Mike Mullin - Sunrise

Mom wiped her eyes and took my hand. “I’d be honored to start Speranta’s first school.”

“I want to help,” Alyssa said.

“I know,” I said. “You’ll both be assigned to the school full time. We’ll add more teachers as soon as we can spare the manpower.”

“We’ll both teach,” Mom said. “And I’ll start training Alyssa to take over the school in case—well, when I can’t do it anymore. What did you have in mind as far as students?”

“Start with the youngest kids—say, everyone ten and under,” I said. “As soon as we can—as soon as I’m sure we can handle it, labor and food-wise—we’ll expand the school a year at a time. Within six months or so, I hope to have everyone under sixteen in school.”

“Maybe we should plan a trade school or apprenticeship program for those older than sixteen. We need more builders, engineers, and farmers, right?” Mom said.

“Good idea. Put your heads together and figure out what you want in terms of a building to house both the library and school.”

My wounds were deep; it took six weeks before I felt strong enough to resume a normal schedule. A few days of strangely warm weather greeted my return to the workforce. Late each afternoon the temperature even rose briefly above freezing; the top layer of the snow turned slushy, perfect for snowball fights. After a couple days of that, a storm blew through. We huddled in the longhouse, listening to the thunder in amazement—between the drought and winter, we hadn’t had an honest-to-God thunderstorm in more than three years. When it ended a couple of hours after dark, Darla and I took a lantern and wandered around outside. The rain had frozen, leaving a crunchy layer atop the snow. The lantern’s beam glittered on the ice, throwing magical yellow and orange sparkles across the snowscape.

Uncle Paul yelled to us from the longhouse door. “Turbines 8-A and 8-B didn’t get shut off in time. Storm burned them out. We’re going to lose four greenhouses if we don’t get some power over there.”

Darla sighed and dropped my hand. “I’ve gotta go. Don’t wait up.”

“Want help?”

She smiled her answer, and I wound up spending all night helping her and a crew of other volunteers string temporary lines from other turbine towers to fill the hole in our electrical grid. By the time we got back to the long-house, the sky was already hinting at grayness.

“Let me show you my favorite place to watch the sunrise,” I said.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.

“Sure. But it won’t take long.”

We got two claw hammers and climbed the longhouse roof together, sitting on the peak.

“I am freezing my butt off,” Darla said, “literally.”

“That would be a true national tragedy.”

She laughed, a sound as lovely as the crystalline shards of light refracted off the new ice.

“I talked to Dr. McCarthy while I was in sickbay,” I said. “There was a good obstetrics department at the hospital in Dixon. They had heart monitors, preemie incubators, all that stuff. There’s no reason anyone would have looted the equipment, since nobody else has electric power—it should still be there. Doc thought maybe we could mount an expedition and move a bunch of it back here. There’s some other stuff he could use too.”

“Are you… are you saying what I think you are?”

“I am. Let’s start a family.”

Darla leaned over and kissed me long and softly, setting off fireworks in my brain and longing in my body that lingered well after the kiss ended.

We sat on the roof, our good arms wrapped around each other, watching the sunrise. The gray turned to a low line of deep red rising from the horizon, and then streaks of pink shot from the line, and it transformed, bursting into yellows and violets and oranges and greens and even, wonder of wonders, a patch of pure blue sky. It was the most spectacular sunrise I had ever seen.

The first sunrise of the rest of our lives.

I have a whole round table of literary knights in my corner: my wife, Margaret, slayer of unnecessary dialogue and prepositional phrases; Robert Kent, champion of the action scene; Lisa Fipps, warrior of t word choice; Shannon Lee Alexander, chevalier of characterization; Jody Sparks, the emotional knight; s and Josh Prokopy, the squire. Thank you all.

Thank you to the people of northwest Illinois who were so warm and generous during my research trips. Thanks in particular to the people of Stockton. I owe you at least two apologies: one for the liberties I took with the physical layout of your town and another for making my fictional Stocktonites far less friendly than the real ones.

Thank you to Krista Fry for some last-minute help on high school sports in Warren and Stockton.

Thank you to Jim Cobb, author of Prepper’s Home Defense. The hour you spent talking to me about post-apocalyptic Chicago greatly influenced my depiction of Rockford, Illinois.

Thanks again to my brother Paul, his wife Caroline, and their children Max and Anna for lending their names to my books. Sorry the characters named in your honor didn’t all survive! I also deeply appreciate the two hours Paul spent with me (during his own birthday party!) brainstorming ways to heat greenhouses with wind turbines.

Thank you to Lisa Rojany Buccieri for making me work far harder than I wanted, polishing this book. Your insightful edits dramatically improved my work, and I’m grateful. Thank you to Dorothy Chambers for uncrossing my i’s and undotting my t’s. Thank you to Ana Correal for another gorgeous cover image.

I cannot thank everyone at Tanglewood Press and Publishers Group West enough, particularly Peggy Tierney, whom I’m proud to claim as my editor and friend. You’ve all labored so hard to connect readers with my books. Truly, I owe my career to you.

Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really glad this writing thing seems to be working out.

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and her three cats. Sunrise is his third novel. The first book in this trilogy, Ashfall, was named one of the top five young adult novels of 2011 by National Public Radio, a Best Teen Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and a New Voices selection by the American Booksellers Association.

Connect with Mike at www.mikemullinauthor.com

All rights reserved. Neither this book nor any part may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover photograph by Ana Correal Design by Amy Alick Perich

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