The Solar Pulse (Book 1): Beyond The Pulse

  © 2017 Will Hawthorne

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Beyond The Pulse: The Solar Pulse Book 1

  Will Hawthorne

  2017

  This work of written fiction is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and other countries throughout the world. Country of first publication: United Kingdom. Any unauthorized exhibition, distribution, or copying of this book or any part thereof may result in legal action. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this book are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

  No person or entity associated with this book received payment or anything of value, or entered into any agreement or connection with the depiction of tobacco products.

  Contents

  Chapter One - The Day Before

  Chapter Two - The Evening Before

  Chapter Three - Things Go Dark

  Chapter Four - By Candlelight

  Chapter Five - You Just Begin

  Chapter Six - Dark City

  Chapter Seven - Thief

  Chapter Eight - Generator, Generator

  Chapter Nine - Hum

  Chapter Ten - Paper Skin

  Chapter Eleven - Click

  Chapter Twelve - The Jump

  Chapter Thirteen - Elevator

  Chapter Fourteen - Leave

  Chapter Fifteen - Moody

  Chapter Sixteen - The Road Ahead

  Beyond The Pulse

  The Solar Pulse Book 1

  Chapter One

  The Day Before

  You never assume that bad things will happen to you until they do – this is one of the most correct, remarkable, undeniable truths of the universe when it comes to human beings. You can see somebody’s apartment flood in the block across from yours and think God damn, that sucks for them, but I’m glad that it didn’t happen to me. Then you leave for work one morning, coming home with dinner as the only thing on your mind, and you discover that the water tank in the apartment above has burst and is steadily leaking through the ceiling into yours. Suddenly you know what it feels like to be in that situation.

  There are similar things that we’re all of guilty of in other situations. When a disaster happens in some faraway country on the other side of the planet we all watch the news reports with intensity and speculation, wondering how far the chaos will spread and how high the bodies will pile up, but confident in the knowledge that we are safe in our homes, away from terrible events that don’t involve us.

  But what do you do when something like that hits you? What do you do when the lights go out and the TVs off and the phone won’t work and nobody is coming to help you?

  We thought that it would be somebody’s job to save the world, but I realised pretty quickly that the only people we could rely on to save us was ourselves.

  It happened in the dead of night, but our story really begins the day before.

  ‘So what’s this project that you’re working on about?’

  ‘I’m not telling you. You wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m your girlfriend, you can tell me.’

  ‘It’s just a little strange, that’s all.’

  ‘Stranger than you?’

  ‘Very funny, Helen.’

  ‘So are you gonna tell me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You suck.’

  ‘I know. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, though.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, you jerk.’

  I hung up the phone, grabbing my bag from the back of my chair and looking about the almost empty office. Pretty much everybody else had already gone home, save for the occasional workaholic or any forward thinkers who wanted to save themselves from a difficult Monday rush.

  Being a copywriter wasn’t exactly the most exciting job in the world, but the one thing I did like about my job was my boss – seeing as we were facing one of the hottest days of the year, as well as the fact that it was a part of a much bigger heatwave that had been going on for some time, she had let everybody go home early. It was a Friday, and in these conditions nobody was really useful for anything.

  I stopped there for a second, looking about the room before glancing down at the name badge on my desk.

  Sam Johnson – Assistant Head Copywriter

  I had been working at Robson and Robson for four years now. For a 26 year-old like myself, city life was the perfect thing for somebody my age right after college. I loved the busyness and the liveliness of the place, even if it did have its bad spots. That was just like everywhere in the world, of course – no matter where you were, there was always a bad side to things.

  My girlfriend of a year, Helen – that was who I had been speaking to on the phone – lived fifteen blocks from my apartment. She was an assistant professor at the university, teaching agricultural science – an interesting choice of study, true, but the world would always need to know how to grow food; that was a given. We had known each other since college, and had only gotten together during the pouring rain after a meal with friends when we had drunkenly kissed outside at the end of the night.

  When neither of us regretted it the next morning, we decided to give things a go – now they were better than ever, and I felt that way every day. Our relationship wasn’t a romantic one, though. Sure, there was some of that present in everybody’s relationship, but considering the types of people we were that kind of attitude didn’t break its way into our lives very often. We were a unit that worked towards common goals, and we always had each other’s backs.

  We were intent on moving in soon, preferably somewhere a little way away from the city, and that was a piece of information that I had no idea how to break to my roommate and best friend, Luke – but we’ll get to him in a little while.

  I pushed the button for the elevator, entering when it arrived and taking the four-storey journey to the ground floor.

  ‘You should get yourself home,’ I said to Donny, the doorman, who had been here since I had started working in the building and had probably been here long before then. He was a grizzled but humble man in his early 60s, still wearing his red coat and hat even in this heat. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  ‘Can’t go nowhere until the day’s over, Sammy-boy. Where the hell you going, anyway?’

  ‘Boss let everybody go home early on account of the heat. Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘How do you stay so cool in all that gear?’

  ‘I grew up in the South. It’s always hot, so you gotta come up with ways to keep cool. I know all the tricks.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘For one? Stay still. Puts your body in a resting state that doesn’t generate so much heat. But you freaking kids these days, you spend so much time on your phones and your screens that you’re too impatient to sit still for a minute. Be the death of you, seriously.’

  He laughed as I smiled and shook my head, promising that I would take his advice and bidding him goodbye.

  Heatwave was damn right. It seemed to wear down onto the street with the sole purpose of frying everybody. I rolled up the sleeves of my white shirt, retrieving my sunglasses from my back pocket and sliding them up my nose. I ran
a hand through my dark hair, already feeling the warmth of it before setting off up the street.

  Despite the heat it was a particularly busy day, even if I had made it out early. The streets bustled with people and the sights and sounds of the city, all struggling to stay cool. While I was still concerned about staying cool, too, I was doing a lot better than the folks dragging themselves along the sidewalk with horrendous wet patches soaked into their clothes. I had kept myself in decent shape ever since I was a teenager – not from lunchtime soccer or afterschool baseball, but from the labour and straight up hustling that is required from growing up in a remote place.

  I had grown up well outside of the city, learning to be self-sufficient from the offset with the help of my father. We looked out for each other, albeit a considerable distance, eventually reaching a point of only helping each other when we truly needed. My father had shifted away from living off the land to engineering work after my mother’s death when I was two from a terrible stretch of illness – it was too much for him to accomplish on his own. Still, when I was old enough and capable enough, he had taught me more than the traditional citizen of the country knew – how to stay in shape whilst working, how to push yourself beyond what was necessary… How to keep yourself alive.

  I hadn’t lived there for eight years, and despite heading home every so often to see him and calling him at least once a month, all of that knowledge and experience had become undeniably rusty over the years.

  I know around this point you might be asking which city this story takes place in, but in all honesty I’d rather keep that part a secret. If and when this manuscript finds itself into somebody else’s hands at some point and is used as a record of the events that shook the planet, I’d prefer that I and those close to me are kept anonymous and safe. I will, however, tell you that it’s on the east coast, and it’s pretty damn big – I hope that narrows it down enough for you to get a decent idea.

  Car horns honked needlessly as the fumes only added to the stifling humidity of the streets, the roads blocked and waiting even though the traffic lights were all green. Far away, somewhere in the midst of it all, a jackhammer blared away. Such a thing didn’t get to me too much; I was used to it after having lived in a place like this for so long. Above anything it was the crushing nature of everything combined with the heat. I could already feel my skin searing with warmth.

  Stopping off in the shade of a street vendor, I took a second to take in my surroundings. I bought a bottle of water and downed half of it, feeling the cool liquid take the edge off of everything that was going on around me.

  A lot of things went through my mind when I walked through the city – the one that I always came back to was the question of who all these people were, and where they were going, and what kind of people they turned into when the odds were set against them.

  I had read a statistic somewhere once that 31% of people would abandon their partners and run if they had been camping in a tent in the woods and a bear attacked – and those were only the people who had answered honestly.

  In the end, everybody was only really looking out for themselves.

  That day, as I stepped out from the shade and headed to the crosswalk, waiting for the green man on the indicator to light up, I didn’t realise just what all those people standing around me would turn into when everything around them fell apart, and the true version of humanity in a crisis was revealed.

  Chapter Two

  The Evening Before

  I arrived at our building, taking the elevator to the sixth floor where our apartment resided. I say ‘our’ because of Luke. I guess I’d call Luke my best friend. I hope he doesn’t mind me saying that. We had been roommates since college, and had gotten along well from the offset – the first time I met him I had walked into our shared room to find him calling his unresponsive portable printer a – quote, unquote – ‘fucking asshole.’

  I liked him immediately.

  A little while after that I met Helen, and we turned into the three musketeers. Now we were together, and I was spending more and more time wondering about how I would approach the topic of moving out. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Luke like a brother, but there came a time when I had to move into the next stage of my life with Helen. I guess I was more scared of the change than anything, even though I was looking forward to it all.

  I exited the elevator and walked to number 23. In college we had made a constant joke about that spooky phenomenon surrounding the number 23, and whenever it came up we always shot each other a knowing, stupid look. When we had first started looking for apartments and saw that that was the number on the door, we decided instantly that it was the one for us without even looking inside.

  I unlocked the door and found myself immediately greeted by the scent of pasta, beef and herbs.

  That was the one thing I would miss about him most when I moved out – while I had learnt to cook at an early age, Luke could make a meal out of anything.

  I let out a wordless groan, pressing the cool, condensing water bottle against my head as I dropped my bag down by the door.

  ‘Good afternoon to you, too,’ Luke said, his figure coming into view in the kitchen. He had a mop of blonde curly hair, a throwback to his summers away from college that he used to spend surfing on the west coast. Now he worked as junior architect for the city council – his hair was a lot shorter than it used to be thanks to the duties of adulthood. He stood by a pan, stirring the pasta, clad in shorts and a t-shirt.

  ‘How are you stood by the stove in this weather?’ I asked incredulously, crossing the room to open a window. ‘It’s a hundred degrees outside.’

  ‘Make the most of the hot weather, Sam. It’s a blessing.’

  ‘You sure?’ I said, crossing to the sofa and throwing myself down upon it, ‘Because I think a lot of people out there would disagree with you.’

  ‘You gotta stop taking it so heavily, buddy.’ He emerged through the open arch into the small kitchen, holding a spatula in his hand and waving it about like he was conducting a presentation. ‘This is a world of abundance. Indulge a little.’

  I laughed and shook my head as he returned to the kitchen. The smell of food had drafted its way into every corner of the apartment due to its open-plan layout, but that wasn’t exactly something I was complaining about considering how hungry I was.

  ‘You got any plans this weekend?’ He shouted through from the kitchen.

  ‘Helen and I are thinking of hitting up some restaurant she’s been looking at in town.’

  ‘You’re not seeing her tonight?’

  ‘No, she’s got a late night at the college.’

  ‘Oooh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Does that weirdo still work on the front door of her apartment building? Because if I was getting home late and I wouldn’t want to go near that guy alone.’

  That weirdo was Wentworth, the lobby receptionist/doorman who acted as the gatekeeper to Helen’s building. He had been a dick on more than one occasion to me after finding out that she was my girlfriend. It was a strange infatuation that he had with her.

  ‘Yeah, he is. I’m not worrying, if something’s wrong then she’ll call me. What are you gonna do, anyway?’

  ‘Gonna spend as much time out in the sun as I can.’

  ‘That involve much drinking?’

  ‘You know it.’

  I laughed again and found the TV remote, turning it on from the couch. I flicked through cartoon shows, trashy sitcoms and reality documentaries, and in between all of those there was the occasional news show – every one of them was talking about the heatwave that had hit the east coast.

  I finally stopped on one in particular.

  ‘-all just speculation up until this point, but that doesn’t take into account the upcoming solar flare, does it doctor?’

  ‘Look, Sharon, there’s a whole load of nonsense being spouted about the flare, and I’d like to make it clear that the flare’s presence has nothing to do with ch
anges to the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere, and those that are affecting us directly at this present moment in time. Even if this solar flare incident were to strike Earth, there is no direct link between it and heat spikes.’

  ‘So, what would you recommend doctor?’

  ‘Well, I may be a doctor, but I’m not a medical doctor by any means. That said, I’d honestly just suggest that people stay cool, stay in the shade, and watch out for anybody vulnerable, such as the elderly, the non-abled and the very young. Events such as this always pass.’

  ‘They’re pandering for headlines,’ Luke said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They’ve been bringing it up on the news all day, the flare.’

  ‘They should,’ I said. ‘It’s a big fucking deal.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My Dad used to talk about it a lot after he retired when I was 17. He didn’t really have a lot to do in his spare time with me about to go off to college and with the kind of guy he was he needed something practical to do with his time…’

  ‘He still does that?’

  ‘The prepping? Yeah. He does.’

  ‘When was the last time you went home to see your Dad?’

  ‘Six months ago.’

  ‘How did the house look back then?’

  ‘Relatively normal, but he’s been working on a few things that he won’t elaborate on.’

  ‘You think you’re gonna get there one day and find it turned into a giant bomb shelter?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been avoiding some of his calls lately…’

  ‘What?’

  I ran a hand through my hair and clenched my eyes shut. This really wasn’t something that I wanted to think about right now.

  ‘He called me a few times ranting about end times, telling me to quit my job and leave with Helen to see him and escape into the mountains… Then he’d call me a few days later, totally calm, apologising… Then I’d wait a month and it would happen all over again.’

  ‘And you still haven’t been to see him?’

  ‘I haven’t had time. He’ll be okay, suicides not in his constitution. It’s the opposite, actually. He’s dedicated to survival.’