t have a lot of reason to involve herself in city business.

  The mayor confirmed this when she reached across the desk and shook Shelby’s hand. “Sparks, am I right?”

  “Good memory.”

  “I’m a natural politician. Haven’t you heard?”

  It was another barb that Stone had thrown her way during the last election—that because she had been mayor in one of the Dallas suburbs, she was a “lifelong politician who had never worked a day in her life.”

  “Have a seat. I’ve been standing out there since this thing hit at—”

  “Eight twenty? We first saw the aurora a few minutes after eight.”

  Perkins nodded and motioned for her to continue.

  It only took ten minutes to lay out what they thought they knew. Shelby presented Perkins with an article for each point she made. By the time she was done, the mayor’s desk was littered with nearly a dozen different printouts.

  Perkins steepled her fingers and studied them before standing and stacking Shelby’s research into a neat pile.

  “You’re telling me this is widespread—”

  “It would have to be for us to see the aurora this far south.”

  “That our loss of power is permanent.”

  Shelby and Max nodded.

  “And that manufacturing is down as well, meaning our infrastructure will be vulnerable for some time.”

  “Yes.” Shelby’s voice was a whisper.

  “Best guess, Shelby. How long are we talking about?”

  It was something they hadn’t yet dared to do, put a number on it. Estimating the breadth of the damage would somehow make i
t more real and perhaps consign them to a lifetime of hardship.

  Shelby glanced at Max, swallowed, and turned back to the mayor. “To rebuild transformers and restring power lines? I don’t know, exactly. I’m not a scientist or a city planner, but if I had to guess, I’d say twenty if things go well. And if this is the only solar storm. Some of the experts say it would take more like forty.”

  “Weeks?”

  “No. Not weeks—years. Twenty to forty years.”

  EIGHT

  Shelby was surprised when Perkins walked around the desk, opened her office door, and started barking orders. What had she expected the woman to do? Argue with her? Throw her out of the office? Weep?

  Max was visibly shaken by the time frame that Shelby had suggested, but he didn’t correct her. If there was one thing Shelby could count on, it was that Max would tell her if he thought she was wrong.

  “Bryant and Castillo—I need you in my office. Stone, find Danny Vail and Calvin Green. Tell them I need to see them now. After that I want you to assemble the council in chambers. They need to be ready to meet in twenty minutes. And someone find me the high school science teacher!”

  Stone immediately began arguing with the mayor. “Maybe you don’t realize the emergency we have here.”

  “Eugene—”

  “Maybe you can’t handle the job during this type of crisis.”

  “Save it, Eugene, and do what I asked.” Perkins slammed the door, took a deep breath, and grabbed a water bottle from her desk, downing the contents in one long drink.

  In less than five minutes the group was assembled. There weren’t enough chairs, but no one seemed to mind. Bob Bryant and Luis Castillo leaned against the wall. Bryant, the police chief, was roughly Shelby’s age and in good physical shape. Castillo, the fire chief, was another matter. In his mid-to-late sixties, Castillo had completely recovered from heart surgery, but the man’s skin had an unhealthy pallor. Sweat beaded on his bald head.

  Calvin Green took the remaining seat. The oldest in the group, he was probably over seventy. Shelby knew Max had filled in for the man on several occasions—but he looked healthy to her. In fact, he looked much better than Castillo.

  As Perkins rounded her desk and took her seat, Danny Vail walked into the room. If their city manager was surprised to see Shelby, he didn’t show it, though he did nod her way. Danny was African-American, with a buzz cut and a military bearing. They’d known each other for at least twenty years. Danny was forty-five years old, the same age that Shelby’s husband would have been had he lived. In fact, Danny had served with Alex overseas.