The container held an olive green backpack, two CamelBak water bladders and a sealed plastic bucket of dehydrated food pouches. The backpack had been outfitted with enough gear and food to support a two-day journey. Each of the bladders held three liters, which was the theoretical minimum he should drink per day if hiking. Realistically, he’d need more, which was why his dad had stuffed a Katadyn microfilter into the backpack. His first task upon leaving the dorm room was to fill both of the CamelBak bladders. Beyond that, everything he needed to walk back to Maine with Chloe was inside the backpack.
The pack contained a hat, old sunglasses, maps of Boston and New England, a compass, extra cash, parachute cord, a thirty-foot section of remnant sailing line, a small emergency radio, first aid kit, fire-starting kit, flashlight, three MREs, a Gore-Tex bivouac bag, N95 respirator and an emergency blanket. The only thing he didn’t have was a knife. Any knife, no matter how small, was classified as a weapon by university police and strictly forbidden. Even a Swiss Army knife could get you expelled. He dug through one of the outer pouches and found the flashlight. He aimed the LED light at the window and tested it, relieved that it filled the entire room with a bluish-white light. He had no idea what kind of damage a solar flare could do to battery-powered equipment.
He considered unpacking the dehydrated food bucket, but there was no way he could stuff anything else into the backpack. The bucket would be awkward to carry, but it had a sturdy handle, and he wasn’t going far enough for it to become a real problem. He’d cover the three miles to Chloe’s apartment in thirty minutes. Forty tops. He heaved the backpack onto his shoulders and tightened the straps. With the bucket in his left hand, he leaned against the door and listened. The screaming had faded to sporadic yelling.
Ryan unlocked his door and stepped into the darkness. Without exterior windows, the hallways were pitch black. A beam of light blinded him.
“You all right, dude? Can you believe this?” said a male voice.
“Did you see what happened?” asked Ryan, locking the door to his room.
“The whole city blew up, brother. We got nuked or something.”
A different voice spoke up. “It wasn’t a nuke. There’s a huge contrail in the sky, running from west to east. It disappears at about a forty-degree altitude over the southern horizon. We’ll see more of it as sunrise approaches. I calculate that it struck somewhere off the coast, due east of here.”
Ryan flashed his light at the two of them.
“Dude, watch it with the light. It’s like a million times brighter than this,” he said, directing his beam into Ryan’s eyes.
“Thanks for the demonstration. What do you mean ‘it struck’?” asked Ryan.
“I think we got hit by an asteroid or some kind of—”
The student with the flashlight interrupted. “That was probably an ICBM fired from China. West to east, it makes sense.”
“I’ve seen the ground footage of the space shuttle reentering the atmosphere, and this is about twenty times thicker.”
“It still doesn’t explain why the lights are out. Nukes create an EMP,” said the first student.
“Not if they hit the ground,” said Ryan, pushing past the two of them.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here. If the power’s out for good, you need to start filling up any kind of container that will hold water. Even a trashcan,” said Ryan, pushing open the bathroom door.
“Wrong bathroom, dude,” he heard as the door closed.
“Hello. Anyone in here?” he yelled, before flashing the light along the row of stalls.
“Definitely not the men’s room,” he whispered.
Directing the light in the opposite direction exposed several sinks set into a long Formica counter. The wall-length mirror anchored to the wall behind the sinks had shattered, filling the white basins and covering the tile floor with razor-sharp pieces of broken glass. Satisfied that he was alone, he dropped the backpack on the floor next to the nearest sink and pulled out both of the water bladders, filling them with cold water.
He hoped the others took his advice about the water. Without power to run the building’s water pumps, pressure wouldn’t last very long on the sixth floor—or any floor. He’d just tucked the second bladder into his backpack when a thunderous explosion rattled the bathroom, rebooting the hysterical screams he had heard earlier.
Maybe we did get hit with a nuke.
Ryan crouched against the wall next to the sink and waited several seconds in the dark, hearing nothing but continued screaming. Activating his flashlight, he opened the door, finding the hallway thick with dust.
Not good.
A female student bolted out of the cloud, knocking him out of the way. He grabbed her arm and held her in place.
“Hold on! The floor is covered in glass!”
Coughing and sobbing, she yanked her arm free and stood there in bare feet.
“What just happened out there?” asked Ryan.
She looked up at him with a vacant stare. Her jet-black, curly hair was coated in dust, and she had several small cuts across her face.
“Something exploded in Boston,” she stated flatly and started crying again.
“Like a bomb?”
“I don’t know. I was facing downtown when all of the fires started to go out. Then it hit us. It was like a shockwave or something. How is my face?”
“Small cuts. Nothing serious. Where’s your room?” Ryan asked, shining the light on her.
“On the other side,” she mumbled.
“You need to go back to your room and put on some shoes and long pants. Hiking boots if you have them. Then fill up any container you can find with water. Tell everyone to do this. It’s extremely important,” he said, stepping out of the doorway to let her by.
“Okay. Water—uh—all right,” she said and disappeared.
Ryan directed his light forward along the left side of the hallway, looking for the door to the stairwell he had used last night. He pushed it open and heard the hollow echo of screams and feet clattering against the stairs. Air quality in the stairwell vestibule was markedly better than the hallway, and he could see across to the door leading to the other side of his floor. The far door opened, and a shirtless student wearing red soccer shorts and flip-flops entered the vestibule, shining a flashlight in his face. The student nodded and rushed past him, yelling unfamiliar names into the hallway Ryan had just left.
He joined the mass exodus in the dark stairwell and let it carry him to the ground floor, jostled and shoved until he spilled through a pair of double doors into the main thoroughfare connecting the three Warren Towers dormitory buildings with the cafeteria and main lobby. The lighting situation remained the same on the ground level, utterly dependent on the few students who had thought to bring flashlights to college.
The emergency lighting system had failed to activate, which didn’t come as a surprise to Ryan based on conversations with his dad. Hardwired into the building’s electrical grid, the battery-powered lights were susceptible to a solar flare or EMP-generated electrical surge.
He spotted a gap in the oncoming flock of students and dashed to the other side of the hallway, his feet crushing gravel as he ran. He flashed his light at the ground, exposing small pieces of concrete and dust. Before he could aim the beam at the ceiling, someone yanked the light from his grip. The light moved quickly away, darting through the swarm of students headed toward Warren Towers’ main lobby.
“Fucking asshole!” he screamed, pushing his way in the direction of the wavering light.
He considered chasing the thief, but quickly gave up the thought. The flashlight had already served its primary purpose, and the risks of pursuit far outweighed the return of an item he could replace at Chloe’s apartment. If the crowd became agitated by his antics, he could lose his bucket of dehydrated food or, even worse, his backpack. Ryan turned his back on the stolen flashlight and moved along the wall, against the flow of students, searching for one of the lesser-known exit doors leading directly onto Commonwealth Avenue. He ran into the door handle a few seconds later and stepped into a pitch-black stairwell, closing the door behind him.