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“We need an update from NASA—”

Gutierrez interrupted by diving across the table, reaching for Alexander. Schlagal yipped in surprise. The major, instincts well honed by combat training, rose into a defensive stance. Gutierrez crawled across the slick maple surface, the knees of his nylon trousers struggling for traction.

“Henry?” Schlagal said.

“Scenario!” Gutierrez bleated.

Alexander didn’t like the look in the man’s eyes. At Fort Benning , Ga., he’d once been jumped by a private who’d screamed “Remember Pork Chop Hill!” over and over. It had taken three M.P.’s to drag the attacker away, but not before Alexander had thrown five or six hard punches to the man’s head. The man didn’t even seem to feel the blows. Later the private was booted from the Army for possession of narcotics before he could be court-martialed for assault on an officer.

Gutierrez now appeared to have that same mindless rage boiling inside him. He slapped Alexander’s laptop to the floor and jumped off the table. Alexander was a good four inches taller, but Gutierrez still charged him, hands open like the claws of a crab, going for the major’s throat.

Despite the sudden ferocity of the attack, Alexander kept his calm, ducking under the assault and slapping Gutierrez off-balance with a judo-inspired elbow. Helen Schlagal broke from her own shock and raced for the door. Gutierrez snarled like a rabid dog and jumped at Alexander again, this time actually snapping his teeth together with an audible clack.

The lights went out again and in the darkness, the major heard the door click open and Schlagal calling down the hall for help.

Where are those back-up generators?

Alexander didn’t have time for the next thought, because Gutierrez slammed into him with the full force of his 180 pounds. Luckily most of it was stomach, the flab of a career civil servant. Alexander spun away from the blow and drove a fist toward where he guessed the man’s nose was but struck him in the temple instead. Gutierrez grunted and collapsed in a heap.

When the lights flickered back on a minute later, Helen Schlagal returned to the room with two guards to find Alexander bent over Gutierrez’s limp form, checking his jugular for a pulse. Alexander shook his head. They tried CPR until a medic arrived, but it was too late.

No one knew it at the time, but Gutierrez was Victim One in the tsunami of solar radiation rolling across the globe.

CHAPTER FIVE

The drive home had been nerve-wracking. The six-lanes seemed packed with road ragers, even by Charlotte standards. Rachel had found herself squinting through the windshield up at the bright sky above, but the sun seemed its usual angry late-summer self.

Finally home, Rachel made a cup of chamomile tea. She punched up some Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod and lodged an ear bud in one ear, then flopped on the couch with a paperback copy of a Stephen King thriller. The walls of her efficiency apartment were paper thin, and she could hear Fox News blasting from her neighbor’s television set.

Rachel was about to plug in the second ear bud in an attempt to block out the bombast, but she heard the words “solar flare” and shut down her iPod. Moving to the wall, she cocked her head, feeling a little like a snoop but rationalizing her actions as scientific curiosity.

“Solar activity has been associated not only with localized power outages, but also a rise in aggressive behavior. Republican leaders in Washington have been calling on the president to address the situation, but so far the White House is mum. Let’s go to Landry Wallace at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for a special report on the behavioral changes. Landry?”

Wallace delivered a staccato rant that made little sense. Rachel had difficulty following it. She was too poor to afford cable, and she would never have voluntarily watched the news even if she were plugged into what her grandfather Franklin called “the Idiot Grid.” However, at one point during Wallace’s interview with a CDC official, she heard him refer to “Zapheads,” the nickname given to those affected by the heightened solar activity.

Rachel decided to browse the Internet for more developments, but a knock interrupted her. Only one person would drop by without phoning first.

“Mira,” Rachel said, welcoming her friend into the apartment.

“I smell chamomile.” Mira was a tall, dark-haired Filipino whom Rachel had met in the complex’s laundry room. They borrowed sweaters, earrings, and belts from one another to expand their wardrobes on the cheap, although Mira sported fashion far more elegantly than Rachel did.

“Want a cup? Only cost you a buck.”

Mira pretended to dig in the pocket of her jeans and came up with an empty palm. “Put it on my tab.”

Going to the little counter that comprised the kitchen, Rachel said, “Did you hear this crazy stuff about the solar storm?”

“Yeah. Sounds like some people are getting heat stroke or something. I saw the cops take down a skateboarder on the street outside. He was punching away while five of them wrestled him to the ground.”

“What did he do wrong?”

“Some lady downstairs said he busted a plate glass window and attacked a mannequin.”

“That’s weird. They don’t even have real mannequins anymore, except those real creepy ones in Old Navy. Most of them don’t even have heads.”

“Zapheads,” Mira said. “That’s what they are calling them. It’s like some kind of psychological condition. A stress thing.”

“Cool. If it keeps up, maybe the state will boost funding for counselors.”

“Nah. Cops are cheaper.”

They settled onto the couch with their tea. Rachel glanced at her iPod. The screen was blank.

Weird. I left the music running.

She picked it up and tapped the glass screen. Nothing happened.

“What, you got a text?” Mira asked. “A hot date?”

“Like there could be any other kind of date in this weather.”

“When you get a job, you can move into a place with air conditioning.” Mira motioned at the box fan perched in the room’s lone window, above Rachel’s bed. “Or marry a guy from Alaska.”

Rachel frowned at the iPod and put it back down on the coffee table. She hoped it wasn’t broken. Her mother had given it to her as a graduation present. “I’m not really marriage material.”

“You’ve just got to find the right man. Or right woman.”

“You know I only believe in Biblical marriage.”

“Which one is that? King David’s first, where you trade the foreskins of 200 Philistines for a bride, or his other seventeen marriages?”

“Don’t get literal on me.”

Mira shrugged. “I’m not the one worried about my eternal soul.”

Mira’s father had been a steward for a cruise line, diligently saving money so his family could afford to live in the United States. Having been an American for most of her twenty-four years, she had eagerly adopted the country’s lax morality, although Rachel had educated her in the more conservative ways of the Bible Belt. The playful tension over their respective spiritual beliefs had proven to be a centerpiece of their relationship.

“Well, Judgment Day may come sooner than you think,” Rachel said, although she had never gleaned much sensible prophecy from the Book of Revelation. In some chapters, the sun went black, and in others, it fell into the sea. Her grandfather believed most of the Bible’s prophecies were written by schizophrenics. “In a complex problem, the simplest answer is usually the right one,” he’d once said to her.

“You know what they say about doomsayers,” Mira fired back. “Even if they turn out to be right, they’re still assholes.”