The new quiet and somber darkness around them lulled their senses into a false calmness that belied the real danger that waited below. The Earth was going to come at them fast. They passed a single light of a large house in the hills, but otherwise, it was dark below them. The town’s fast approaching lights beckoned them from just below the cowling, growing in strength with each passing second, as their distance closed.
Then the town’s lights went out. It was as if the blanket of darkness that followed them in the air was thrown over the town as well covering all the lights below.
Now panicked, John and Steve spun their heads wildly, searching for anything, glad they could not see the fear in each other’s faces.
“How will we see the street now?” Steve asked feeling stupid for asking a question, he already knew the answer to.
“At this point, I’ll be happy to see anything,” John answered.
Breathing slowly, Steve tried to think like a pilot, considering what he would want to know, based on the forty or so hours he’d flown. “What do you think our altitude is right now?” He finally asked.
“Around 1000?” John guessed, “Maybe less.” He popped open his window and the scary peace was broken by the cool 120 knot air rushing into their cockpit.
Steve understood without asking. John was flying by his senses now, and he needed to hear as well as see anything he could to keep from going in nose first, or crashing into a structure or trees on the ground.
Their eyes appeared to be adjusting to the darkness. It was the auroras. They came to the same realization at once. The ground was bathed in a bright green light, enough now that they could see the trees and the fast approaching ground
“I see a road,” John announced triumphantly. He banked the plane slightly, but then reality sunk in, with only two hundred feet of altitude, they were too far away to make it.
“Steve, prepare for a crash landing. At that last moment, you need to tuck forward. You got that?”
John leveled the plane and searched for the cleanest line and a solid tree or structure to take some of their inertial energy away. He was thankful that he attended the workshop on crash landing at Oshkosh last year. At least, with little fuel in their tanks, they wouldn’t burn.
“I hear you, Dad. I’m not scared.”
There. He found his flight line between two tall oaks. Every second a loud whoosh sound, announced a passing tree. Any second now.
“I love you, son.”
“Me too,” Steve’s voice rose in pitch, unconsciously bracing for the impact the moment it happened.
The intercom and then the pilot’s voice broke through the loud hum of the plane’s engines which were working hard, still pushing to keep them upward, “This is your captain speaking. I’m sure you have already noticed the rare occurrence outside your windows. For the same reasons we left O’Hare so late, if you look out now, you will probably never see an aurora display this far south in your lifetimes.” Most of the passengers craned and contorted themselves to see the green ribbons of light spread out all over the horizon, so close they felt they could reach up and touch these heavenly objects.
“Soooo beautiful,” Stacy exclaimed, momentarily forgetting her fear, which had been constant throughout their flight.
The captain continued, “Because of recent solar activity, we have the pleasure of—”
The lights flickered and the intercom crackled, cutting off the captain mid-sentence. Every head that had been craning to see the beautiful light show, turned to regard the cockpit door, hoping their gaze would somehow pierce the door and yield some sort of confirmation that the plane’s captain was not as concerned as they were. The engines started to stumble as did the plane’s lights, as if some unknown force was sucking up the plane’s energy. It was the opposite.
All at once, the engines stopped and the lights were extinguished. The passengers were bathed in silence and an eerie green darkness. They held their collective breaths, as if the plane would now float, using the combined air in their lungs.
Stacy’s eyes, slightly illuminated by the green glow of the aurora outside, were filled with terror. Her right hand reflexively reached, grabbed, and squeezed a vice-grip hold on a hand in the seat next to hers. The silence, and the shock of the last few seconds was broken by a sheer wave of panic that washed over everyone from the front to the back of the plane like a tsunami. “Oh, my God!” and “The engines!” screamed out of the cabin’s green haze.
“It will be alright,” Stacy’s friend said, calmly squeezing her hand and the hand of the boy sitting next to her.
Someone yelled something unintelligible, followed by another, and then another, now screeching the same declaration, “FIRE.”
Stacy looked to her left and saw through two of the window seats that the wing on their side was on fire.
Then, everyone could feel it. Their inertia had given way to the greater force pulling on them, gravity. They started to descend, first, a little, then a lot. Within a few seconds, they were spiraling out of control, the planes electronic controls unyielding to the pilot and co-pilot’s physical exertion to keep the plane airborne.
Stacy squeezed her friend’s hand so hard it was turning it blue. She closed her eyes and starting praying the only prayer that came to mind,
33.
Hell Breaks Loose
Most sunrises on their beach, were similarly stunning, with almost imperceptible differences in the new day’s light, breezes, or the ocean waves. This dawn was different, a foretelling already seen by many, but soon by everyone else. The sky sported an extra deep hue of magenta, more common during cloudy mornings, and an unnatural shade of lime. There were no clouds, but for the slight wispy red and green ropes; leftovers from the evening auroras. These heavenly ethereal cords slowly dissipated as the sun stood its ground, as if to command them away, at least for now.
With that, a new day started. It was to be a day no one on Earth would forget.
Max had been up for hours. Troubled first by his dreams, vivid visions of death and destruction, then last night’s light show, both events seemingly predicting what was coming. From what he understood, the CMEs that hit last night were pretty big, but not big enough to cause the destruction he had been most worried about, including their technology. Unfortunately, that was the mission of their much bigger brothers, traveling on their heels. They were due to hit the Earth at any moment. Unlike solar flares, which carry excessive radiation, coronal mass ejections were large clouds of plasma that weren’t directly injurious to humans, but were deadly to just about everything electronic. This one was supposed to be a doozy, potentially many times worse than the Carrington Event of 1859 was.
Because he prepared for this for years, and last night giving Bill and Lisa their instructions, there was little he could do but wait.
His lack of patience for the end of the world to hurry up and get here tickled his desire to find out how much damage the already arrived CMEs caused elsewhere. While the world still had power, he wanted to watch some news. He turned his TV on, which like his computer equipment, was connected to a set of twenty-five back up batteries, charged by the multiple solar roof panels, and shielded along with his office behind the bookshelf. However, because both television and Internet were receiving their signals from satellite, Max doubted the reception would be good due to the electromagnetic waves from CMEs. It showed nothing but static.