“Mom and my brothers. To teach me a lesson, I guess, she didn’t try to find me. She just went home and waited.”

“She didn’t call the cops or anything?”

“Nope. Obviously, I found my way home, but she told me that actions have consequences, and that as a single mom, she wasn’t always going to be there to cover for me.”

“Jesus, you’d go to jail for that now.”

“Maybe. But the training worked. I’ve got a lot of bad traits I’ve got to work on fixing, but I should be anyone’s number one first choice as company during an emergency.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

There was another piece to what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure this was the time. “Oh, what the hell?” he said.

“Huh?”

“I want to prepare you for something,” he said. “You need to remember to act only on what you know at times like these. Right now, we don’t know anything about any of what’s going on. We’re assuming we’re at war, and we’re assuming that millions of people have been killed. But we don’t know that.”

“I’m not following,” Emma said.

He tried again. “We need to stay one hundred percent in the moment all the time. That’s what survival is all about. There’s not a creature within a hundred miles who’s not going to be suffering. Some are hurt, a lot are dead and a lot are going to be. Everything. Foxes, cougars, squirrels and humans. They’re all going to be hungry and none of them is going to give a shit about you or me if we’re between them and their next meal.”

“So cut to the chase,” Emma said. “What are you not telling me?”

“From here on out, everyone is your enemy until they prove themselves to be a friend.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PENN GLENDALE HAD JUST GAVELED THIS SESSION OF THE HOUSE OF Representatives to order when the television screens in the House Chamber went dark. Boom. No flicker, no image wobble. Just dark. The assembled members gasped as one. A few shouted curses. Penn thought he heard someone crying.

“What just happened?” Penn asked to anyone who might answer. “Pete, buddy, talk to me.” In the shielded booth in the back of the chamber, Peter Clostner, a Solara employee, was working frantically to establish some level of communication with the rest of the world.

“I don’t know,” the technician replied. In his booth, he looked to be randomly pushing buttons. “Comms are all down. All of them.”

“Well, bring them back up!”

“It’s not us,” Clostner said. “All of our stuff is working fine. At least so far as I can tell.”

Representative Lianne Holt, of Delaware’s Second, stood from her seat and waited to be recognized by the Speaker.

“The gentle lady from Delaware.”