The Catastrophe Theory Read online

  The Catastrophe Theory

  The Dystoptomists

  Joseph A. Turkot

  Cary Caffrey

  Deborah Rix

  Katie French

  Deirdre Gould

  Sarah Dalton

  Jenni Merritt

  Megan Thomason

  Shalini Boland

  David Wright

  Scott Cramer

  TW Piperbrook

  Samantha Durante

  Saul Tanpepper

  David Estes

  Shelbi Wescott

  Tony Bertauski

  David Normoyle

  Elle Casey

  On July 18, 2014, twenty-three dystopia authors joined forces in The Hunt for Tomorrow, a virtual scavenger hunt that attracted readers from all over the world.

  The grand prize winner, Gayle Nobles, receive autographed paperbacks from each author and her very own progressive story. She gave us a title, a trope and three character names. Nineteen of the authors from all over the world took it from there, each writing a chapter.

  This is the result.

  Jared and Cassie have secrets.

  Those secrets will be tested when the world is plunged into darkness. The green flash that lit up the sky short-circuits all technology—cars, computers, pacemakers. Everything.

  They wait for help to come, but their daughter’s fever continues to rise. As chaos takes over, they go in different directions to find help, neither one knowing where the other is really going. Or why.

  They’ll discover just how much they mean to each other. More importantly, they’ll learn just how valuable their daughter is to the world.

  Chapter One

  Written by Joseph A. Turkot

  For the second time in the long dead night, the flicker came and went. Wide and bright and so quick that Eve almost didn’t have time to grab Jared so that he would see it. So that he would believe her this time. Because she was convinced he was ignoring it on purpose — that he’d seen it each time through the window and was pretending he hadn’t. Buying time for something. Stalling for hope. Hope that everything would just fix itself.

  When he saw the light, just the last bit of it — and he knew she’d seen him see it — he drew up tightly against her. Everything looked so far away. Even the sidewalk and the street and the dead cars right below them, and the black windows in every house surrounding theirs. With a nervous jerk, he nodded and pulled her down from the slope of the roof. Down to where the incline wasn’t so steep, where no eyes could watch them anymore — or whatever was looking out from dark windows, or the hill that rose to the east, a ridge of pine so high it touched the first strand of space dust.

  “We’ve got to go…” she said as he tugged her back to the window. “It’s a signal. Somebody that can help us.” But her husband just kept pulling her to get inside, all the way down to the edge of the roof until they reached the window. He kneeled down and pushed, grunting until it opened. Together they slipped into a dark room. They stood there in the glow of the only light they had — a candle dancing on the bureau, and the mass of stars burning billions of miles away.

  “How do you think we’re going to get her there? She can’t walk,” Jared said, his voice tightening up with anxiety again. There’d been too many gunshots over the past two days. But the nights...they had been worse. He had to stall for time.

  He pushed the thought of leaving from his mind. Rejected his wife’s idea again before she could even speak it. Decided it was his decision. They’d stay. Cassie would get better like she always did, even without a doctor this time. And Eve would listen because he was the man of the house. And they would have to trust him. It wasn’t safe to go out there. Not until the power came back on. Until the phones started working again. But he didn’t say a single word, and Eve looked at him so hard that he had to look away. Her eyes had bled their last patience and he knew it. The only thing left in them now was cold desperation, the last force she would use to move her husband to act before going out alone without him. She knew she had to get him to forget about their safety now. Because Cassie would die. If they didn’t move her, toward someone — anyone for help — she would die. And they both knew it.

  “I don’t know how, but we will,” she finally answered, carefully watching his reaction. Each line of his cheek stretched with quick darts of his eyes— out to the window and then back, searching again for the sign of the flash. As if it would prove to him they really should go. An echo of the proof he already had— that he’d just seen. That there really was power out there somewhere. Someone had power. Someone was alive and could help them. Finally, when he wouldn’t respond, and her stare did nothing more to move him, Eve grabbed his neck and twisted it so that he had to see her eyes. She glared at him as she spoke. It scared him the way she did it — as if he was a stranger to her.

  “She’s not going to get better. Not if we stay here.” Eve tried to conceal the quiver in her voice as she waited for him to look away, dared him to. Anything to anger her further, so that she could take control without guilt. Her instincts had grown too sharp now. Too bold. But she didn’t have to wait for him to make a decision. The noise from downstairs was enough to do it for him.

  They both turned toward the door and into the hall, the direction of their shivering and sweat-drenched child. Her moaning came again, and the noise of her tossing in the bed and burning up. Some kind of sickness that shouldn’t be happening at the same time as the power outage. An impossible nightmare.

  “Okay,” Jared said. She grabbed the candle and moved the hall.

  “Maybe the car will start,” he said. He followed quickly after her, arranging his plan in his head so that she would agree to stay put another night, but the ideas fell out of his gut when they stepped into the room.

  Battling against the bed, Cassie suddenly froze and looked up at them. She had heard them fighting again. It had gotten so much worse since yesterday. And all she wanted to do was get better so they’d stop. She knew it was her they were arguing about. Her mother wore the same look of calm she always had. Her hand came and went gently over her head and her arm and her forehead. And then, through the painful knock in her head, she noticed something new in her father’s face. An expression more anxious than she’d ever seen. Her gaze fixed on him, so long that she knew what it was. He was finally caving in to her mother’s idea of leaving the house. To stop waiting things out — whatever they were — to see if everything fixed itself. It had only been a few days, but it had been enough for her. And now, for both of them.

  “It’s okay, Daddy. I’m not scared to go. I can walk by myself.”

  And with that, Eve knew Jared didn’t have a choice. It didn’t matter that the neighbors were dead. That there had only been the sounds of gunshots and screams and yelling and desperation out on the streets, and that they’d been lucky enough to hole up inside the house without anyone trying to get in. With each passing hour, and his insistence that the news would come back on, that the phones would start working again, that the car would start up, hope had waned down to nothing. First in her, but now in all of them. There was no information coming. No power. No help. They’d have to do it themselves. She knew this day would come, just not this soon.

  “How did they die?” Cassie asked, trying to sit up. Eve bent down and pushed her back against the bed. From the nightstand she took a wet towel and put it on her daughter’s forehead. She didn’t even bother to take her temperature again. It ha
d been too high for too long. And she knew it — even if Jared wouldn’t admit it. Cassie had been sick before the power failed. But they’d neglected to take her to the doctor. To the hospital. To anywhere. They’d both decided to wait it out. Let’s see how she’s doing tomorrow, they’d say. She usually got better on her own. And now they were left with nothing. No way to get medicine. Antibiotics. Anything to help her.

  But there was power — someone out there had power. A generator or something. The long flash breaking through the black night, a lighthouse of hope, for two days in a row. Somewhere near the edge of town. Somewhere near where the pines rose up from the last roads of town.

  Cassie gave up her questioning and let her mother try to cool her forehead. She couldn’t talk any more. Not enough to get her father to tell her. She would go and look through the neighbors’ windows for herself if she could, if it were any other day of the year. Because she never got sick, not like this, and it wasn’t fair because this time she wasn’t getting better. None of what was happening was fair.

  The moan came again, long and hard from her gut, the sound of the slow and rolling stomach pain. And the splinters cut through her head, slicing up all of her nerves, so that she had to fight to look at her father.

  His eyes twisted around the room, searching for whatever they could take with them onto the streets. How to arm himself to protect his family.

  “The neighbor, how did he die?” Cassie managed to get out one more time. She’d overheard enough to know that it was true. And even as she waited, trying to retain consciousness long enough for his reply, she knew right away he wasn’t going to tell her anything.

  And instead of answering her, he told her to close her eyes and relax because they were going for help now. But in his mind the images came anyway. The same ones he’d seen for the past two days. The reality check he’d forced himself to view over and over again through the window during the daytime, like torture. Sprawled on the kitchen floor, Doug’s dead body. The neighborly smile gone forever; in its place a mashed nose and a single open eye. The cheek, pale and fat and bulging underneath. Deciding that he couldn’t tell his daughter anything because it would only scare her more, he bent down and lifted her up from the soaking bed.

  Her head fell back against his arm, soggy clumps of hair clinging to his skin. And then, numbing himself, as his wife had already done, to the idea of self-preservation, he nodded. It was all for Cassie now.

  Chapter Two

  Written by Cary Caffrey

  In the distance, smoke drifted up into the sky, black turning to orange in the early morning light. Two more houses had burned last night. This last one even closer to theirs, less than a block away. The Anders’ house? Eve couldn’t be sure.

  She took a bottle of water from the crate, taking the smallest of sips before replacing the top and setting it carefully back into its spot. Staring at the stacks of bottled water piled high in the corner of the garage, she regretted having teased Jared so much. She’d called him paranoid, a conspiracy theorist, each and every time he’d come back from the shops, adding to the once-modest stockpiles of water, dried food, and tinned goods.

  Now, as she heard the rumblings in her stomach, as she reached for the tin of tuna fish, she was grateful for his preparedness.

  They had food and water for two weeks. Perhaps three. Though Eve knew it was only a matter of time before people came. Looters. They were everywhere. Still, for the moment, they were home, they had food. They were safe. Even Cassie’s fever had broken, just as Jared had said it would.

  But how long could they hold out? Jared kept up his assurances. It couldn’t be much longer, that’s what he kept saying. The power would come back. It had to. He seemed so sure — and he’d been right about Cassie’s fever, hadn’t he? Couldn’t she trust him in this?

  No, she couldn’t.

  Jared was a pessimist, which is why he’d held out as long as he had, hoping that the power outage and the ensuing chaos were only temporary, that Cassie’s fever would break. It was why she loved him. Jared might believe the power would come back on, that help was on its way, that the government was working diligently to restore services.

  But Eve knew better.

  At least, she suspected she did. Dreaded it. And the longer the power stayed off, the more days that passed with no official word, no explanation of why any of this had happened, the more Eve feared she knew exactly the reason why.

  But, no…it couldn’t be.

  Could it? They wouldn’t. It was unthinkable.

  Eve felt the familiar pang of guilt. After all these years together Jared knew so little about her. She was glad that he wasn’t the kind to press and pry, but she hated keeping secrets from him. It was only natural he would ask questions, and when he did she would remind him she wasn’t permitted to speak of the details regarding her work at the institute. “Classified, darling,” she would say with a wink. Jared would give a disappointed sigh, but then he would nod and smile, his hands raised in submission. And on those nights when his curiosity got the better of him, when he might ask one question too many, Eve…well, she had her ways of distracting him and changing the subject.

  Eve cursed as she reached once again for the garage light switch. Nothing. Nothing worked at all. Not the lights, not the water, not even the batteries from the solar generator worked. Even the face of her wrist watch, powered from the heat of her own body, stared blankly back at her, though she kept tapping it, half expecting it to come back online, reconnecting her once more to the world. If only she could get a connection, get some word, some confirmation of what was happening…

  But someone knew. That signal had come again last night. This would be the second time they’d seen it.

  Stepping carefully in the dark, Eve moved toward the workbench and the spot where she last remembered seeing the thing she sought. Kneeling, groping with an outstretched hand, Eve rummaged amongst the piles of tools, old computer parts and discarded telephones, all doubly-useless now, and cursed herself for not having the foresight to bring a candle.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Startled, Eve banged her head on the underside of the workbench. Rubbing at the bruise, she turned slowly and faced Jared. She didn’t have to answer. He could see what she held in her hand.

  Yellowed, crinkled, torn in places, the ink faded, Eve tried to hold the old paper roadmap behind her back, hiding it from Jared, but it was already too late. He reached around and snatched it from her. Eve let it go, rather than letting the thing be torn.

  It was a miracle they even still had such a thing, that it hadn’t been recycled long ago — a paper map, a relic from another era, printed decades ago. But it was something she desperately needed. The GPS in her contact lenses hadn’t functioned since the outage. If she was going to find her way toward the signal light, she needed that map. And if she was right, if what she feared was true, she knew exactly where that signal was coming from and who was sending it.

  She reached for it, but Jared shook his head.

  “Cassie’s still not ready. She needs rest. Perhaps in a week…”

  Slowly, Eve looked up and her eyes met Jared’s.

  “Cassie’s not going,” Eve said. “And neither are you. I’m going to find that signal. I’m going to find some answers. Get some help.”

  Chapter Three

  Written by Deborah Rix

  “So, it is The Institute, isn’t it?” Jared demanded. “Did your ‘classified’ project do this? Did it kill Doug?”

  Jared had looked at his dead neighbor often enough over the past few days, trying to come up with another explanation. He knew Doug had an older pacemaker and he figured it had stopped working when the power went out. Everything with an electronic circuit had stopped working, whether it was plugged in at the time or not.

  Eve stared at Jared without answering.

  “Is it?” he demanded again, “Are you somehow responsible for this? Because it sure as hell isn’t a normal power outage
or even a solar flare. The grid would be down, but all the electronics wouldn’t have fried, like Doug’s pacemaker did. The only way that happens is if this is man-made.”

  Eve hung her head and her shoulders slumped before she met his eyes again. “Y-yes, it’s possible,” she answered quietly. “And that’s why I have to go, Jared. I have to get to that signal. Maybe I can do something…fix this, or at least stop it from getting worse.”

  “Fix this?” Jared was incredulous. “Eve, I made us stay here, where we’re safe and have supplies, hoping this was a temporary event. Hoping it might be localized. Hoping the military will show up with backup generators. But there’s no military. There’s no Red Cross. This is widespread. And now you’re telling me that the Institute of Progress has sent us back to the Dark Ages?”

  “That’s why I have to get to that signal, to see who it is and help stop this from spreading.”

  Jared paced around the neatly organized garage, crumpling the old map in his fist. He ran his other hand through his hair as he considered what to do.

  “The camp is the best place for us to be,” he finally said, “but I don’t think Cassie is well enough for that long a trek on foot.”

  Jared was the Director at Adventure Base Camp, or Camp ABC as the attendees called it. It was adventure-based, like many other summer camps were.

  Sometimes they held survival weekends, for all those guys that liked to play pretend-soldier. Weekend warriors. Cassie’s favorite was the Teenage Zombie weekends, where they staged zombie apocalypse scenarios. Jared couldn’t believe how much money he could make from the stupid zombie craze.

  What he didn’t advertise was the L.I.T. Program. On the surface, Leaders-In-Training sounded just like other junior counselors at every other kid’s camp in the country. Except, they weren’t training to be camp counselors. Some of them were kids of friends or his partners in the camp. Some, he scouted from the zombie weekends after evaluating the teens that had managed to “survive.” Because that’s what this was all about. Survival.