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 the neighbors’ house. The windows in the house were dark of course, and he got the sense of stillness. Deliberately he moved his gaze forward, and in the eerie red glow saw that the road dead-ended about fifty yards ahead.
“Hey.”
The single word was soft, so soft that if he wanted he could legitimately pretend he hadn’t heard it. It came from the direction of the dark porch. Maybe she thought he’d seen her, and rural manners had compelled her to greet him. Maybe she didn’t really want a conversation in the dark early-morning hours. He could keep going . . . but he’d already had this talk with himself, and look where he was.
He stopped in the middle of the road, turned his head toward the house. Yes, he could make her out, a pale blur barely visible in the dark protection of the porch.
“Hey,” he said in return.
Sela had stood in her yard for a while, face turned skyward, then returned to the porch with the intention of going back inside to try to get some sleep. The red sky held her, though, and she remained standing at the screen door just as entranced as she had been when she first saw the glow. Then she saw Ben. She recognized him almost immediately, though she felt a split second of alarm at seeing a strange man walking down her road. The smooth, silent way he moved registered with her and with some astonishment she realized she’d watched him enough that she knew how he walked, could recognize him even in the faint, eerie red glow.
Her heart began pounding.
She started to shrink back, not say anything. She had no idea why he was walking down the middle of the road in the wee hours, but one thing she did know about him was that he didn’t like interacting with others. The fact that he’d warned her about the solar storm was more astonishing than if he hadn’t. At the time she hadn’t fully appreciated what he’d done, but now she did; however well they survived this crisis, they would have been much worse off without his heads-up. The least she could do was say thank you.
“Hey,” she said, the one word all she could manage because her heart was beating so hard and she didn’t have the breath to say more. She doubted he’d be able to hear her, her voice had been so weak.
Then he stopped, looked at her, and repeated her greeting back to her. Her knees went weak, so weak she almost slumped against the screen door. Her reaction to him was so extreme she felt like a teenager; the realization was enough to strengthen her spine, her knees, and she barely trembled as she pulled open the screen door and stepped outside so he could see her, perhaps recognize her. That was as far as her determination carried her, and she sank down on the top step. She crunched her toes, the wood cool under her bare feet, and waited to see if he’d resume his walk down the road.
She expected him to; she even wanted him to. When, after a pause so long she almost stopped breathing, he turned and walked across the yard toward her, she sucked in a quick breath of . . . maybe panic, maybe excitement, likely both.
As he got closer she could make out some kind of stick across his back . . . no, a scabbard. A gunstock was protruding from it. Of course; no sane person would wander these mountains at night without the means of protecting himself from the wildlife.
He slipped the scabbard off over his head and without a word sat down on the step beside her. He kept the weapon at hand, though, right beside his leg.
She took a deep, silent breath, caught in the moment with crimson magic above her and him beside her. On a cellular level she realized she’d remember this forever, no matter where life took her or how long she existed. This, now, was ingrained in her being. Red ribbons danced overhead, fading, then pulsing with power again. The red glow bathed them, making it seem as if the heat she felt all along her left side came from the lights in the sky instead of from him. He wasn’t actually touching her but he was so close there seemed to be a mild magnetic field between them, lifting the fine hairs on her arm.