Honey Grove, Texas, United States

July 14, 2024 | 8:12 PM | 71 degrees

2 days after The Blink

While the northern lights danced across the heavens over Honey Grove, Sue Bellamy didn’t have the slightest idea that anything was wrong. In fact, she’d spent the better part of the last two days trying to convince herself that nothing was wrong, that the chaos and uncertainty gripping the world was all part of the plan, so to speak. This was proving to be more difficult than she expected.

Sue had been the pianist for the First Baptist Church of Honey Grove going on thirty years now, ever since she’d moved into town and felt called to put her musical talents to divine use, so trusting in the Lord was nothing new to her.

The world being plunged into eternal night, however, was.

Still, she wasn’t about to let the last five decades of faith crumble to dust just because it had gotten a little dark outside. In her experience, that was the best time to have a little faith. It was in those darkest hours of night that the God’s signs were most visible, when His voice came through the clearest.

Sue just wished the Good Lord would speak a little louder right now, if it wasn’t too much to ask.

Before she had the chance to hear His guidance, though, a knock sounded at her door and pulled her away from the heavenly one-on-one she’d been trying to have. Sue opened her eyes to the darkness of her small room—one of the classrooms the church used to teach Sunday School—and briefly informed God that He would “just have to hang on a second,” but she knew He already knew this. He had undoubtedly been hiding His grin the whole time she prayed, fully aware that someone was coming down the hall to interrupt her long before knuckles met the door.

What was it Pastor Evan always said? “Man plans, God laughs.” Sue liked that. She liked to think God had a sense of humor.

The knock came again, a bit more insistent this time. “Sue? Are you still awake?”

“Yes,” she answered, rising from the couch they’d dragged into the room. It wasn’t a memory foam, that was for sure, but it was a good deal better than sleeping on the floor. Ever since the Sun had darkened, Sue had driven her car only once from her house to the church, and it had been by the grace of God alone that she hadn’t wound up in a ditch that time. Her eyes weren’t what they used to be, especially when driving at night, so rather than making the half hour trip back and forth every day Sue had packed some necessities and decided to just stay at the church. Since her husband died a few years back, she always dreaded spending nights alone in that dark old house. Now that it was always nighttime, she couldn’t stand the thought of staying another minute at home. Imagine her surprise wen she found out she wasn’t the only one who’d had the same idea in mind.

Sue flipped on the lamp but nothing happened. Before she could consider what this meant, the door creaked open and the light that spilled into her room came from a white flashlight beam, not the warm hall lights from the ceiling. That’s when she figured out something was wrong.

“Did we lose power?” she asked, still unable to make out who was standing in the doorframe. Her voice sounded too loud in the stillness that had settled into the church.

“You’ve got to come outside and see this.” The voice belonged to Janie, one of the younger women who helped lead Wednesday night bible study. Sue couldn’t tell if the woman sounded terrified or amazed, but she put on her glasses and slid on her shoes anyway.

The power was indeed out. Sue followed Janie down the hall, through the swinging doors that opened into the sanctuary, down the rows of empty pews, and toward the large double doors that led out to the parking lot, the whole trip made in quiet darkness. Although the cavernous space of the church’s sanctuary was unlit by the hanging lights, the dozen or so stained glass windows that lined the walls shimmered with a ghostly blue glow coming from outside. Janie turned off her flashlight and the two of them walked by the light of the shifting colors that fell onto the carpet, both surrounded by biblical stories that came to life in the mosaic panes of colored glass.

A hundred questions ran through Sue’s mind as they walked, but she didn’t ask a one of them. In her sixty years on this Earth, she had learned it really was true that patience was a virtue, and that nine times out of ten it was better to listen than it was to speak.

And when she stepped outside and stood beneath those unbelievable streaks of blue and green gently undulating across the darkness, tears filled her eyes and she knew this was one of those times.

Alright, Lord, Sue thought, I hear you loud and clear.

---

Not long after, Sue sat in one of the pews talking with the others while some of the men worked outside on hooking up the church’s backup generator, a clunky old thing that hadn’t been used in years. Small LED lanterns placed around the room cast harsh white light onto the walls and windows. The northern lights had peaked right around 9 PM, and although they had started to dim and become less intense, the glow from the sky was still visible moving across the stained glass.

Those lights were all the ten or so people staying at the church could talk about. What did they mean? Some of the congregation took it as a sign to have hope, that the world hadn’t ended and the colorful lights were proof of that. After all, didn’t the good book say Noah saw a rainbow after the world was destroyed by the flood? Who was to say he hadn’t seen the northern lights and just didn’t know what to call it? Others saw it as just the opposite, pulling out Bible verses about “strange signs in the stars” as evidence the end was truly upon them.

Sue didn’t take a side in the matter. She simply shrugged and said she didn’t know, and that was the truth. No one knew. And coming up with theories one way or the other felt too much like trying to know the mind of God, and she didn’t like doing that. If the whole congregation was called up to the pearly gates in the next few hours, well, it wouldn’t matter either way. Knowing wouldn’t speed up the process nor would it delay it, so Sue didn’t see the point to worrying over it. She just sat in her pew and listened.

It did strike her as amusing how the voices that echoed through the silent sanctuary did so in hushed whispers, a force of habit that made Sue feel like Pastor Evan was about to walk up to the pulpit and deliver a Sunday morning sermon.

But the preacher wasn’t even in town, he hadn’t been for two days as far as anyone knew. When Sue had called him to ask about opening the church up to the public, the answering machine had picked up. She’d flipped through the small notebook of addresses and phone numbers in her kitchen drawer until she found the one for his cellphone, but it also went straight to voicemail. No one knew for sure where Pastor Evan had gone, but everyone had a pretty good idea that he and his family had fled to their cabin. A lot of others had as well, whole droves of Honey Grovers quite literally running for the hills after the Sun went dark, dozens of families leaving town to stay in vacation homes or pull their campers off the side of the road in some secluded spot to live out the last days. These were the loners, as Sue liked to think of them, the isolationists who saw cities and towns as the last place you wanted to be during the end times. Like every other person in the world was about to turn into vicious monsters except for them. The men were typically behind this line of thinking, but what were the wives and children supposed to do when Dad grabs a shotgun and says they’re leaving?

That wasn’t to say Pastor Evan was a violent man, but he was one of these loner types. A prepper, some would call him. He had a small stockpile of weapons and ammunition and whatever he could find on sale at a military surplus in preparation for The End, an End he had preached for years was a little more nigh, and somewhat ironically an End he and the other believers didn’t think they would be around for to actually need all that guns and ammo. But Sue guessed it never hurt to have a backup plan, just in case the Rapture ran a little late. She didn’t care much for the apocalyptic machismo so many seemed to boast in recent years, especially from within her own church, the way men who strived every day to be more like Christ were so ready and willing to load a gun and turn the other cheek on all His teachings.

Fortunately, it seemed that most of the machismo in town had gone off to play soldier in their various hiding holes, and Sue was glad of it. Unfortunately, Pastor Evan had turned out to be one of them.

That meant Honey Grove First Baptist was in dire need of new leadership, at least until things either went back to normal or got a whole lot worse. Sue had prayed for someone to step up to the pulpit and provide some guidance for her and the others, but after two days of almost constant prayer, no one had.

The ceiling lights flickered on and surprised applause filled the room.

Sue joined in the cheering and then set to turning off all the lamps to save their batteries, a task Janie helped her with. The three men who had figured out the backup generator came in from outside and, following another round of cheering from the pews, approached the front of the sanctuary with triumphant grins on their faces.

“The generator is good,” Manuel announced in his slow and careful accent. He was a single father in his late thirties who had come to Honey Grove two years earlier with his daughter, Isabel, and he had become a church member not long after getting settled in. He worked for the power company, too, so when it came to outages and generators he was the best man in the congregation to have on hand. “But,” he continued, “there is not much gasoline. Enough for two days, or three, but we will need more. We should, uh,” he frowned, searching for the right word, “we should not use so much lights. To have more time.”

Sue started toward the swinging doors as one of the other men said something to Manuel in Spanish that made them both laugh.

“Where are you going?” Janie asked, following after her.

“Help me turn off some lights,” Sue said, holding the door open for her.

They split up and went through every room of the church, unplugging lamps and televisions and flipping light switches. Every bathroom, closet, and classroom was looked over and quickly made more energy efficient. The kitchen was the worst, having two refrigerators and two large freezers so old and inefficient the EPA would have a heart attack just from looking at them, so Sue unplugged everything but one fridge and transferred as much cold foods as she could into it. They always kept the kitchen well-stocked for the fish fries they held once a month, an event that always had a wonderful turnout at this time of year, but that now meant they had more food than they had freezers.

Sue placed the packaged rolls and frozen filets of cod and tilapia back into their unplugged units, wondering how long it would take for it all to defrost and spoil, and what a shame it would be for all that perfectly good food to go to waste.

The northern lights flared outside the kitchen window, a quick and bright glow that splashed green light on the sides of the freezer. And on the fish.

Sue laughed aloud and slowly shook her head, her gaze drifting toward the window. “Loud and clear.”