The Catastrophe Theory Read online

  Jared grabbed a small backpack from one of the storage shelves and began to fill it.

  “It’s been bad out there, but it’s going to get a lot worse. You’ll need to be very cautious,” Jared said as he zipped a package in the front pocket of the pack, where Eve would be sure to find it. “So far, it’s mostly been hooligans and looters, but all those unprepared people who’ve sat at home, waiting it out, are about to realize that the water is not going to start coming out of their taps anytime soon.”

  Jared rifled through a drawer and found what he needed. He handed the pack to Eve with one hand. In the other he held a new-looking map which he held up for her to see and then dropped it into the pack. Eve watched silently.

  Finally, he fetched a crowbar from his tool bench.

  “Jared… what are you doing?” Eve finally spoke, her voice sounding hollow in her head.

  “I’ve been wondering about that light too, worried it was somehow related — the cause of the outage, maybe, and that it might happen again.” Jared stopped in front of the three metal trash cans lined up against the wall. “Which is why I didn’t want to do this sooner.” He sighed. “I’m going to have to risk it.”

  He jammed the crowbar under the lid of the first can and pried it open. The lid clattered on the concrete floor as Jared reached in and pulled out an oddly-shaped object wrapped in cardboard, plastic, and aluminum foil. He moved to the workbench and removed the layers to reveal a two-way radio.

  “You made Faraday Cages?” Eve said in wonder. “You’ve got electronics in those cans that were protected from the pulse!” She ran her hand over one of the other cans and then turned to watch Jared.

  “I didn’t want to expose them if a second pulse came, but I’m going to have to set up a temporary base here, until Cassie is well enough to travel,” he told her. “I’ll get her to monitor the bandwidths, see what we can find out. And I have to let the guys up at the camp know about our delay because the first seventy-two hours are almost up with no help in sight. We’d agreed to wait that long, but now they’ll be expecting us. ”

  Jared unwrapped a small generator next.

  “Expecting you?” Eve asked him. “How did you know that this would happen?”

  “I don’t even know what this is,” Jared said. “We weren’t just playing games up at the camp, Eve. Obviously, we considered that the possibility of something like this happening was high, but I always figured it would come from an enemy outside the country, or a terrorist group…not from right here at home.”

  Eve flinched, but Jared couldn’t help that little dig after all the times she’d teased him about being paranoid for no reason.

  “We should go see Cassie,” Jared said in a softer voice as he moved toward the door that led into the house. “And you should get a move on if you’re going.”

  Cassie was in a deep sleep and looked exhausted, and in the end Eve decided not to wake her. I’ll be seeing her again soon, she told herself.

  “Promise me you’ll take care of her,” Eve begged Jared with a tremble in her voice. “Don’t let anything happen to her.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to her,” Jared said, as he embraced Eve tightly. “We’ll see you at the camp. Don’t lose the map.” He held her for an extra moment.

  On the map they had approximated where Eve thought the light was coming from and Jared had marked a route from there, through the pine forest, to the camp. Together with the Institute, the location of the light and the camp formed the three points of a triangle, and inside of it, slightly off to one side, was their house.

  After Eve left, Jared tried to radio the camp. He heard from a few of the LITs who were heading there according to schedule, but they were farther away than he was, tens of miles away. They hadn’t been able to make contact with the camp either, and he was worried. Maybe something had gone wrong and the camp radio had fried along with everything else. If that was the case, he knew he should try to get there as soon as possible with a working radio.

  He slumped in his chair not wanting to think about the other possibilities causing the radio silence. None of them gave him much hope.

  With a sharp exhale, he stood up. He’d have to see if Cassie was up to the dangerous trek ahead of them.

  Chapter Four

  Written by Katie French

  “Tell it to me again,” Jared said as they sat at the kitchen table, taking advantage of the last rays of daylight before the whole city plunged into thick darkness.

  Cassie rolled her eyes, something she never would have done with any of the other leaders at the camp, but Jared didn’t flinch. “This isn’t a game, Cassie.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “We travel silently. No main roads. If we see anyone, we do not engage. No helping strangers no matter how badly we want to. You are in charge. What you say goes.” At this last part, she rolled her eyes again.

  Eight years old and acting eighteen, Jared thought as he looked, really looked, into his daughter’s face. When had she turned into a small version of Eve with her dark, arched eyebrows and her red, puckered mouth that frowned, disappointed, whenever she thought Jared was being ridiculous? At the thought of Eve, a flare of regret and remorse gripped him, but he pushed it away.

  “Good,” he said, handing her the smaller pack. “Let’s go.”

  They walked to the back door with little fanfare. He’d taken only one photo and one book. A survivalist knows what’s important after all. Plus, his bag was already overstuffed with the most precious items from the Faraday Cages. It’d been hard to pick from the three barrels of electronics, but he’d made good choices. Then he’d painstakingly repacked the remaining items back inside their insulating wrappers and replaced them in the barrels and tightly shut them. It would be a miracle if everything remained unmolested by looters until they’d be able to send a team back to get the rest, but Jared liked to think miracles still happened.

  As he took his final step across the threshold of his house, a pain clenched his heart. He never was good with goodbyes.

  Three days. It would take three days, at best, to reach the camp. Three days of night walking, exposed to any number of dangers along the way. They’d heard the gun shots, seen the fires. Chaos reigned in a world gone dark. If he was honest, three days was a generous guess. With Cassie’s illness they were lucky if they could make ten miles a night. It was thirty-seven miles to the camp. He’d inched his fingers along the map, counting and swearing and wishing to God Eve would've let them move closer liked he’d begged three years ago. Thirty-seven miles. And Cassie hadn’t kept down a full meal in four days.

  Ten miles a night would be a miracle.

  They slipped down the walkway and into the neighbor’s yard, the grass already pushing up past their ankles. How quickly things went to rot, he mused. He glanced at the house, but his eyes didn’t linger there. Instead they swept the dim street, noting the changes his nice suburban cul-de-sac had undergone. Two houses burned to the ground and another singed like an overdone casserole.

  On the other side of the road, a Volvo stood, doors open, windows smashed into tiny glass shards that winked in the twilight. As they passed another house, a curtain twitched and he caught a glimpse of a face before it ducked back into the shadows. His hand itched as if wanting to draw the Remington 1911 from his shoulder harness. But the last thing he wanted to do was stalk the streets with a handgun pointed at every shadow. It was a great way to get shot by frightened neighbors, and besides, he didn’t want Cassie to think that was what the world had come to. Not yet, anyway.

  The swish of the grass and the hum of cicadas accompanied them as they trekked past the yards and through a dense field. He glanced at Cassie to see if she was appreciating his insistence on the long black pants instead of the shorts she’d wanted to wear. She said nothing, just walked, head high, eyes alert like she’d been trained.

  His gaze fell on the pink sparkly nail polish on hands that gripped a survival pack. The paint was already chipped a
nd fading.

  Cassie stopped mid-stride, her body tensing. He jogged up beside her and studied her face. It was twisted in pain.

  “What is it?” he whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder. She felt hot. Burning hot.

  Her hands went to her stomach and she doubled over. Jared watched helplessly as she retched the MRE he’d forced her to eat before leaving into the weeds. Only after she’d thrown up twice did he remember to hold her hair back. God, how could he be so good at some things and so useless at others?

  It wasn’t the first time he’d missed Eve since she’d left.

  “Are you okay?” Stupid question, he thought.

  She crouched, hands on knees, spitting into the grass. “Water.”

  He dug around and unsnapped his water bottle from his pack. She took it and drank. He didn’t have the heart to remind her of rationing as he watched her hands tremble.

  Several minutes passed as they stood in the grass, batting away mosquitoes, Cassie resting. How far had they gone, half a mile? Thirty-seven miles might as well be three thousand.

  He was clipping the water bottle to his pack when he heard it. A crackle in the grass. Twigs breaking.

  Someone or something was coming.

  He grabbed Cassie’s arm and tugged forward. Her eyes widened and she followed, sprinting through the grass. The sound of pursuit came from behind them.

  They ran for a half mile through undergrowth that grabbed at their clothes and scraped their flesh. Cassie’s breath became ragged. He glanced at her, willing her to keep going. What he didn’t say was there were at least three human shadows running after them. He thought about the handgun, but dismissed it. Shots in the dark were just that.

  When she fell, she fell hard, tumbling into the grass with a cry that tore his heart to pieces. He reached down to pull her up, but she might as well have been boneless. He should have known. She was her mother’s daughter and didn’t quit until it was impossible not to.

  He tried to lift her, but, between the heft of his pack and the weight of his daughter, the strangers would be on them in minutes. He looked at his pack, filled with priceless working electronic devices, the only usable currency in this broken world. Then he looked at his daughter. His baby girl. Wet curls clung to her sweat-drenched forehead.

  There was only one choice.

  He unzipped the pack, pulling out the one item they could not live without, and put the rest on display. The GPS, the cell phones, the laptop with solar power supply. So many untold treasures. Treasures they would need.

  But none more than he needed his daughter.

  He hefted Cassie into his arms and took off running.

  Chapter Five

  Written by Deirdre Gould

  The narrow wheels of her old bike crackled over an empty chip bag before Eve realized how foolish she’d been. She’d been so anxious to get to the flashing light that she’d assumed she was the only one to see it.

  Without streetlamps or car headlights or the glow of neighbors’ windows, the dark was almost complete. The strobe Eve was chasing would be like a beacon, summoning the curious and desperate for miles and miles around. She wondered how many people had left immediately after the outage, the very first night, to find it.

  So far, Eve had been lucky. She’d taken the bike against her better judgment. She didn’t like the idea of having something that others might want, but anxiety for Jared and Cassidy had won out. It was agony to leave them in the first place and it would take her only half as long with the bicycle as on foot.

  She’d seen no one and, during daylight, on the comfortable well-worn roads of her own town, it was hard to remember to be cautious.

  But with night falling, the woods were closing in on the road in front of Eve and shadows were clustering around the edge and pressing in. The sun rolled behind the trees.

  The dull shine of a bullet casing caught her eye as she passed and a chilly cramp hit her stomach. She was still alone on the road, but she scanned the tree line for movement.

  The trash on the road began to increase. Plastic bottles bounced over the tar in a light breeze and soiled diapers tossed to the side were thickly covered with buzzing flies.

  It was almost dusk when her tire hit something small and loose and sent her tumbling sideways.

  She picked a few pebbles out of her scraped hand and checked the knee that had taken the brunt of the fall and then her tire. Both were all right. She peered at the patch of road, wondering what she’d run over. It glinted and she picked it up. A lone double-A battery. Was it just someone trying to find a working device? Or was it someone who actually had one and had discarded the used-up battery?

  Eve put it in her pocket, not even sure why she was doing it. A sort of talisman maybe, a little act of faith that everything would go back to normal.

  Her knee ached too much to get back onto the bike, so she walked beside it for a while. The ride had left her drained and she wanted to rest, thinking that soon she wouldn’t be able to see anyhow, at least until the moon rose. But thoughts of her family made her keep bargaining with herself: Just over the crest of the next hill, just down to the curve, just a couple more steps.

  Her sneakers were a dull gray blur against the tar. She focused on them, concentrating so hard that she almost tripped over the body in the road. She froze when she saw it, just a lump, an outline of the person’s back. She couldn’t see much, just a darker shadow, but from the shape and the odor that was beginning to climb from it, she knew that the person was dead.

  Eve didn’t waste time looking for other bodies. She forced her exhausted body back onto the bike and sped away, her adrenaline giving her a burst of energy. She managed not to hit anything and, after a few minutes, she slowed again, finally unable to see the road at all. If she took a serious tumble and hit her head, there’d be nobody to help her and she’d be the corpse melting into the tar.

  She needed to reorient herself anyway. I’ll just sit until the flash comes again and then I’ll get some sleep.

  She decided to risk a small light so she could find a clean patch of grass. She reached into her pack for a glo-stick. It made a satisfying crunch as she bent it and relief washed over her as the chemicals brightened. It wasn’t much, just a little globe of green around her, but any light was better than wondering what was creeping up on her unseen.

  She rolled the bike down into the ditch and then slid it into the culvert where it wouldn’t be seen. She climbed up the far bank and sat, leaning on her pack. She faced the woods where she thought the flash would be and pulled out a bottle of water and a protein bar. Her breathing slowed and the pulsing ache in her leg muscles died to a dull pinch. Her eyelids fluttered and she shifted so she’d stay awake.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been dozing when she heard the voices. She sat up, and adrenaline crunched her into a tight ball. She closed her hand tight around the glo-stick. The light leaked out of her fingers. She stuck it back in the pack and zipped it, but panicked when the world was still a misty turquoise around her.

  The voices got louder and she began to hear the shuffle of feet. Eve slid down the bank into the ditch and crept along it into the culvert, searching for the new source of the glow. She leaned a few inches out of the culvert, pressing her back against the side of the ditch and looked over.

  An emerald aurora snaked across the edge of the tree line and Eve’s heart sank. Friar’s Lantern. That was the codename they’d given it at the Institute. It meant whatever had happened was about to happen again. It meant that the flash she’d been following, the help she’d been chasing for Cassie, might be gone.

  Chapter Six

  Written by Sarah Dalton

  The first time the Friar’s Lantern lit up the sky, Eve had held a frightened Cassie in her arms and listened to the screams. She remembered how Cassie’s tense little fingers seized her own; tenacious, strong, yet vulnerable with youth.

  The panic started so quickly. But it wasn’t because of the televisions that die
d, or the lights that went dark, or even the cars that stopped dead in the road. It was from the plane that fell from the sky. So many people watched the sudden plummet of the aircraft. The townspeople stood at their windows like mannequins.

  She remembered making eye contact with an open-mouthed stranger on the street outside. They both knew instinctively that the world was changing.

  No one could have survived the crash and she knew it. That’s when she realized they weren’t protected anymore. And she couldn’t talk about it with the world. She was cut off. No more phones. No more internet. There was nothing to tell her how far this had reached, and there was no protective barrier anymore.

  She swallowed, the image of Doug’s dead body popping into her mind. The corpse left in the street where someone had dragged it from his kitchen. So many innocents killed by the opportunistic looters.

  Lives claimed by an invention she’d helped to create.

  This time the green light meandered across the horizon to an almost silent audience. Eve wondered if Jared and Cassie were sitting by the window watching, their hearts in their mouths. Her chest tightened at the thought. They’re safe, she thought. They have to be.

  Eve whipped her head around at the sound of shuffling feet. Closer now. More urgent. Hurrying straight for her. Whoever it was seemed to have been spooked by the sight of the aurora. Unless…

  Unless they saw you hide in the culvert.

  With nervous fingers, Eve unzipped her pack. The thought of using, even holding a gun made her stomach flip. He was the one with training. He was the one who knew how to load and aim. He’d taught her the basics, but the thought of actually using such a weapon made her stomach turn to water. She reached into the compartments and searched.

  The mystery footsteps hurried closer. Shoes scuffed against the dry ground, quicker with each stride. Running away. But from what? From whom?