Honey Grove, Texas, United States
July 18th | 2:38 PM | 33 degrees

---

“Anything?” The question left Ryan’s mouth in a cloud of frozen vapor that drifted out into the dark. Black clouds obscured the stars above the school’s roof, signs of another approaching storm, but so far it hadn’t started to rain. Or, considering the latest thermometer reading of 33 degrees, snow.

Carlos adjusted the volume dial and shook his head. “Nothing.” The shortwave radio from his Jeep rested on the waist-high wall that surrounded the roof, cables connecting the device to an old car battery that looked like an electric shock waiting to happen. For several days he had gone out to sit in his Jeep and listen for any broadcasts coming in, but the world had remained unnaturally silent whenever he switched it on. Thinking the surrounding buildings might be interfering with the signal, he dug around the school’s A/V classroom and found an old antenna and some wire that Ryan had helped him install onto the highest point of the roof. 

Apparently, though, that hadn’t helped.

“That’s weird, right?” Ryan asked, rubbing his cold hands together. His knowledge of radios started and ended with the FM stations he listened to on the way to and from school half a decade earlier, each playing a shuffle of the same songs separated by commercials with overly excited, possibly coked-up used car salesmen. It didn’t take long for him to start getting his music from streaming apps instead, and he hadn’t thought about a radio since.

“Very weird. You usually pick up chatter from all over the place on these things.” Carlos thought for a second. “If the whole country’s power grid went down with the solar flare, most stations probably had a bunch of equipment fried in the process. So I can understand not finding any FM stations, but shortwave should still be there. Radio hobbyists, military, police, something. And yet,” he slapped the side of the radio, “nada.”

“Maybe we’re out of range?” Ryan suggested, knowing Carlos’ experience of using the radio while chasing tornadoes meant he had already considered something so trivial.

“That’s the thing. Sometimes you can pick up broadcasts from the other side of the planet with one of these. Range shouldn’t matter.”

“Could the corona . . . ,” Ryan frowned, struggling to remember the precise words Rivera had used, “that solar flare thing that took out the power, could that have messed something up with it?”

“Coronal mass ejection,” Carlos said, then shook his head. “I thought about that too, but I plugged up the radio in the A/V room and it was the same. Just static. It’s like no one else is making any broadcasts.”

The idea hung in the air between them, its implications unraveling in the cold silence and sending a chill through Ryan’s body. The rest of the world couldn’t be . . . gone, that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

“But someone’s always broadcasting,” Carlos added, a little too fast to sound like he fully believed it. “If this old scrap heap survived the CME, there should be plenty of others that did, too.”

“Unless we’re the last people left in the world,” Ryan said, only half joking.

“That’s unlikely.”

As unlikely as the Sun disappearing? he wanted to add, but didn’t.

A loud burst of static screeched up from the steady background hush and made both of them jump, the sound carrying faint but distinguishable traces of what might have been words. Carlos pressed a button to stop the automatic scan and adjusted some dials to clear up the signal, then they leaned in toward the speakers.

“. . . -ther . . . cast . . . strong . . . -tions . . .”

Ryan frowned at the jumble of syllables coming through and strained his ears to make sense of the broken words that followed, but it was no use. The bad signal combined with the background static and the sound of rising wind made it impossible to pick out anything.

“Watch the antenna wire,” Carlos said, disconnecting the radio from the battery and carrying the device toward the roof hatch. “We can hear better inside.”

Ryan took the battery and held the cable so it didn’t tangle or run out of slack, then followed him down the ladder and into the warmth inside. He left the hatch propped open with a roof pebble so it wouldn’t cut the wire and, once Carlos reached up and took the battery, climbed the rest of the way down.

They set up the radio on the floor of the hall right outside the roof access closet, no time to find a classroom. Carlos had the device running again in seconds, the crackling static echoing down the hall.

“. . . will repeat.” The signal came through much clearer in the hall’s silence, though for several long seconds there was only more static.

And then the message repeated.

“Attention: Severe winter weather is forecast for the following counties.” As the broadcast went through a list of what seemed to be every county in north Texas, Ryan recognized the speaker as the robotic narrator that always delivered weather alerts. Nearly a minute passed before the broadcast completed its list of counties and continued with the message. “Expect heavy snow accumulations, strong winds, and blizzard-like conditions beginning at two PM. Seek shelter immediately in a well insulated building. Ensure that you have enough food and water to survive at least a week, as well as enough fuel to power any generators that are available.”

Running footsteps approached from the stairs and a figure skidded around the corner. Ryan glanced up and saw Terri, the Army soldier who had gone with them to retrieve Davie’s guns, her eyebrows furrowed in an effort to find the source of the noise. 

Without looking, Carlos raised his hand toward her as she approached, palm out, and she froze in place.

“If you do not have access to a generator or working fireplace, seek shelter with a neighbor who does. Government-run warming centers are being set up in Dallas and Fort Worth with limited space for those unable to secure shelter of their own. This is a potentially life threatening storm system. Stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio for further updates. This message will repeat.”

The radio fell silent, then began the broadcast again. 

Carlos turned the volume down and looked at Ryan. “At least the emergency alerts still work.”

“What’s going on?” Terri asked.

“Texas just got a severe weather alert for a mid-summer blizzard,” he said, checking his watch. “Due in about six hours.”

She nodded her chin to the radio. “You checked the other emergency bands yet?”

“It’s all static.”

Terri frowned and knelt by the radio. “Can I?”

He hesitated. “Ever used one before?”

“Did training in COMSEC repair while I was enlisted, so radios were my whole life for a good while.”

Carlos motioned toward the radio. “In that case, be my guest. I’ve scanned through every band and the only broadcast coming through is this one. And if I remember right, that transmitter is about thirty miles away from here, over in Paris.”

“That shouldn’t matter, though,” she said, adjusting the various dials and raising the volume until the hall was filled with white noise.

“I know, but for some reason it does. We only picked up the weather alert after setting up a bigger antenna on the roof.”

Terri dialed through four different stations, pausing at each to listen for a few seconds. “These are military, top priority channels. Even if everything else is down, these would still be going. So why can’t we hear them?”

Carlos rubbed at his chin. “At first I thought our receivers somehow got fried, but then the weather broadcast came through.”

“Because it’s the closest transmission,” Terri said, more to herself than to him. “So, what, something’s interfering with the long distance transmissions but not the ones nearby? How does that work?”

After a few seconds of silence, Ryan, feeling more useless than he’d ever felt in his life, asked, “Could the cold make the signal not bounce down to us the right way?”

They both paused and looked at him, gears spinning behind their eyes at something he’d said in his question. Within the span of five seconds their faces simultaneously lit up. 

Terri said, “It’s the skip–“

Carlos said, “It’s the bounce–“

“Signals skip off the underside of–“

“–the ionosphere–“

“–and solar flares can mess with skip–“

“–because its made up of particles ionized by solar radiation–“

They both looked at each other and said, “It’s the Sun.”

Carlos smacked his forehead with his palm. “I should’ve known that. Ryan, you’re a genius.”

“Uh, happy to help,” he said, still not entirely sure what had just happened. “Just to clarify, though, the CME is what’s messing with the radios?”

Carlos shook his head. “Shortwave gets its range because it bounces off the atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere, and solar radiation is the only reason we have an ionosphere. No Sun means no ionosphere, no bounce, no shortwave.”

“So shortwave is officially useless,” Terri said, turning down the volume and rising to her feet. “We’re pretty much limited to an antenna being in line of sight with the transmitter.”

Carlos switched the radio back to NOAA’s emergency broadcast, the message again running through its list of counties. “I bet the government is loving that.”

“No doubt,” she said. “That’s supposed to be the last line of communication if the grid fails.”

“Maybe they’ll take a page from Darren’s book and start blowing up gas stations to send messages.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Oh, speaking of, we’re getting ready to head to the Mobil and get a watch set up. Me, Franklin, a handful of others. You guys interested?”

Carlos laughed. “No way. I’ve seen enough action out there for my taste.”

“Alright,” she said, “but don’t be surprised if Howell gets you for roof duty. I may have recommended the two of you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Carlos said. 

Ryan frowned. “Roof duty?”

“Yeah. He wants some people up on top of the school to keep an eye out for anything weird. Fires, helicopters passing over, a mob with torches marching toward the Mobil, stuff like that. That way if anything happens we can be ready.”

“Not a bad idea.”

Carlos snorted. “It will be when we’re stuck up there freezing our asses off.”

“You’re big tough boys, you’ll manage,” Terri said, turning toward the stairs. 

“Better dress warm,” Carlos called after her. “It’s gonna be bad out there.”

Walking backwards, Terri pointed up at the ceiling and grinned. “Not as bad as it’ll be up there.”

---

As soon as the door to the principal’s office closed, Howell closed his eyes and leaned against the metal desk, his body deflating like a tire that had been punctured. Exhaustion was a word he had grown familiar with during his time as mayor, but the last few days had completely redefined the concept. He now realized he had never been truly exhausted before, not like this, no matter how many meetings or late night work sessions had filled his schedule.

What he wouldn’t give to go back to those days.

Carlos had walked into his office before he had the chance to summon him through the PA system, but it hadn’t been a social call. He had come with yet another problem to add to his plate. A blizzard, and a bad one at that, set to reach Honey Grove in just a few hours.

“Christmas in July,” Howell muttered to himself.

The school was prepared for the cold, mostly, but a blizzard? Howell didn’t know how much weight the roof would support if the snow started piling up. And the wind, what damage would that do? If windows shattered, would they be able to get them fixed before all the heat escaped? And how would they get fuel to the generators if a foot of snow covered the roads between the school and the Mobil? Did they even have shovels to clear the snow? How long would the firewood they had last if the power did go out?  

And where the hell was Joey? 

Howell had called for him twice now but he still hadn’t shown up. The kid had a surprising eye for detail, he had to admit, and a rare teenage ability to actually finish what he started. Even if he was as socially competent as a pile of bricks. Joey’s note taking included far more than the obvious necessities Howell had asked him to keep track of, it had tools and items he hadn’t even thought of as being useful, maybe the location of a few shovels, as well as notes on what needed to be done and who had been assigned to do it. Who would’ve thought a high schooler would prove to be more useful than the official assistant he’d had back at town hall? 

It might have been no more than a way to escape boredom, of having nothing better to do than start organizing data, but he also felt like Joey wanted to prove himself to somebody. And, considering the boy’s deadbeat of a father (a regular source of complaints around town), that didn’t surprise Howell in the slightest. He made a mental note to thank Joey for his hard work once he tracked him down, something he had been too preoccupied to do so far.

Howell drained the last of his cold coffee and set the mug down on the desk, grimacing at the bitter taste it left in his mouth. With Joey missing, he had a lot to do before the storm, a lot of people who needed to start working on new tasks to get the school ready for it. He clipped a walkie talkie to his belt and went for the door. Before he opened it, he took a breath and straightened his back, relaxed the frown from his brow, forced the tiredness in his face to retreat back beneath the surface. Then he stepped out into the hallway.

A few people walked the halls, some clusters socializing and others carrying out various jobs they’d been assigned. Most of them nodded to him as he passed, a gesture Howell made a point to return. Years of serving as mayor had taught him that his own expression told people more than his words ever could; show even an ounce of worry and the whole town would react, and that was rarely a good thing.

That’s why politicians always seemed so shady, he’d discovered. Why they skirt around questions and avoid easy answers that might have difficult consequences. Truth was important, yes, but it could be dangerous. Take the blizzard, for example. Did people need to know that it was on the way? Or would it be better for them to go about their work without worrying the whole time? Morally, Howell agreed with Ryan and Rivera in that telling them was the right choice, but logistically, keeping it a secret would result in less fear and more work done, more time to get the place as ready as possible. That could mean the difference in staying alive with things the way they were, so keeping quiet felt justified. Lying for the greater good, if you will.

Howell rounded the corner and paused by the double doors of the library. Joey had spent a lot of his time in there when he wasn’t cataloging everything, usually sitting at a corner desk playing with his phone.

He opened the door and poked his head inside. The large room was inhabited by only one person, but it wasn’t Joey.

Dr. Rivera sat at one of the round tables surrounded by books, a single battery-powered lantern illuminating her face above the pages of whatever she was reading. She’d been there for nearly two days straight from what Howell could tell. He had seen her several times through the doors as he passed, sometimes lying on the floor with a book held above her eyes, other times pacing back and forth with one in her hands, but always reading something and wearing that stressed out look on her face.

He knocked at the doorframe and she looked up.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No,” Rivera said, stretching. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied. “Just looking for Joey.”

“I think he was in here earlier.” She looked around the library, like she might have been so absorbed in reading that she didn’t notice him walk out. Which, she probably had been.

Howell almost left it at that and retreated to the hall, but changed his mind. The poor woman looked more exhausted than he did. He approached her and looked at the books on her table. Introduction to Geology, Fundamentals of Physics, several books on the ocean, all scientific texts that would have put him to sleep in minutes. “Reading anything good?”

“Oh yeah, they’re real page turners.”

“You’re not reading for fun, I take it. You’re researching something, right? Something to do with the sun?”

Rivera rubbed her bloodshot eyes and nodded. “Just trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.”

“Found anything?”

She sighed. “No. There’s too many variables, too many parts missing.”

“Parts?”

“Yeah. Change even one part and the machine always reacts, always causes something else to happen, and that causes more things to happen as a result. Domino effect. Everything’s connected to everything else.” She motioned toward the books spread out in front of her. “We know what would happen if most of the parts get changed–different atmospheric compositions, the arrival of a new apex predator, clouds of radioactive fallout–but losing the Sun isn’t as simple as swapping a single part. It’s more like swapping out every metal component in the machine with glass and trying to predict what will break first, and then trying to predict what’s going to break next. It’s impossible. You can’t know the effects until you know what breaks first.” She looked up at him, eyes glassy from either exhaustion or emotion. “But it’s all going to break. Everything. And I have no idea what goes first or which way the dominoes are going to fall when it does. I don’t know how . . . ,” she sighed and shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

Howell hesitated. “When’s the last time you got any sleep?”

“I’m fine,” she grumbled, looking back to her book. Something told him she wouldn’t be able to sleep even if she wanted to.

“Okay. In that case, maybe you don’t need to know what breaks next,” he gently suggested. “It’s not like you can change the outcome once the pieces start flying, right?”

Rivera laughed. “No, but wouldn’t you want to know the best way to get away from it? Wouldn’t you want to know if one of those gears is going to shoot to the left or right before you start running for the door?”

“I–Yes, I guess I would. But–“

“Then you have to know what’s causing the machine to break. You have to know why it’s breaking.” She turned her back to him and pulled the book closer to her.

Howell gently rested a hand on her shoulder. “I think you should take a break–just a short one. That way you can look at the problem again with fresh eyes.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll deny this if you ever tell a soul, but when I can’t work out the answer to some big problem I have, sometimes a good long bath can help me figure out the answer. A half hour in some hot water, relaxing music, maybe a few bubbles, sometimes that can make all the difference.”

To his relief, Rivera looked back at him and smiled. “That . . . does sound nice.”

He removed his hand and took a step back. “We don’t have any bathtubs here, but I won’t complain about wasted energy if you decided to run a gym shower for a few extra minutes. Just this once, of course.”

She nodded and some of the tiredness seemed to leave her face. “Okay. I may take you up on that offer.”

“You should.” He scrunched up his nose. “Really. It’s starting to get a little ripe in here.”

Color blooming in her cheeks, Rivera smacked at his arm but he was already out of reach. “You ass!”

“I’m just kidding. Well, mostly.” He laughed and started for the door. “Oh, if you see Joey, let him know I need to see him.”

Just before he made it out into the hall, Rivera called out after him, her voice soft and almost apologetic. “Hey, Howell?”

He saw the solemn look on her face and stepped back inside. “Yeah?”

Her facade faltered and she made a show of hiding her laughter. “Think I can borrow some of your bubbles?”

Now Howell felt his face go red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turned and left her laughing in the library.