Hugh Howey - The Hurricane

“Can it do cell phones?” his stepdad asked.

Daniel shrugged.

Carlton dug into his pocket and held out his iPhone. “The charger’s on the table by my side of the bed,” he said.

“Can you do my Blackberry?” his mom asked. There was a sense of desperation there that Daniel wasn’t used to seeing from his in-control workaholic mom.

“I guess,” he said, wishing he hadn’t said anything. He should’ve told them he was going to go smoke cigarettes, or something.

“You know where my charger is,” she said simply.

Daniel accepted the phone. He was surprised both of them were carrying their phones around, even though there’d been no signal since the storm.

“Check with Zola,” his mom said.

“Mine’s fine,” his sister said. She tugged on a branch. “I put my other battery in.”

“Why do you have two batteries?” their mother asked.

Zola shrugged.

“I was already hesitant to ask about charging up my Zune,” Daniel complained. Which was the truth, but not for the reason he was insinuating.

“See if they need to borrow the saw in return,” Carlton said. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe sawdust off his glasses, which he then pinched with his gloves and inspected.

“Or if they need water. Or anything,” his mom said.

Daniel nodded, suddenly thrilled. The idea of making a transaction —from one family to another—released the knot of nerves in his stomach. He ran inside for his backpack with a surge of confidence. He was now going on a mission , not a tryst. This was about survival , not puppy love. He was a sanctioned ambassador with messages and offerings from a not-too-distant familial municipality. There was no pressure to fall in love, or force someone else to reciprocate. All he needed to do was establish a trade route. More formal treaties and arranged marriages could wait.

Daniel gathered his family’s dead gizmos and the various species of chargers with their fat heads and wispy tails. He ran back outside, balancing haste with the fear of stirring an unseemly sweat, and made his way through his new and wondrous wilderness neighborhood to that distant and promising kingdom a few houses down.

••••

The neighborhood streets were everywhere hedged with brush piles. They were like slumbering and camouflaged beasts, lying supine along the pavement’s shoulder. They crowded the black tar, which was still littered with leaves and the smallest limbs, and were deathly quiet and devoid of traffic. While Carlton’s chainsaw dimmed behind him, several others became audible elsewhere. The smell of tree sap and tar and sawdust filled the air. As far as Daniel could tell, this was the new way of things; the world had reverted to some primitive state, and that’s where he’d live forever. Juxtaposing this idea with the fact that people in Atlanta and Chicago were getting up, checking their email, going to work or school, waiting at red lights, hunting for WiFi—Daniel imagined what a Bahamian, Haitian, Mexican or Cuban might feel about such distant and magical realms as the United States. As he rounded the small tangle of limbs in front of Anna’s house, he considered the ridiculous idea that he could just walk from this primitive new island of his to that faraway land of promise. A few days of hiking, of sleeping under the stars, and he’d arrive somewhere to find streetlights and air conditioned houses. There’d be music and roving vehicles. There’d be signals : cell phone and wireless, radio and satellite. He could call people . . . just not anyone back here.

Daniel wandered up the white concrete driveway feeling conspicuous and uninvited, but also primal and in some survival mode that ignored taboo and embarrassment. He was on a mission from his family, he reminded himself, and nothing more.

As he turned down the walk curling from the driveway, he passed a curious addition to the house that had been erected between two large bushes: a small shed. It had a metal roof bent out of a single corrugated sheet with the solar panels mounted on top. The sides consisted of scrap vinyl siding, and it had double doors on massive hinges that stood open. There was a sign above the doors that read, in a neat print: “Community charging station. Help yourself.”

Help yourself , Daniel thought. Did that mean he didn’t have to ask? But now he wanted to ask.

He peered inside the structure to see the black inverter he’d helped solder mounted to one wall, out of any threat of rain. The other side was lined with shelves that each had their own outlets, which were wired up and covered with electrical tape. A scattering of wall warts were plugged in here and there. Two of them had devices attached, little green lights glowing happily.

For Daniel, it was like seeing a neon sign go up on his little island. He was a caveman peering into a fire. He saw at once that the same ingenuity and restlessness that had dragged his species out of their caves and down from their trees to the twenty-first century couldn’t be excised by a storm and a loss of power. Besides, it was his people who had created that power in the first place. And now he was seeing a small piece of evidence that it would all come back. Eventually.

Movement inside the house startled him out of his optimistic revelry. Daniel straightened and turned toward the door. Despite the welcoming hand-lettered sign, he wanted to make sure it was okay, especially since he had so many items begging to be recharged.

Lumbering up the stairs, he found the front door propped open, a screen door shut against the bugs. Daniel knocked on the wooden frame of the door.

“Coming!” he heard someone say. Daniel heard feet stomping through the house. He remained on the stoop and adjusted his backpack.

A tall man with a smiling beard arrived at the door; Daniel recognized him as Anna’s father, or at least the man who had interrupted their soldering and had been working with her on the roof.

“Is that Daniel?” the man said. He pushed the screen door open and Daniel stepped back and out of the way.

“Yessir,” Daniel said, stunned that her father knew his name. But that meant she’s been talking about me , Daniel realized. His heart leapt with the idea that this lovely sprite with magical powers of soldering had uttered his name—

“Ah, yes,” her father said. “I asked Anna who her little helper was, but all she had was a name. Come inside. I’m Anna’s father, Edward.”

Daniel digested all that information, feeling himself sink and deflate as he did so. The conversation between father and daughter took a more realistic aspect: Who was that? A shrug. Some creeper named Daniel .

He suddenly felt like bolting through the screen door and sprinting down the street.

There was thunder on the stairs, followed by the squeak of bare feet on clean floors. Anna ran around the corner, her longish brown hair twirling behind her in fine wisps. “Cool,” she said, beaming at Daniel. “You brought your stuff?”

Daniel hooked a thumb in his backpack’s shoulder strap. The fear and hesitation he’d felt from the risky visit melted. It was as if Anna had been expecting him, or at least anticipating his return.

“Just a few things,” he squeaked.

“Bring ’em outside,” she said, hurrying past him and throwing open the screen door. “I’ll get back to my studies in a little while,” she called to her father.

Daniel smiled meekly at Edward, lifted his palms in a shrug, then turned and pushed open the door that had just cracked back on its springs against the jamb.

“Let’s see what you got,” Anna said. She crouched by the open doors of the little shed and waved her hand impatiently. Daniel hurried over and set his backpack on the walk. He rummaged for each device and paired them with their chargers.