Deep Shadows (2 page)

“Are you okay?” he shouted.

He'd raised up enough to check on her. She didn't pause to listen to a word he said or answer a single question. A part of her mind registered the wall of flames, the destruction and death. She pushed those thoughts aside, struggled to her feet, and ran toward her son.

O
NE

Bend, Texas

One week earlier

S
helby stumbled over a tree root, tried to maintain her balance, and ended up bumping into Max, who glanced back at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I'm fine,” she snapped.

Hiking was not her idea of fun, especially since she had an almost pathological fear of snakes. Something scurried through the underbrush. She momentarily froze, but all she could hear was the thudding of her heartbeat and the clomp of Max's boots against the rocky trail. Resisting the urge to look behind her, she opted instead to pick up her pace and catch the group. They were heading northeast and climbing steadily up. The nearly setting sun cast her shadow in front of her—elongated and misshapen. She wouldn't have agreed to the afternoon's activities if it weren't for the three friends who insisted she step away from her computer and enjoy the great outdoors.

Max Berkman, Bianca Lopez, and Patrick Goodnight gained the top of the trail a few moments before her. Max was tall and wiry, with black hair beginning to tinge with gray. Bianca was shorter than Shelby—no more than five three, curvy and beautiful. Patrick managed to keep up in spite of his size. He was a big man, with the body shape of the linebacker he had been in high school. He'd retired from the army five years ago. Shelby knew he worked at keeping himself in the same physical condition he'd sported during his years of service.

She literally collided with the group as they stood with their mouths half-opened, staring around them in amazement.

The view was a dramatic one. The Colorado River curved like a serpent, two hundred feet below. The Texas hill country stretched out in the distance, green from recent rains. The state park where they were hiking offered over thirty-five miles of trails, though they'd only covered a small portion of that—from the parking area to the Tie Slide Trail, down to Gorman Falls, and now circling back to where they had started via the River Overlook Trail. Probably less than five miles, but it felt like more. Shelby's heart raced, the muscles in her calves quivered, and sweat trickled down her neck.

She realized, with a start, that she was the only one looking at the view.

Glancing up, she at first thought she must be dreaming—that she would wake to find herself at home, in bed, and safe. She closed her eyes and attempted to calm her heart rate. When she opened them, if anything the scene had become more bizarre. What should have been a dark-blue sky was now streaked with shafts of green, pink, purple, and red. The colors of the rainbow, but more sinister.

The lights of the aurora borealis swirled across the Texas sky.

“Northern lights?” Max pulled off his ball cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Here?”

“I've never seen anything like it,” Bianca said, her voice filled with awe. She tipped her head back and stared straight up, her mouth partially open in surprise.

Curtains of predominantly red arcs brightened the sky, reflecting off every rock, tree, and cactus. Shelby had asked someone for the time less than a mile back, and Max had said it was eight p.m. The sun had set and the sky was beginning to turn dusky. She'd picked up her pace, wanting to make it back to the truck before complete darkness fell.

But now, the sky was unnaturally bright.

“This shouldn't be visible here,” she murmured.

“I've read about it, but I've never seen it.” Patrick leaned against a boulder and continued to stare at the sky.

Max watched Shelby.

She glanced at Max and shook her head. “We need to get back. Now.”

When he only cocked his head, she said, “I need to check on Carter.”

“Can you call him?”

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and pressed Carter's number under Recent Calls. As she suspected, the call wouldn't go through.

Bianca and Patrick had taken out their phones as well and were using them to take pictures of the northern lights.

Max stepped closer to Shelby. “What's wrong?”

“The call won't go through. I need to get home, Max. I need to be there in case Carter… in case he has a problem.”

“All right. Let's double-time it.”

Bianca had been turning in a circle, photographing the celestial event. She was a freelance graphic designer and sold many of her photos on the web. Finally tearing her gaze from the sky, she asked, “Is this a problem?”

“Yes, it is.” Shelby worked to keep the panic from her voice. Maybe she was misremembering her research. Possibly she was overreacting.

The aurora continued to bathe them in its unnatural light, even tinting their skin the color of a red rose. Patrick exchanged a questioning look with Max, who was readjusting the weight of his backpack.

“The lady says we need to hurry. Let's go.”

It was a testament to their friendship that everyone held their questions. The group turned back toward the trail, and that was when they heard the whine of a jet engine, followed by a thunderous crash. To the southeast, black smoke rose to meet the swirling light of the borealis.

Bianca gasped, Max and Patrick stood frozen, and Shelby realized that the nightmare she feared was actually happening. Each member of the group instinctively stepped closer together.

“What was that?” Bianca swiped at her hair, and Shelby noticed that her friend's hands were shaking. “Patrick? What was that? Did we… did we actually just see a plane crash?”

Before Patrick could respond, they heard the whine of another plane—this one smaller, probably a single engine, and headed south. As they watched, another dot approached, and then the planes collided. They tumbled to the ground as more smoke filled the sky.

“None of those planes were military,” Patrick said.

“Those people… are they all dead?” Bianca backed up against a tree and slid to the ground. “Are you telling me… did an entire plane of people… did three
entire
planes of people just die right in front of our eyes?”

“I'm fairly certain the first was a domestic flight, probably headed to the regional airport.” Patrick's tone was grim, hardened—the voice of a soldier assessing a situation. “The other two could have been private jets.”

Shelby glanced at Max, who had once again pulled out his phone. “Nothing. I can't access 9-1-1, there are no emergency notifications, there's nothing.”

She fought the urge to vomit, covered her mouth with her hand, and tried to think clearly. This could not be happening. Not now.

Plane crashes. People burned alive. The borealis.

The thoughts spun and collided in her mind, and beneath those more selfish, more urgent ones rose to take their place.

They weren't ready. Probably they never would have been ready, but Shelby's life had finally begun to resemble something normal. Carter was to leave for college at the end of August.

Please, not now.
The words were a prayer coursing through her heart.

Max's expression had settled into a hard, straight line. “We can't help those people. It's farther away than it looks.”

“So we just leave them?” Bianca's voice cracked. She stood and swiped at the tears running down her cheeks.

“Yeah. We do.” Max repositioned his backpack.

Without another word, the four best friends rushed back down the trail, retracing the path they had covered a few hours earlier. Only now everything was different.

They stayed closer together, though darkness had refused to cloak the hillside. Picking out the trail was no problem. It was eerily bathed in the pulsing light of the borealis. In twenty minutes they covered the distance back to where they'd parked. As they turned the last corner and caught sight of Max's truck, another explosion shattered the evening's silence.

T
WO

T
hat sounded different,” Shelby said. Her legs trembled, and her right arm had begun to shake.

“Probably a train.” Max led the group and Patrick brought up the rear.

Bianca was breathing heavily when they stopped.

The parking area was deserted. There was no sign of park rangers, emergency vehicles, or other hikers.

Patrick stored their packs in the bed of Max's old Ford pickup. When he'd bought the truck, it had been used but in pristine condition. He'd liked it because it didn't have any gizmos—no backup cameras or computers that would require replacing. Now it was twenty years old and showing the wear of travelling down a few too many country roads.

Max pulled out his keys and unlocked the doors, muttering, “Let's hope it starts.”

“It would. I mean, it will,” said Shelby.

She started to climb into the backseat of the extended cab pickup, but Max nodded toward the front. She hesitated, and then she stepped up on the running board and grasped the grab bar, pulling herself into the passenger seat.

Patrick and Bianca hopped into the back.

They were all buckled by the time Max started the truck. He put it in drive and sped down the caliche, white rock road.

Patrick tapped on the back of the seat. “Someone want to tell me what's going on?”

“Yeah, what is happening? Planes falling out of the sky? A possible train
derailment? Are we being attacked?” Bianca attempted to drink from a water bottle, but her hands were shaking too badly. She recapped it and asked, “Can you get anything on the radio?”

Max turned it on and cycled through his preset stations. They heard nothing but static.

“Does this have anything to do with the aurora?” she asked Shelby.

“I think… that is, I'm sure the northern lights are caused by a solar flare. Probably the flare disrupted the electrical systems on the planes and the train, and even the radio and phones.”

Silence filled the truck, and then everyone started talking at once.

Max accelerated as he turned right onto the blacktop. The back tires of the truck slipped and spun before gripping the road. He held up a hand and said, “Shelby, tell us what you know.”

“We're not supposed to see the aurora. It's never been this far south. The fact that we can see it means that this is a solar event of unprecedented proportions.”

“Unprecedented?” Max continued staring at the road, gunning the truck, his hands wrapped tightly around the wheel.

“No one knows how…” She stopped, closed her eyes, and prayed fervently that she was wrong. “We can't be sure what an event of this magnitude will do.”

“The truck started.” Max continued driving with his left hand and pulled out his phone with his right. He split his attention between the screen and the road. “Why does my truck work but not the phones? I thought electromagnetic pulses fried anything with a circuit board.”

“You're thinking of an EMP. A solar flare is different. It's…” She thought again of the notes in her study. Maybe she had the details mixed up. Perhaps this was a nightmare, and she'd wake in a moment. “Some of the effects are similar, but it's not the same. In many ways, it's worse.”

“How long will it last?” Max asked.

“Who knows? Twenty-four hours? Thirty-six?”

“Tell me why the truck works.”

“Because it's older, would be my guess. The newer ones—anything with an advanced circuit board, keyless ignition, any vehicles with GPS integrated into the system—might not.”

“So why does my phone work?” Bianca sat forward, shoving the phone
toward Shelby. “See the pictures? I took them a few minutes ago. Why does it work? Maybe you're wrong. Maybe—”

“I'm not wrong. Solar flares cause power surges. If you'd had your phone plugged in to charge it, then a flare would have fried the circuits. No one actually knows what would happen to automobiles during a major solar flare because it hasn't happened in the last hundred years.”

“And the planes?” Patrick asked. “We have had solar flares before.”

“Minor ones.”

“But we've had them. Air traffic was diverted from the north and south poles, but the flares didn't actually harm any of the navigational systems.”

“Because they didn't fly straight through one. With this event—if it's as big as I think it is—there would have been no flying around it.”

“The train explosion…” Max glanced her way and then back at the road. “Train switches are all electrical. This flare… it would have fried those as well?”

“Maybe. I guess so.”

“How do you know all this, Shelby?” Patrick was now practically in the front seat, hanging over the space between her and Max.