Page 37 of Heart of the Sun

“Slow down,” Emily said with a cheeky smile. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“Touché,” I conceded as I tossed back another handful. “Good find,” I said, nodding to the truck. We’d need some protein eventually, but this “meal” was going to allow us enough energy to make it to our next stop, wherever that might be. I saw movement a little ways down the highway and paused, squinting and craning my neck forward.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“I think I see someone in a car right over there.” I pointed, and Emily and Charlie stood, turning in the direction where I’d seen someone sit up in the driver’s seat of a compact car.“I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“We’ll come,” Emily said, brushing the crumbs off her jacket and following me.

We wove through the abandoned vehicles and the man sitting in the car spotted us and gave a small wave, opening his door and getting out. “Hey. Hi.” He looked sort of rumpled, like he’d just been sleeping and when I glanced in his vehicle, I saw a few boxes of the same cereal we’d just scored.

“Hi. I’m Tuck.” I pointed behind me to where Emily and Charlie were approaching. “That’s Emily and Charlie.”

“Neil. Hi. Damn, it’s good to see a few faces. The last of the folks around me gave up and left yesterday. There might be one or two back that way, but I haven’t walked in that direction because there’s a pileup and I hear there are bodies.” He turned and pointed behind him and drew his shoulders up in a shiver.

“Bodies?” Emily asked. “No, no that can’t be true.” But the look on her face said that she knew very well that it could be. The three of us might have been casualties of whatever event this was too if Russell hadn’t had the skill to land the plane like he did.

But I shook off the thought of Russell. “What do you mean, ‘gave up’?” I asked Neil. “Can you tell us what happened? From the beginning. We were in an accident, and it’s taken us three days to get here.”

“Oh man. Shit. Yeah, uh, I was just driving along when this bright white flash almost made me crash. Other cars veered sideways. Most of us managed to stay on the road, but our cars died. Just…died. All at the same time. After waiting for a couple hours for some help to come, most of the people here decided to walk home. A group of us from out of town walked to the closest exit where there are some businesses, but there was no power there. No one’s phones were working either. Luckily, I had a little cash and went to a liquor store in a strip mall and bought some snack food and water and brought it back here.Once the truck driver took off—” he inclined his head toward the now empty cereal truck “—others who were waiting broke into the back and took the product. I was out of food by then, so I did too. There’s nothing else to do. That liquor store is boarded up now, but I’d bet that the food and water is all gone and only the liquor remains anyway. Yesterday, people started getting real nervous.”

“So, there were people in these cars?” Charlie asked. “They walked away? You saw them?”

Neil looked at him strangely. “Yeah.”

Charlie had clearly decided Emily’s theory about a people-vaporizing comet had some merit. “And no one you talked to has any guesses about what happened?” I asked as I stepped in front of Charlie.

“No. Some are saying it’s just a widespread power outage. Some guy said this happened in Detroit in the two-thousands. Other people say an EMP or a meteor.”

“EMP?” Charlie asked. “What’s an EMP?”

Neil shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a sunspot or something?”

An EMP.What was that? I’d heard the term before. An electromagnetic pulse maybe? That sounded right, but I couldn’t recall much more than that.

I looked around at all the abandoned cars. “And in the three days you’ve been here, there haven’t been any police officers or other first responders that have come through?”

“No. Not one. I haven’t even heard any sirens from anywhere. I live in Ann Arbor. I’m hundreds of miles from home. It’s not like I can just start walking.”

I glanced at that empty food truck. “You might have to.”

He looked bleakly up the highway. “Seems safer here. The authorities are bound to come. It’s not like they can just stop working. I have some food and water so… I’ll just wait.”

“Okay. Hey, good luck.”

He nodded and got back in his car. I saw him pick up the box of cereal next to him before I stepped away from his vehicle.

“Where are you going?” Emily asked as I walked ahead. The stars had blinked to life and soon it’d be too dark to do anything other than hole up and get some rest. I would bet that a number of these cars were still unlocked. It wouldn’t be the worst place to sleep.

“There’s a tower that way,” I said. “See it?”

“What are you going to do? Climb it?” Emily asked. “Oh my God, you would, wouldn’t you? Are you out of your mind?”

“No. I want to know how far this outage extends. If it goes all the way to the city of Springfield, then we need to figure out how to get to the next one.”

“The next what?”

“The next city.”

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