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  After she’d set the candle safely back on the bedside table, she sat up and rested against the headboard. Her journal laid next to the candle, and though she’d already written in it more than once that evening—without power, without the Internet, and with her mind full of ideas, what else was she supposed to do?—she considered writing in it again.

  There was something about the way the pen felt in her hand, the way the words poured out of her and distracted her from everything else while she wrote that gave her comfort. More than anything else, Cass needed comfort. So, she reached for the journal and the pen beside it, rifled through it to the first blank page, and scribbled down the date at the top: March 6, 2017.

  And that was where she stopped. Unlike most days, Cass had no more words. What could she say to describe this that she hadn’t already said? She stared out the window and twirled her pen between her fingers while she thought.

  The weird-ass lights in the sky had finally gone away, but it was well after midnight and the power still hadn’t come back on like the energy company promised—and there probably wasn’t a working vehicle in the entire neighborhood.

  Cass thought of all the people she’d watched leaving throughout the day. Most went on foot, their backs and hands loaded with bags. Some pushed carts and wheelbarrows so full of their belongings and supplies that Cass was amazed they could move, and others left on bicycles—one of the only vehicles that still worked.

  Cass could’ve sworn every car in the city was disabled, but every now and then an engine roared in the distance loud enough to be heard from anywhere because it had no other noise to compete with it. Whatever the blast was, it hadn’t ruined all the cars—but it had stopped most of them. As she thought about it, Cass couldn’t decide whether having a car in this situation would’ve been a blessing or a curse.

  She jabbed her pen to paper and scribbled the two words she’d said most often in the last twelve hours: Fuck this.

  Annoyed at the situation and at her inability to write, Cass tossed the journal back on the bedside table and slumped down into her bed.

  Beneath her annoyance and anger, fear itched at the back of Cass’ throat like an oncoming cold. The world had gone to hell in a handbasket, her father was M.I.A., and her mother was slowly but surely losing it without him there to tell her what to do. It’d been years since the last time Cass had seen her mother melt into a shaking, crying mess, and she hadn’t missed it.

  After the cars didn’t start, after Cass found Shelby in her Lexus bawling and rambling incoherently, it’d taken everything Cass had to calm Shelby down and bring her back into reality. Nate was just as bad. He had no idea what to do or say, and that was when Cass realized it would have to be her who held them together and got them through this, whatever it was.

  She could live with that. It’d been a role she’d been playing already anyway, one she learned from her father. It wasn’t fair, but it was what it was, and it made her all the angrier that neither her mother nor Nate would listen to her when she said they should leave.

  Staying in the house made them targets, especially after everyone else left, and Cass had no intention of becoming some addict's next drug-addled thrill. There was a gun in the house somewhere, the same one Cass had found in the hallway closet earlier, and she knew how to use it. Her father had made sure of that.

  If only she knew where the gun was, she could keep it under her pillow, which might’ve let her fall asleep easier. Frustrated, she held her pillow over her face, trying to drown out the incessant whining of the crickets outside. She returned to counting sheep and was drifting off to sleep when the sound of sneakers against gravel jolted her awake.

  Cass sat bolt upright, the hairs on the back of her neck almost as straight, and strained her ears to listen. At this hour, there shouldn’t have been any action in the neighborhood—so who was up moving around and why?

  She slipped from her bed to the hardwood floor below, crouched, and crept to the window, careful not to let her head peek above the sill.

  It was pitch black outside, so dark Cass couldn’t even see the street, but there was a tiny orange light bouncing up and down. She watched it intently for a few moments, all kinds of horrible possibilities running through her head, until the distinct stench of cigarette smoke drifted into her nose.

  She slumped against the wall and allowed herself to laugh. Jesus, maybe her mother was rubbing off on her, making her all paranoid and anxious like this. It was just someone outside smoking, no doubt trying to take the edge off.

  Still, she was curious who it was, so she chanced another glance over the windowsill. With her eyes narrowed, she tried to focus on the face that appeared in the orange light from the cigarette when the smoker inhaled, and she smiled when she realized who it was.

  It was Austin, their neighbor from across the street—and her kinda-sorta ex-boyfriend. It was difficult to make out his features, but Cass didn’t need to see anything other than Austin's full lips in the glow of the lit cigarette to know it was him; she would’ve recognized them anywhere.

  “Austin!” Cass hissed, and Austin nearly dropped the cigarette. He looked left and right, trying to figure out where the voice had come from until she called to him again and he looked up at her.

  “It’s Cass,” Cass said. She doubted he would want to talk to her, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Their breakup hadn’t been particularly rocky given that they were never officially an item, but they’d both gone out of their way to avoid crossing paths with each other anyway.

  Still, maybe Cass could bum a couple drags off his cigarette or something. She was desperate for anything that might relax her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. Cass heard it loud and clear thanks to the lack of any other noise.

  “I can’t sleep. I take it you can’t either,” Cass said. “Stay where you are, I’m coming down,” she continued and didn’t wait for Austin to protest before she snatched the matchbook off her bedside table and opened her bedroom door out onto the hallway.

  On her tiptoes, she crept past her mother’s room—though she doubted Shelby would’ve heard anything over her snoring—and made sure to skip the top step of the staircase so it wouldn’t squeak and wake Nate up, whose room was right by the stairs.

  When she was sure she was in the clear, she made a beeline for the front door and slipped outside, letting it shut noiselessly behind her. Austin was already there, waiting at the foot of the porch, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his hands shoved into the pockets of his ripped-up jeans.

  “I always knew you were a bad girl,” he said with a smirk. “Want a smoke?”

  “Are you fucking kidding? I’d love one,” Cass said. Shelby would kill her if she caught Cass smoking again, but Cass didn’t care.

  Austin rummaged in his shirt pocket and produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes. She took one out, examined it in the moonlight for any breaks or tears, and placed it between her lips. She slipped the matchbook out of her back pocket and struck one of the matches to life before holding the flame to the cigarette and savoring the soothing burn that filled her lungs as it ignited.

  “Jesus, I needed that,” she sighed as she exhaled, watching the smoke unfurl up into the sky and disappear.

  “Me too,” Austin said. He was two years older than her, a senior, which was practically an eternity in terms of social acceptance, but Cass didn’t give a shit. Austin was a bad boy, with long, dark, and rough hair that matched his sharp edges. He had more tattoos and scars from fights than good grades, but that’s why Cass liked him.

  “Can you believe this shit?” he asked. Cass shrugged.

  “Not really, no. I don’t even understand what happened. We were out on the back porch just talking when all of a sudden there was this crazy noise, and everything went white. When I could see again, we were all on our hands and knees, like something had pushed us down. None of it makes any sense,” Cass blurted. She hadn’t meant to say that much, b
ut after spending all afternoon keeping it bottled up, she couldn’t help herself.

  Talking with Shelby about what happened was out of the question—she was way too unstable now for that—and Nate wasn’t much better.

  “My dad says it was an EMP,” Austin said.

  “What the hell is that?” Cass asked and took another drag of the cigarette. She knew she’d need it to help her make sense of whatever crackpot theory Austin was about to spew. He got it from his dad, Scott, who Cass had met once before and never cared to again. Scott was intense—far too much for Cass—but Austin always said it was because of his dad’s time spent in the service.

  “An electromagnetic pulse. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it before,” Austin said, eyeing her up and down. “I thought your dad was ex-military too.”

  “He is, but he doesn’t talk about it. My mom won’t let him. Anyway, what is that… whatever you called it?” Cass asked.

  “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” Austin said, and it took everything Cass had not to burst out laughing.

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just some weird storm that took the power out,” Cass said, but even she didn’t believe herself. Austin eyed her and shook his head.

  “I'm not stupid. We wouldn’t be leaving in the morning if my dad didn’t believe it,” Austin said.

  “Leaving? Where are you going?” Cass asked.

  “We’re bugging out and heading to a military safe zone. Los Alamitos Joint Forces. It’s south about forty minutes, but Dad figures that’ll be far enough away from other people until this all blows over,” Austin said.

  “Bugging out? What the hell are you talking about? You sound crazy,” Cass laughed, but beneath her laughter anxiety clawed at her stomach like a beast trying to get out. Why were they leaving? Did they know something Cass and her family didn’t? If they were going to a safe zone provided by the military, did that mean…?

  “It means we’re getting the hell outta here before shit really hits the fan,” Austin said. “Look, the power isn’t gonna come back on. You can sit here and pray for rain all you want, but that won’t make it fall. The longer people sit without power, the crazier they’re gonna get.”

  “That’s crap, I don’t believe it,” Cass said, though she had to take another drag of the cigarette to settle her hammering heart. She’d thought the same thing more than once, but every time she’d suppressed it.

  “Fine, you don’t have to believe it. Sit here in the dark with no food for a couple of days and I bet you’ll change your mind,” Austin said and snuffed out his cigarette on the porch bricks. “Or you could come with us,” Austin said, and Cass’s brain froze.

  “Come with you?” she asked, taking the deepest drag yet on her cigarette. Rather than calm her down, the conversation had only made her more anxious, as had the cigarette. Still, she couldn’t stop sucking on it.

  “You heard me. We’re leaving, and trust me, there’s nowhere safer than where we’re heading. There'll be lots of dudes who know how to use guns and aren’t afraid to do it. They’ve got more supplies than God,” Austin said.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little nuts? We don’t really even know each other,” Cass said.

  “Well, something tells me we’re about to have a damn lot of time to get to know each other,” Austin said. Though she’d never admit it, Austin was scaring her. She wasn’t opposed to leaving—she’d been trying to convince her mom and brother to evacuate for hours—but was a military base really the right place to go? It seemed like a sitting duck to Cass.

  “What about my family? I can’t just leave them here, especially if this EMP thing is real,” Cass said.

  “Cass, listen to me: it’s real. Would everyone be panicking like this if it wasn’t?” Austin asked. “Look, my dad would never let me bring your whole family, but I know I could talk him into letting you come. He likes you.”

  As far as Cass was concerned, if Scott didn’t have room for her whole family, then he didn’t have room for her either. Though she was annoyed and even angry with her mother and brother, she couldn’t and wouldn’t leave either one of them behind—especially not to run off to some military bunker with people she barely knew.

  “I think I’m good, but thanks,” Cass said and flicked the stubby remainder of the cigarette away.

  “Suit yourself,” Austin said with a shrug. “But here, in case you change your mind in a few days when you just can’t take it anymore,” he said and dug into his pocket to produce a crumpled up piece of paper. Cass took it from him and smoothed it out.

  It was a brochure for the base, some fact sheet or something; she couldn’t read it in the dark.

  “Good luck, Cass. You’re gonna need it,” Austin said and disappeared into the night. Cass stood there watching him until she couldn’t see him anymore.

  As she walked up the steps to the front door, the brochure screaming up at her from her hand convinced Cass that Austin and his dad were paranoid, that things couldn’t possibly be severe enough to require military shelters.

  So when she got back to her room, she crumpled the brochure up and threw it against the wall.

  9

  Joel watched the sun rising over the mountains.

  He hadn’t slept a wink, couldn’t even dream of sleeping, due in no small part to his arm and the constant sense of panic about his family hundreds of miles away. More than anything, he wished he could call them, just to hear Shelby or Cass or Nate’s voices, just to know they were okay—because not knowing was unbearable.

  Ashley had set them up with a pallet of sorts, made from the collection of pillows thrown about the sanctuary. Joel had never been in a place like it in his life, and after spending the night there in agony and anxiety, he hoped to never set foot in one again. Rather than bring him peace, it brought him nothing but unease.

  Staying in the building exposed Joel and Ashley in the worst way possible. The floor-to-ceiling windows probably led to inspiring meditation sessions, but they were awful when it came to concealing the people inside. They didn’t need openness right now; they had to be cautious.

  Though Joel could stand, something he’d already tested in the night, he wouldn’t be much good in a fight if it came to that. It was only a matter of time before somebody found him and Ashley there. Anyone with half a brain would try to get away from the general population in a situation like this, try to isolate themselves as much as possible and stock up on food, supplies—and guns.

  That’s what Joel would’ve done if he had the choice, but he didn’t.

  When the sun’s rays started to creep across the hardwood floor, threatening to reach Ashley and wake her with its brightness, Joel knew he had to act while he still had the chance. Ashley had been kind to him and shown him mercy in a way he worried he might never see again as the world deteriorated in the wake of the EMP, but that didn’t mean he owed her anything in return.

  The fact of the matter was, she had a working car, the only functioning car in the vicinity that could get him to his family, and he needed it more than anything else—including Ashley’s medical expertise.

  Based on their conversation the night before, it was unlikely Joel would be able to convince her to come with him anyway. He also wouldn’t be a match for her in a fight for the car, if it came to that, so that left him with one option: he’d have to steal it.

  What would that make him? Joel couldn’t leave Ashley stranded, as much as he wanted to get moving. He might not have owed her anything, but he couldn’t condemn her to that fate, not after the way she’d patched him back together.

  But he also couldn’t afford to sit around and wait for her to make up her mind about what she wanted to do, so he crept past where she slept beside him to the parking lot a few hundred yards outside the front door.

  There were about a dozen other cars parked in the gravel, including Ashley’s Topaz, each of them fried in the EMP and abandoned as a result—but there was still a ch
ance one or two of them hadn’t been. Best case scenario, an older model with less computerized equipment might’ve survived. Joel swore he’d read that in some book or another.

  There was only one way to find out, so Joel went from car to car, searching each of them for keys first—and coming up empty-handed each time. But even if he hadn’t it wouldn’t have mattered because all the cars still left at the center were newer models, full of electrical wiring and sensitive chips probably destroyed in the blast.

  He came to the last car that wasn’t Ashley’s, a navy blue, early 90s Ford F150, its paint cracking and peeling in different areas from sun exposure. If any of the cars on the lot stood a chance against the EMP, besides Ashley’s, it would be a tank of a truck like that. Given that he’d been unsuccessful in finding any keys thus far, Joel wasn’t positive he’d have any better luck with the truck, but he had to try.

  To his surprise, the door came open when he pulled the handle. He didn’t know many people in the LA area who left their cars unlocked, but for a truck as old as this one, maybe it didn’t matter to the owner to keep their things safe. Joel took a few looks over each shoulder, making sure Ashley hadn’t come out to find him trying to sneak away, and when he was sure the coast was clear, he climbed inside the truck.

  Of course, there weren’t keys in the ignition. Joel had to think. If he were the owner of this car, where would he have put a spare? He checked the center console first, the most likely place, but there was nothing but sticky, soda-covered coins and a safety pin inside the cup holders.

  Next, he checked the glove box, and his heart dropped when he opened it and found it mostly empty—except for a small box inside, most likely a first-aid kit of some sort. Given his current condition, at the very least he could use the supplies within, so he snatched the box and flipped it open.