Flare (12 page)

“Easy there, that’s Dave Edwards, he’s the local forester.  Don’t think we’ll be needing the shotguns”.

I nodded and let go, but noted that he scanned the yard before he got out of the car, and his own weapon was at the ready as we approached the cottage, a light still on in the kitchen window.

As we walked towards the door it flew open and Harriet almost ran out.  She and Emily caught hold of each other and hugged while I stood there awkwardly.  Harriet finally disentangled herself from her daughter’s arms and swapped them for Ralph’s, squeezing him tight before gripping my hand, her eyes shining with tears.

“Oh, thank god you’re safe”, she said, pulling me towards the door as the others followed.  “Jerry was beside himself, talking about hiking over there until Dave came by, then trying to convince him to go and search for you, but I knew you’d come back.  Was it bad?”

I opened my mouth to answer but then caught Ralph’s stare.

“Not too bad”, I lied with a smile, “just a bit of car trouble”.

She nodded and accepted the explanation, leading us into the kitchen as Maggie ran around our feet, yapping excitedly until Ralph yelled at her.

Jerry was sat at the table, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea, while opposite him sat a man in his early thirties who appeared to be carved from granite, his tattered navy jumper straining to cover his hugely muscled arms as he stood to shake our hands.

He seemed to be a pleasant chap, a permanent smile splitting his thick, dark beard as he folded a huge hand around mine, squeezing surprisingly gently and saying my name to himself when we were introduced.

In moments, it seemed, we were all seated around the table with mugs of tea, Ralph batting off questions about the delay in getting back and turning the conversation to how Dave had managed to get his vehicle working.

“I came out this morning and the battery was dead”, he said by way of explanation, “but I’ve got a couple of spares in the shed
so I tried one and it worked. I thought I’d head over and make sure you and Harriet were ok.  Your man Jerry here was about to explain what happened when you pulled up”.

We all turned to look at Jerry and he cleared his throat nervously.

“Right, well.  I’ve already explained to most of you about the solar flare, and to some of you about the Coronal Mass Ejection, which is actually the thing causing all the problems.  Do you all know what an EMP is?”

Everyone but Ralph nodded.

“Ok”, Jerry continued, “it’s an electromagnetic pulse, which is normally found when a nuclear device detonates, and it’s capable of destroying electronics and causing all manner of problems, such as overloads and the like.  The Ejection, or CME for short, that we had yesterday was particularly bad, and in layman’s terms it’s the sun venting plasma, which acts like an EMP.  The sun actually has a very strong electromagnetic field of its own, as well as its own gravity, but sometimes when the gravity weakens it sends out, well, puffs of plasma, I suppose you could say.  It’s almost unheard of for one to hit the earth, but it
does
happen, clearly, or we wouldn’t be in this mess”.

He looked around with a smile, as if he’d covered everything, but there were more than a few confused looks at the table.

“So how does that explain my car battery then?”  Dave asked, scratching his beard.

“Oh yes, well.  A CME as large as the one that hit us is kind of like a giant taser hitting the earth.  The shock would ground, in much the same way as electricity, and anything made of conductive material with a power source connected to it would effectively draw the energy out of its power source unless it was shielded and surge protected”.

“Like a metal car with its battery still attached?”  Dave said, catching on.

Jerry took a swig of his tea and nodded.  “Exactly.  I detached my battery before it hit, so it was ok, and so would any that were being driven at the time, as the alternator would charge it up again, but if your vehicle was switched off when the CME hit, the battery would have drained, whereas the ones in your sh
ed weren’t attached to anything so the charge wouldn’t go anywhere”.

“I think I follow you”, Dave said, “so what about all the other cars?”

“Microchips”, he said, waggling a finger.  “We’ve become so reliant on microchips as a society that they’re in almost everything now.  Unfortunately they are delicate enough that they are particularly susceptible to Electromagnetic variations, so everything that has a microchip in it is, well, pretty bloody useless now”.

Emily turned her mug with one hand while the other stroked Maggie’s head.

“What about older systems, pre the microchip revolution?”

Jerry shrugged.  “They sh
ould work if you can find a power source, and maybe a working fuse or two.  There’s no reason why, with a bit of make and mend, we couldn’t have ourselves back to the technology level of, say, the seventies, within a few weeks if there are enough people out there working on it”.

“I can think of a reason”, I said, standing and walking to the window to look out at the night sky.

“Oh really, what’s that?”  Jerry asked, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.

“That”, I said, pointing out to where the sky was writhing with colour, blues, greens and reds all mixing together from horizon to horizon. 

Jerry almost ran to the door, pulling it open and heading into the yard.  We all followed, speechless as we looked up at the incredible display above us.

“Oh my god”, Jerry said, his voice barely a whisper, “it’s happening again”.
  

Chapter 19

We all stood in the yard, staring up in wonder as the sky pulsated in resplendent colour, washing our faces with its light.

“It’s beautiful”, Emily said, “what’s causing it?”

Jerry spoke without moving his eyes from the display.

“It’s the magnetic force of the sun interacting with the outer atmosphere”, he said, “although it’s a good deal more complicated than that.  If my instruments were working I could see exactly what was happening, but even if they were it would drain… the car!”

He ran to the Golf and opened the door, pulling the handle for the bonnet and hurriedly lifting it to tear the connectors from the battery.

Following his lead, Dave did the same with the Landrover, quickly pulling up the passenger seat and pulling the whole battery clear before laying it next to the vehicle.

“Will it be ok out here?”  He asked Jerry, who nodded as he returned his gaze to the sky.

“As long as there’s nothing draining it, it should be fine”, he said, “I just wish I knew if this was just a flare or another CME”.

“What difference does it make?”  I asked, awed and scared by the lightshow at the same time.  It might be beautiful, but it was also a sign that the worst of the storm wasn’t over.

“If it’s just a flare”, Jerry said without turning, “then it won’t cause further problems, but if it’s a CME then anyone who’s crawled out of their hidey-holes to start making repairs will find all their replacement kit being fried.  It could set a repair effort back months”.

Emily came to stand next to me, arms hugging her chest as she looked up.

“I always wanted to see the Northern Lights”, she said with a wry smile, “and now I have, I suddenly wish I hadn’t”.

“I know what you mean.  Did you see it last night?”

She shook her head.  “No, I went to bed quite early, then woke up and nothing was working”.

“It wasn’t quite as strong last night, I think”, I said, trying to compare the lights to the ones from the previous night, “which makes me glad the electricity is already out or we’d probably see worse than we did then”.

“How bad was it?”  She glanced over at me, trying to read my expression.

I shrugged and looked down at the ground, trying to block out the images of Brighton burning while we drove away, unable to help anyone against the sheer scale of the disaster.

“Bad”, I said shortly.

I half expected her to press but she merely nodded, putting a hand on my shoulder before moving to stand with her
mother.  I could feel the warmth of her hand long after she’d moved away, and again chided myself for thinking of anything other than going to find Melody.

“I can’t be standing out here all night”, Ralph said suddenly, and went back into the cottage.  A few moments later the sound of clinking glass came from the kitchen, and I suspected that he was fixing himself something stronger than tea.

I moved up next to Jerry and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Do we need to be worried?”  I asked quietly.

He looked at me over his glasses.

“How do you mean, exactly?”

“Well, you said that the CME is bombarding the Earth with radiation, are we likely to get sick?”

He shook his head.  “I wouldn’t think so, no.  At least not right away.  The atmosphere works a bit like a sponge, stripping most of it away before it gets this far down. If we were in an aeroplane at thirty thousand feet it might be a different story, but as long as it doesn’t keep doing this every night
we should be ok”.

“And what if it does?”  I asked.  “What if this isn’t a new flare, or CME, but the same one from last night.  That means we would have spent all day being slowly cooked from up on high”.

He shrugged.  “Not much we can do about it now”.

“Still, it would be nice to know what’s
going on.  Those famous algorithms of yours, your formula or whatever you want to call it, can it tell us what’s happening now?”

Jerry looked at me for a long moment before nodding hesitantly.

“It might, you know, particularly if I can get readings from stars.  I’ve have to do the calculations on paper though”.

Without another word he headed into the cottage, coming back out a minute later with his telescope and a small green metal box which he attached to the end, a little like a silencer on a pistol.

He began looking through and making small adjustments, then squatted with a notepad resting on his leg and began making notes in tiny script with a pencil.

“Do you need help?”  I asked him, but he just waved at me absently
.

The others began to drift back inside so I followed, needing to be around people far more than I needed to watch Jerry at work.

We sat back around the kitchen table, Ralph drinking whiskey from a glass without offering to share.

“How’s your ankle?”  Harriet asked as she made yet more tea, adding some wood to the stove to get the heat up.

I rolled my foot experimentally.

“Better than it’s got any right to be after today”.

Ralph shot me another warning glance and I changed the subject before she could ask why.

“So, what’s the best way to get up past London if I’m avoiding the M23?”  I asked, “and probably the M25 too.  I don’t know how bad things are in London but I want to give it a wide berth, and the 25 is probably packed with cars”.

Ralph stood and crossed to one of the many shelves that lined the walls, pulling out a large road atlas and several smaller maps. He spread them out across the table and began pointing out roads with one thick finger.

“If you want to avoid the motorways, your best bet is to take the A247 to Woking, then go to Maidenhead on this road, then this one, and then head up to he
re”.  He stabbed his finger at a point on the map.

“You got a choice then, you can either take the B4445 which is a straighter route but a smaller road, or follow the M40 right up north, suppose it depends on what things are like.  When are you thinking of heading off?”

I sat back and accepted a mug of tea from Harriet with a grateful smile.

“As soon as I can.  The longer I leave it, the worse things are going to get.  I’ll probably head off first thing in the morning, providing the car’s still working”.

“And if it ain’t?”  He asked, sitting back down and reaching for his glass.

“Then I’ll walk”, I said with a shrug, “what other choice have I got?”

Chapter
20

The next morning found me tired but full of nervous energy
, waking to the faint sound of chopping wood outside.  I hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning on the lounge floor as nightmares of Melody trapped in a burning house roused me every hour or so.

I looked over to where Jerry’s bedroll lay, untouched since the night before, and wondered if he was still in the yard with his telescope.

I stretched and yawned, the movement sending up a waft of stale sweat.  I needed a shower, but that was something I suspected I’d be waiting a very long time for, so instead I settled for raiding Jerry’s kitbag and giving myself a quick baby-wipe bath.