After Sundown Read online

  Dedication

  Our very special thanks to Fran Troxler for ferrying us up and down Cove Mountain and along the quiet Wears Valley roads, and for answering all our questions about the community. She knows it well! The valley has a great asset in the Troxlers. Thank you, Fran and David, for all you do. It’s deeply appreciated.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Also by Linda Howard and Linda Jones

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Ben Jernigan snapped awake at the first beep of his computer alarm. What felt like a lifetime of training had him moving and on his feet in front of the computer before his conscious caught up with his subconscious. He scrubbed a hand across his face and turned on a lamp as he focused on the information displayed on the computer screen in very tiny print. Swearing under his breath, he enlarged the screen—and then swore out loud.

  His cell phone rang no more than ten seconds after he began reading. Very few people had his number and any call coming in at—he glanced at the time on his bedside clock—2:43 a.m. wasn’t a call he’d ignore.

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to elevate his tone from growl to something intelligible. The abrupt awakening had adrenaline pouring through his system, tightening his muscles, sharpening his vision, his thought processes racing. He hadn’t been shot at in over two years, but his sympathetic nervous system was still ready for action.

  “You reading this?” The voice belonged to Cory Howler, longtime buddy from the military who now worked with the government in a somewhat murky job description that had him in position to know a lot of shit. People who knew shit were invaluable in every organization, no matter how large, or how small.

  “Yes. Data?”

  “Bigger than Carrington.”

  “Shit,” Ben said softly. The Carrington Event was a series of powerful coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, in 1859 that had melted telegraph wires and set some telegraph offices on fire. Technology in the nineteenth century had been limited to telegraphs; now the developed world ran on technology, and the damage would be catastrophic. Satellites would be fried, the power grids—most of them, there were a few that had hardened security—would go down, gasoline supplies would vanish because the pipelines would be damaged, food supplies would dry up, and cities would become the sixth level of hell.

  Small CMEs that had little or no effect on technology occurred almost daily, but those mild solar storms couldn’t be compared to what was coming.

  “What’s the timing?”

  “About thirty-six hours from now. We’d have had more lead time but one of the GOES satellites is down for maintenance, or malfunctioned and they don’t want to say so. Bad timing,” Howler said in wry understatement, given the magnitude of the impending disaster. “It’s a series; we’ve seen four so far. The first one will hit the Far East in about twelve hours, but the ones behind it are bigger, wider, and traveling faster. The Middle East and Europe are going down.”

  Ben didn’t miss the qualifier “so far.” They expected more than four. The fourth one would hit the Atlantic, which would play hell with any ships at sea, but any CME after that would hit the American continents, making this a worldwide shit-storm. The thing with a series of CMEs was that the first one sort of cleared the way, cosmically speaking, for the ones behind it and they grew in intensity and speed.

  “What are your plans?” he asked, because Howler had a family to take care of.

  “I’m packing up the wife and kids right now and sending them south. I want them away from the city, and as far south as possible.”

  Ben grunted. The farther south they went, the more survivable the winter would be.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m making preps, but hanging here for another twelve hours or so. Then I’ll meet up with Gen and the kids and we’ll hunker down, try to survive. My guess is close to a year before the grid comes back up.”

  That was an optimistic guess, but not completely outlandish. “Will there be a warning?” He didn’t assume there would be, because the government was so screwed up someone could persuade the head honchos that “panic in the streets” was somehow worse than actually making preparations. On the other hand, governments weren’t the only entities who could see this thing coming. Word would get out, but sooner was better than later.

  “It’s being framed,” Howler said. “Word is we’ll hear something right after daybreak, but I’m betting it might not happen until this afternoon. The morons might think it could be a false alarm and wait until Japan is hammered. You know how it goes.”

  He did, unfortunately. “See you on the flip side.”

  “Take care, bro.”

  Ben ended the call and began pulling on his clothes. He was largely self-sufficient, but there were still things he could do to harden his position, expand his resources, safety measures he could put in place. He had solar panels to protect; his ham radio would be worthless for a while after the CME hit because the atmospherics would be fucked, but he needed to protect some of the components so they’d work when the atmosphere did settle down; he also had to protect his generator and get it topped off with propane, get extra gas for his truck and ATV.

  There was no way to get enough gas to last for the duration. This wasn’t going to be a short-term event. Both the corporate side and the government side had had their heads in the sand for decades, opting to do nothing because of the cost and gambling that a catastrophic solar storm wouldn’t hit Earth, at least on their watch. Some of them had just run out of luck. The sun called the shots, and the sun had just lobbed the energy equivalent of thousands of nuclear weapons at them—no explosions, but enormous damage.

  The people who were paid to think of events like this and the likely outcomes had predicted that the worldwide mortality rate would be at ninety percent by the end of the first year. Ben didn’t think it would be that bad, because people were more resourceful than government entities gave them credit for being.

  There wasn’t much he could do right now, with dawn still hours away. On the other hand, neither could he go back to sleep. He went to the kitchen and made himself some coffee, then checked the thermal signatures on his security setup to see if any bears were wandering around in his yard, or even on the wraparound porch. Bear encounters here in the east Tennessee mountains were a fact of life, and he gave the bears the right of way.

  There were a few small signatures, birds and what was probably a raccoon, but nothing bear-sized. He took his can of bear spray, a pistol loaded with shotgun pellets, and his coffee cup out on the porch looking out over the valley. Just because there wasn’t a bear now didn’t mean one wouldn’t come along. Settling in a rocking chair and propping his booted feet on the porch railing, he sipped the coffee and looked out over the twinkling lights of Wears Valley, far below.

  He’d lived here almost two ye ars now; a military buddy from this area had steered Ben to the mountains, and though he’d initially thought about maybe building a small cabin tucked away in the mountains, when he’d seen this place he’d put in an immediate offer. It was larger than he’d planned, but the location was ideal, situated high on the side of Cove Mountain. The rudimentary driveway leading up to it was steep, impassable to regular cars, and even most pickup trucks couldn’t make it unless they were jacked high enough to clear the big rock Ben had moved into the middle of the driveway as another deterrent. He could have put a chain across the driveway but then he’d have had to get out and unlock it every time he came and went, and for the most part he’d just be making things tougher on himself. Not many people ventured up here.

  He liked being alone. He was more content this way. After years of combat and dealing with bureaucrats who didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground but were nevertheless in charge of life-and-death decisions concerning him and his men, he was done. He got out, and now he just wanted to be left the hell alone.

  That meant he never let down his guard. He had a top-notch security system, monitors, alarms; he was serious about keeping people at a distance. A couple of times some nosy neighbors—or tourists, and he didn’t know the difference because he didn’t know any of his neighbors, if someone who lived over a mile away could be called a “neighbor”—had hiked all the way up here. His motion alarm had alerted him the moment they cleared the curve and set foot on the wide, flat area where his house sat, and he’d stepped out on the porch with his shotgun broken open and draped over his arm. Neither time had he had to say a word; just the sight of a big, muscular man with a dark scowl on his face and a shotgun in his hands was enough to send the trespassers the hell off his property.

  Sitting here on his porch in the predawn darkness, listening to the nightbirds, the rustling of the trees, not a soul anywhere around him—this was why he’d moved to the Tennessee mountains. He didn’t have PTSD—no nightmares, no flashbacks, no sweats of terror. Maybe some shrink would tell him that his extreme withdrawal was a form of PTSD, but that’s what shrinks did: come up with diagnoses that justified their jobs. As far as Ben was concerned, anyone sane who had spent years dealing with the bullshit he’d dealt with would react the same way.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t know people, or at least know their names. By necessity, he’d met some of the valley residents. People insisted on talking to him, even when he limited his responses to grunts. That was almost the only drawback to the area: Southerners were friendly. They talked to everyone. He didn’t want to be talked to. Once an elderly couple he’d just met had invited him to supper; getting away from old people was almost as hard as escaping an ambush, because they were persistent with their offers of hospitality. He’d felt as if his skin was being peeled away, and all he’d wanted to do was duck and cover.

  He hadn’t even met any women he’d been remotely attracted to. Scratch that, his subconscious immediately said. Sela Gordon, the owner of the little general store / gas station on the highway . . . he’d noticed her. For one thing, she was quiet; she didn’t bombard him with questions or try to draw him into conversation. He could go into her store and pick up a few items without feeling as if he were under attack. Maybe she was a little shy, because she didn’t get real talkative with any of her customers. Shy was a bonus; she wasn’t likely to start feeling comfortable around him and start up a conversation.

  She was slim, quiet, dark hair and soft brown eyes, just curvy enough to leave no doubt she was female. She didn’t wear a wedding ring—or any rings at all. When she wasn’t looking at him, which was most of the time whenever he was in the store, he’d indulge himself by looking at her, though he was careful not to let her ever catch him at it. That was the only time in the past three years his dick had shown any signs of life.

  Brooding, he watched a lone car on the highway far below, its headlight beams crawling from left to right. Okay, so maybe he did have a form of PTSD. A few years ago he’d have been all over Sela Gordon, trying to score; the fact that he’d noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring said a lot. Still, his reluctant interest couldn’t overcome his much stronger need for solitude.

  The people down in the valley were still sleeping peacefully, for the most part. Maybe there were a few who didn’t sleep well and were waiting for dawn the way he was, maybe there was even someone who had a NOAA space storm alarm on their computer the way he did, though he doubted it. Their lives were about to change in drastic ways. His, not so much. His income stream would dry up when the CMEs hit and he stopped writing columns for survivalist magazines; his military pension would accrue until such time as the government and banks were up and running again, but the hard fact was there wouldn’t be any bills he needed to pay because utilities would stop working, and he’d be feeding himself with what he could hunt or grow. As an extra hedge, he had about a year’s worth of freeze-dried food stored in a secure locker under the house, he had canned goods, and he had plenty of ammunition stockpiled to protect his food and property.

  If the think tank people were right and only ten percent of the population survived the coming Very Bad Day event, then he intended to be one of the ten percent.

  Business had been brisk, for a weekday. Sela Gordon’s grocery store / gas station was located right on Highway 321, so business was usually good anyway. She wouldn’t get rich off the store, but she made a decent living. The gas pumps were out front, in the center of the smallish parking lot. Inside, there were seven rows of shelves filled with basic goods. No one would do their regular grocery shopping here, but if someone in the valley ran out of a few things and didn’t want to go all the way to town, this was where they came. Aunt Carol called it the “toilet paper and Spam” collection, and she wasn’t all that wrong, though there were also chips, and cookies, and a few boxes of cereal, some canned goods, and a small section of staples such as salt and sugar and pepper. One aisle was dedicated to over-the-counter meds, bandages, and feminine products. The small floor-to-ceiling cooler in the back was filled with beer, soft drinks, and juice. She’d carried milk for a while, but it hadn’t sold well enough to justify the necessary space. When it came to pricing, she couldn’t compete with the bigger grocery stores in town, and the dairy sell-by dates came and went too quickly. Now she kept a few packs of powdered milk and some cans of condensed sweetened milk that sold mostly in the summer when people were making homemade ice cream.

  Between the locals and the tourists, who either stayed in Wears Valley or passed by on their way to and from Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, she stayed busy enough to make this small venture profitable. She’d never own a private jet or buy her own vacation home, but she did okay, and okay was good enough.

  Carol said Sela liked her small business because it was safe, and again, she wasn’t wrong.

  Taking chances, both personally and professionally, was for people who liked an adrenaline rush. Sela wasn’t one of those people.

  A big gray pickup truck, riding high on its chassis, pulled up to one of the gas pumps. She recognized a lot of the locals’ vehicles, including this one. Ben Jernigan didn’t come in all that often, though he did stop for gas now and then, and he’d run in for beer and cereal a time or two—but she recognized him because it was impossible to ignore him. Both the truck and the man were impressive, he more than the truck. He was big, at least a couple of inches over six feet, with muscles that strained the cotton T-shirt he wore. His arms were thick and roped, decorated with a few tattoos, his hands scarred and callused. Usually he was somewhat scruffy, with at least two days’ growth of beard. He almost always wore sunglasses, though he’d slide them up on top of his head whenever he came inside, and his pale green eyes always had a remote, cool expression that cut like a laser. She tried to be friendly with her customers even though she wasn’t an outgoing person, but with him she couldn’t manage even that much. She stayed quiet, like a rabbit hoping the wolf didn’t notice her.

  She di dn’t like tattoos, but she couldn’t imagine his arms without them. She was vaguely alarmed that she’d given his arms that much thought.

  Whenever he came in, her heart pounded hard and fast for at least a few minutes after he’d left. Rabbit, indeed.

  She watched as he left the truck and headed for the gas pump, but then he stopped and looked toward the store. Sela quickly glanced down, though she doubted he could see her through the reflection on the glass; she still didn’t want to take the chance that he’d think she was watching him, even though she was. Bold had never been a word used to describe her.

  He left the gas pump and started toward the store.

  Right on schedule, Sela’s heart started pounding. She concentrated on the invoices on the counter in front of her, even though she wanted to look at him. What woman wouldn’t? She was definitely a woman, even if not a very adventurous one.

  The chime sounded, and he walked past her without a word. She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t pumped any gas but had left his truck at the pump, but she didn’t. Only after he’d walked by did she look up, quickly glancing at his muscled back covered by a brown T-shirt, and while she was at it also noticing how well his muscular ass cheeks filled out his jeans. Her cheeks got hot and she returned her attention to the invoices, fiercely focusing on them, or trying to, anyway.

  Her thoughts raced, refusing to concentrate on the invoices. He’d picked up one of the baskets on his way in, which was unusual. He never bought much, certainly not so much that he couldn’t carry it in his two big hands.

  Damn. Was her mouth watering? It was! The realization flummoxed her. If she was in the market for a man, which she definitely wasn’t, Jernigan would be the last man she considered as an option. Sure, he had the looks, and the muscle. She darted another look at him. Those arms, that ass . . . just wow. But there was something about him that screamed danger, danger, like the screeching robot on that old TV show, and she knew she’d panic if he actually asked her out or even lightly flirted. It was a smart woman who knew when someone was more than she could handle.