Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 17th | 10:17 PM | 39 degrees
When it came to academic literature, the library of Honey Grove High was far from that of the glory days of Alexandria.
The shelves were stocked with all the classics–Moby Dick, The Odyssey, basically everything by Hemingway–but Rivera wasn’t interested in fiction. The texts she was looking for were those that didn’t seem to exist outside the electronic databases in which modern research took place. Gone were the days when she could open up her laptop and freely access millions of scholarly articles with just a few keystrokes, pulling up study after study by scientists around the world who had published their findings for the public to read. If the articles existed in any physical form it would be in the bottom desk drawers of those who had written them, dusty stacks of double-spaced printouts covered in red ink, coffee rings, and late night tears. Probably some celebratory champagne stains, as well. Finding them without a working computer would be impossible.
Rivera never thought she would miss the Internet as much as she did now. More often than not it had been a cesspool of trolls and misinformation, flooded with confidently incorrect opinions and half-baked conspiracies, a place that both existed in every corner of modern life and had no tangible presence in reality. At the same time, the Internet was also the center of science in the 21st Century. Researchers from every field relied on it to carry out and upload their work, Rivera included, and not once had it crossed her mind that this new, digital Library of Alexandria might also be burned to the ground by a simple lack of access. Decades, centuries of knowledge and progress locked away on dead servers that would never again send their data across the world.
She tossed another book aside and reached for a new one. Like a few other states throughout the U.S., Texas officials had declared war on climate research by banning books that suggested fossil fuels were the problem from all school libraries. Since all the science agreed that these emissions were in fact responsible, this meant that Honey Grove High had been forced to toss out any texts that so much as mentioned the atmosphere. And that meant Rivera had practically no chance of finding anything of use that could help her understand how the Earth’s climate might react to no longer having a Sun.
That said, she had still managed to find close to twenty books with titles about weather or climate (thank God for rebellious librarians), but only two of these had proved to be relevant to the world she now lived in. Of these two, only a handful of pages included any mention of frozen water cycles or abrupt thermal imbalances, and those pages only briefly discussed the ideas as impossibilities not worth dwelling on. She placed markers in these sections anyway, added them to the small stack of hopefully useful information she had gathered, and cracked open the next book.
This one included a chapter dedicated to climate shifts caused by dust from asteroid impacts. The author theorized that the asteroid that caused the Chicxulub crater some 66 million years ago and ended the reign of the dinosaurs would have released enough dust into the air to blot out the Sun for up to a decade. Rivera’s eyes rapidly scanned the page for paragraphs about the water cycle or drastic shifts in weather patterns, but all she found was a single sentence: “Photosynthesizing plantlife withered away and died from the lack of sunlight, resulting in the starvation and extinction of a large majority of land-dwelling fauna on the planet.”
She pushed the book across the table and rubbed her eyes. It had been just before 8 PM when she came into the library and now it was after 10. Sleep had crossed her mind several times, but she knew it would be a useless attempt with Carlos still outside with the others on their scavenger hunt. After all, it was her fault he was out there with Ryan; she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew they were both back safe and sound. So she could either sit here and stare at the wall until that happened, or she could keep digging through books.
Rivera reached for another book.
“. . . a second?”
Rivera glanced up from the page some time later, not sure if the voice she heard had been real or a figment of her overworked mind. Just as she decided on it being the latter and returned to reading, it came again.
“Anybody home?”
She turned around in her seat and Carlos was approaching her from the library doors, still wearing his puffy blue jacket.
Nearly tripping over her chair, Rivera rushed across the room and fell into his arms.
“Hey,” Carlos laughed, hugging her against him. “Everything okay?”
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Rivera said. She pulled away. “You were gone longer than I thought and I’ve been imagining everything that could’ve gone wrong and–” she took a breath. “I’m sorry I talked you into going out there, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Hey, no apology needed. Really. I needed some fresh air anyway. And I think Beasley enjoyed the exercise.”
Rivera looked to the door behind him and frowned. “Where is Beasley?”
“Ryan’s watching her for a bit.” He looked past her to the table covered in books. “So do you have a second? There’s something I want to show you.”
Carlos led her out into the hallway and toward whatever it was he wanted her to see. Annoyingly, he refused to answer when she repeatedly asked what it was. She hated surprises, almost more than she hated the fact Carlos knew she hated surprises but always tried to surprise her anyway.
She gave up on trying to pry a hint from him. “How was it out there?”
Carlos shrugged. “Cold. And dark.”
“And the weapons?”
“We found them. Terri and Franklin are going through them with Howell now, but it’ll be more than enough to get some people guarding the Mobil.”
“Did you see the Valero?”
Carlos hesitated, then nodded. “It’s . . . It’s gone.”
She didn’t say anything else. It was another worst case scenario. Darren’s people would come asking for gas before too long, or they would decide the Mobil belonged to them and then there would be war. People would be shot and lives would be ended in the selfish pursuit of fuel, and then when the bullets stopped flying everyone still alive would freeze to death. Or starve. Rivera thought she would feel more shocked at realizing how bleak this now certain future was, but she oddly didn’t feel surprised in the slightest. She just felt sad that this was the way everything would come to an end for her.
“What’s that?” Carlos asked, nodding to the book she was still clinging to. She hadn’t realized she still had it until then.
“Oh, nothing. Thought I’d try to find something to better understand what’s going on with the weather.”
“Any luck?”
She thought about mentioning the fate of the dinosaurs but decided against it. “No.”
“You’ll figure something out,” Carlos said, stopping at the doors to the auditorium, “just keep looking.” He pulled the door open and motioned her inside. As she walked past him, he gently took the book from her hands and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. “But not right now.”
Rivera frowned and stepped into the darkness of the large room as the door clanged shut and echoed up to the ceiling. “Why are we here?”
“Just keep going.”
Sighing, Rivera did as he said and walked blindly down the aisle between auditorium seats. Up ahead, the stage was dimly lit by several LED lanterns that had been left on by whatever idiot who forgot to turn them off following the meeting earlier. “Wonder how long those have been running,” she asked, then muttered, “Batteries are probably drained by now.”
Carlos didn’t answer, but followed her up the steps and onto the stage. Rivera picked up one of the lanterns and switched it off, then started for the next one.
Then the song began to play.
A single note plucked on a muted bass guitar followed by the wooden scratch of some percussion instrument. A faint, high pitched bell. Then more bass guitar as the song moved through the beginning of its iconic melody.
Rivera turned around and found her husband standing center stage with his smartphone held out between them, the song from their wedding night spilling out of the speakers. Carlos smiled and she felt the air rush out of her lungs, the same way she’d felt when he’d given her that exact same smile after their first date.
Heart pounding, she looked around the room and finally figured out the surprise. The lights, the secrecy, the song. “What–“
The scratchy voice of Ben E. King filled the stage and cut her question short.
“When the night, has come.
And the land is dark.
And the moon, is the only light we’ll see.”
Carlos held out his hand and Rivera found herself drawn toward it like iron to a magnet. He took the dark lantern from her and switched it back on, placed it on the floor by his feet, and took her hand in his. Rivera felt herself pulled in close to him, his hands at her waist, her hands instinctively moving up to rest over his shoulders.
Mr. King continued his song and they began moving in slow, swaying circles.
“No I won’t be afraid.
Oh I won’t be afraid.
Just as long, as you stand,
stand by me.”
As they slowly revolved there in the middle of the stage, Rivera rested her head against Carlos’ chest and felt part of herself melt into him, her rapid heartbeat slowing to synchronize with his while the song played on. For the first time in days, she didn’t care that the world had ended or that life itself stood on the brink of collapse. None of it mattered. The only thoughts filling her head now were of their wedding, of the way Carlos had taken her in his arms and guided her across the dance floor in front of their friends and family all those years ago, the way her nerves and embarrassment had evaporated the second she looked into his eyes. In that moment almost twenty years earlier, everyone else in the room had fallen away to the shadows and ceased to exist. All that remained in the world was her and Carlos and the music.
The song came to its end and Rivera pulled away just enough to look up into Carlos’ eyes, and they were the same eyes she had gazed into two decades ago. A few more wrinkles, but the same warmth and compassion. Maybe even more.
“Thank you,” she whispered, not trusting her vocal cords enough to speak any louder.
He kissed her, then said, “I love you. So much.”
“I love you too,” she croaked, resting her head back against his chest and listening to his heart.
“We’re going to get through this,” he said, the words rumbling against her ear. “I promise you. No matter what else happens, we’re going to be okay.”
The thing that surprised Rivera the most wasn’t the song or the dance, not even the fact Carlos had been able to pull the whole thing off without her realizing it at any point along the way.
What surprised her the most was that she believed him.
The Blink 