Flare (10 page)

The RV itself was an interesting specimen. It wasn’t windowless, but its back windows were small, and the front door had been left open. There was a barrier that sealed the rear off from the front cab, and the back held a toolbox, two beds and a small fridge filled with a bucket of decaying meat. Heather held her breath and cleaned it out, and though the smell remained, the RV was clean.

They broke into the house and found the keys on the dresser, but the owners’ bodies were nowhere to be found. They found a cache of canned food in the pantry, but they decided to see if the RV started before looting the place.

The RV started on the first try and gave a long, smooth growl that sounded like it would continue forever.

“This is it,” said Heather. “This is how we get to the Salvation.”

Ash nodded.

“Let’s drive this back to our house,” said Heather. “We’ll line it with our curtains and then sleep in our house through the day. We’ll take it out as soon as the sun sets.”

“We need to stop at Raj’s store at some point,” said Ash.

“For water and supplies, of course,” said Heather.

“Not just that,” said Ash. “I’d like to see if he has any more of those pipes that allow us to see outside during the day. One might come in handy.”

/***/

The sun rose after they returned to the house, and Ash slept lightly because he was worried about the RV. They had lined the vehicle with the lead curtains and it was strong, but their lives depended upon it, and if it broke down or there was a crack in the walls that they hadn’t seen, they would be in trouble.

Heather woke before the sunset and Ash told her his worries.

“I know you’ve had problems with transitions, going into the unknown,” she said. “And I know you had problems after you left school, out in the
real world
.”

“I did.”

“But you didn’t die,” said Heather. “You came close a month ago, but you didn’t die.”

Heather pointed outwards at the night sky. The sun was now buried beneath the horizon and glowed a hot red beneath the earth’s edge.

“Out there is another
real world
, and it’s dangerous,” she said, “but we’re not going to die.”

/***/

They tested the RV once more. Heather got inside and Ash shined a flashlight at the curtains. Heather couldn’t see any light coming through and said that they were good to go. They practiced getting in and out of the RV just in case, and they jumped in the back and shut the doors four times.

“The sun could be rising, and we might have to do it with our eyes closed,” said Heather.

They did it again with their eyes closed. The first two times Ash fumbled for the back door, but the third time he entered without a hitch.

They practiced one last round, this time diving under loose lead curtains that they kept on the floor. By the third time, Ash could do this with his eyes closed too.

/***/

They left an hour later, driving into the darkness while keeping a lookout for other survivors. The engine was noisy in the quiet night and was bound to gather attention. They couldn’t trust anyone, not yet at least, so they chose to take the back roads to Raj’s place.

The RV had come with a siphoning hose, so they stopped by an abandoned vehicle and took its fuel. Siphoning wasn’t an elegant thing to do, but the abandoned vehicle was able to fill up most of the canister.

“One for one,” said Ash to Heather. “Gas’ll always be a concern, but it won’t be our biggest one.”

They went to Raj’s place and filled the RV with water and food, most of it junk food, but Heather had brought enough vitamins to last them a year. Ash found a leftover metal pipe with one end covered in cellophane. It was completely opaque in the night, so dark that Ash wondered if it could see anything, even in the flare. Still, he took it and then searched for places where he might be able to put it in the RV. He found places on the front and on the side, two areas where he could wrap curtains around the pipe, perhaps even allow it to stick outwards so they could move it like a periscope.

“Time to go,” said Heather.

“Yeah,” said Ash, putting the pipe away. “You’re right.”

They started the RV and drove off into the darkness, and the red glow of the buried sun had given way to a sharp, metallic blue that covered the night sky so completely that it looked like it would protect them from the flare forever.

PART II

THE PATH TO SALVATION

COLM

Zeke walked through the town warily. He had seen a lot of people here, and they didn’t seem friendly. There was a boarded-up gymnasium, and although the windows in the rafters were large and couldn’t be covered, the gym was connected to a building with several rooms once used for administration, and most of them were windowless.

Zeke did some exploring and heard voices coming from the windowless rooms, but he didn’t trust their tone enough to approach. The voices were from a pack of teenage boys, and Zeke knew that young males could be trouble. Race, background and culture didn’t matter; groups of young men could be dangerous, because their primary imperative was to
take over
.

Zeke had a good sense of social dynamics and knew that in normal times, young men tended to plan out grand strategies of acquiring girls, getting their own businesses and outcompeting other groups of young men who were trying to do the exact same thing. Boys like these formed strong attachments with each other, but they often had the direction and imperative to destroy something else. Teenage males were the creators, the architects, the business-planners, the band-formers, the joke-tellers, the tight-knit group who always had something to offer the world. But boys, and eventually men, always put something into the world at the expense of something or someone else. Zeke listened to the voices coming from the gymnasium and knew that if these boys had survived the flare, it might have been at the expense of someone else on the outside. He knew that if he approached them they would only accept him if he had something to offer that far exceeded the cost of his presence among them. If he knew where food was, or possibly weapons, they might trust him, but only as much as it would be of use to them.

Zeke had no such thing to offer these young men, so he stayed in the shadows and walked by the gymnasium unnoticed.

Zeke trusted individual men though, and he trusted groups of women. Individual men tended to seek companionship, even if was with someone who didn’t have anything to offer them. And groups of women … they behaved differently than groups of men.

Zeke had seen how women treated each other, and had marveled at it. He knew that the dynamics between them changed when they competed for men’s affections, but when you removed that factor, what remained was a high level of cooperation. Zeke wasn’t so naïve to consider women
better
or
nicer
than groups of men of course, but he was amazed by their support for each other. They would instinctively form packs for protection, but not destruction. Perhaps it was because there was less to be gained by being an alpha-female, but groups of women had no interest in destroying anything. They would crowd around a child not their own to coo and care for it. If someone insulted one of their group they would stand up for her but not rush to violence, and wouldn’t seek to destroy the interlocutor. They wouldn’t escalate the situation, simply defend the victim and then walk away.

Zeke laughed to himself and considered that perhaps his trust of women
was
naïve, as qualified as it had been. He hadn’t had much contact with women, or even groups of men for that matter. He also knew that generalizing wasn’t a useful tool in these times. A pack of angry men could save your life and a group of seemingly friendly women could lock you out and leave you to burn in the sun. The old rules no longer applied, and there was no more sense in the world other than what he felt in the moment.

But listening to the boys in the gymnasium talk he knew that, at this moment, this was not a safe place for him. They were young, perhaps, but had become hardened in the past month. Zeke could tell that they weren’t afraid of doing bad things to survive.

The moon was bright and Zeke saw one of them peer out a window at him, jaw fully formed but his head too thick on a squat body, so disproportionate that Zeke wondered if the boy would ever fill out. This was a kid half-grown, and he stared at Zeke with small eyes like dull, black pearls. Zeke saw that the boy was carrying a rifle. He didn’t point the weapon at Zeke, nor did he call on Zeke to show himself. The boy just waited for Zeke to make the next move and stared at him with his small, dull eyes.

Packs of boys don’t worry about individuals.
If I was in a group of twenty he’d be on his way to tell his friends, but I’m alone, so he’s just making sure I keep my distance.

Zeke considered the situation and then sighed, shaking his head. Whatever the circumstances that led up to this muted standoff, he felt sorry for the boy in front of him.

This boy is protecting his group and only doing what’s natural,
but this is not the way. He and his friends are spending their youth defending a gymnasium. This is not the way to survive this flare.

The boy raised his rifle, and Zeke held up his hands to show that he was no threat.

/***/

Zeke made his way to an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. The roof had holes in it, but he could hide in the structure with his tent. The faucets in the house still worked, though the water that flowed out of the taps was light brown. Zeke didn’t worry because he had thought of a strategy for sterilizing water and was eager to try it out. He filled up all his empty jars that he had collected along the way and set them down in his tent, and then thought about finding something to eat outside.

He estimated he had an hour before sunrise, so he secured the silver tent within the abandoned shelter and then vowed that he would keep the house within his eyesight while he foraged for something to eat. He made concentric circles around his site, scouring the ground for anything that might be edible.

He had experimented with cactus during the past few days, and found that these plants were a good option. A few had apparently found a way to withstand the flare’s radiation, and though they weren’t common, they still dotted the landscape and were easy to spot from a distance. Zeke didn’t know how much nutrition they had but felt comfortable eating any cactus that he found.
Cacti have spikes, so they generally don’t need to grow poison in their flesh.
There’s always a price you pay when eating wild foods, but cactus makes you pay the price up front.

Zeke found a broad, flat patch of cactus and took out his gloves and a small saw that he kept in his bag. He cut five pieces from the plant, big broad pads shaped like beaver tails. He broke off the larger needles with his knife, and made a note to start a fire tonight so he could burn off the smaller spines later. He thought about taking one more pad but decided against it. He could take enough cactus for a decent meal, but not enough to kill the plant, because he knew he might have to come back here one day.
Never count on the world to put more plants in front of you.
Not even cactus.

Zeke then took several clippings from the shrubs around him and found another patch of cactus, with small thorns like wool. He grabbed three ball-like pieces and put them in his bag.

After twenty minutes he looked at what he had gathered, and nothing looked too promising. His bag looked like it was filled with yard waste. He could leave some of the cactus in the brown water, and let them sit in the flare to make tea, but that didn’t seem like it was going to carry him through the next day.

Cactus, shrubs and brown water won’t kill me
,
but I need more to survive.

Zeke was about to head back to his tent when he saw a mound in the distance, and it appeared to be a dead animal. He approached it cautiously, and found that it was indeed dead and had been some sort of ungulate, perhaps a small deer or even a domesticated goat.

He decided that he would drag this creature into the tent tonight. The sun had turned the meat to jerky, and although it would surely taste of rubber, it would be clean. It was pure protein, much of it surely denatured and useless, but it would keep him full and it wouldn’t make him sick.

/***/

After the sun rose Zeke wrapped his hand in cloth and pushed a plastic jar out of the tent under a flap, and the small crease flooded the tent with blinding light. He closed the flap, withdrew his hand and it was dark again. He waited five minutes, and then ten just in case the plastic of the jars had some protective quality. The water was still brown but he took a small sip nonetheless, and though it tasted of metal, he was tempted to drink more.
Just wait,
he reminded himself.
If you’re healthy after a day, this method might work. If you’re sick, you’d be a lot sicker if you drank the whole jar.

Zeke put the rest of the jars out of the tent and decided he’d wait twenty minutes before bringing them in. If he was healthy by this time tomorrow, the technique would be a success. He’d still have to be careful because there might be a superbug that thrives in the sun’s overpowering radiation, and though he was dark-skinned and covered in clothing, putting his hand outside was still dangerous.

He took out a small hand-cranked flashlight he had found and inspected the dead animal in the darkness. It smelled musty but clean, like cured leather. He didn’t quite feel comfortable eating flesh, and this was the first bit of meat that he had ever eaten. But there was food all around now, and you didn’t need to hunt, let alone
kill
anything. The animals died and were cooked in the sun until their muscles hardened and then came off their bones in strips, with the help of a knife or even without. This meal was grim, and Zeke took no pleasure in feasting off of any animal’s misfortune, but the flare had given him meat, and it would stave off his appetite much better than cactus.

Zeke inspected each bite thoroughly before eating, because he had seen a lot of insects in this area. They had somehow found a way to survive the sun, and they often hid in dead flesh. The flare prevented decomposition, but Zeke had seen a few bodies half-eaten, with stomachs gnawed by tiny mandibles and eggs laid delicately in lifeless mouths.

The creature I’m eating is whole and untouched though. That means it may have died recently
.

But it couldn’t have died recently—could it? Zeke knew some animals had found a way to survive the flare, but wild animals on the desert plains? He’d seen cats in the suburbs, and even a few dogs, but he’d not seen much outside of where humans lived, at least not any mammals. He looked at the face of the creature, and from its long snout and broad teeth it was probably an herbivore, but he couldn’t tell what kind.

Whatever it was
,
it found a way to survive a long time out here.

Zeke chewed on the meat, and he realized that this little mystery would have to be solved another day. He was happy now, and that was good enough. The meat before him tasted slightly better than ashes, he had potentially clean water and he was safe. At this moment, he was content.

/***/

Zeke awoke and greeted the dusk with a smile. The sun was hidden behind the distant mountains, and though he knew he shouldn’t, he faced it and felt it burn against his skin. He’d never felt his skin burn before, and it felt good somehow, like a scratch that dug deep into your body and stayed there.

You’re crawling too close to the edge,
he warned himself.
So far you’ve been able to drink the water and see the sunset, but all it takes is one mistake, and you’ll die.

Still, his skin felt warm, and it was good.

/***/

Zeke found a large pipe a few hours later, and approached it cautiously in case there was something or someone inside. It was empty, but damp because water flowed through it and over a decaying tree that was now lodged inside. The water was so dirty that Zeke wouldn’t drink it even after a week in the sun, but Zeke was intrigued by the tree. It was covered with life: lichen, mushrooms and, of course, insects. He knew one day he might have to eat the insects but didn’t feel the need now, because the world still had plenty of dead animals lying about.

The lichen and mushrooms interested Zeke, and he scraped the green scum off the bark and put it in a jar, and then gingerly handled the fungi. The mushrooms covered the tree in patches like barnacles on a whale. Zeke looked closer and found that there were two types of mushrooms competing for territory: a group of white puffballs and taller mushrooms that were interspersed between them, with broad parasols and gills underneath.

Zeke was wary of both, but he was a decent mushroomer and knew that in general, puffballs were edible, and parasols were dangerous.
In general
.

/***/

He started a fire and skewered a puffball mushroom on a stick. He was cautious, and ate only a little bit out of the puffball, though he was severely tempted to eat more. He knew mushrooms contained a lot of water, and when cooked they become perfectly juicy, even if they’re left in the fire too long. The mushroom on his stick was good, just like it was supposed to be, and an hour later he felt nothing. He knew these mushrooms were safe, so he cooked more and ate them one by one, each one savory and heavy with moisture, and each one as good as the last.

There’s always a catch with food lying around
, he thought. Cacti were prickly, and showed their danger up front. Mushrooms were soft and ripe for the taking, but you risked your life whenever you ate them. You had to be cautious and slow, but if you were careful you could live off the food the world gave you, and survive.